Race Report: August ThunderHill

I didn't write about this for a long while. At first it was because I'd rather forget it, and later because I was out and about and legitimately busy. Well, I'm on a plane now so I can no longer say "I'm too busy" and I should probably write it up.

I headed to Thunderhill on Aug 22nd for the typical Saturday and Sunday races, but as a bonus this weekend I also had signed up to drive on Monday with PDC.

The race weekend started off as it usually does with an 8 am morning practice session. This particular practice wasn't as uneventful as it usually is. I eyed a steadily rising coolant temp gauge as the session went on, despite it being relatively cool. I turned in a few minutes
early when the gauge hit 230. I was worried.

I had overheating issues at the bmwcca race school just prior, combined with loss of coolant, so I knew this problem was lurking. Somehow I kept hoping that it was an improperly bled cooling system, or a leak from some recent maintenance.

After practice I bled the cooling system and crossed my fingers. Crushing my hopes of a simple fix, the car overheated and I came in early. I qualified 6 out of 8 with a time of 2:14.921. Not great, but my excuse is being preoccupied with the car overheating. I sought some
advice in the paddock, and decided to pull the thermostat to try to remedy the overheating. In hindsight, this was pretty dumb.

I raced, had a good time, but bailed out early due to overheating. I was definitely off my game due to the overheating.

The next day, I bought some gasket sealant and decided that maybe I'd try to patch up what looked like a leak on the water pump. In hindsight, more dumb moves, but hey, I just wanted to race. I drained the cooling system in the morning, gooped it all up, and put it all back together in
time for the practice session. No help, more overheating. I was ready to pack it in at that point, but fellow racers convinced me to hang out, do a couple of qualifying laps, and then do a few laps of the race. This was an okay idea, well, with the risk of hurting the motor. I did just that. The race was cool, and I can always use more practice at the start. I did a whopping 2 laps in the race, and packed it in, pretty disappointed.

(the photo above is just before I packed it in on Sunday)

As an aside, this was the race when the top 4 cars were put on the dyno. There's a link to the race report on norcalspece30.com.

I also had a car that didn't work for the open track day with PDC the next day. I was pretty deflated. At one point while I was whining, Scott Clough, a fellow spec e30 driver and PDC member, offered to let me co-drive his car the next day. Once again, Scott Clough proves to be my favorite Spec E30 driver.

The next day we alternated 30-40 minute sessions on track through the morning, ate some lunch, then I toasted the brakes on his car. We're talking pedal straight to the floor toasted. We tried in vain to bleed the breaks, but couldn't build up any pressure to force the fluid out by
pumping the pedal. I diagnosed it as a bad master cylinder, and we put his car up on a trailer and headed out.

So I'm 2 for 2 on breaking cars that weekend. Nonetheless, the open track session in another car was lots of fun for me. I got to drive another car, that is drastically different than my car in feel.
His car is smooth and easy to drive. My car requires muscling and it's loud and vibrating. It feels more like a "race car", but it's probably more distraction than anything else.

That day salvaged the entire weekend. Thanks Scott!