If You Didn't Think I Was Stupid Before

If You Didn't Think I Was Stupid Before...

When I was about four or five years old, I lived on my grandparent's property out in the dry, coastal hills of California. Their house was at the end of a long winding, unpaved road, aptly named "Dusty Trail". The last stretch of this trail climbed a very steep ridge and then descended down the other side in unpaved switchbacks. In a strangely fortuitous occurrence, I somehow acquired a Big Wheel (kind of like a big plastic tricycle, but way cooler when you’re five). I don't remember when I figured out that riding the Big Wheel down the hill would be a lot more fun then pedaling around at the bottom, but it probably took me about 2.6 seconds to make the connection. Eyes squinting against the grit, dust flying, sliding through the sharp turns, I did it again and again.

Strangely, it was one of the few uncompromisingly entertaining (questionable) activities I had as a child that was not eventually forbidden by adults; i.e. throwing dirt clods (better yet: rocks!) at unfortunate animals or other kids, playing in poison oak, pulling the tails off of lizards, "adventuring" on neighbor's property, playing with axes and fire and that kind of harmless thing.

But it got better – I had cousins who lived on the property as well, and they had their own Big Wheel. (Although it was lime green. Lime green? Helloooo?). Wheel to wheel racing against someone down the hill was entirely superior to doing it alone. Especially when they were bigger, older and capable of easily beating me at everything else except this. Willa Cather once said that what happens to us before we are seven years old is most formative of our personality, or something a long those lines. I'm suspicious that she didn't have Big Wheels, evil cousins and steep hills in mind, but whatever. All this may help explain the following lack of common sense, or if not explain, at least give it context.

Since driving a tired, underpowered, drum brake-equipped, vinyl-seated BMW with over 200k miles on it as my track car just wasn't a sufficient display of general dimness and lack of "getting it", I decided to push the envelope a bit. Why not race? Floating around in the back my head for most of the first year that I was driving the fugly ‘84 318i was the possibility of racing. There were a number of issues to consider: would the car be competitive (since an ’84-85 318i is pretty much the slowest BMW since the Isetta), how would I get the car to the track, could I afford it, and how would I improve my driving skills sufficiently to meet the far higher level necessary of a race driver? A lot to think about before I made any kind of decision.

My interest grew from a realization that race driving would advance my high performance driving skills a great deal. My familiarity with the basic concepts – the line, heal and toe, and simple car control – was reasonably cemented after about 15 or 20 odd track events, and my learning curve was starting to flatten out a little. While I still had a great time at every track event, I wanted to make things frustrating again – and what a better way to do it then to add competitive traffic.

In early September, I went down to Seattle International Raceway (now called Pacific Raceways) to watch the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs, aka ICSCC, aka "Conference", race on the invitation of one of the BMW racers, Greg Hinkel. If you haven't gone and watched the races, I highly recommend it. It was a very enjoyable way to spend a sunny afternoon. Walking around the paddock, I found a lot of different kinds of cars from Minis to 500 horsepower Porsches to open-wheel formula cars. One of the things that struck me was just how friendly people were. Watching the cars go round and round was only a small part of why it was enjoyable.

Observing the novice racers I realized that I would be able to hold my own just fine. Driving ability ranged from people who appeared to be driving the track for the first time, to obviously much more skilled people. I filed this away for future reference.

In November, on my last track event of the year, I met Bill Shaw. Bill drives a black Miata race car. The vast majority of people tow their cars to the track, so I was very curious to see him show up in an obviously race-prepared car towing a little tire trailer.

And it's all Bill’s fault for putting the bug in my ear! He told me about a class in Conference, called Production class. Production class is designed with more affordable racing in mind, and greatly limits the kind of performance modifications that can be made to a car. Additionally, its rules are conducive towards building a car that is drivable to the track – for example, you cannot replace the car's rear windows with plastic, and a racing fuel cell and main cut off switch are not required. Being able to drive my car to the track was key for making racing affordable, as my budget couldn’t afford a tow vehicle and a trailer in addition to the steep initial costs of a first race season. For those that know a little about sports car racing, it’s worth noting that SCCA’s Production class operates with much less restrictive rules.

When I returned home I downloaded the rules from the Conference webpage (www.icscc.com) and began to study them thoroughly. I was interested in discovering how much work was necessary to meet the class safety requirements, to estimate whether my car would be reasonably competitive in Production class, and guess what kind of budget would be necessary. First, I found that Production classifies cars by a ratio of racing weight divided by stock from-the-factory horsepower. I guessed that my car's race weight (everything, including driver) would probably end up being around 2300 pounds after finishing stripping, but adding a roll cage. I eyeballed G Production, which has a weight to horsepower ratio of 22 to 1. With 101 stock horsepower, my minimum race weight in G Production was 2220 lbs. The really cool thing about GP is that there seemed to be around 8 or 10 cars entered for most races – plenty of competition.

Now that I had gotten a handle on the rule book, what followed was a lot of questions thrown at everyone I could think of to discover whether they thought my car would be competitive. I spent a lot of time studying the rules. Additionally, I came up with a list of clarifications regarding the rules and allowable modifications to ask Dan Heinrich, the race steward. I didn't want to spend time or money on a modification that might turn out to be illegal!

Many people voiced the opinion that simply buying a moderately prepared race car was more affordable and just plain less work. I also heard, from several experienced drivers, that many race car projects are started, but never make it to the track. A number of folks suggested that I rent a race car, but rental fees can be over a thousand dollars per race. As well, one of my goals has always been to learn more about cars, my 318i specifically. Therefore, I decided that building my 318i into a race car was the right decision. As an added benefit, a few years of driving an underpowered car would hopefully develop good habits for higher horsepower options. Finally, as this car shared a chassis with its much faster 325i twin, by replacing the engine, driveline, rear subframe and a few other items, the car could be "upgraded" into a 325i. Although, as I had discovered in the past, 1.8 liters was entirely sufficient to scare the pants off myself.

After a lot of study, time, budget calculations and head scratching I came to the conclusion that my 318i could eventually be competitive in G Production. I planned on incrementally modifying the car, as I had in the past, focusing on safety and reliability enhancements first. My goal for the winter would be to have the car ready to roll for the first race of the season on April 13, 2002. Winning races, or even being able to keep up with the back markers of the GP class was a goal for much further down the road. The important thing for me was getting as much seat time as possible.

I would have to be fully committed. Racing is not conducive to half measures. The wear and tear it puts on the car is extreme – and skimping on maintenance and parts is a recipe for, at the very least, an embarrassing "Did Not Finish" result. Racing was going to be expensive and incredibly time consuming, but hopefully there would be benefits. One evening late in November, I decided to go for it. There was a huge amount to be done – the first race in April was right around the corner.