NASA Great Lakes
Gingerman Raceway
South Haven, MI 7/31-8/2
Thunder Roadster GTR
Thursday
We drove to the track separately. Melanie drove the truck and trailer, while I followed in the 2010 Camaro… So I didn’t get in trouble by driving too fast! No, I wasn’t bringing the Camaro to pull double duty racing and running Time Trials. It was heading off to have some engine work done, and everything worked out for Brandon Wilson to take it to his place in his trailer. I enjoyed the 2 hour drive, rowing through the gears and listening to that big engine growl, but honestly, I had mixed feelings the rest of the weekend. It felt like I had brought two dates to the prom, but had to dance with the wrong one the entire time.
A beautiful sunset at Gingerman Thursday night
Friday
I had big plans for the full day of practice we had on Friday, unfortunately they were mostly unrealized. I completely forgot to do my planned routine during the first session, it wasn’t a complete waste, I was still able to get my mind into “race mode”, and got the car warmed up. I went out for session two determined to actually go through the drill I had planned on. Again, it didn’t really pan out. The handling of the car just wasn’t up to the task, in almost every corner, every time I would get back on the gas, the rear of the car would get extremely loose. It was a chore just to keep it on track. While talking to a couple of the other guys after the session, it was suggested that I might have a blown shock. This wasn’t a total surprise, since while working on the car between races, I discovered the right rear shock was leaking. I didn’t think it was bad enough to affect the handling as much as it did, but when I showed it to Scott, he said that was definitely the problem. Unfortunately, nobody else at the track had a spare, so my test day was over, but on the good side, one of the guys getting there that evening had one, so the weekend wasn’t ruined. When Jeff Stutler arrived, I went over to his trailer and grabbed one of his spares. After about 20 minutes (10 more than it should have been, since I forgot my work light), I had the new shock installed, and Grinch was ready for action the next day.
My best friend and his wife celebrated their wedding anniversary so we had to celebrate with cupcakes!
Saturday
Man, what a difference a new shock can make! Grinch felt like a different car during warmup! For qualifying I ended up getting stuck in traffic so I ended up in 10th place out of the 12 TR class entries to start Race 1. Race 1 (Saturday afternoon) was AMAZING. So many wins in this single race - I got a new personal best for this track and car, 1:42.746. I was nip and tuck with the 9th place car the ENTIRE RACE. Half of my laps were within 3 tenths of my previous personal best. The fast laps of places 4-10 in my class were all within ONE SECOND of each other! It was a BLAST and that’s why I love these cars!
For those of you who know how I've struggled with car reliability/mechanical issues since my racing career began, sometimes just finishing a race is enough of a celebration. We finished off the night with the NASA awards and BBQ! Then we all hung out in the paddock for a good while sharing stories, more cupcakes, and some other snacks. My friend Connor K and I spent some time watching videos – he’s in the 944 porsche you can see in some of my videos, and his dad’s the #5 dark green car. All of us were near each other almost the entire race – it was super fun to watch all of our videos from the diff perspectives!
Me and Connor watching some videos!
Sunday
Race # 2 of the weekend started off so promising! Again John in the #5 and I were having quite a battle. I was drafting him, playing “peekaboo” in his mirrors and hoping he would make a mistake I could capitalize on. I couldn’t resist a little “Days of Thunder” callout, but I might have tried the pass a little too soon. Here’s a great little clip of this on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GHxqRNgcK/
I'm coming for YOU -- channeling my inner Cole Trickle
I was RIGHT BEHIND P8 and was reeling him in but when I went into Turn 1 the engine cut out, causing me to spin. It kept sputtering every time I went into that same turn after that, too. 👎 In the video, you can hear the car sputter back to life just before I come to a stop.
Since this is a sprint race, only 30 minutes, that spin was pretty hard to recover from. It was right in the middle of the race, so I wasn’t able to to catch back up with the #5 again. I also got passed by #333 Steve during the spin and some out-of-class cars. HOWEVER, still something good came out of that race … I mean better than the great video footage lol. An interesting note about these TR cars is that spinning them can ruin the starter. On my first ever weekend racing this car last year, I got punted in a race, which spun me, and then when the car died the starter got screwed up and had to be replaced. That’s a very expensive lesson, especially when it happens in the first weekend! 🙁Well, THIS TIME, when I spun, I was able to hit the gas and then pop the clutch in time so the starter was saved! This means I was able to resume the race once traffic cleared – what they call in race control as a “spin and continue”. This saved me from having to be towed off track which can interfere with everyone’s racing. The dumb thing is that I kept the car running DURING the spin – because I wanted to save my starter! – but then as I started to drive away I killed the engine. Final place in Race #2 was P10.
My buddy Scott helped me look at the issue I had with the car sputtering. He’s a great friend and seems to be the first one to come check on me if I’ve had an issue in the race! He cleaned up my electrical connections for the ignition and we were hopeful that would help for the final race! I’m also planning to replace the rubber fuel line before the next race as its pretty old and might be contributing to this issue.
After that first race, we had a 2-hour break in the racing action. At many tracks there is a
designated “quiet hour” on Sundays and that’s when our official lunch break is. At Gingerman, we’re required to have no racing from 10am - 12noon due to a local township ordinance. So, during that time I packed up what I could from the trailer and organized things to make the loading up easier later.
One of the nice things about Gingerman is that the paddock area is very close to the control tower so my wife was able to come by and snap a few pictures in the paddock Sunday! Here’s me checking my tire pressures ahead of the final race, and just being a general goofball in the paddock.
Checking tire temps
Having fun in the paddock before the race!
For the third and final race, our class frequently inverts the order we qualified in (fastest lap from RAce # 2). So I started 3rd! The start of this race was ABSOLUTELY INSANE! Starting in near the front of the 12-car field means my rear camera shows off some great footage!
The view from race control was pretty interesting too - here is some footage courtesy of my favorite Timing & Scoring staffer! 😀
Rear video camera view:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/184y2d43X1/
Race 3 for the weekend was just awesome and a ton of fun! My sputtering issue wasn’t nearly as bad, hoping the fuel line replacement before the next event will make it all better.
Just having fun!
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DvzYGoN3N/
My final thoughts for the weekend:
This is what a successful weekend at the track looks like.
SUCCESS!!!!
Not podium celebrations.
No last second, heroic passes on video.
THIS.
The car loaded into the trailer to head home in as good of condition as it was when we rolled it off the trailer 3 days ago. (Actually, it's in better shape, due to some advice from another racer!)
Beyond that, I made some huge improvements in my craft.
I lowered my personal best lap time at this track by over a half second.
I was able to run much more consistent lap times.
Best of all, I enjoyed some extremely close, yet clean battles with another driver all race, every race!
It feels like I'm really starting to click with this car!
The rest of this season should be fun.
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