The Art of Racing in the Rain

aka Race Report: NASA Norcal Sears Point - 2008/11/8

(I stole this title from the book, in hindsight I probably should've written up a book review since I've read it ... maybe that'll come later)

I hadn't touched the race car since the last weekend's worth of trying to get it running, succeeding, and then not racing. Then I got the LeMons car, spent a few weekends wrenching on it, and oh crap here comes a race weekend. The Friday before the race I adjusted the valves in the morning, then went to work for a short day that turned out longer than expected. I didn't have time to do anything else I wanted to do, so I threw the car on the trailer, and buttoned it all up for the next morning.

I decided I'd do a quick fuel run so all I had to do when I woke up was get in the ambulance and drive. The ambulance rewarded me for a month of neglect by not starting.

Dead batteries. Okay okay, it wasn't the ambulance's fault. I forgot to set the master electrical switch to the off position, and something in the ambulance consumes all available power when it sits. I spent half an hour jumping the big diesel's 2 batteries with the M3, got it to start, and headed over to the gas station. Wow, diesel is only $2.90. I topped up the ambulance, filled up the race car, and hopped in the ambulance to head home.

It didn't start.

So, 15 minutes later my wife arrived at the gas station to witness the ambulance start up again. Once it was running, I sure as hell wasn't going to just shut it off. I spent the next half hour sitting in a parking lot idling in the ambulance and watching the ammeter move from 100A output all the way back down to 25A. I figured that'd be good enough to start the next morning.

I woke up dark and early at 5am on Saturday.

The ambulance rewarded me for spending quality time with it the night before and started right up. The drive up to Sears Point (aka Infineon thanks to the asshole marketing dept Infineon) was uneventful.

I arrived at the track to beautiful sunny weather that Norcal is famous for oh crap, it looks like rain. That's not at all what I was prepared for, because I hadn't prepared for much at all. The day started out overcast, and track was dry for practice and qualifying. Bonus! I qualified 6th of 12 cars with a 2:02.521.

Shortly after qualifying the rain started.

We spent a few hours in the paddock with off and on rain, hoping that the track might dry up for the race later in the day. Don't get me wrong, I actually like to drive in the rain on a race track. It's lots of fun to play at the limit of adhesion at substantially lower speeds. I've driven ThunderHill, Sears Point, and Reno Fernley in the rain. Of those 3, the only one where I've slid sideways towards a wall driver door first is at Sears Point. I stopped 2ft short of the wall that time. That experience was etched in my brain, and it keeps me from being enthusiastic about Sears Point in the rain.

The track was pretty wet by the time of the race, but it had stopped raining. Of the 13 cars that qualified, 7 started the race. I got a free bump from my 6th place qualifying spot up to 4th place at the start (thanks Scott N and Kevin!). The out lap was comical with Donny in the lead spinning in turn 2 (see about 1 minute into this video).

We lined up for the standing start. I fully expected to spin wheels like a madman in the wet, but when the green flag dropped I feathered the throttle enough to get moving. We charged up the hill 3 wide: I dove to the inside of Scott C and Brenden cut to the outside. Brenden carried a lot of speed over turn 2, and spun to the inside. I tucked into 2nd place ahead of Scott C as we zipped by Brenden facing the wrong direction. I think I might have waved :)

I spent the rest of the race repeating to myself "stay smooth" over and over and over. I may have sounded like an idiot, but it paid off and I kept up a good pace slowly walking away from Scott C. Brenden tore through the field after his spin, and eventually caught up to me. His pace in the rain was insanely fast, so I could only block hold him off for so long before he snuck past. My only hope to gain the spot back was for him to spin again. Spin he did, off to the inside of turn 3, but I couldn't quite catch up. The remainder of the race was uneventful: I continued to put down boring smooth laps. I finished 3rd.

I wish I had video of my own from the race, but I didn't get my camcorder turned on. Here's video from Scott C's car. You can see me for the first coupla laps.


Nor Cal Spec E30 Race Infineon Raceway Nov. 08, 2008 from Scott Clough on Vimeo.

Wow that's a long post, and I haven't even got to the 2 races on Sunday yet. There's more to come.