The UnSage Mechanic Goes Racing
(c) 2002 J. Sage Schreiner
I had just
finished a sleepless week preparing my '84 318i for its first race. Friday
morning, I was caravanning up to BC with
On the way
to his house, I started hearing an awful grumbling from the front end of the
car. The grumbling would disappear if I lightly touched the brakes. I
thought it might be a combination of the not-broken-in racing break pads
and slotted rotors I was using. At Greg's house, I jacked the car, pulled the
pads and looked over the rotors for anything obvious, such as cracks. I also
tugged on the wheels to check the wheel bearing play, but didn't find any
problems. Huh. I put everything back together and followed Greg
up Highway 9 to
When I arrived Friday afternoon I put in a little seat time at the new track. The weather was gray and cool, but dry. Driving with super-fast race cars blazing by was quite an experience! I was getting passed by fire-breathing Porsches, M3s, and a wide variety of other racecars driven by fast, experienced drivers. This was a great trial by fire to relieve anxiousness I had about my first race.
Mission is a short, 1.1 mile, track with lots of extremely tight turns – 2nd and 3rd gear for the whole track. It has a short straight and is quite technical. This moves the handling / horsepower equation a little more towards breaking and turning. I loved it! The low speed turns were a much more comfortable place to experiment with the new found adhesion of my sticky Toyo R-compound tires. Slower speed means that things tend to happen more slowly, giving more time to react correctly.
The
front-end grumbling seemed to re-occur most strongly when the brakes were hot
and I was cornering hard. It made me nervous as I could feel it through both
the chassis of the car and the steering wheel. In the paddock I looked over the
front suspension of the car several times, but found nothing wrong. So, I
shrugged and kept driving.
Friday was a chance to reinforce the electrical fan radiator mount, get my seating, belt and mirror adjusted properly, fix the radiator overflow (which wasn't working quite how I wanted it), pad the roll cage where my helmet was bouncing off it in sharp right hand turns and other simple jobs.
Saturday
dawned wet, windy and cold. Luckily, Ken and Wes Hill, the two racers that had given
me invaluable advice and support, brought a large tent to keep the rain
off. Throughout the day Ken and Wes, and Ken's wife Cecilia, provided technical
and racing know-how.
I had two practice sessions with the other novice drives. Rain poured down in both sessions. The track, which is located in the marshlands by a large river, doesn't drain well, making things very exciting. The grumbling from the front of the car persisted.
My 318i has
a light rear end and tends to oversteer slightly, although in a slow and
predictable way. In the dry I can keep the rear-end
planted by staying on the gas through corners (transferring weight to the rear
of the car). In the wet, the car oversteers ludicrously because I can't put
down enough power to keep the weight back. While this isn't necessarily fast,
it's a ton of fun and a great way to learn car control! I made it through
both of the practice sessions with only one or two mild "rotational moments".
I considered disconnecting the rear sway bar to help soften the rear of the car
and thus reduce oversteer, but as it looked like it
was going to clear, I decided to leave it attached.
I
was quite nervous before the race. Struggling into all of
the unfamiliar safety equipment, contorting myself through the roll cage
and into the seat and fastening the five-point harness is a lot of work. I sweated
that I wasn't going to make it in time. The rain started to pour down, but it
was too late to do anything about the sway bar. My mouth was cotton-dry.
I was pre-gridded in 2nd place (next to pole position). We ran through our pace lap, Start/Finish tower waved a green flag and we were off! I was passed half-a-dozen times before I even made it to the first corner, as my car was the most underpowered car present by a significant margin. Once we got into the corners, however, I was able to hold my own. The extremely wet track worked as an equalizer, reducing the amount of power that the other cars could put down, as well as reducing the advantage given by their stiffer race suspension.
Conference novice races mix cars regardless of class. Everything was present from a big, fast Camaro (having a lot of trouble getting the power down), to Civics, Rx7s, and of course a number of BMW 325i race cars. Even once my car was fully prepared with race suspension, a new engine, race exhaust and so forth, it was going to be in a much slower class than these cars. Running with an ancient, 90 hp engine, and almost-stock suspension was a big disadvantage. But it was still an amazing amount of fun!
I was passed eight or nine more times, and of those about half immediately spun or overcooked their braking and ended up in the weeds, although none bent any metal. My lasting impression of the race is largely of cars sliding off the wet track just in front of me. The car corners and brakes reasonably well and so the only place it can easily be passed is on a straight. At one point, one of the 325i race cars tried to pass me and spun immediately in front of me. I went for an opening, but he came off his brakes early and rolled backwards into my line. Yikes! I had a serious pucker moment as I momentarily locked up my front wheels and had images of pushing my bent car home. I came off the brakes slightly, got my car back under control and nipped through a narrowing gap.
Three cars were dicing it up just in front of me and I slowly gained on them, but didn't have a chance to work pass them before Start/Finish vigorously waved the checkered flag. I placed 11th overall out of 18. I was extremely pleased with this result considering how much slower my car was then even the slowest cars. I had still managed to be faster seven other cars, including a fully prep'd Nissan 300zx and a BMW 325i.
For the rest of the evening I couldn't wipe the stupid grin off my face. It was every 8 year old’s dream come true – and I had finished my first race with an unbent, running car despite plenty of opportunities to do otherwise. As novices only race on Saturdays, I started home that evening after dinner (still grinning). About 20 minutes into my drive I heard a "clink" followed immediately by something banging around the front of the car.
I knew what
it was before I even got out of the car. Friday morning, when I had opened my
calipers to diagnose the grumbling, I had wondered if the problem might be
related to one of the bolts being over torqued, so I had backed it off
slightly. That was dumb. A lot dumb. The caliper itself is bolted to a small
mount which is, in turn, bolted to the front strut. One of the two small
caliper-to-mount bolts had come loose, letting the caliper swing freely –
and bang against the inside of the wheel. I searched around the roadway where I
had heard the first clink, but it was pouring rain, windy and dark, and I
couldn't find the bolt. Images of walking through
the cold and wet back to
I was
extremely lucky it hadn't happened in a race – at very least it would have
ended my race. The rest of my drive home, though slow because of the high winds
and wet, was uneventful. My next race was in