Sorting the Driver

(c) 2003 J. Sage Schreiner

www.unsage.com

 

On the weekend of August 17^th and 18^th, 2002, I raced at my home track of Pacific Raceways. Saturday dawned celestial blue – one of those days that makes you forget that there are months of miserable drizzle on the way. The downside of a day like this is that it will get hot – and the hot weather can be tough on cars as well as drivers.

 

I unloaded the fugly 318i and readied myself for the Group 2 practice session. This weekend, Group 2 was running last of the 6 groups, so I had plenty of time to register, rent a transponder, have my safety equipment checked and collect myself. I said ‘hi’ to Judge and Jeff Peneck (Judge is the old guy who drives his son Jeff’s Honda Civic I Production race car). Judge was running his "upgrade" this weekend, i.e. his first Conference race with senior drivers, and was very excited about it.

 

My Group 2 practice session was uneventful, but it was followed immediately by my Novice Closed Wheel session, with no chance to cool down either the car or the driver. I had a thirty minute break for lunch, which was barely time enough to bring the car in, sop up the sweat and then head back on track.

 

After the short lunch break, the car wouldn’t turn over. Click. Click. Ah hah! I knew what the problem was immediately. Twice before after ‘vigorous’ sessions on track, I'd had the ground wire to the starter solenoid (switch) fall off, a common problem with M10-motors. I thought I had fixed the problem permanently, but apparently not. I jumped out and found that… the wire was still connected. What the heck? My stomach tied in knots – I was due on track in minutes. Luckily, Keith Martin, a professional BMW mechanic, was working with Greg Hinkel, my paddock mate. Keith jumped the terminals of the starter with a screwdriver (do I really have to tell you not to do that at home?), and the car started. Huh. Apparently the solenoid on the starter of the old M10 engine has a tendency to “lock” in high-heat, especially when they get a bit older.

 

I got in some good laps. One of the issues I had to work on was that, with the race exhaust I had installed a few weeks previously, the car was much faster than it had been. This messed up all of my deeply-ingrained reference points for breaking, shifting and turning. I also found myself with a faint disorientation through the turns – a sure sign that I wasn’t looking far enough ahead. As the car goes faster, the eyes have to be retrained to look even further down the track. My mantra was "look far, go fast."

 

By the end of my third practice session, I had recalibrated my hands and eyes. The erratic and bizarre lines that had the turn workers in stitches were cleaner and more consistent. I rested in the shade for two hours. When I hopped back in the car for my Group 2 qualifying session, my freakin' car wouldn't start, again. And this time, no one was handy to jump the solenoid terminals. Time for the trademark Unsage Mechanic finesse! I wriggled out of the roll cage, found a wrench, and whacked the starter several times to free the solenoid. The car started right up and I zipped down to pre-grid just as the last cars were entering the track. I took it easy for a few laps in order to catch my breath and re-concentrate. Then, I was able to put in a few good laps. Off the track, I learned that I had managed a 1:55 lap. This was the best time I'd run at PR by two seconds. I felt that going faster without race suspension was out of my reach, so I was quite pleased.

 

I returned from qualifying just in time to get a sip of water and drive back down to pre-grid for the Novice Closed Wheel race. When five minutes are remaining before

a race begins, all cars in pre-grid must turn off their engines. Because I was worried that my car wouldn't start, I sat just outside of pre-grid with my engine running. When I saw the one minute warning, I pulled into last place of the 20 novice cars.

 

When the green flag waved, I quickly pushed past a number of cars. At least one person actually honked at me! I couldn't believe it – most race cars don't even have a working horn and I could barely hear it anyway. The sound of 20 race cars at full throttle was deafening! This was my 11th race, and my experience over some of the novice drivers showed. My car, while it was faster than it had been, wasn’t fast by any stretch of the imagination – the cars with racing suspension had the potential to enter corners much faster and carry that speed through the other side. Also, most cars had more horsepower. Passing people in better handling and faster cars was only possible by wringing every ounce from of my 101 horsepower wunderwagon – but not over-driving it. Gratuitous slides and smoking tires look fast, but aren't (Although they are silly-fun!).

 

After 7 or 8 laps, I had worked my way up to 11th. But the next bunch of cars was a good 10 or 15 seconds ahead of me. Bill Vine, the novice director, gave us a “practice” full-course yellow and brought out the pace car. The pack bunched up. The bad part of this was that the people I had left far behind had a chance to catch up. The good part was that I had a chance to catch up to people who had a big lead on me. When the pace car pulled off and we had the green flag, I passed several more people immediately, and then one or two more on the following lap. I held my position with only one of the people I had passed managing to get by. The checkered flag waved and I knew I had done well. The official results said that I placed 7th of 20 cars. Not bad for starting at the back of the grid in a slow car! Additionally, I had a fast lap time of 1:53.2, which I was overjoyed to see, as it was two seconds faster then the personal record of 1:55 I had set that afternoon. Not bad at all!

 

Sunday was not a busy day. I had one qualifying session just before lunch, and then my Group 2 race late in the afternoon. Qualifying seemed to go well, and I got in a number of clean laps without being slowed by traffic. At the end of my session, the shifter popped loose again, just as it had at Portland. I wasn't too worried, however, as I had lunch and a full afternoon until my race. I jury rigged a fix (More silicone glue! More nipples!), and chatted with various people about a more permanent way to fix the problem.

 

Then I checked my qualifying results. I found that I had qualified 33rd of 40 cars, ahead of one other G Production car. That in itself was awesome, but I had also managed to come up with a lap time of 1:51.8. I had no idea how, but I had shaved 1.4 seconds off of the best time that I had set the previous afternoon. I was running almost six seconds faster than I had at the last PR race. I couldn't believe it. 1:51s were as fast as I hoped to be once I had full race suspension for the car! I simply couldn't understand where the extra speed had come from. Glue on my tires? An extra squirrel pedaling away? A horsepower-adding “Calvin Peeing” sticker?

 

But the best of the weekend was still to come.