This was my second race of this season. I had my racecar dyno tuned Friday and we were able to get 390 rear wheel horsepower and 393 rear wheel torque. These are great numbers and represent an 80 horsepower increase over my last engine setup. This increase in power was immediately noticeable once I got the car on the race track.
Saturdays practice session there were a few fast cars in my race group that used to be a lot faster than me. Not anymore. I was able to run with them and keep on their bumpers. In my Saturday afternoon qualifying session I posted my best lap time to date, 124.963. This is 5 seconds faster than my previous best lap time at PIR (with chicane)! I ended up qualifying 4th overall and 2nd in class on the second row right behind a fast Nissan 300ZX in my class.
At the start of the race I got a pretty good jump but wasn’t able to gain any positions before the chicane. I got passed my a pretty fast A/Sedan Mustang at the chicane entrance but quickly re-passed him. A GT1 Monte Carlo in front of me spun in turn 2 and bunched up the field somewhat. Then it was the Nissan 300 ZX, me and a GT2 Nissan 200 SX and we were nose to tail for the next couple of laps. I was staying right on this guys bumper in 2nd place with the Nissan 200 SX hot on my tail. The 200 SX was faster than me in the corners but I was faster on the straight. He ended up passing me going into turn 6. I probably could have held him off but that would have been blocking. So that put me in 3rd place so far. We would switch places like this for the next few laps. Then as I was entering turn 5 I was carrying too much speed and ran a bit wide and hit the rumble strips and went into the grass heading straight for the tire wall! Somehow I was able to get some traction and braking in the grass and managed to stop my momentum just before getting to the tire wall and turned around and headed back on course. This was my first of three off course excursions for the race, a new record for me, one I’d rather not relish!
So now I’m playing catch up with two A/Sedans that passed by as I was in the grass. I managed to pass them in another lap and a half or so, but in my effort to pass the yellow Mustang, I over cooked my brakes going into the chicane and ended up spinning out right at the apex of turn 2. Then after a few more laps there was some other race car on course that dumped oil and/or coolant on the track that caused me to loose traction going through turns 10 - 11 and causing me to go off through turn 12! Fortunately there was enough runoff room so I wasn’t in danger of hitting the tire wall.
After getting back on course again I just put the peddle to the metal and drove like heck. I started lapping slower racers and making my way through traffic trying to keep clean and not have any more offs. After awhile the checker flag came out and the race was over. As I was on my cool down lap I checked my water temperature gauge and noticed it was pegged! Somehow I had overheated my engine! I figured I had placed pretty poorly, but when pick up the official results later I discovered that I ended up in 3rd place overall and 2nd place in class! Not too bad considering I went off course THREE times!
When I got my car home and had a chance to investigate the over heating problem, I realized that I had neglected to screw on the radiator cap on all the way allowing coolant to escape from the top of the radiator. Dumb mistake, but at least it didn’t show up until after the race was over!
This race made me realize that now my car is putting out way more power than it can safely and reliably race with. I will now need to upgrade my front brakes and probably get a larger radiator. Considering I’m going a lot faster now, I really need to invest in these upgrades and probably a fire suppression system too.
Next race is this coming weekend’s annual Portland Rose Cup race. This is the most popular race of the year and there are supposed to be over 400 cars racing in 6 or 7 race groups with lots of spectators watching.
Stay tuned for more racing…..
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