First race week-end with a new racecar means all kinds of things to figure out and/or get used to, from learning what driving style suits the car best, to getting to know your competitors in the class, and even simple things like the best way to load the trailer. Thinking caps on, kids!
When I attended my first race with the Mustang, I entered the one-hour mini-enduro for some extra seat time to help with getting used to the car, but I concluded that my long experience with the E46 platform made that somewhat unnecessary and that sprint racing was a more effective way to shorten the learning curve anyway, and so I signed up for SPM as well as SE46. That said, I had experienced a couple of strange, possibly related issues, at the shakedown test I did in September, and I didn’t want a second run group to potentially interfere with my main class, so I eventually decided to withdraw from the Group 1 races and just focus on Group 4.
Of course, this also meant that I was spending a lot of time towing my trailer for only about an hour and fifteen minutes of track time, but “it is what it is.” (I hate that expression.)
Friday
I hadn’t used the load-distributing hitch I’d had to buy to deal with the fat-ass Mustang very often and not for quite a while, so I decided to hook up the trailer much earlier in my load-out process than usual, which turned out to be a smart move: I went through three or four iterations of connecting the chains, breakaway cable, and electrical hookup before finding one that I liked, but I wasn’t also stressing myself over how long it was taking. Also, and in contrast to what the weather reports had indicated all week, I managed to dodge any rain while both fiddling with the trailer and when it came time to actually load the car. All in all, loading up was a better experience than I’d had in a while and the lesser weight of the car and associated cargo meant that the load-distributing hitch was actually able to keep both the car and the truck level. (I’m winning already!)
The drive down was alternately sunny, wet, rainy, and omigod-I-can’t-see-the-lane-markers monsoon, but I managed to arrive in one piece after not quite a four-hour tow for the 186 miles. Unfortunately, everybody and their brother seemed to have come down for the Friday Test & Tune and the paddock was, in a word, FULL. Annoyingly, lots of people seemed to have set up paddock areas with little or no concern for anyone coming later, so what few areas were free were impractical for one reason or another, leaving me to flee to the tree-lined meadow in the middle of the infield. Aside from the grass and mud—and goose poop—it’s actually quite nice, a little haven of peace and tranquility away from all the noise and fumes of racecars.
The first race of the season is typically chaotic and, combined with some miscommunications between Registration and the guys doing Tech, I ended up making several trips from Tech to Registration and back, as well as to my car/trailer before we finally got me squared away. I didn’t mind (it’s not like I had anything else to do) and when we were done I had a logbook for my new-to-me racecar, an annual tech inspection for both the car and my driver’s gear, and a clean tech sheet for the week-end itself: noice!
Saturday
Since qualifying for Group 4 wasn’t scheduled until 10:30, I actually had the (rare) opportunity on a race week-end to sleep in until my usual wake-up time but, of course, we can’t have that… I generally wake up at least once a night (where “wake up” means aware that I’m no longer sleeping before rolling over and going back to sleep), but if I have anything on my mind from the day before, my brain tends to latch back onto it and engage until I wake up completely. On a race week-end, of course, there’s a lot to be thinking about, so I found myself wide awake at 4am with nothing to do but stew until I eventually gave up and took a shower.
The weather app on my phone indicated things were looking more and more positive for no expected rain after about 7pm on Friday, but now it said there was a pretty good chance of rain starting around 10 and going to around 2, which was… disappointing. 🙁
Having intended to get to the track around 9-ish, I actually got there at 8, added a couple gallons of fuel as a safety buffer for qualifying, tidied up the paddock area from the overnight “storage mode”, and then spent much of the remaining time staring at the weather app on my phone and fretting.
Qualifying
I’ll spare you the multiple “what’s your radar app say?” and “what are you doing for tires?” conversations, but it looked like nearly everyone committed to dry tires by the time we arrived at pregrid. Of course, at the one-minute warning before we were released to the track, the sprinkles on my windscreen got a bit heavier and I noticed a few of the workers putting up the hoods on their jackets. Awesome.
Between the tires, the cool temperature of the track, and the rain, things were slick. How slick? Well, even though everyone I saw in front of me was going surprisingly slowly on our out-lap, I saw several cars spin in the first four corners. Okay then, my first session with the new car “in anger” was going to be sketchy. Fair enough; I wasn’t expecting to qualify toward the front anyway.
On my first hot lap, such as it was, the car got loose exiting Turn 5, got so loose mid-corner in Turn 6 that I went off driver’s right (where I almost looped it in the wet grass trying to back on “the grey stuff”), loose again in Turn 7, and then just about lost it in a bad way exiting Turn 8. Not only is this a scary place to lose the car, because there are a number of hard things to hit that are relatively close to the track, but it’s the same place and under pretty much the same conditions where the guy who bought my M3 binned it back in 2013.
That was as much of a wake-up call as I cared to get, so I backed off for the rest of that lap and then starting focusing on just going fast in the straights and gently in the corners while my tires warmed up. After only four laps, though, I’d had enough “fun” (the image of Turn 8 kept flashing in my eyes) and decided to just bail on qualifying. Looking back, I could’ve/should’ve kept going and warmed the tires up more for another push lap, but honestly it didn’t really matter as I expected to be at or near the back of the group anyway.
Although I wasn’t literally last in either the class or the group, I was comfortably 12 SECONDS off the class leader’s time, which was something of an eye-opener. Work to do, then!
One of the big question marks I had about the car was what it was actually going to weigh in race trim. I knew some rough numbers for what these cars are “supposed” to weigh, and I had a number from the previous owner for a different configuration of the car, but I really had no idea. It was super-gratifying to roll off the scales after qualifying measuring just 40 pounds over my minimum weight and still with 6 to 7 gallons of fuel. No more days with the Mustang where the guys at the scales freak out because I’m 200+ pounds over weight!
Race
Based on my lap times from my shakedown day and comparing them with race times from that same track the year prior, I thought a top-5 result was not a wholly unreasonable goal to have, but I really just wanted to not be last in the class. Learning the car, having trouble-free runs, and improving my lap times were all “table stakes” here, but I really had no idea what to expect from my first race in the new car.
The track was still wet when we were released from pregrid, but not wet enough for “rain tires,” leaving me and at least most of the grid on dry-weather tires. Polesitter Igor in his super-torquey GT1 Dodge Viper elected to start from the back of the grid, where he was joined by an SE46 car that had skipped qualifying, so I was starting 10th overall and 6th in class. At the start, loads of the cars in front of me took it easy while I didn’t, so I suddenly found myself running 6th overall by the time we got to the first corner. My lack of experience with the car and my lack of confidence with the conditions (I was still slipping and sliding much of the first couple laps) meant I was back down to 8th by the end of the lap, and then I was passed for 10th by the only guy I thought I was going to be able to race a couple laps later, which is where I remained. I did also get lapped on the last lap, but only by Igor and Eric (a handful of corners before Eric pipped him for the overall lead) so, that’s okay, I guess? First race in challenging conditions and all that?
Positively, I stayed in control of the car, learned a few things about the car during the race, and improved on my lap times each lap for 13 out of the 15 laps, starting at a 1’36.590″ and finishing with a personal best of 1’23.358″. This was a few hundredths better than the car that finished 4th in my class, so if I could just manage that kind of time or better for the WHOLE race… well!
Sunday
I purposely arrived a bit early for the morning because, in addition to the usual pre-session stuff (check the tire pressures, torque the wheels, check fuel/oil levels, and so on), I needed to A) fix the crazy sound levels issue in the camera from Saturday and B) correct some issues I had with the shift lights on my dash.
Qualifying
After the stress and general challenges posed by changeable but generally wet conditions the day before, I was really looking forward to an all-dry qualifying session and the opportunity to put together some of the things I’d learned once the track during Saturday’s race had mostly dried out. One of the first things I noticed on my out-lap was that I’d somehow made the shift lights worse instead of better, so I was going to have to fix that. (Uh, maybe for real this time?)
On my first push lap, I realized I was too close to a group of cars in front of me that was consequently overslowing for the first turn, so I backed out for my second lap before pushing again. I thought it was a pretty good lap but it was only a 1’23.9xx”. I pushed again and went slower, so backed off for another lap to settle myself. After another push lap and another 1’23.9xx”, I backed out again, plus let by a few faster cars that had caught up with me. I then pushed again for what felt like a better and faster lap, but I was still only clocking in at 1’23.692″. At that point decided I wasn’t getting anywhere and so bailed out a little early and returned to the paddock. As it happens, my time would’ve put me 7 of 8 in class and 10 of 13 overall, but times were still dropping and I would ultimately start the day’s race 8/8 in class and 13/13 overall… I’ve got them where I want them 😉
Race
Sunday was supposed to be the dry day of the week-end, but it shortly turned into another episode of “what’s your weather app say?” as there was every indication that more rain was going to be arriving just about the time our race was supposed to start. Sure enough, what started out as a decent sprinkling of rain started getting a bit heavier as we were released from pregrid, leading to three cars spinning in the first three corners of the out-lap. As we came down the front straight to take the green flag, Igor pulled out wide right to let everyone by until his tires got warm enough to deal with all the torque of his Viper.
Ultimately, there’s not a lot to say about the race from my side, as I pretty much played it (way too) safe and ran around in circles for a half-hour. I did somehow also manage to “tippy-toe” around the track slightly faster than a couple other guys and so finished fifth in class and ninth overall. One positive of the race, if I squint really hard to find one, was that my best lap was nearly nine seconds faster than my best time in the first wet-track session, and in what were much wetter conditions.