Man, that didn't go as planned. 😒
I'm not even sure where to start on this one. So let's rewind a few days, shall we? This race kept me up at night for a few days just thinking about all of the "what if"s. I could not sleep at all as I thought about all the things that can go wrong. Did we pack all the tools and stuff we need? Did we tighten all the bolts? Is the setup close? Is the engine going to be okay? Will it have power? Will it have too much power? What if I make a mistake? What if I hurt the car? What if something goes wrong? There's a million things that dwell in my mind before a race, and setting such a lofty goal made it even worse. I'm generally my own worst enemy, and that was never more true than last week.
We all met at the shop the morning of the race and started loading the trailer. I set the car on the floor about twenty minutes before we needed to leave. Plenty of time to load the last thing, the car, and then close up the trailer and head out. That's when I noticed that the right rear corner was way too low. We had set this car up about six weeks ago, it was done, ready to race. Then we set it on jack stands and left it alone. To find it this far off was insane. So we scrambled to get the car back on the scales and get it back in race shape.
Things never go well when you are in a hurry. Scaling the car took close to an hour and a half, making us late. Plus, we still had to put everything away and load the rest of the stuff. So by the time it was all said and done, we were running almost two hours behind where we wanted to be. And of course, when things get rushed, things get missed. We wouldn't find out the full impact of that until we got to the track. Arriving at the track, we were really only about one hour "late" officially. That meant getting unloaded was a bit of a rush too, but we got everything done just in time to miss our first practice session. Okay, well, whatever. Let's take a deep breath and just let that one go. This was when we learned that we forgot an impact gun to change tires. 😒 Fine, I guess we're changing them with a ratchet today. Not fun, but we'll get through this.
Going out on the track for the second practice session I made a huge mistake. The flagman who stands at the end of pit out was kind of right in the middle of the exit road, it made me very nervous about hitting him and I pinched the car over against the wall pretty hard. The pit wall there has this little spot where it transitions into the front stretch wall where the wall kind of jogs out a bit. I managed to drive right into it, and not easy either. The car literally climbed up the wall about six inches or so and then slammed back down on the ground. Great job Tim, just drive it straight into the wall before you ever get out on the track. Nobody will think you're an idiot or anything. 🙄 The end result was a bent ball joint. I knew right away because when it landed back on the ground the steering wheel was about a third of a turn off from center. Perfect, this is what we needed after the morning we've had. Well done, bonehead.
Honestly, I'm surprised it was just a ball joint and not a tie rod end or a-frame. We can fix a ball joint easy enough, that's why we use these ball joints with replaceable studs! Okay, back in business, maybe try not to be so stupid next time. Heading out for our last practice session I needed to figure out if this thing would run. Once the track "went green" I got after it a bit and the rear tires broke loose, the car kind of turned sideways on me and I started peddling it trying to catch it. Somehow, I'm not really sure exactly, the car just grabbed and snapped on me. Unfortunately, I had a lot of wheel in it trying to sort of drift and catch it and it slapped the wall very, very hard. Thinking back now, I think I may have eased up on the throttle which caused the tires to grab. And when they did, it just jumped out from under me. You'd think less throttle would be the answer, but not always. Which is fun, because literally everyone that walks by says "Maybe try less throttle!" 😒 Okay, now the car is a complete mess. I've managed to pretty much hit everything but the concession stand at this point -
So we've got a damaged body panel, a shock that looks very similar to a pretzel, a broken trailing arm mount and a spring precariously perched in a position that wants to kill someone if something goes wrong. Top all that off with a driveline that has a chewed up input shaft from being yanked out while spinning, a rear bumper that completely parted company with the car and it even ripped the battery hold-down out. Awesome, you've really done a number on it now bonehead. At this point this is literally all of those nightmares that kept me up for two or three days all coming true ... one right after another.
I'll say this much about my guys, they literally have no quit in them. One of the other racers ran to his house to get a welder and a driveline, we rounded up a shock and they went to work to put it all back together. It wasn't pretty, but it was a car.
During all this, we missed qualifying. whatever, at this point I'd rather just start in the back so I don't run over anything else. Oh wait! We still get a heat race to see if I can hit something else! 😒 I was keeping an eye on what classes were lined up and going out on the track, knowing where my heat race fell in that running order. It appeared I had two heat races before mine when I started climbing in my car to go get lined up. While climbing in, they sent my heat race out! Well, they sent the 4 cars that were lined up out. I was not the only one who thought he had more time, so two of us missed our heat race. Whatever, I just went and got in line behind the other heat race and went out with them. If they want to black flag me they can, but not before I squeeze in at least one lap to see if this thing will stay together. Luckily, I got to run it. I just hung back and didn't bother trying to actually race, but I did finish without hitting anything so I'm calling that a victory! At this point I need to find a small win, because my self esteem and confidence in my ability to even drive a racecar was at an all-time low.
Okay, it's time for the main event. I knew I was starting last so maybe I'll just take it easy for a few laps and then see how this plays out. sitting in the lineup there comes a time where the official tells everyone to fire it up. It's usually way too early but I fired my engine and sat there idling. The temperate started climbing, but not alarmingly so. It did seem odd because it usually doesn't do that. I watched it slowly climb up to 200 and I shut it off, because clearly we're not going anywhere and I'll see the front of the line move way before I need to, so I'll just fire it again at that point rather than sit here and melt it down for no reason. Once the line started to move I fired it up, turned on the fan and went out. The temperature came down to 140 during the warmup laps so I wasn't worried. I saw a couple puffs of smoke coming off the radiator cap area and thought it was odd, but the gauges looked good.
Once we took the green I kind of laid back a bit for a few laps. To be honest, it was probably too many laps, but I was really nervous because we had changed stagger around, put a few rounds of sway bar in it to help tighten it up and we took some timing out of it to try and calm this engine down. It had so much power, it was just insane. Like an angry bull in a China shop, the power was just so explosive. Once I felt a bit more confident that maybe I could drive this thing without destroying it I started getting after it. I had to clear a slower car, which took way longer than I wanted it to because of my timid-ness. Once clear of him I was a good ways behind, but I set to work and was actually running down the two cars in front of me, who had a good battle going. After a while they caught the slower car and were trying to put him a lap down as I quickly reeled them in while they were hung up. I managed to pass one of them before they could clear the slower car and then made my way by the other once the two of us had cleared the slower car. Cool, I actually passed people!
The race would go flag to flag and the leader would catch me with about three to go. I moved over and met him on by and focused on just making the end of the race. I saw another puff of smoke out of the top of the engine, like up by the radiator again. Looking down at the gauges everything looked perfect. Then it happened. Right as I crossed the finish line the engine let go with a big bang and huge cloud of smoke. Literally all of my nightmares coming true ... one right after another.
The car is back in the race shop. I've got a plan to try and salvage this season but I'm not ready to make an official announcement yet. the official standings lists us as ninth. That sounds right, I started twelfth out of twelve and I recall passing three cars, one of the twice (yup, I lapped a guy). That should also mean that we are ninth in the points standings. It will read as a top-ten, but man it didn't feel like it. We were so far off it wasn't even funny. I don't know what my problem was, it was like I had never driven a racecar before. It's going to be a few long nights over the coming couple weeks, but hopefully we'll know soon if we can salvage this season. For now, I'm just trying to put this one behind me and focus on what's ahead of me. Because God knows I made a mess of that. 😒
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