Beach Party On The Shores Of Lake Michigan
Fast Farmer Autosport Race #3
NASA Great Lakes
Gingerman Raceway
6/19-21
FRIDAY
The morning sun broke over Gingerman Raceway Friday morning revealing a near perfect day weather wise, a huge improvement over my first two NASA events of the year. I didn’t have much time to sit and enjoy it, however, since our practice group was on track first. My plan for the day was to just try and learn how to drive the car on this particular track, and slowly gain speed. I took it pretty easy the first session, slowly building confidence, and getting my head into the right frame of mind. The car performed flawlessly, and I felt ready to start pushing a little bit in session 2. The second session went just as well as the first, with the car still running great, and I was feeling more comfortable, so was able to pick up a few seconds, including setting a new personal best lap time for that track. With a short turnaround between session 2 and 3, I decided to sit it out and take the opportunity for a bite to eat to refuel myself, and to rest a little. Our third practice session was combined with the other race group, which includes the CMC class that I used to race in. With the added traffic, I was unable to go any faster, but my lap times were more consistent overall, which is something I’m always looking for. A cool thing that happened during that session is that I caught up to my old car towards the end of the session. I decided having the two cars cross start-finish nose to tail would be a cool pic, so I started following him around the track instead of passing. Unfortunately, as we exited turn 3, Ron got a little anxious, and tried to carry too much speed, causing him to lose control and spin off track. The loss of my photo opp was the only blemish to the session, and the practice day ended on a very upbeat note, leaving me feeling confident about the rest of the weekend.
Thunder Grinch waits to take the track Thursday evening
Saturday
We were once again greeted with an absolutely gorgeous morning when I stepped out of the trailer on Saturday, a trend that held for the entire weekend, right up until we were ready to leave on Sunday afternoon. My warmup session was the first on track activity of the day, and I was scrubbing in a new set of front tires, so I took it pretty easy. After the tires started coming in during the third lap, I picked up the pace a bit, but I used the session mainly to get my head back in the right space, and gently warm up the fluids and brakes on the car. Even with a slow pace, my best lap time was good enough to start the qualifying session in P 14, so I didn’t have too much traffic to worry about for that session. Before quali, I took the new tires off and stuck my next best tires on for the rest of the weekend. I like to scrub in tires, then let them sit until the next event before using them, so they will probably go back on the car for our next race at the end of July. I went out and ran some quick laps in qualifying, three of them were better than the new PB I set on Friday, and the best of those was over a second quicker. However, everyone else stepped up their game also, and I wound up starting the race in P10 of 12. Our race started a little after 2pm, and since we were race one of the weekend, the National anthem was played before the start. It’s kind of cool sitting there on grid listening to that and then getting the command to start engines, but at the same time, the sun absolutely bakes you in an open cockpit car like the Thunder Roadster. Luckily, my lovely wife volunteered to be my umbrella girl, and I was able to stay comfortable in its shade until the song was over. I got a pretty good start in the race and was right in the thick of the action through the first three corners, unfortunately, going into turn 5, the car just wouldn’t slow down, and I nailed another GTR right in the rear bumper with a decent amount of force. Luckily, he’s an extremely talented driver, and the bump really didn’t upset his car much, and from my point of view, if I hadn’t hit him, I would have ended up way off track in the grass, so win-win, lol. The rest of the race was fairly clean as far as I was concerned, without gaining or losing any positions on track, and no further instances of contact. However, there were a couple more times where I went into that same turn, and the car just didn’t want to slow down. I was starting to think maybe the throttle cable was hanging up partially, but everything looked fine during my post race inspection. Unfortunately, the race ended under full course caution the final two laps, which is never fun, BUT, due to some errors by other drivers, I finished in P7, and would start from there in Sunday morning’s race. The relief and joy I felt after the race was pretty huge, with how much torture I’ve experienced over the past two race weekends, it was amazing to finish a full length race with zero issues. There was one side effect, however…. I was exhausted and sore! It had been so long since I completed a full length race in one of these cars (Champs last September), that I had forgotten just how physically demanding it was to race one. After supper, I swapped tires from one side of the car to the other, mainly just so I could inspect the brakes and suspension between races. To my eye everything looked like it should, and I put the tires back on, then covered the car to get ready for a pair of races on Sunday.
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Sunday
Our race Sunday morning was scheduled for 9:30, but first we had a 15 minute warmup session, to get the cars and drivers' brains ready to go. During that session, I was having all sorts of handling issues, which I decided must just be caused by a cold track and cold tires. The car was doing all sorts of things that made it nearly impossible to drive, some times when I went to the brakes, the rear would snap around and I’d have to fight to keep from spinning, other times, it felt like the car was hardly slowing down, and it would push almost off the track, then on corner exit, every once in a while it would get extremely loose, forcing me to back off the throttle. I should have known there was something “off” with the car, but in the moment, I felt it must be the fresh track and cold tire combo. After warmup, we had our daily driver’s meeting, then we had to hustle to get cars on grid I was starting 7th based on lap times from Saturday’s race, so I was right in the thick of our 14 car Thunder Roadster field. Which is honestly where I like to be on a race start, the adrenaline really gets going when your in the middle of a maelstrom like what our cars produce when they’re packed close together like that, so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, it all went wrong in the first corner. I got a great start, would have even had the chance at gaining a position or two at most tracks, but not Gingerman, since it’s fairly narrow and turn 1 is fairly close to the starter station. Going into the brake zone, I had to back out and get in line, but the car just wouldn’t slow down! I slammed into the left rear corner of the car in front of me with the right front of my car, an area of unprotected fiberglass and a plastic aero-catch body latch. The hit caused him to pinball into the car he was next to at the exact wrong point in the corner, which in turn sent him into the left rear wheel of the car he was partially alongside, then the tire to tire contact caused him to bounce back into the car I originally hit, sending him off track. Watching that all take place and knowing I was the cause was one of the worst feelings I’ve had in a racecar, but at the speed in which things happen in a GTR, you can’t dwell on that, you need to focus forward, so I put my head down and got back after it. The loss in momentum I suffered from the bump caused me to lose a spot going between T2 and T3, then going into T5, the car didn’t want to slow down again, and it almost pushed off the track. This allowed another car to get alongside going into the long right handed sweeping turn 7. Normally the car runs great through there, but this time, I really had to back out to keep from pushing wide at first, then towards the end of the turn, it kept trying to spin, very strange behavior, but I was way off the normal line, due to the passing car. He got by going into T8&9, where again I had issues, this time on the exit of 9, the car got extremely loose, it usually does there, but this was extreme. Going into the next turn, the car didn’t want to slow and I almost went off track, again. I still was thinking it was all the driver’s fault at this point, considering it was the opening lap, so the tires weren’t quite up to temp yet, but by the time I got back around to turn 10 the next lap, I decided there was something amiss with the car, and I needed to get it off track. After letting the car and myself cool down for about 30 minutes, I began the task of diagnosing what was going on. Thinking maybe there was a steering or suspension issue, I first looked under the hood, but couldn’t see anything out of place there, next I removed both front tires, so I could check where the steering and suspension components attach at the wheels, and look at the brakes, all still seemed on the up and up. This was frustrating, because I was sure something had worked itself loose, and would be very easy to find. Ok, so, nothing wrong with the steering or front brakes/suspension, let’s move to the rear. But first, I decided to flip my tires back to the sides they were on Saturday, thinking maybe it was a tire balancing issue. I pulled both rear wheels off the car and at first didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, all the suspension parts looked ok and were tight, nothing seemed amiss with the rear axle, the frustration grew…. I decided to try turning the rear wheels, maybe there was a problem with the axle or differential, they wouldn’t turn by hand using the lug bolts, odd considering usually that’s not at all difficult. I thought maybe I had left the car in gear, so checked, nope, it was in neutral. So I tired again, only this time I grabbed the driveshaft and rotated it. Everything turned just as it should, so I went back to trying to turn the wheel…. Nothing, could barely get it to rotate more than an inch or two. I found my problem, the brakes were clamped down tight on the rotors. The calipers were so tightly clamped, that I couldn’t push them back with a pair of Vise Grips, usually the go to for pushing caliper pistons back into their holes, they simply wouldn’t budge. Since the calipers wouldn’t release, I had to pry each brake pad out. I discovered one of the pads on the right rear had all the material worn off, and even some of the metal backing plate was wore down, that caliper had been froze up for a while! Moving over to the left side, I had the same problem, I couldn’t push the pistons back into the caliper to release the brake pads, so again, had to pry them out. This time, one of them looked like it had barely any wear to it at all, while the other showed normal wear, the exact opposite of the right side. This would help explain why sometimes the car would slow down, I was only getting half the braking force from the left side, and with one pad completely gone on the right, it was also greatly reduced. I had a couple of the other drivers look at it, and the consensus was I needed to either rebuild the calipers (not enough time with the next race happening in a couple of hours), or swap them out for new ones. With a new pair of calipers supplied by our travelling parts counter, I set to work getting them affixed to the car. With an hour to go before our final race, everything was reattached, the brakes were bled, and wheels torqued, Grinch was ready to go once again. Normally, we do a full field inverted start for the final race on Sunday, which would have put me on the front row, instead, this time they only inverted the top 7 positions. I found this rather annoying, as I would have much preferred being at the front of the field going into the first turn with untested brakes, than at the very back, so I took it pretty easy into turn 1, and got to the brakes much earlier than usual, just in case I couldn’t slow down sufficiently. I need not worry. The brakes performed flawless in that final race, maybe even better than they had since I started driving the car. With my cautious approach to the first few turns of the race, there really was no opportunity to gain positions, but, I was able to hang onto the car in front of me for a few laps, until the fastest car on the track passed me, and separated me from the herd. I spent the rest of the race just DRIVING the car, and having a blast doing so. It almost felt like I was the only car on track for a good deal of the race, and I took the opportunity to try different techniques and lines, it really helped me get a much better feel for how a GTR handles. I was able to bring the car home in P7, once again, for a pair of seventh place finishes on the weekend. This will really help boost my confidence in the car, as the last few weekends have made me doubt how much I can really push it without fear of something breaking.
UP NEXT
Next on the docket for Fast Farmer Autosport is another trip to Sebring, Florida, to once again drive one of Open Throttle Racing’s green machines. This time, I will get my first experience behind the wheel of a Porsche, driving a 1999 Boxster in a 12 hour, overnight race the weekend of June 26-28. I will also be looking to become a repeat winner, as the car I drove last year won our class in this same event!
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