Portland Rose Cup Race, PIR 6/9 – 6/11/06

Rose Cup weekend. This is a race that culminates the Portland Rose Festival and always draws a lot of competitors and quite a crowd of spectators. I’ve wanted to compete in this race for a long time and this year I finally was able to race in it. This year the Rose cup race did not include my normal race class (ITE) so I stepped up a class and raced in SPO where I was racing against some seriously fast purpose built race cars. I knew I didn’t have any chance of being very competitive, but it would be fun just to be out there with and mix it up with the big boys in front of all the spectators.

This weekend I was being sponsored by Parent Empowerment Network and Mother’s Against WASL and I was happy to be able to help support their cause. Lisa set up a table with literature and gave out stickers and buttons as she enlightened people about the WASL. They put out a press release and we had a reporter and photographer from the Vancouver Columbian newspaper come out and do a story on us. We were printed in the Monday 6/12/06 newspaper and they had a nice article and pictures of me, Lisa and the Camaro!

Thursday evening after work I trailored the racecar to the track and set up my pit. I needed to replace a leaking header gasket so I decided I better get it done that evening and began working on it there at the track. It took me about one hour to get the old header gasket off. I began installing the new header gasket and it began to be more work than I anticipated. I couldn’t seem to get the header bolts to line up and get the threads to start. When it started getting dark I had to go buy a flashlight at GI Joes (where Melissa works) so I could see what the heck I was doing. I got back to the track and continued working on the car until about 10:30 when I decided to give up for the evening out of frustration. I had to get up early and return back to the track first thing the next morning and complete this work because I had our group’s practice session at 11:30am. I finally got the header re-installed and everything buttoned up by about 10:30 and got my car through tech and got suited up to go out on track. I went out and completed the practice session and was able to complete some fast laps and size up the competition, but there were a lot of cars that decided not to go out for this session. The Camaro was running well and felt strong. The only problem was that I seemed to be losing some of my coolant. No much but it was a concern.

Saturday morning came and our qualifying session came next. When I pulled my car into pre-grid there were some very fast racecars showing up to go out on track with. The racecar that pulled up next to me was Monte Shelton’s 1984 Porsche 962 GTP. This car is known to be able to top 240mph at Lemans! Talk about a mismatch! A little intimidating to say the least! We went out on track and I was able to only get a couple of fast laps in because they had decided to split our race group’s qualifying session into two groups, the fast cars and the slower cars. I went out in the faster group but we only had about 5 laps to qualify, and I was trying to bed in my new brake pads too. I ended up qualifying at 1:25.199, just a couple tenths of a second off my best lap time from the previous week. This qualifying time placed me 32nd out of 41 cars on the starting grid. I’m not used to starting so far back in the grid. I spent the rest of the day readying my car for the race the next day my installing new brake pads on all four wheels and installing new rotors on the front.

Sunday was race day. I got to the track at about 7:30am to begin double checking everything. My race was scheduled for about 1:10, but they wanted us to get the cars in pre-grid about 45 minutes early for the opening ceremonies. This was something I have never done before and it was kind of cool. They interviewed the top drivers, had someone sing the national anthem, and then had a celebrity announce “Driver’s, Start Your Engines!” Pretty cool! We had one parade lap, then one pace lap behind the pace car. It was pretty hot, about 80 degrees and I was getting nervous about my engine getting too hot and overheating. When we came around for the green flag and the start of the race, the starter figured we were all too out of shape to give us the green flag and made us all go around for another pace lap. As we came around for the third time we finally got the green flag. I started out very conservatively not wanting to get out of shape for the chicane on the first lap and I made it through cleanly. As we drove through turn 6 there was a Porsche 911 that was smoking badly and I was afraid he was dumping oil on the track, so I had to drive off the racing line and slow down to avoid him along with a few other cars. This gave the rest of the pack a chance to brake away from us. A GT1 car that started a couple rows ahead of me was driving a lot slower than I thought he should be and was holding me up even more. I was stuck behind him, an SPM Porsche 911 and a couple of pretty fast EP Mazda RX7’s. We struggled behind this slower (in the corners) GT1 car for a few laps until he blew the chicane giving us a chance to pass him. That set me up to do battle with the 911 in front of me. The only problem for me was the two RX7’s that were catching and passing me or trying to pass me in the corners. I would pass them on the straights, but they would catch back up and pass me in the corners. I had some really close racing with those guys, a little too close. As I was battling the 911 in front of me, he must have felt the pressure because he spun out right in front of me as we were coming out of turn 7. I had to drive off the track and into the grass to avoid T-boning him. Just as this was happening the race leader lapped us.

With the Porsche 911 spinning out I was now able to gain a position and get a little breathing room in front of the two RX7’s. I began chancing some cars that were a ways in front of me for awhile but before long my tires started getting too hot and began to get greasy and lose traction in the turns. This hut my lap times and allowed the two pesky RX7’s to catch up with me again. As I battled with these guys, trading positions a two or three times per lap, my engine began to overheat! So I had to slow down a bit off my pace to let the engine cool down a bit. This gave the Porsche 911 the change to catch up to me and he ended up passing me. After a lap or so my water temp gauge indicated the engine was cooling down, so I increased my pace again and chased the 911 again. As we were entering the chicane he went in too fast, overcooked his brakes and began to spin. This presented me with yet another opportunity to re-pass this guy, I was happy to oblige and went on by. Before long my engine heated up again and I had to slow down to avoid overheating. The 911 once again caught up with me and passed me again. After another lap the engine cooled enough that I felt like I could go after him again. Then, as we rounded turn 12 onto the main straight I saw that they had put out the checked flag signaling the end of the race! Apparently the starter never put out the “last lap” sign. I only had half the strait to try to pass the 911 to beat him to the finish line. It was a drag race between me and the 911 but he was able to edge me out at the line by only maybe a foot or two! If we had another 50 feet I would have passed him for the position.

What a race! I had survived and made it through without any incidents. I felt good about that. But as I completed my cool down lap my engine overheated! I ended up finishing in 23rd place, three laps behind the top three finishers. All in all it was a pretty fun race weekend. It was real nice to have my family there to support me. I think they enjoyed the day watching Dad race. I still need to figure out why I am losing coolant and overheating though before the next race.

Stay tuned race fans!


Columbian Newspaper Article on my race: http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/06122006news35244.cfm