A quick wrap up of the event is best summarized by the quote from some famous author, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
I headed up to Tacoma on Thurs morning to go see what we had in store for us. Jokingly during the week before, I had joked about getting there early and having plenty of time to screw things up. This year, I vowed to do something different. Make sure we have a decent and neutrally handling car, make sure it's reliable, make sure we're prepared in the pits, and drive to a target pace. Mind you this has always been our objective in the past, but we generally fall behind for some reason and then try hard to make up the time.
This year was different. Plainly, the car was fantastic with only minimal tweaks to it. We were the last team to arrive (~11a on Thurs), so we didn't get to pick a car, we just got the last one in the box- a McLaren F1 GTR. Powered by the normal black motor, it sported a completely new billet aluminum chassis capable of extremely precise adjustments. It was fantastic! It was quick on the straight, stable in the corners... it was imminently driveable. With some basic set up adjustments, we started getting used to it and the track and just had fun.
None of us fared very well in the support races, which isn't surprising, but the new Trans Am cars were an absolute blast even on the rubber tires right out of the box. I am very excited about these and hope you guys are willing to give these a go. I think they'd be a blast to run on Odd Thurs, rotating with the Gp C class.
Moving on to the main event, we had assembled a team of 5: Monte, Stan, Tony, Ray, and me. We were all hip to the team strategy for this year and all agreed that it was what we needed to do. I drew up a running order which seemed to make sense and we got ready to rumble.
"It was the best of times...."
At precisely 14 minutes after 10AM, racing got underway. We started in lane 8, and with only 7 other teams, we ran only on the 8 lane track, three rotations of 1 hour per lane. To make things new and exciting, we were informed that we would be running the opposite direction from which they normally race it. This was upsetting to not get any practice time running way, but I can honestly say that it is definitely a fun way to run that track.
For us, Ray was up first and put in a strong heat in the inside gutter lane- strong enough to put us in first place. Yes, you read that correctly, FIRST PLACE. Ray is good and maybe lane 8 was easy, so I didn't get too excited... Tony was next and did a fairly good job in lane 6. Stan put together a respectable heat in lane 4, followed by Monte on lane 2. I was next, and after a few minutes of "learning" the track, I had an extremely fun time in lane 1 (yes, a gutter lane!).
After all this time, I noticed we were still doing fairly well. With the exception of the first 4-8 minutes of the heat to learn the lane in the new direction, we were staying in the slot and out of the pits. Not everyone could say this, including the PSSRA team, who ended up in the pits for a braid swap 25 minutes into the FIRST HEAT!! In turn, we were well set up, could service the car quickly when needed (didn't change the braid til heat 5), and were doing well with staying in the slot.
After the first full rotation (8 hours of racing, everyone had been through all the lanes), WE WERE IN SECOND!!!!
I offer as proof, a shot of the scoreboard during heat 7:
"...it was the worst of times..."
The second trip through the 8 lanes would be in darkness for our simulated 24h cycle. This was easy- all the teams would drive one rotation through all the lanes, in the dark. For this, we were supplied a light kit (warned that there were no spares), and part of the rules was the car had to have a functional head and tail light for the entire stint in the dark. We started heat 9 with our previous running order and Ray jumped back up in lane 8 to start the drive into the dark.
Shortly after the heat started, the EMSA team's entry ended up across our lane (stopped) with Ray not being able to stop for it and ramming it at a very high rate of speed. Our headlights stopped working. To the pits...
After an eternity of troubleshooting, swapping a circuit board, testing the LED's (and connectors), etc..., we couldn't figure out which component was bad. With no spares, Alan eventually snipped the light kit out and soldered a battery into the circuit with the headlights so they were always on. After THIRTY THREE MINUTES IN THE PIT ROOM, we were finally back out on the track, but you can probably figure out that we weren't in second place any more. To say this was frustrating is a monumental understatement.
We still tried to make good laps but it was clear we weren't going to make much upward progress as we only had modest speed and were hoping to win through slow and steady, while there were others who were just simply going fast. We couldn't make up the laps they were gaining by staying out of the pits and we dropped further down the board.
In the early hours of daylight on Sunday morning, we also started to have some power delivery issues, where we were very sporty down the straight but couldn't do a thing to get through a corner and just got walked around by everyone. For this we spent a bit of time in the the pits as well, still with no remedy.
All in all, it was still a fun time. I learned more about setting the car up, and as a team, I personally feel we executed flawlessly to plan. Until we lost literally hundreds of laps in the pits and our plan was no longer applicable. Tony and Ray were excellent to have on board, and despite arguing amongst ourselves for who was the worst driver, we all did well enough to turn in respectable results.
So, if we had scored it on the first 8.25 heats, we would have done exceptionally well. Unfortunately, there were still 15.75 heats remaining, and we had to run them all. In the end, we returned to our roots, wanting to finish high enough to be not last. Conveniently, that's where we ended up- NOT LAST, but in 7th of 8 teams entered.
It would have been nice to have a few more people up there- even if it was just for the 24h. Please think about making a weekend of it for next year. It's a great way to spend some time racing some really good slot cars.
Chris
