Off season

2007 racing season is over. It was a pretty uneventful season for me this year. I only entered three races this year. With a lot going on with our family and work, unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of time left over for racing. My last race of this season was in October at Pacific Raceways. It was a total rain fest, and I didn’t have any rain tires. To make matters worse, my engine broke another rocker stud during qualifying. So rather than risking racing on slicks in the rain, I decided to bag it for this race and the season.

During this off season I plan to replace all my rocker arm studs with ARP studs, add NASCAR style door bars to my roll cage to conform to the latest SCCA GCR’s, add a fire system, and I’ll probably replace my front control arm bushings. Other than that, the number 31 Camaro should be ready to race at the start of the 2008 racing season that will start sometime in April.

Here are some miscellaneous racing pictures to tide you over during the off season…


PIR in 2004



Racing in the rain at PIR in 2004.



Here is a picture of me during a race in Portalnd in June '04.



Here is the 383 stroker engine I installed for the 2006 racing season. It dynos 391 rear wheel horsepower and 393 rear wheel torque.



Here is a picture of the new (C5) Corvette ZO6 front brakes I installed at the beginning of this racing season. This addition resulted in at least 1 full second off my lap times at PR.

CSCC 8/19, 8/20 Race at PIR

8/18/07: Lisa, Alex, Skyler and I loaded up the racecar on the trailer and headed south to Portland to race at Portland International Raceway for the weekend. This was the first time we have been back to race at PIR since we moved back to Seattle last year. I miss living so close to a race track. We used to live only about 10 minutes away from this track. This was only my second race this season and I was eager to get back on track. I towed the racecar to work Friday morning and worked until Lisa and the boys picked me up at 3:00 and we headed south for Portland. Traffic was really bad and what is usually a 3 hour drive turned out to be a 5 hour drive. We drove straight to the track, registered and began unloading and setting up our paddock space. After that we went over to the Days Inn located next to the track and checked in into our room for the night. When Morning came I got up pretty early to get ready for the days activities. Lisa wasn’t feeling well so she and the boys slept in while I went to the track and got ready to take the car out on my first track session, a twenty minute practice session. The weather was perfect for racing. It was cool but sunny. My morning practice session went well and the racecar was running and handling pretty good. Afterwards I went back to the motel to pick up Lisa, Alex and Skyler and took them back to the track for the rest of the day. In the afternoon I went back on track for my first qualifying session for the weekend where I was able to set a fast lap time of 1:25.872. The car still felt pretty good so I didn’t change anything on the setup. When our group’s official qualifying results were posted, I found that I had qualified in 5th place. After my qualifying session I check over the car, check the brakes, tires, oil, etc, then we left the track and went out for pizza. After dinner the boys wanted to see a movie so we went and saw the Simpson’s Movie which we all enjoyed. Sunday morning we got up and packed up our bags, checked our of the motel and went back to the track. During my morning qualifying session I wasn’t able t better my lap times from the day before. The official qualifying results had me starting 5th on the grid of 26 competitors and 1st in my ITE class. After this session we just checked things over, bled the bakes and rotated the tires to get ready for the afternoon race. After lunch we were the second race group to race. As I brought the racecar over to pre-grid I began to strategize on how I would start the race. We left pre-grid and began following the pace car around the track for our pace lap, scrubbing tires and brakes to generate heat for the first turn of the race. As we came around for the start we all bunched up real tight for a good start. When the starter dropped the green flag we all jumped on the gas and raced for turn 1 into the “Festival Curves”. On my left was Scot Morton in a fast GT2 Nissan 350Z. I had the inside line and beat him into and through the first turn as I was hot on the tail of Alan Wendler in his fast GT1 Chevy Monte Carlo. As we exited the Festival curves I had about a 1 car length lead on Scott Morton as the leaders began to pull away slightly ahead of me. Scott stayed on my tail for the next 10 laps or so as we raced really hard together. He had better speed in the corners, but I had better straight away speed. He’d pass me in the turns but I’d pass him right back on the straights. After so many laps of that my tires started getting really hot and greasy making it impossible to keep him behind me, so I finally pointed him by. As soon as I did this I see in my rearview mirror the second place ITE car, a fast Mitsubishi Evo XIII driven by Wayne Monahan gaining on me real fast and getting really big in my mirrors. Soon he was all over my rear bumper looking trying to pass me. It was the same thing though, he was catching me in the turns, but I’d pull him on the straights and try to gain a little breathing room before he’d catch me in the turns. My tires and traction were getting really bad in the corners and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep Wayne from passing me passing me for sure on the next lap. As we exited turn 12 onto the front straight I was determined to put as much space between us as possible so it was peddle to the metal all the way down to the brake zone for turn 1. As I exited the chicane and looked in my mirrors, Wayne was nowhere to be seen! I figured he must have overheated since he was driving a highly modified turbo charged car, they tend to be more susceptible to overheating with their high pressure intake charges. All I had to do now was cruise a couple more laps onto victory. I ended up finishing the race 1st in class, 4th place overall! It was a great race and a hard fought victory. During the race I was able to improve my best lap time slightly to 1:25.243. After the race we congratulated my competitors and began to pack up for the trip home. I felt good about the race and especially winning my 5th career 1st place finish! Unfortunately our in car video camera quit working so I don't have any video to upload.

2007 racing season

First race of the year for the 2007 race season.
I usually race earlier in the season but this was the first Conference (ICSCC) race at Pacific Raceways this year. Races at Portland usually begin as early as March or early April, but I haven't been able to get to any races there yet this year.

During the winter I retrofitted new Corvette Z06 front brakes to my car to improve the braking and compensate for the extra horsepower & speed from the engine I installed last year. I was eager to get my car on the track to evaluate the performance and to see what effect that would have on my lap times. Saturday morning Kyle and I towed the racecar to the track, registered, got our pits all set up and got the car through tech. Lisa, Melissa, Alex and Skyler got there around lunch time. The weather was cloudy and it was threatening rain. The Saturday morning practice session was on a damp track and I had to spend most of that session bedding my brake pads and heat cycling my tires. After lunch the track dried out just in time for my group's first qualifying session. I went out and tried to get some decent lap times. I could definitely feel the improvement of my new brakes. After a couple warm-up laps I strung together four hot laps that all felt like they were pretty quick. The car felt good as I really pushed it for this first time this year. After my qualifying session I was anxious to see the lap time results. When they were posted it showed that my best lap time was 1:34.038 qualifying me to start 4th on the grid. That is a little more than 1 whole second faster than my best lap time from last year. I was pretty happy with that but I felt like there was probably at least another second or so that I could shave off that time.

Sunday morning it was raining pretty hard. The track was really wet, so I knew my second qualifying session would not show any improvement from my Saturdays qualifying session. So when out group's time came to go out on track, I just took it easy and practiced my lines. We were the second group to race after lunch. The weather was still bad with rain and water on the track. I didn't have any rain tires so this looked like it was going to be a wet and slow race and I wasn't going to be very competitive. As we gridded up I just resigned myself to the fact that I would have to just let everyone behind me pass right on by because I wouldn't be able to have any traction with my slick race tires on the wet track. Sunday morning a Viper had qualified ahead of me and bumped me from 4th to 5th on the starting grid. When race time came and I reported to grid, I noticed that 4 of the first 5 cars on the grid all had their slicks on! I was really surprised because with a wet track, they wouldn't be able to have any better traction that me.

We left the pre-grid and began to follow the pace car around the track for the start of the race, all of us trying in vain to get a little heat in our tires so we might have a little traction for the first turn. As we came around onto the front straight we all bunched up waiting for the starter to drop the green flag. At the last possible second before reaching start finish, the starter threw the green flag and we were all off! The water on the track threw up such a spray from everyone’s tires that it made for near zero visibility. I just let everyone behind me that wanted to pass right on by rather that defend my position and risk crashing. I figured that I would simply strive to finish the race in one piece and collect a few points rather than force things and risk crashing or injury.

I was passed by about 16 cars on the first few laps of the race. On about the second lap I began to notice that my engine had a miss and an exhaust leak at the header. I figured that maybe the header leak had burned through a spark plug wire or something. I considered just bagging this race and calling it a weekend, but for some stubborn reason I decided to stay in the race since my car was still drivable. After about the sixth or seventh lap the rain stopped. The track began to slowly dry out in places. This allowed me to pick up my pace and I quickly began to pass the cars that had been passing me and soon I was almost up to my normal race pace. Pretty soon I had worked my way all the way up to 3rd place overall! I maintained that position for the rest of the race and at the checkered flag managed to finish 2nd in my ITE class and 3rd overall, being beat by the ITE Viper and a GT2 Mazda RX7. Not too bad considering my engine was only running on 7 cylinders and I had let almost the entire field pass me at the beginning of the race. Most of the cars in my group had rain tires on and when the track started drying out they could not keep up the pace without overheating and destroying their expensive rain tires.

I limped my car back to the paddock and it was pretty clear that my car was done for the day. It was running really rough and the exhaust leak made it sound pretty bad. I’d have to spend some time later on troubleshooting the problem. I was hoping for something simple like a burned spark plug wire, but my gut was telling me it might be a bad head gasket or something worse. All in all it was a successful race weekend and we all had a good although a little wet time at the track. I have uploaded a video of my fast qualifying lap for your viewing pleasure. This is my fastest lap time to date on this track. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct-Jgnk0qCQ