Gone Racing ...

Post & Pre-race inspection

After the last NJMP race in July, the 44 got a good looking over. Due to an agricultural excursion in the last race, my front sway bar mount was a bit bent. Some quality time with an anvil and a 2 lb sledge hammer and it was good to go. A few minor issues were taken care of and the car was stuffed back into the trailer for the next race in Sept.

After a rainy labor day week where I spent my time fussing with the 2002, by Friday it was warm and muggy as I headed back to New Jersey Motorsports Park for a race weekend on the Lightning circuit. This time we were running with EMRA and had our own race group and block of time. Nuthin' but 44's.

Saturday morning was breezy and cloudy with temps in the low 70's, but it soon warmed up. In all we had about 10 944 Cup cars with a lone Supercup. Matt Marks, a former 944 Cup racer came back to join us this weekend.

Practice and Qualifying went without a hitch and I placed 5th, ready for the afternoon race. Sitting on the grid, the pace car headed out and I followed. As I traveled down the pit lane, the car started sputtering, and sounded terrible, like I had bent the valves or something. Heading out the track I had no power and couldn't keep the revs up. I became concerned that I wouldn't even make it back to the pits without dying. WTF? It ran strong all day and now this? On the outlap for the race?

I pointed the other cars by on the back straight and followed them around as they took the green flag while I headed into the pits & paddock. Once at my paddock spot, I got out, changed and went back to look at the car. A bit of prodding and poking showed nothing obvious. I restarted the car and the motor was fine. As the risk of repeating myself, WTF?  A lap around the paddock and a few incognito hi rev pulls behind the Lightbulb sound walls and the car was okay. So much for race 1.

Race 2 on Sunday the next morning was a different story. The officials wanted to grid us first come first served, and since I was the first to grid, put me on pole. While nice, I didn't deserve it and told them so. Their next idea was based upon race 1 finishing position, which would be put me in 11th. I wasn't going along with that either. Finally we got it sorted out and we gridded by our qualifying position as originally planned.

Today I was 5th in class, 6th overall, starting on the outside lane. I had a good start and by turn 5 I was 3rd in class, where I finished after some good racing. The results of this race set the grid for Race 3


Race 3, I started 3rd, and had a nose to tail battle with Bob Page pretty much the whole race. A couple laps in, I made a small bobble in the uphill turn and Bob got past me. I dogged him for several laps, hanging right off his rear bumper until he missed a shift in the left hander and got past him. Now it was Bob's turn, and he dogged me until about lap 15 when my tires started to go off. I was heading left in turn 4, leaning on my tires and they just said "Nope, not going to do it ..." and was spit out into the dirt. Bob thundered past again with a good lead. With about 5 laps to go I started to reel him in. Every lap I was bit closer. Al Cohen was in 3rd with a gap to Bob, then me.

All our tires were going off and our times were slowing a bit so we just maintained the same gap. My tires were done, I couldn't put any power down in the Lightbulb turn until at least halfway. Finally Matt Marks who was battling behind me with James Rothenberg, got free when James went flying off the track into the dirt at the left handler. With 2 laps to go I wasn't sure I could hold Matt off. On the last lap he dive bombed me into turn 1. I was afraid he was going collect me so I checked up, glad I did. Matt was able to keep it on the track ahead of me and I didn't have tires to take the fight to him. He took the checker in front of me, and I ended up 6th.

With that, I put the car back on the trailer in one piece and headed back home. Another good weekend racing. Gotta love it.