World Challenge Race - Round 9
Road Atlanta
21-24 September 2004

 

A Work in Progress...

We've been working on this car for about two years now and working on me as a driver for at least six. Progress has been definitely been made, but I am not one known for my patience. Some days it all seems painfully slow and that is reflected in my lap times. Perhaps my lack of patience is the problem. The fastest way thru a corner is slow in and fast out. Turning in early is almost never a good idea and late braking uses the car most effectively. As I said... working on it.

Much has happened since my last pro race, mostly in the vintage arena. Dad's Ferrari 512F was accepted to run at the Classic Le Mans this past June and he surprised everyone by inviting Paul to share the drive with him. I was invited along as a spectator and while I couldn't help being jealous of Paul's unique opportunity, I was thrilled at the chance to visit Europe for the first time in my life. That's a tale for another day, though. Suffice to say, we had a fantastic time and can't wait to visit again. Well, I should at least mention that ours was the fastest 512 at the track that weekend.

Our trip to Le Mans conflicted with the Sears Pt. and Portland races and the Monterey Historics kept us from Road America. That one was worth it as well. Dad raced his Chaparral 1 for the second time at this event, but it's the car's third appearance. The first year, Paul had his memorable run against Brian Redman in the Scarab that ended in one of the closest finishes ever at the Historics. Last year, Dad drove the car and had a rather spectacular finish as well, but for an entirely different reason. He thought the car felt a bit dodgy coming up the hill thru Turn 7 and it all went wrong as he turned down into the Corkscrew. The right, rear wheel and tire fell clean off the car. Fortunately, he managed to keep it pointed in the proper direction, off the outside wall and even brought it in at the bottom of Turn 10. It could have been much, much worse.

     

This year thing's went quite well though. He was battling with John Mozart lap after lap and finally forced an error in Turn 5. He made a clean pass and brought the Chaparral home to his first ever win at the Monterey Historics. He even won the Rolex Award for his this class. That was a fun weekend, but I was eager to get back to my own racing.

I missed the pro race at Road America this year, but I did get in some testing the weekend before the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. The VSCDA had an event honouring the Morgan and dad decided to run his Morgan Aero 8 GT(R) in the exhibition class. I was allowed to run my Mustang as well. It was my first trip back to this track since that rather fiery incident last year. I admit that I was a tad bit apprehensive, but I vowed to go ripping by the Cheese Bridge at top speed on my first lap out, laughing in the wind. And so I did. The scorch marks just past the bridge have been overgrown, but the skid marks leading up to it can still be faintly seen.

No matter! That's old news and I still had much to learn on this track. And I believe I did so. I managed to knock a few seconds off my best time at Road America and kept the car out of those infamous gravel traps. Well, except for that one time in Turn 5. I was pushing my braking point further and further back and I went a bit too far. It wasn't a major incident. I just sort of drifted off the track. My mistake was in trying to chase the car back on track on the uphill. I wedged myself into the gravel right near the apex. It didn't feel like a big deal at the time, but my splitter is a delicate piece of work. The
undertray was destroyed and half the paint was scrubbed off the lower half of the splitter. Not too bad overall, but some added work for Paul nonetheless.

I tested at Road America for three days, but wasn't able to run the race on Sunday afternoon because we had to be on track at Road Atlanta on Tuesday morning and needed to get on the road. Paul and dad drove straight thru from Wisconsin to Georgia and we made it to Atlanta by Monday afternoon. In time to clean the truck up, get it parked, open up the tent and take a deep breath in preparation for the penultimate race of the season.

The competition in World Challenge has always been tough, but this year it's shot through the roof. The Cadillac Factory team had three cars on grid for Atlanta and so did the Factory Audis. Those two teams have been the focus this season. The political talk has been flying back and forth all year and conspiracy theories abound. World Challenge is a fairly unique series in that the intent is to run a diverse field of makes and models, but to equalize the machines' performance as much as possible to make it a driver's race. Not only are adjustments made to allowable tire sizes, engine mods and weight distribution next race in the form of REWARDS.

From the World Challenge website (http://www.world-challenge.com/seriesfacts.html):

"Rewarding of Equalizing Weight Assigned to Reduce Driver Sensitivity, commonly referred to as “REWARDS Weight,” is a weight equalization system based on the addition and subtraction of ballast weight based on the finishing position of individual drivers in the previous race(s). The goal of the REWARDS System is to provide close on-track competition between a diverse variety of cars in the top third of the field. REWARDS System weight adjustments are in effect for the next race in which a driver competes in the same class."

SCCA usually has a tough job in keeping so many diverse cars in line with each other and this year has been no exception. I'm addicted to online bulletin boards and have enjoyed the ongoing discussion surrounding this year's competition adjustments. A lot of it is hot air and ignorant posturing, but there has also been some really good discussion and debate and that's almost as much fun as racing.

The specifics of who was going to win the Road Atlanta race didn't really affect my week at the track though. Attrition is one thing, but chances were good that I wasn't going to have a podium finish. I was going for something a bit less flashy. First qualify, then have a decent start, work at picking off a few competitors and then finish the race clean. Sounds simple enough, but it's almost never that easy.

Because of the hurricanes, there was some concern that the Atlanta race would be a wet one, but the whole week turned out to be sunny and warm. A bit, too warm, actually. It was well into the 80's, if not warmer and it was muggy. My cool suit didn't work the first couple of times that we tried it, but my new roof vent rocks.

We recently chopped the roof off my car. It was a roadster for about two weeks. Looked even stranger than dad's Morgan Aero 8 GT(R), but not as bad as the 330 Michelotti. We replaced the steel roof with a carbon fibre one that has a vent ducting air into the cockpit. It's aimed at the driver and it really works. I was afraid that when it's hot, it would feel like a blow dryer blasting on me, but it's not like that at all. It's really cool air and it helps a lot.

Not much happened during the test day. I beat my best time from last year by a half a second, but couldn't get any quicker than that over the course of the day. The official practice day was a different story. The shifter got all wonky on me again. The worse of it started after I locked it up in Turn 10. It happened when I was attempting to push my braking points further back and was also working on following closely. I was coming down the back straight with two Vipers, one in front of me and one that looked like it was going to out brake me and pass us both on the inside. The Viper in front of me bobbled a bit and went off line. I locked up my rear brakes just a touch and at the same time requested the downshift for second. It didn't happen. The transmission defaulted to neutral instead. That was a bit of a bummer because I would have been able to pass one of the Vipers and then begun chasing the other one down.

What I ended up doing was chasing my transmission around for a lap. For some reason, the car had gone into limp mode, which means that you can't rev over 4,000 and can't shift above second. I brought the car around to the pit lane and Paul told me to kill the power, let it sit for a moment and then restart it. He jacked the back end of the car up and had me run it up and down thru the gears to see if the error had cleared. We were back in business. He dropped the car down to the ground and I headed back on track. Everything seemed to work, but my times didn't improve any.

That first session was still better than the second practice session of the day. There I was, minding my own business... OK, that's just mean. Between what Bob Woodhouse and Tony Gaples both told me afterwards and what I saw, here's what happened.

Woodhouse in his Viper and Gaples in his Vette were battling it out for a few laps. Gaples was doing his best to get around Woodhouse, but put a wheel wrong here and there before finally getting by him. On one particular lap, I knew that the two faster cars were coming up on me, so I was keeping one eye on my rearview mirror thru the first few turns. Heading down thru the esses, I saw Gaples heading toward me and part of me thought that he was coming on a bit quick. I usually take a wide line coming out of Turn 5, and since it didn't look like Gaples was going to wait to pass me on the short straight between 5 and 6, I figured staying wide was a good idea. We entered the braking zone for Turn 5 and I stayed to the right turning up the hill, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blur coming at me anyway.

Gaples went off on the inside of Turn 5, came back across the track and drilled me in the left, rear wheel, sending me spinning off into the gravel. Damn, I was pissed! I almost ripped my window net down so he could see me flipping him off out the window as he proceeded up the hill. I radioed to Paul that I'd been hit and was stuck in the gravel. I believe there was some screaming and cussing involved in my transmission, but even at that point, part of my brain was going over what had just happened. I was rethinking everything I'd just done, trying to figure out if I'd made a mistake. Maybe I didn't stay as wide as I thought I did. Maybe I turned in earlier than I thought. Maybe, maybe... Luckily, I didn't have to dwell on the possibility of my error for long. Paul radioed back to me that Black Dog Racing was pitted next to us and their crew had already started apologizing for what had just happened.

Ya know, nothing diffuses anger faster than a prompt and sincere apology. I was still fuming over the situation as I waited for the tow truck, but at least I knew it wasn't my fault and the guy who caused the problem knew it too. It was obvious that my rear wheel was trash, but the safety crew still thought they could flat tow me back to the pits. We almost made it, too, but right at pit in, I felt that rear wheel go "clunk" and stop rolling. I slammed on my brakes and started yelling at the corner workers just off the track to stop the tow truck. It took a second, but they stopped and came back to take a look. On further examination, everyone realized that my Mustang wasn't going to roll any farther and they helped me from the car to one of the safety vehicles to transport me back to our paddock.

Once the car was there, the crew dug in to see what the extent of the damage was. The body damage wasn't too bad and the brake rotor and caliper could be saved, but the wheel was trash and so was the hub. And we didn't have spares with us. While Paul got on the phone with the guys back at the shop to see about FedExing the parts we needed, I decided to wander over to the Black Dog paddock to see how their Corvette had fared.

Their team looked rather dour when I got there. It seemed that the damage to the Vette was about equivalent to that done to my Mustang. I teased one of the crew by asking which one of them was going to order the pizza for us to make up for the incident. He said that Tony should make us steaks instead. Sounded fair to me and when I told Tony what his crew suggested, he was a good sport and agreed. I've gotta say that while it didn't make up for shortening my practice session or for the hard work that Paul had to put in getting my car back in running order, that was still some of the best steak I've ever had.

We didn't get back to the hotel that night until after 10pm and had to be back to the track at 7am or so for Paul to keep working on the car. I don't know why I'm ever surprised by this, but Paul got my car back together in time for qualifying. The plan was to send me out at the back of the pack to give me clear track to get in a fast lap or two and verify that everything on the car was copacetic. It rolled off OK, but almost immediately I had problems. The shifter started acting up all over the place. Up shifts and down shifts were being refused. Full throttle and half throttle, lifting for the shifts didn't seem to help either. Basically, it was all bad.

When my transmission refuses shifts, it's not like missing a shift with a standard, manually selected tranny. In the latter case, you usually make the shift on the second try and only lose a few seconds. In my race car, you lose a bit more time because the car shifts to neutral and then when you request another gear, up or down, it shifts to 6th. It's another one of those safety things to prevent over-revving the engine. The problem is that it takes precious seconds to downshift from 6th back into the power band and get moving again. When there are multiple refusals in a single lap, it's absolutely maddening, but even one will destroy an attempt at a qualifying lap.

Luckily, albeit for reasons unknown, the shifter seemed to get better after a few laps and I managed to put down a quick enough lap time to meet the 110% qualifying mark. It was still a depressing session though. It also meant that Paul had more work to do chasing down this problem.

There was some talk of swapping out transmissions that night. The thought was that perhaps the synchros were going or there was some other mechanical problem, but I disagreed. Not only did it seem clear to me that it was a computer glitch or a sensor problem leading to an electronic glitch, but we'd also just swapped out transmissions in the recent past and it hadn't solved the problem. And I just did not like the idea of another 12 hour day for Paul with no guarantee of success. I don't usually get to make these decisions, but I was pretty adamant about this one.

As it turned out, I was right. Paul found a faulty sensor and spent the morning before the race replacing it and debugging the transmission control unit (TCU). Once again, he got the work done in time, although it did come down to the wire. We also had one last detail that needed handling before the start of my race. We needed a Flag Boy.

Usually we have a lot of visitors on race weekends, but this one was an exception. Almost none of our friends were able to make it to the Atlanta race and nobody was around to carry our flag. At the last minute I went looking for someone suitably photogenic. Paul had made a joking suggestion earlier in the day, but the more I thought about it, the better it sounded, so I headed over to TecMark's trailer.

The Touring Car race had run that morning and the teams who weren't already gone, were busy packing up. The guys at TecMark were loading their cars into the trailer when I walked up, so I had to wait for Chad to climb out of there before I could ask him a favor. I'm rather picky about my Flag Bearers and while my father could get the job done, I thought Chad would be far more photogenic. He cracked up when I told him what I had in mind. Did I mention that Chad is TecMark's crew chief? Flag Boy may seem like a step down to some, but SCCA has insisted that the pageantry at the start of the races is important and that there is nothing degrading about parading around in a belly shirt and smiling cute for the TV cameras. To my delight, Chad was a great sport and agreed to help us out! We fitted him in one of our new crew shirts and headed down to pre-grid.

I had qualified 29th, which was right near the back, but we were surprised to see one car starting behind me. The series Champion, Randy Pobst, was starting from the back of the pack because of a problem found with the REWARDS weight in his car after qualifying. That was a bummer for him as he would have been starting 15th as opposed to 30th.

I was a bit nervous at the start of the race because we haven't practiced launches in quite a while and the last few that I'd done, I hadn't done well. Mid-Ohio was especially bad. The "problem" I have with the standing starts now is that my Mustang has quite a bit of power. So much power that the TCU has trouble smoothly actuating the clutch when you ask for a full power launch. It used to be rather a no brainer, but we've managed to eek out a bit more horsepower and so now it's as difficult to balance a launch with the shifter system as it is with a standard manual. I was worried for nothing this time though. I had a great start and was in the hunt for the first half of the first lap.

I'd been having trouble with Turn 7 all week and maybe I should have kept that in mind on that first lap, but I had a great line going thru Turn 6 and saw that I could out brake a Viper going into 7, so I went for it. It would have been beautiful... but it wasn't. I was too hot going in and I lost it. The back end came around on me and the field just flowed on by. Not only did I lose the spots I'd just gained, but I also must have smacked the curb when I spun because I ended up with a flat tire. I apologized all the way back the pits and then chastised myself quietly while the crew thrashed getting a new tire on the
car.

At that point, I did have a bit of luck. Rob Foster's Viper had stalled on the start and there was a full course caution while his car was towed off the front straight. That meant that I had time to haul ass and catch up with the back of the pack, keeping myself from losing a lap. I dug in and caught up enough to see the tail end just as the field went green again. I began by chasing the Volvo driven by the young rookie, Riley, down. I made good progress in passing him and then I had the orange and yellow Corvette of Dipippio in my sights for the next few laps. I was slowly reeling him in, hoping he'd make a mistake under pressure when, instead, I made another mistake. It was stupid. I'd screwed up in the same place at least twice that week already. Once during this very race. I overcooked it going into 7.

This time they got it on tape. If you've seen this race, you've seen me facing the wrong way in traffic in Turn 7 and heard the announcer mention that I'd had "issues" in that turn at the beginning of the race and say that it was, "not quite a happy day" for me. Yeah, not quite.

The rest of the race was incredibly anticlimactic. Paul told me to conserve the car at that point. We needed it to be in one piece for him to take it back to Ford for some transmission work and then on to the last race of the season at Laguna Seca. We didn't have time to fix any major damage if I got even more out of sorts and balled the car up. Chances are that if I spun out again, I wouldn't have the luck I'd had so far in keeping it off the walls. Speaking of which, Woodhouse should get a special award for the spin he did on the restart. He was right behind me, but I didn't see it happen until I saw the broadcast. It's not clear how it happened, but somehow he ended up in the dirt on the inside of the front straight and he spun, not once, not twice, but three, complete times. Not only did he keep it off the wall, but when he spun onto the track, he ended up in a miraculously clear space, facing the right way and then continued his race. It looked bloody cool!

So my race didn't have an exciting end, but at least I finished. And with the car in one piece and the shifter working correctly. Paul has taken the car to Detroit to get together with the Ford engineers again and do some more fine tuning on the transmission calibration. The shifts can never be too smooth or too reliable. We keep working on improving the car. He'll be there for a total of two weeks and then bring the car home to do final prep before we head up the coast to Monterey.

In the meantime, I'm back at the shop handling administrative details and trying to wait patiently for my next chance to get behind the wheel. It's coming up quick and I'm hoping for a good weekend. It'll be my birthday, after all. That's the kind of progress that's easy to make and I don't really mind waiting for it.