Brain Fade

Brain Fade

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As I couldn't sleep well the night before my first 2003 race, I got to Pacific Raceways very early for the Friday test-and-tune. I set aside a few paddock spots for E30 folks and my friends from Portland, Jeff and Judge Penick.

Friday was my opportunity to learn the car’s new suspension. It was also the first time I had driven my race car for 6 months. Things were very different. The car had far less body roll. It reacted much more quickly to steering, throttle and brake input. The negative camber, or inward tilt, of the wheels, added to the ability of the car to corner. The same camber, however, reduced the amount of rubber on the ground when driving in a straight line. This had the effect of making it easier to lock up the brakes. This would come back and bite me later that weekend.

One of the things I noticed was the car made a loud 'banging' over big bumps. It wasn't immediately clear what caused it. I looked at a variety of possibilities, but couldn't find any obvious problems. It sounded like it was coming from the rear of the car.

By the end of Friday, I had managed to put in about 120 miles. The handling dynamics were drastically different. I was no longer able to anticipate understeer and oversteer before they happened. Things happened more quickly. I was going to have to recalibrate myself to the new handling characteristics. As my number one goal was always not bending my car, this meant approaching the limits very slowly and very carefully.

Saturday morning there were 5 E30 race cars parked together, including Lance Richerts / Auburn Foreign Car four door, Greg Miller's white E30 325e, Dale Beuning's and Ken Hill's E30s. It was great having a lot of knowledgeable folks around to help.

For the morning practice sessions, I kept my driving dialed back, as I reacquainted myself with race car traffic. For the afternoon qualifying session I tried to concentrate on pushing the car a bit. My times were disappointing, however – around 1:52.2, which was about half a second slower than I had been at my fastest the previous year. Also, the banging was getting worse.

It appeared that the anti-roll-bar mounting tabs were bending – despite being reinforced with welded tabs. Wes Hill took a look and pointed out that the sway bar was bottoming out against the chassis. We shortened the adjustable links. I also noticed that the adjustable spring perch for the front left strut had loosened itself, letting the car rest on the shock. This isn't optimum! Looking at it closer, it appeared that the small allen locking screw had fallen out, probably because it hadn't been properly tightened down when the car was corner weighted on Thursday. I slightly adjusted the spring perch so that the car weight was held by the spring. The next time out, some of the banging and clunking was gone, but I was hearing a clattering from the front at odd times.

Saturday afternoon I had my car looked over for its yearly technical inspection. The inspector provided a few pieces of advice, including some additional places for roll cage padding. He also noted that he really liked what I had done with the battery and that it looked solid and safe. I don't get many compliments about my car, so I savored it. Additionally, he tested the master cut-off switch. When he flipped it, it killed the engine perfectly. Hopefully, it would never have to be used again.

The following morning, I worked on bringing up my corner entry speed incrementally. My qualifying times were around 1:50.2 – almost a second and a half faster than my previous record time last year -- and on unshaved, slower tires. That was more like it. It felt really fast… but at the same time, I wasn't pushing the car yet. The year before, I knew my corner entry speeds were "right" when it was a fight to bring the car down to the apex of the turn. The car was tracking right to the apex. Two of the senior racers commented on this, as well. I set this as a longer term goal – slowly increase corner entry speed until it was a 'fight' to bring the car down to the apex, and the car was slipping and scrubbing, not driving, through the turn.

Because I wasn't running in the novice race group this weekend, both of my races were on Sunday afternoon. My first race was Improved Touring B, in Group 5. Group 5 was a much faster group than my old home of Group 2, as it included fast 6 cylinder cars. I had done some quick calculations, which told me that I had to watch out for lapping cars after about 15 minutes. I wasn't too worried about the race though – as the only entrant in ITB, all I had to do to "win" was finish.

The race wasn’t exciting for me – but, approaching turn 9, just before the straight, I saw the Turn 9 flagger scrabbling for the yellow. The spectators at turn 9 were making vigorous pushing motions towards the outside of the track, i.e. go wide! Even before I made it around the corner, I knew that another car had gone into the wall through 9. Sure enough, an E30 BMW had hit the wall pretty hard and was sitting on the inside of the corner just past the apex. By the time I was half-way around the track, the full course yellow was out. Just as it came out, another E30 325i blew by me. Just past turn 6, the 325i pointed me by, recognizing that he'd passed under the yellow. As the race was due to be over soon, they black-flagged the session and brought us in.

A little later, the race steward came by and asked me about my "pass under the yellow" on the exit of turn 6. I let him know that it was the result of a point by, and he was happy with that answer.

I had an hour before my G-P race. On rough pavement, there was still a lot of clattering from the front of the car. I poked around I found was that there was a little play in the strut. Since this would require disassembling the strut, it wasn't possible for me to fix on the spot and it wasn’t clear that it was responsible. With Ken Hill's help, we also found that my control arm ball joint mounting nut had worked itself partially loose. That's very bad, since if the control arms breaks loose, you're guaranteed to spin suddenly and violently. Yikes! I put a bunch of extensions on ratchet and tightened the hell out of the nut. For good measure, I capped it with a second nut, to assure that it wasn't going to loosen.

I finished tightening the ball joint nut just in time to drive down to pre-grid for the GP race. Unfortunately, the previous race grid was delayed to clean up an incident, so I ended up sitting in pre-grid for about 25 minutes. I was very thirsty and hot.

I had qualified right in the middle of a group of 6 GP cars that were all with in about one second of each other. That promised close racing. My hope was that I would be able to fight my way out of the group of close cars to clean air.

On the start, I wasn't able to get ahead of the pack. As expected, close racing ensued. Greg Miller's white G-Production BMW 325e was just in front of me. Margie's yellow GP Datsun 510 wasn't too far behind. After a few laps, I was able to pass Greg Miller's car. One by one, I made it past each of the cars. I was driving consistently and timing my passes well, so that I was slowed down very little by the traffic. By about lap 6 or 7, I had managed to pull ahead of the pack of cars into clean air. Each lap, I pulled farther ahead of the bunched cars behind. Much further ahead, faster cars diced it up, and I set my sights on at least catching them.

Then I hit a mental wall. My brain got soft(er), my eyes got slow, and exhaustion caught up with me. It sucked! Suddenly, I wasn't pulling away from the pack of cars behind – and they were slowly gaining on me. I knew that there was still 6 or 8 laps to go. I blinked sweat out of my eyes. Then, heading down the steep hill into 3a, I locked up my brakes badly. I often locked up my brakes briefly two or three times on the way into 3a on average – but each lock-up was very brief. When done properly, it sounded like ‘erp erp erp’. When not, it was more like “errrrrr” and stinky white smoke went everywhere. Locked brakes don't slow a car nearly as well as almost-locked brakes. I found myself on the run-off road. I was able to get the car back on the track, losing only a few seconds. Only one car made it by, and I was able to quickly pass it again.

A few more laps, and the pack was even closer behind me. It felt like the car’s engine had lost a cylinder… but I knew that it was the Sagepower that had blown a gasket. The race was almost over. Each time I passed start-finish without a checkered flag, I had to steel myself for one more lap. My arms were heavy and my feet numb.

Heading down into 3a, I locked up my brakes badly a second time. This time, the pack was right behind me. While I got the car turned around, the crowded pack zoomed by. I wasn't willing to pull back on truck and trust to luck that I didn't cause an expensive accident, so I waited until 10 or 12 cars had gone by. It was disappointing watching all my hard work evaporate. Finally, I got in behind Greg Miller's BMW. I was able to pass him the following lap – which turned out to be the last lap of the race. As I passed the checkered, I was kicking myself for not holding out for just two more laps. At least my “moment” happened in a relatively benign place, but my lack of concentration was a symptom of having to race twice in one day, as well as the general exhaustion of three full track days. As I rolled off the track, my odometer told me that I had just completed 312 track miles since Friday morning. That was a lot of time to spend on a race track in a three day period!

I finished 7^th of 9 G-P cars. It wasn’t a great result, and to drive such a fast (for me) first half of a race, followed by the doofus moves entering 3a, was disappointing. At the same time it showed potential. I had been able to consistently run 1.50’s – much better than my previous year’s record time of 1.51.8 and consistent 1.52.5’s. I wasn’t pushing my car in most corners, and I was very slow through the 5 / 6 complex. There were still one or two relatively easy seconds to be gained with the new suspension’s increased limits. It was something to work on.