2011 Nelson Ledges 25:25:25 race report

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MostMint
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Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2005 12:11 pm
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2011 Nelson Ledges 25:25:25 race report

Post by MostMint »

Mostmint Racing was formed early in 2011. I can't recall exactly what got me to looking on youtube, but that started it. Soon I was starting to plan. I read on the internet – a lot. So I put together a proposal and started shopping it around to form the team. By February the team was formed and the car was acquired. We then started working on the car. Main focus was on getting it legal to race and getting the necessary equipment to make it 24 hrs. We had at least half a dozen work sessions to get the car ready. The guys helped quite a bit. Along the way took 90 lbs of extra weight off the car. Had several test sessions. Spun a rod bearing and rebuilt the engine – and put the baffles in the pan to avoid this fate in the future. Decided to make it the Saturn V Rocket. Spent a lot of time getting AIV documentation together (to show the year, make and model was really worth $500). Did a lot of planning to have equipment, spare parts and people at the track for race weekend. The last month or so was kinda crazy but no all night sessions and no arguments. Just a steady march forward to completion.

As the race weekend approached the weather forecast turned excellent. And it held the whole time – sunny and mid to upper 70's in the day and high 40's at night. It was clear and calm at night, had some nice breezes during the day. On Thursday before the race the final preparations were completed, including John and I loading all the stuff into Eric's trailer. Matt came by on Friday morning and drove the car to the track. Our first problem cropped up then. The old gel battery was failing. I tried charging it and we got the car running and we were off to Nelson Ledges. Yes that's right sports fans Matt drove the car there.

I really can't explain to you the anticipation that was building up inside me before this race. It probably started about Monday before the race. On the way there I could really feel it – like a multi-day adrenalin rush. Well during the last few miles of the drive I had to force myself to calm down. We were about to start our first race. The life experience was playing itself out now. I had been racing in my mind since before we got the car, it was almost here!

I worried about so many details. Would the engine hold up? Would there be penalty laps due to inadequate AIV documentation? Would any number of newly installed items fail? Was something forgotten at home? My teammates did not have receipts for the prepaid deposit – would there be any issue getting them in? Yikes.

Anyway all that melted away when we got to the track. Saw some Chumps on the track practicing as we approached. Came up to the front gate, signed my name and went in. No hassles there. Dave had found a nice spot in the paddock and had the “condo” there. The condo is Marlena's 37' 5th wheel camper. We plotted where everything would be set up and soon after John showed up and we set up shop. We ended up with a big triangular space with the condo in the back and John's truck with the trailer on the right. We put up Tony's 10x20 canopy just to the left of the trailer and put the extra cars behind the condo and in the empty section of the triangle.

While we were setting up we quickly learned the old gel battery was really dead. The car had been turned off like 10 minutes and it was dead – too weak to start the car. Tom took the mission to locate one (at Summit) and get it. We had learned that the Chump officials were doing tech inspections in the paddock. I was hopeful they would do our inspection all except the kill switch – which would have to wait for the battery. So while Tom was running I approached them – they were inspecting a black and pink Miata. I watched them practice emergency egress, fire extinguisher release, pull the OE taillights. When they were asked acout AIV, a member of the Miata team said “I thought AIV was something you were supposed to tell us.” Ouch. I thought “sounds like some penalty laps are in order for them”. I found out there they would not tech us if the car would not start, so we waited until Tom got back.

Once the battery was installed we got the Chump guys over to tech in the car. It was surreal. Jeff Collier was leading the tech inspection. I did all this work to produce AIV and he never looked at the ads – just the summary sheet! Our AIV was $308. He asked what parts were added. I rattled off the springs, the cold air intake and adjustable rear sway bar. I gave him the prices Donnie Weymer gave me on in emails and he accepted them – another $135. He wrote $443 on the tech sheet and that was over! He also had us practice exiting the car, releasing the fire extinguisher, and testing the kill switch. We had to tape up the headlights (had the clear tape on hand – was not sure about this rule which said the lights had to be “covered”). There were three tech guys and so I missed a lot of what the others were doing. I know for sure we did not need to jack up the car, though they did spend some time looking under it.
Overall the process was easy.

After this we had time to kick back, and wander around. Some guys were watching the practice session.

At 3 PM we took our gear up to tech inspection and got that approved. From there we went to the registration line and got the car registered. This was definitely the “slow” line as it took about a half hour to get through it. At the end we all had our Chump licenses, the transponder, and the inspection sticker to put on the car. I forgot to get the arm bands for our crew members so I had to go back. By then the line was long and thank goodness Cathy McCause took my money for the crew members and did not make me go through the line again.

The transponder mount had been a question for some time. It was $5 for the bracket. In the end we mounted it to the radiator fan bracket with a nice view of the ground. We used a couple zip ties.

At this point there was not much to do except wait for newbie school at 6 PM. We spent some time sitting around shooting the breeze. We were the exact opposite of most teams. The BRE Datsun 260 z owned by Jeff Grauer was sitting right next to us. They spent almost all day wrenching on that thing. Some kind of electrical problem apparently.

Somewhere along the line we learned we had to share pit stalls. All stalls were pre-assigned and two teams per stall. I wanted to find our pit mates and find out there schedule. I knew it was car 244 and I spent a bunch of time looking for it – to no avail.

At 6 PM we went over and had the newbie driver school. Most of the time was spent discussing the meaning of the various flags. Also went over other things we already knew like pit speeds, etc. Mike Chisek presented the material – he is the eastern region Chump Director. While we were sitting there I spotted the 244 car on the other side of the track – a white Volvo, and I saw it head down the lane closest to the track over by turn 1. We were done by 6:25.

So a few of us went over to talk with them but they were not there! More searching. Finally I found them in tech and met Brian. He said they were doing 45 minute stints so everyone could get a chance to drive before the car broke. The car had a turbo so in theory it could be fast. In addition to his concern about it staying together, the roller paint job and spray can number seemed to indicate otherwise to me.

Coming back from the meeting we found out there was good news for the Datsun team. They had it sorted out and were ready for night practice. Forget that. We just sat around. Well actually I spent some time walking around seeing who was there. I went over and talked to the guys with the only other Saturn there. Also met Kevyn a.k.a. Porkchops22 on the forum with the Subaru. I think I left around 8 PM. Dave and Matt stayed. Tom, John and I left for the night.

I had a hard time falling asleep. Too much adrenaline, too much anticipation. Usually I can sleep quite easily.

Saturday morning I arrived at about 8:30. Driver meeting was at 9 AM so had to suit up and get over to the meeting. From there got back to the pits and had just a little time to get in the car and get up on pit road. All the fluids were topped off and we were ready to go. They had all the cars back up into pit stalls and wait.

Started the pace laps. Not sure there was any order to who got out when. Soon after we were making laps single file. A couple cars had to go in – apparently they had transponder issues. The EC Honda died on the back straight prior to the green. After a while I started to get ancy – watching for the flag stations to pull in the yellow flag. Eventually the flags came down and we were off to racing. The start was nice and easy as I had a nice distance between me and the car in front and car behind. The start came on the back straight. I recalled from past experience to take it easy the first couple laps until I got comfortable with the car. Nonetheless it was not too long and I was passing slower traffic. The game was on! In a relatively short time we had some incidents. There were two cars off around turn 12 – the Ded Bull VW and a white Civic. Based on forum discussion the Civic was at fault here getting into the kink too hot. Both had significant damage and were towed off. Not too much later there was a black BMW on it's roof – he apparently hit the tire barrier too fast and rolled over – all on his own. The carnage had begun.

Somewhere here in the early going I got some open track and was pushing the car and lost it in turn 1 – again. I hit nothing and came right back up on the track with no further incident. I recall quite a bit of aggressive driving here though no one hit me. In one instance in turn 13 the Duct Tape BMW (eventual winner) got loose and spun out. I was on the outside and thought about shooting by but visions of him shooting across the track caused me to lift and like 10 cars got by. I recall at about 65 minutes in starting to feel like I had enough for this shift – though I still had 15 minutes to go. I also recall somewhere around this time I was starting to sweat a little as the air was warming up and I was busy driving. My shift was getting near the end and I lost track of time, then something happened to the car. The brake pedal got soft and I could hear the tires picking up things. I surmised I was spraying brake fluid and radioed that I was coming in. I went slow down the back straight and used the ebrake to stop at the top of pit road to get the timer. Funny thing when I pumped the pedal it came back up. Records show 46 laps complete and we were 29th at this time.

So we did our first pit stop and got Tom in the car and refueled. Happy with the driver change and refuel we looked at the car. There was something on the inside of the left front rim and brake fluid near the master cylinder. After some checking we sent Tom out, reasoning I had boiled the brake fluid. He never left the pits as the pedal went flat again. So we were back to the paddock.

This started a flurry of activity. We got the wheel off and learned the hub was now loose since the bearing gave out. Our strategy of buying a bunch of parts from Autozone and having them there was paying its first dividend as we had a replacement on hand. Speece was there and helped us through this one. Ken also helped a lot with this. We used a piece of exhaust pipe and a sledge hammer to get the old race out of the knuckle. In all it took about 85 minutes but we got the car fixed and Tom was off for his first session. Tom went out starting in 60th place. This means 12 teams were behind us with something significant since we had been off for as long as we were on up to this point. I was most impressed at the cooperation of everyone involved to make quick work of this and get the car back out. I don't know why it took me by surprise but it did – people I did not even expect to be there were making contributions to get us back on the track. Besides shagging tools, during this time I learned my son's soccer team had won their first playoff game and would be playing for the championship at 4 PM.

Tom took us up to lap 103 and moved us up to 52nd place. He did a great job – kept the car clean and on track the whole time with no contact. We had our first routine pit stop and John was off to racing.

John kept us moving up the charts. When I went to the tech center (they had a big screen there with a laptop showing live results) we were back up to 48th. At this point I left to go coach the championship. I reasoned that our 85 minute delay move my second shift back far enough I could get back in time. Shortly after this the red Saab #91 came down on John after oak tree and hit the right front pretty good. The guys did some work to straighten the strut – fixing it in about 25 minutes. Congrats our race car is now sporting duct tape. For a short time it seemed my trip to the soccer field might end up as a trip to the junk yard. A couple of the ladies ran to get another strut just in case. John went back out in 52nd place. John finished his stint at lap 138 in 50th. Again the guys had a routine stop and we only lost one spot getting the car serviced and getting Dave in the car. I'm coaching the soccer game. Dave took us up to the safety break at 5 PM and moved us up to 44th. Every hour that passes and the downtime becomes a smaller percentage of the total.

Matt is up next. More to come.

edit: here is the mylaps link:
http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=725327
[quote="Basement Paul"]Is that a mint rocketship on the hood?? :shock:
-BP[/quote]
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