944 Cup Nationals - some pics

Just got my CD of pics from the Nationals. Here's some that I like. (I'm in the pink car if you couldn't guess).

944 Cup Nationals - continued

The cute stewardess handed me a drink as I thundered along at 50,000 feet in the Alpine Motorsports private jet. "We should be landing at Danville in a couple hours. Do you want your usual sushi lunch?" As I stretched and started to drift off to sleep in the comfortable leather seats I thought I could really get used to this. As I sleep, the flight started to get a bit bumpy, with several sharp jolts.

"Hey Wake Up!" Bam! Wha? What? "Aren't you leaving for VIR?" asked my wife as she leaned over me in the driveway. "I thought you wanted to get there early for registration. Isn't it a 6+ hour drive?" So maybe Arrive & Drive racing came in several flavors, and I can only afford vanilla. But even so, for the first time in about 10 years I was heading to the track without my giant safety blanket, my trailer. Tools, spare parts, even A/C, all abandoned as I hustled down I-95.

I make good time and am at the track, through registration and wandering the paddock by 4 pm. No big pink trailer. Well, it's nothing that I can control, so I grab myself a beer and start visiting.

Spoiled Boys Racing - The Crowell Brothers

Mid Atlantic racer Glen Evans

Early next morning, the pink trailer is waiting in the paddock and starts disgorging it's cargo of racecars.

 

#356 - My race car for the weekend

 First up is the driver's meeting. The SCCA Pro Racing representative welcomes us to the event and goes over some of the weekend's rules. Next is chief 944 honcho Dave Derecola (DD).

After the meeting was the first practice session. This was to be my first time in the rental pink car. We got the seat, belts and mirrors adjusted. A quick lesson on the controls and I headed out onto the track. The session was basically a throw-away. The car was a handful to drive with the rear stepping out under braking and impossible to trail brake. I had no confidence at all in the car. After debrief with Nick, we concluded the used tires on the car were dead and we would put on fresh Hoosiers for the next session. The front shocks were firmed up to put some more weight on the rear to help with the stability.

Bill Repass - Mid Atlantic racer

Second session saw the car totally transformed, it became predictable and I settled down and started to relearn the track. I don't know about you, but as I get older, it's getting harder to just jump in a car and go fast. I need to sneak up on it. I wasn't a threat for the title but I was improving. After the session, it was time for drinking beer and some dinner from our 944 Racing Chef Joe

The Real Racing Chef - Joe Boschulte's #08

Joe's Tools of the Trade

Tomorrow morning started off with our Qualifying session. I continued to improve, knocking a few more seconds off my time and ended up mid-pack. The last Saturday session was the Qualifying race. This would set the grid for the Championship race on Sunday. I started ok, gained a bunch of spots on the start, then slowly over the 45 min race lost those spots . I wasn't as aggressive with somebody else's car as I would have been with mine. I was self insured so any dings/bang/booms were at my cost. Discretion is the better part of a lower MasterCard bill.

My "teammates", sharing the other 2 pink cars were Karl Troy, a 944 SuperCup champion from South Carolina, and Nick Esayian, a pro driver on the Realtime Acura World Challenge team. Karl is a very fast driver and once the car was setup for him, quickly left me in the dust by a couple of seconds. Nick on the other hand, was handicapped by jumping from his front wheel drive Acura with sequential shifter into a (new to him) rear-wheel drive Porsche 944 with a manual H pattern. For a couple of sessions, we ran nose to tail, swapping leads with equal times. However by the Qualifying Race, Nick started to figure out the car and started going fast. I guess that's why he's a Pro driver and I write code.

Nick Esayian being interviewed on TV in front of the Pink Porsches

Nick was very friendly and personable and I enjoyed meeting him. The two Nicks (Esayian and Riefer) were interviewed by SpeedTv announcer Greg Creamer about the Pink Porsches. Another interviewee was our own DD about the 944Cup series, it's history and future. Coming to a TV screen near you!

Dave Derecola - have we created a media monster?

Sunday was for all the marbles. One session, the Championship race. Instead of our usual rolling starts, we were doing it World Challenge/Formula One style: a standing start and when the red lights go out, off we go. All very exciting but in actuality, a bit confusing. We were supposed to go onto the main straight into our assigned grid spots. Hang out for about 5 minutes and then do a sighting lap of the track and then back to our spots and wait for the red lights. However all of a sudden the red lights come on. Wait a minute, we haven't done our outlap! Everybody's tires are stone cold at 9:30 in the morning with paddock gravel bits still on them. Oh shit, the lights go out. Along with everybody else, it's time to go!

Sunday's race was more of the same. Gained some spots, lost some spots, ended up about where I started. Had some good battles. It was all good. Car made it back to the paddock with no damage to it or my MasterCard.

Battling with Canadian Rod Herrera

Canadian Chris Green took the win and Championship trophy. That's the 3rd year in a row the Canadians have taken the Cup. Must be something about those donuts, eh?

 It was nice being a pretend pro driver, having wet towels and bottles of chilled water handed to me before getting out of the car, not working on the car, having lunch prepared, etc. All I had to do was just drive. Nick and his family were great, the cars were well prepared. If you are in the south east, you can't go wrong with the Pink Porsches. Economically it makes sense if you don't already have the infrastructure to go racing. However, I already have the trailer, the tools, the lift, the F250, the spare parts cars and all the rest. So I climbed back into the Subie and pointed it north, back to where the stealth car awaited me on the lift. But it was a fun weekend.

2010 944 Cup Nationals

Time for a break. All summer long I've been working in the garage and not racing. Now's it's September and that means it's time for the 44Cup National Championships. Once again it's at the great track VIR just outside of Danville Virginia. This year, there's a change to the structure of the event. The weekend is a Pro Racing event, the SCCA Pro Racing World Challenge. If you watch any racing at all on the US telly, World Challenge - formally known as SpeedVision World Challenge - was one of the most exciting racing series around. It featured real production cars such as Porsche 911s, Corvettes, Vipers and the like in the GT class and Mazda, Acura and other small bore machines in the Touring Class. Cars that look and are pretty much close to what you can buy down at the car stores. The series, like most racing series over the last several years has lagged abit, but seem to be in the rise again with great car battles.

This year 944 Cup was invited to be part of the weekend to run as a support race. I was psyched to be part of the event. I always love to go to Nationals - I've done badly and also done very well - but it's great to be with all the top 944 drivers battling it out on the track. I've been preparing since spring, I got my car inspected and got a SCCA log book at the Glen event. I joined SCCA and applied for my Pro license. I was ready, all except for one minor detail:

You can't go racing if you don't have a race car that works.

Now my car works, but as we saw at the Glen, not really. The dyno told the tale after the Glen, a blistering 126 hp at the rear wheels. Bringing the Stealth machine to VIR was just taking a knife to a gun fight. Just wasn't going to do it. But a ray of (pink) sunshine is peaking over the horizon. Nick Reifer of N-Tech Racing was bringing his rental posse of pink 944's to Nationals.

A call to Nick revealed that 2 of the 3 cars were being held for some of the WC pros to race with us, but one was available. However, last years Nat's Champion Bill Comat had dibs on the ride. After some gentle baderging of Bill, he decided he needed to not divert his energies from supporting his son's bid for the Championship and passed. So after a signed contract and a few checks, I became an Arrive & Drive racer. Time to see how the other 10% live.

Glen PCA race - May/June (continued)

1st practice session was uneventful. This was the first time the car has gone faster than 25 mph since the engine blew up in April. The lap times seemed pretty slow, but I chalked that up to lack of grip on the early damp track and my general rustiness.

2nd and 3rd practice sessions didn't see much improvement, my laptimes were still pretty slow. The car felt kidda gutless. Granted I was running a 2.5L motor instead of the 2.7 I was used to. And I was running at my 2.7 weight - 2750 lbs - which is 150 over what the 2.5 guys are running. That's the equivalent of having a passenger. So I didn't expect to running up front this weekend, but still, 4 seconds off the pace?

Sitting on the grid to take part in the fun race, I idlely played with my quick-release steering wheel. I like to check and double-check that it's locked in place. I remember an incident at Lime Rock years ago when a racer coming thru the downhill turn onto the front straight turned right, but the wheel came off instead and he augered into the wall.

Hmmm, feels like more that the normal play. There's usually a bit of slop but this feels weird. Since having the wheel come off could make a bad day worse, I bailed off the grid and headed back to the paddock. Some mechanical sleuthing revealed the bolts that connected to the quick-release to the hub were too short, only gripping by several threads. And the several years of wear had stripped one of them to the point where it was barely gripping. So a good catch, always listen to that voice in your head: "Check out that loose fit ... Drink more beer ... Kill them all "   Well, maybe don't listen always ...

The nice quys at AtSpeed Motorsports (Thanks Bob!) found me some longer metric screws and I was back in business. I finished in time to head out for dinner and beer with the gang.

Our 3rd practice session served as our qualifying times, so Saturday was 2 sprint races with me starting at the back of the field. In the first race the car was a dog. Absolutely no power. At the starts when everybody was all bunched I moved toward the front, but once the race settled down all that work went down the drain. I could go through the corner with the best of them, but once on the power the hamsters were out to lunch. Everybody would just motor away from me and wave. A couple of laps into the race Tyler Comat and John Bilikas came together in turn 1-2 with John ending up on his roof. Scary stuff. Several laps under yellow kept me in contention but soon it was time for the restart and I assumed my lonely role at the back.

Race 2 was a reply of race 1. One lap of fun at the start, and then a boring drive to the end. I didn't even bother to fight anybody for a position, there was no point. They could just drive by my Yugo with their Cadillac. This royally sucked.  The only exciting part of the race was when I was going up the hill from the toe of the Boot when my right side mount of my Wink mirror broke and swung down and hit me in the helmet. I proceeded to drive up the hill with my right hand supporting the mirror, the left frantically trying to unscrew the left bracket while steering with my knees. That was exciting! Of course I kept my foot to the floor, after all, I drive "Flat Out" :)

Sunday was the 90 minute enduro. 1 minute of exciting start. 5 minutes in the pit. 84 minutes of trying not to be a rolling chicane. I didn't give up trying, I worked my ass off in the car, trying for a perfect lines, but the car gave up trying. I was running 10 seconds off the pace. A consistent 10 seconds off, but even so. Nuff said.

So at the end of the day I rolled the car onto the trailer in one piece. Much better than last year when I got a 13/13. That's the good news. Actually that's not true. There's more. I appreciate how fortunate I am to go racing at all. That's not something available to a lot of folks. I got to hang out with friends and enjoy their company. And not that I mind rain, it was a beautiful weekend at the track. All very good things.

However, I'm just too competitive and if I can't race with a competitive car, there's no point to expending all that time, money and energy. So no more racing until I find out what's wrong with the car. It just wasn't fun.

And for a final perfect touch of the weekend, I had another trailer flat on the way home. This one happend about 5 miles from the flat on the way up. Must be some sort of trailer black hole in Harrisburg.

Time for a nice home brew.  A Tower English Dark Ale is calling my name ...