The story was captivating, and the documentary was very well done. As with any good documentary, there's a great human story behind the whole thing. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. I'll probably watch it again in a few days to pick up some of the finer points now that I know the story.
It's available for free on iTunes, just follow this link, or see Jalopnik, Autoblog, and probably a jillion more sources.
Watching the movie made me want to do more endurance racing. Maybe I'll try to sneak the Spec E30 into one of the enduros later in the year? If I don't do any serious endurance racing, I can always take comfort in the fact that the not-so-serious 24Hrs of LeMons Reno is rapidly approaching.
(my apologies for the long post. it was a busy weekend)
The season opener this year was at Infineon on Feb 14th. That's right, Valentine's Day. My wife was extremely understanding, so I was allowed to go play at Infineon while she spent the day with the wife sitters.
I had 2 months worth of off season to prep the car, but in classic procrastinator style, I didn't do much til the week before the race when I slapped the spec exhaust on the car after some stupid fitment issues. The night before the race, I ended up swapping brakes and other misc things while it poured rain. I had the car on the trailer by 11pm, at which point I noticed that it had a flat tire. I filled it with air and went to sleep.
Saturday's Drive to the Track
I woke up at an unpleasant 5am to make it up to Infineon in time for the practice session. The trailer tire held pressure just fine overnight, so I put it out of my mind and groggily drove to the track.
About 5 minutes out from Infineon I was treated to another illuminated light. It was red and said "brakes". Awesome. Guess I should check the brakes now? They still functioned, but operation required both feet and large amounts of pressure. Power brakes are for sissies anyway. I soldiered on, leaving extra braking distance, just in case.
As I cruised into the paddock, the ambulance lost power steering. Clearly there was a theme developing. I parked it and opened the hood to find 1 of 4 belts in its proper configuration. 2 more belts were present, but were hanging like shredded vines on the front of the engine. After a detailed analysis, I believe the alternator belt exploded, which killed the power brake belt, then the remains of the alternator belt took out power steering.
I was just relieved I made it to the race track. I unloaded the race car and went to drop off the trailer in the trailer lot. To top off my morning of broken stuff, the key promptly broke off in the trailer hitch lock. The ambulance and trailer were going to be coupled all weekend. I'd cut the lock off later.
Saturday Race
I had "super sized" my race weekend. This means that I payed a small amount extra to race in the PTE class in addition to Spec E30. PTE is a points based class, full of miatas and rx-7s and now spec e30's. There were a couple of other Spec E30 guys doing the same thing, so I figured it would be an extra spec e30 race, but with Miatas.
In PTE I qualified 8th with a traffic full qual session, then I finished 5th in the race. It was interesting to race with the Miatas, which are faster in the turns and slower on the straights.
In Spec E30 I qualified 8th with a 2:02.444 lap time. I got a pretty good start (for once!) and had a fun race chasing down MacKenzie in a 318is. It was the first time I've driven with a 318 in Spec E30. They have a smaller 4 cylinder motor, so they get a 200lb weight advantage and a lower geared differential to compensate for it. Much like a Miata, it's faster in the turns, and slower in the straights, which made for fun racing. We traded spots a couple of times through the race, and I ended up finishing an unofficial 7th. Thanks to 3 DQ's ahead of me (the top 2 cars were underweight, and MacKenzie was DQ'd for some reason), I jumped to an official 4th place.
The highlight of the race for me was putting down a fast lap of 1:59.924 (1.021 off the fastest non-DQ'd lap in class). I'm now a member of the sub 2:00 minute club at Infineon. I'm also now turning faster lap times in my spec e30 than I did in my M3 over a year ago (2:04's in the M3 on RA1's). This shows how much I was underdriving the M3, and maybe how far I've come?
Thanks to the Selvigs who drove into town to get belts for me, I spent an hour Saturday night changing the belts on the ambulance. I was tempted to put it off, but it wasn't raining, so I decided to be responsible and get it done during the cold but dry evening. This paid off, since it rained all day Sunday.
Sunday Race
Sunday was very wet. I spent all day slightly soggy, but in between sog sessions I hid out in the dry and warm Speed Trapp Racing trailer.
Aside from it being uncomfortably wet in the paddock, I really like driving in the rain. Last year at Infineon we raced in the rain, and I was looking forward to more of the same kind of fun.
In PTE I qualfied 5th, and finished somewhere near the bottom in the race. I got a good start, and tucked in behind Brenden in the rain. I pressured him for a couple of laps, then we came around to turn 5 and there were 2 cars off. I got distracted gawking, and didn't notice the back of the car stepping out til it was too late. I slid and spun, ending up on the pavement to the inside of the turn facing backwards. I decided I'd turn the wheel, pop the clutch, rotate around and be on my way. I turned the wheel, let out the clutch, and promptly went straight into the grass and got stuck. So much for that maneuver. I spent the next 5 laps watching traffic go by. They eventually towed me out, and I drove the rest of the race, but it was mostly practice for the spec e30 race that was to come later.
In the spec e30 qual I ended up in 10th. We only got in 4 or 5 laps, and I was caught up in slower traffic for most of it before they yellow flagged and then black flagged the field due to a spun car. Going into the race, I was pretty sure I was faster in the rain than the 3 cars ahead of me. I proved that by getting a great start, I flew into Turn 1 where there was a river of water, and promptly spun. Luckily, I didn't contact anything and nobody contacted me. I watched the tail of the field drive by, and prepared for an uphill battle. I worked my way through a few cars, spun again at the exit of Turn 6. No contact. I gathered it up and spun again in Turn 8a. I got lucky again, and the car was unscathed. At that point, with 3 spins, I decided to calm down so I could drive my car home. This was further reinforced by driving through Turn 10 with a chance to look at Will with his car in the tire wall for a few laps til they towed him out.
I ended up fighting my way to 6th, after dropping back to 14th at the start. For that, I recieved the Evil Genius Racing hard charger award. The award certificate is a $100 bill.
The first Spec E30 race is almost a month away, so I decided I should probably plan out the year and get approval from my CFO (Chief Financial Officer, aka my wife) for the plan for '09.
Part of putting it together was taking a look at the data I've accumulated from 2008. In 2008 I:
spent 28 days at the race track
bought a Spec E30 race car
got a NASA license and started racing
bought an ambulance and trailer to tow the race car
averaged $968.68 per weekend
That last one is complicated, and the value really depends on what you include when you add up all the numbers. Instead of drawing the line somewhere arbitrarily, I decided to count every penny. If I had a burger for lunch, that counts towards the total. It's also a little skewed because I didn't include the race car purchase, and some of the improvements to get it ready (seat?), in the figure. I did include "maintenance" things such as a new transmission and the rebuilt head. You get the picture. Complicated.
All in all, it was a pretty good year.
I came up with this schedule for 2009:
2/14,15/2009 NASA race Infineon
4/25,26/2009 NASA race ThunderHill
5/23,24/2009 LeMons race Reno Fernley
5/31/2009 NASA race Llihrednuht
8/7/2009 PDC HPDE ThunderHill
8/23,24/2009 NASA race ThunderHill
10/3,4/2009 NASA race Llihrednuht
11/7,8/2009 NASA race Infineon
12/5,6/2009 NASA race ThunderHill
I'm only at 16 days at the track for 2009, down from the previous 28.
I had to throw out some of the Spec E30 races due to conflicts with other events. Alas, people do not schedule their weddings around the NASA Norcal schedule. There's a break in the middle of the year for what should be a happy/stressful time with the delivery of a baby. I'm still not sure how the baby's arrival will impact racing. Hopefully I can balance both, but time will tell.
Finally, I'm shooting for a lower per weekend cost. If I can avoid big expenses, like head rebuilds, it'll probably happen.
I bought scienceofslow.com, so now all the old links will be magically redirected here. Fear not, Raul Mazda will live on, but not in the URL to my blog.
While the off season is relatively short here in Norcal, there's always stuff to work on.
I have a laundry list of things I want to do to the race car "while I have time", but I also work on the driver in the off season. A few months back I spent a lot of time trying to find mental exercises that I can use to sharpen my skills while not on the race track. So here's one technique that I practice called "soft eyes". Read up on it at http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/softeyes.htm or Google search for it.
I practice on the street (safely, mind you). I try to soften my visual focus and use all of my peripheral vision to track the cars around me. See everything. All at once. In low resolution. I started off by trying to track everything in front of me, then added the rearview mirror, and then finally stretched it to encompass both side mirrors. I switch back and forth between focus and soft eyes. Switching back automatically is the hardest part, and takes effort to build the habit. Once I could do that every day, I started to do it and added random math problems (let's count out the powers of 13 or 17 or 29) to the exercise to simulate the kind of stuff I do during a race. I'm not adding numbers in my head during a race, but I'm always thinking. It could be strategy, or observing and storing where I could set up to pass someone on the next lap. Or even stealing someone else's line and figuring out why they're faster than me.
The more I train my brain to do the "easy" stuff automatically, the more I can use my brain to figure out the hard stuff. So I practice, and practice some more.
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