racebw040403.txt
Time-stamp: <2004-04-11 19:27:24 lrc>

The older I get, the faster I was.

It's been about ten years since I last drove on a new (to me)
racetrack. I'm still learning the limits of the Spec Miata, and how it
acts as they are approached. It was only just before my last race that
I found out that I could rev the engine much higher than I had
been. In short, I could write a book of excuses for why my driving
sucked last weekend. For reference, the configuration we were running
was #13 clockwise, with the Star Mazda turn. The length of this
configuration is 2.64 km.

I took off early from work on Friday. Unfortunately I had not had a
chance to start packing for the trip before hand. Yet again, I
promised myself that I would put together a kit of stuff for taking to
the track that I simply had to load into the van and go, rather than
sorting and packing everything every time I go to the track.

In practice on Saturday, as I expected, I turned a rather slow
laptime. However, I did start to get some idea of where the track
went. I had tried to read Hank Watts' description of the track, but
without ever having seen the track, it didn't make a bunch of sense to
me. 

Qualifying was very frustrating. After a few laps I caught up with
Brad Leabo in his second gen Rx7. His horsepower advantage kept me
from passing on the straights, and I wasn't fast enough to pass in the
turns without being a lot more aggressive than I wanted to in a
practice.  My best time during qual was a 2:25.

The sprint race on Saturday started out fairly well, I was actually
keeping up "with the pack" of Spec Miatas. I even passed one of the
other Spec Miatas. About 20 seconds after the pass, I completely blew
a turn. I was about 70 degrees clockwise before the car suddenly
caught and I spun back the other way, off the track and back on,
finally spinning 430 anti-clockwise. I managed to refrain from
stalling the car (either that or I bump started it), and continued
on. Having fallen way behind the other Spec Miatas, the session became
more of a practice than a race for me. I did manage to get down to a
2:22 during the race.

My friend Jeff was going to codrive with me in the enduro that night,
but he was not feeling good about his driving. We thought we had lined
up another co-driver, but that fell through. Meanwhile, we realized
that my front rotors were in much worse shape than I
thought. Fortunately, I was able to get a set of cryo treated brembos
from Rush Motorsport, and get those mounted.

Jeff was helping with the barbecue, so I didn't have much in the way
of help setting up the hotpit between final checkered and the start of
the race. I ended up sharing pit space with ET's car and Jim Bucha's
car. Jeff grabbed me a plate of food from the barbecue and I had time
to eat a couple of meatballs before the start of the race.

Since I didn't know the track, nor did I have a codriver, or much in
the way of crew, rather than trying to "win" the enduro, I decided to
treat it like a three hour practice session. It was only my third time
racing at night, and I knew I needed a lot of practice. For various
reasons, my video camera ended up not recording when I started the
race. This may be a good thing, I was exploring new realms of
agricultural racing. During the day, I had pretty much learned most of
the turns. When it got dark, I realized that I had not learned the
track. I'd go charging up to some reflectors thinking that it was one
turn, and too late, realize that it was another. 

One time I went charging up to the left hand kink after the "nascar turn"
mis-reading the three reflectors on my left, not realizing that the
third one was on the right side of the track after the high speed kink
to the left. Not being a hero, I chose to go straight on what for this
track configuration was an escape road. When the escape road rejoined
the track I made sure that nobody was coming up on the left checking
out both my window and my rear view mirror. I noticed someone coming
in my mirror, looked for them out the side window, didn't see
them. Looked again, they still hadn't caught up. Rechecked my
mirror. They had followed me down the escape road.

One thing I realized was that not knowing a track well enough to have
names for all of the turns makes it a lot harder to learn. I'm still
not sure of the "names" or "numbers" of the turns I ended up calling
"right-left-right right-right left-left".

I was not getting nearly as tired as I had feared, and stayed out
until I had put about 75 miles on the car, at which point I was
confident that I wouldn't need to stop again for gas. Rather than a
hectic, every second counts pitstop, while Jeff gased the car, I ate
some of my (now cold) dinner, drank water, hit the loo, etc. I then
fired up the camcorder, hopped in the car and headed out. About the
time I was pulling out of the pits, I realized that I had forgotten my
gloves, so I took a lap and came back in to get my gloves.

After my pitstop, I felt much better, though to my surprise my
laptimes didn't drop as much as I had expected. Looking at my laps for
the race, my last two laps were by far my fastest, again, they were
2:25s. 

After the race, we did minimal cleanup, and Jeff and I headed back
into town. I saw an "OPEN" sign in the window of an Indian restaurant
and we tried going in there. Unfortunately they had already closed, so
Jeff and I went to the Denny's. The combination of several people
calling in sick, and a whole bunch of people showing up after the
enduro led to the wait being exceptionally long. The staff were, by
and far, rather good natured and friendly about it though.

Seeing the track again during warmups Sunday morning was quite an
experience. My only reference points the night before had been
reflectors, which were now invisible. On the otherhand, I could see
more than 100 yards ahead of me, as well as being able to see to
either side as well. The track seemed almost unbelievably
spacious. Even though I felt like I was going so much faster, my best
lap was, yet again, a 2:25.

Qualifying Sunday was quite frustrating. I got caught behind some
Pro-7 cars that were having their own little race during qual and
couldn't quite get around them. After a few laps, when someone
crashed, I came in to the pits to find some clear track. I headed out
behind the pace car, and the session was ended after that lap. I only
got a few laps that session, and again, my best time was a 2:25.

Sunday's race went a lot better for me. I was able to keep up "with
the pack" of Spec Miatas, until the Honda Challenge cars caught us. I
did not do as well in traffic as my compettitors and lost ground as
cars outside of our class passed me more readily than the other
Miatas. 

At one point, I somehow got turn 2, the buttonhook, "right". I carried
so much speed out of it that not only did I hit my revlimiter for the
first time on that straight, I hit it well before the end of the
straight. Continuing my tradition of following a success with a
screwup, I totally blew my entrance to turn three, the first part of
"righ-left-right". As by now, the Buttonwillow dirt and I were old
friends, I didn't even try to make the turn, I just went rallycrossing
over to the entrance of turn 5.

If I'd known I was going to spend so much time driving in the dirt
that weekend, I would have borrowed "Yuppie", RC's 4WD, v8 volvo
wagon. At least it was built for racing in the dirt.

At the end of the race the three PS1 second gen Rx-7 were in
the middle of a hot battle when Paul Ko spun coming out of "Star
Mazda" and Brad Leabo collected him. Paul Cabana was able to avoid the
shunt. On the last lap, I was just about to pass a novice going into
star mazda when we passed the flag station going into the turn. Rather
than slowing down a bit, through most of the turn, and slowing enough
to be under full control when we passed the incident, this driver
slowed to about 30 at the entrance of the turn, about 1/4 mile before
the incident and just crawled around. While it is better to err on the
side of caution, there can be too much of a good thing. Fortunately, I
was not in a close race for position when I got caught behind him.

Leaving the track Sunday was delayed somewhat as we helped Brad shovel
his racecar onto the trailer. At Norm Cabana's suggestion, I went home
via hwy 46 (Past where James Dean totalled his 550) through Paso
Robles. 

While it was a very educational weekend, it was also very
frustrating. I did not drive nearly as well as I had hoped. When I was
not racing against other Spec Miatas my laptimes sucked. I seem to
have lost most of my skills at passing closely matched cars and even
my best laptimes were six seconds off the leaders (2:21 vs 2:15). 

I do need to put my car on a dyno and see where I am in terms of
power. My ego is really hoping that the car is down on power, as that
means that I'm not as crappy of a driver as it seems. My pocketbook
hopes that the car is not down on power as a new motor is a lot more
expensive than fixing the driver.