TireSmoke.org

"car related" year in review that is:

Did a bunch of iRacing

• XSLR league racing
o Season 7 – ran the last 9 races and finished out the season P5 in points, despite missing the first 5 of the 16 races.
o First league races on dirt road courses, dirt ovals and paved ovals
o Season 8 – ran the full 16 race season and was able to move up to P3 which netted a nice trophy
o With some good mileage strategy, I managed a win on dirt oval and one on paved road courses

• ChampCar 2024 iRacing
o 4 endurance races running between 4 and 6 hours. This year my team finished all the races ending up 3rd of 17 teams that participated. Most of the result was due to participating in two of the first races and the finale
o 12 1 hour endurance races. First three races all had bad outcomes but I stuck with it and finished out the season P5. This was a couple spots about where I finished in 2022 when I last competed full time in this league. Also managed to match my best finish in the league at P4

• Other
o Ran a few races with Spec-5 World Tour
o Improved my dirt road course license from rookie to C
o Improved my paved road course iRating – now higher than 79% of the participants on iRacing

Did some drag racing

• Returned to the ¼ mile
o Raced six times at KMP and managed three runner up trophies – first expansion of my drag racing trophy collection in two decades
o Pretty sure the first time I’ve raced three different cars in a season
• Debuted racing on dirt
o Did a few races, won a few rounds – no big scores

Road racing

• Pit crew at Nelson Ledges for the ChampCar race in support of Dean Tener, Tom and Troy with the MR2
• Crew chief at PittRace for the ChampCar race in support of Scott Wangler, Dave and Tom with the 944

Cars

• Put a lot of work into the Challenger to get it rebuilt and back on the road
• Acquired the black 2014 Cadillac ATS, got it roadworthy and raced it on the ¼ mile and on dirt dragstrips. Hit a snag when I learned the dirt drag sanctioning body would not let me run the turbo 4 cylinder in the 4 & 6 cylinder class
• Acquired the red 2014 Cadillac ATS, fixed the sheet metal damage, got it roadworthy and raced it at the dirt drags and on the ¼ mile

2024 marked the first year ever for me where my drag racing efforts were focused on a car other than my Chevelle.

Took a memorable adventure to Kentucky with Tony for Chevelle parts and ended up at the VetteCon Comic-Convention at the Corvette Museum.

Took a fun little trip to Florida to visit my dad and visited the country's smallest actual Post Office.

The Eclipse!

Lap of Lake Erie anniversary trip.

I went 10s for the first time ever. I went 9s soon after!

Successfully completed Hot Rod Drag Week 2024, with some help from our new friends in Indiana.
- Ran 10.0 three days in a row at 3 different tracks.
- Qualified #17 of 32 fastest in a field of 155
- Made it Elite 8 round in bracket race

Brought home a runner-up trophy from Kuhnle.

Made 12 of 15 hours in the Porsche at PittRace.

I've also put in some work on both Vettes, although I don't have much to show for either yet. Just as I got the intake / injectors sorted on the '90, it blew out the passenger header gasket. It has languished while I focused on Drag Week and Champcar. I'm in the middle of a head/intake swap on the 63.

Even before moving to Alaska in 2005, I had really ramped down my credentials for the car-guy club. By the mid-90’s, my drag racing had become infrequent and merely casual. My desire to restore and hot rod cars was beaten out of me by a 1968 Lincoln and a lifestyle that included too much work. I wanted my time back so my work on cars diminished to an annual demo-derby prep. Even that pursuit ended in 2003. Moving to Alaska forced me to get rid of almost every tool I had. Every tool I owned for the next 18 years fit into a portable steel box that I was still able to lift by the single handle on top. Alaska seasons and roads discouraged returning to a car hobby and both slots in the two-car garage were required to keep our drive-to-work cars out of the winter weather. We left Alaska in a travel trailer and lived that full-time RV lifestyle for most of the next two years, with just some brief winter stops in rented housing. The next ten and a half years were spent in our State Department lifestyle. Our time overseas and in training in D.C. provided no opportunity to do more with cars. The three years in Buffalo provided only a slight temptation. During that time, we bought land in South Dakota upon which we planned to build a home for our retirement. That land was five miles up a dirt road and cost compromises began during the design phase. We weren’t going to have a car-guy garage, and I wasn’t going to have room for a classic. It wasn’t in the plans. In 2023, after battling the post-pandemic builder waitlist, we stumbled upon this house in Hot Springs that met the criteria we had written down, including the one that literally read “there is no such thing as too much garage space”. The wheels in my head started turning. I began assuming some of the maintenance I had previously paid others to do for me. I began buying tools.

2024 was the big return. I returned to doing my own oil changes. I bought more tools. I hung cabinets, built a workbench, and put up drywall in my garage, turning it into a pleasant place to work (picture below). I finally bought the Jaguar I always wanted and have already made it a better car. I drove a lot more in 2024 than I expected from this time in my life. While we can go entire months putting just a couple hundred miles on our vehicles, repeated 200-mile roundtrips to our local ski area last winter and road trips to Idaho, Montana, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio (twice), and North Carolina added over 15K to the VW and 5K to the Nissan. I even put about 600 miles on the Jaguar. I also bought a utility trailer which has proven quite useful in hauling our e-bikes, yard waste, and that load of drywall for the garage.

As I approach my 20th anniversary as a member on this forum, I will add that in 2024 and all those previous years, I have read every post on this forum. I usually don’t have much to add or to say, but this forum certainly has kept my brain a little sharper on car-guy matters during my long absence as a legitimate member of the club.

^ the best thing I see in that pic is the heater!