Vegas Baby!

Introduction | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9

Once George and Steve were set, we loaded up their stuff and headed West. Next stop, Vegas Baby! This leg is a short one, but we were getting a very late start. At this point, it probably wouldn’t matter if we were just going down the street, we are wiped out. George looks so piqued that his face is red and eyes are swollen. He flat out can’t drive until he gets some sleep. The night was mostly uneventful and we made pretty good time once we got out of the traffic of western California. We saw an accident just before crossing into Nevada, where a pickup had gone off the road and apparently rolled. The truck had no windows and looked like it was snapped right at the cab-bed intersection. It looked like it had been there for a while since the truck was quite a way from the road, and there was one officer standing there scratching his head, lighting the situation with his headlights. It just underlined the importance of staying fresh while driving the long hauls. At high speed in one of these low slung cars, it could be hours before anyone even notices you are there.

We finally arrived in Vegas at about 5:00 AM. We checked in to a hotel, grabbed two and a half hours of sleep and were back on the road around 8:30 for the next event.

Day 5 of Competition - May 4, 2004
Vegas International Motor Speedway is HUGE! This place will holds thousands of spectators two thirds of the way around the track. Of course the place was packed to capacity for our little showing. Actually, I don’t know if anyone was there at all since if they were, they would be completely lost in a sea of seats.

We set the tire pressures to 33 front 37 rear at Infineon trying to take some of the push out of the car. Dave liked the handling at those pressures, so we stuck with it. Two portions of VIMS are on the high-bank oval of the NASCAR track, so there will be some very high speeds seen today. The front runners will probably see 180+ going into turn 1. I was going to take the first run today because our nearest competitor, Glen Clark was apparently out of the event with a blown motor. They lost the motor at Pikes Peak International and they didn’t make the Infineon event. Little did we know that they were working on a new motor, and instead of taking the run to California like we did, they went straight to Vegas. They showed up just before their run position with a motor from a 911SC with all their special equipment bolted on.

Glen is a very nice guy, and so is his co-driver Lou. We have had some healthy competition between the teams for years, especially since two years ago, when Glen and Lou came in first in class, and we came in second by only a few points. The scoring was so tight that year that we actually beat Glen overall, but he won in class.

This is probably a good time to mention scoring, since One Lap is a timed, scored event. Scoring is pretty simple. Show up and you get points. Place higher than the next guy, get more points. This scoring strategy goes for both the overall scoring as well as the in-class scoring. The car that comes in last receives 5 points. The car that comes in next slowest, receives 10 points, and so on until you fill out the field. So this year, in the Vintage Foreign class there are three cars. The most points anyone can receive is 15 in-class points. If you don’t finish a competition, you receive no points at all.

In our case, we ended up losing five events when we broke the transmission, so even if we had come in last at each of the events, we would have had 25 more points than we did. The point calculations are determined before the start of the event, so even if someone DNFs all the events, in a three car field the winner will get 15. So let’s take a look at the field:

So before Glen showed up, it was possible that we could catch Dave if he didn’t finish one event. Now that Glen is back, It seems a mathematical impossibility that we can catch him unless he breaks. It looks like we might be looking at third place if everyone stays together. The catch to all this is if we can take first in every event from now on, we can wedge Glen between Dave and us, and possibly take second. That whole premise is a bit of a long shot since Glen is very fast, and his car handles better than ours, so on tracks that he has been on like Road America, and Hallett, he should be difficult to beat. He doesn’t have the power we do, so in the end it is pretty much a wash.

Dave went out on his first run, and was happy with the results. It looks like the push in the corners is mostly gone. There still is a bit of under-steer in the car but that isn’t always a bad thing, especially in a car like the 930. Ultimately we want the car to behave neutrally, however under-steer is better than over-steer in this situation. The second run was equally good for Dave however when the results came in Glen took top in class by a few thousandths of a second.

We waited for George and Steve in the Mustang, which was a bit painful since the temperatures today was about 100. The car is running pretty cool despite the temperature outside. On the track we are seeing oil temperatures of about 210, which are right in the middle of the operating range. Fortunately the infield at this place has covered garages with painted floors that stay cool regardless of what the weather is doing. We got underway about 4:30 and started East toward Pueblo. We made it as far as St. George Utah and the Mustang’s fuel pump started to make a whining sound and the fuel pressure was jumping between 20 and 40 psi. We stopped at a couple of auto parts places, looking for a high flow fuel pump – ha ha ha. Needless to say the closest one was in Vegas. Too bad we didn’t get one before we left.

Finally, we ended up at a Texaco station with a lift outside their garage. They were willing to let George and Steve use it, and even lined up a Ford mechanic to help them install it. George was definitely getting edgy but both he and Steve were remaining cool considering the circumstances. We had made a call to Steve Woodsum, a friend of both mine and Dave’s, thinking he might have an explanation as to what was going on with the pump, and maybe have some thoughts on how we could keep going. Independently, George called his mechanic and both Steve and George’s mechanic came to the same conclusions: that the impeller was deformed or the pump bearing bad, causing the pump to lose siphon. The pump would loose pressure, the decreased pressure would let the siphon return, the pressure would climb and the whole process would repeat itself. All of us agreed that the chances of the pump making it were virtually impossible to determine, and it would be best to find a replacement and install it, rather than risk it failing in the middle of the Rocky Mountains.

With a little creative Internet searching, between visiting much more interesting sites, we located the fuel pump product development manager’s home phone number. We called it and his wife answered. George did his best to sweet talk her, considering it was after 10pm her time, and in the process even slipped in the fact that they run this event as a charity. George is a smooth cat when stranded in a town without a bar, or strip club. Apparently he was successful since she contacted her husband who was on a business trip and this guy called us back in about ten minutes. With the product managers’ help, George was able to track down a replacement pump at a race shop in Vegas, and convinced the shop owner to find a way to get the part to him ASAP. I suspect a small token of their gratitude was enough to get the ball rolling. It is funny how the $2,000 entry fee is really only the beginning when doing the One Lap. It is possible, depending on what breaks, to spend thousands just to get your car home.

It is funny how the $2,000 entry fee is really only the beginning when doing the One Lap.		The trip took us across route 50 which is an absolutely tremendous stretch of American road.

After a very long four hour delay, Dave and I were back on the road to Pueblo Colorado. The trip took us across route 50 which is an absolutely tremendous stretch of American road. If anyone has a chance to drive route 50 through the mountains, do it. The scenery is simply awesome. We did the majority of the run at night, but the moon was full and it shone brightly on the heavily blurred canyon walls. You could see the snow capped peaks in the distance and on more than one occasion we saw the occupants of those cliffs on the highway. At one point or another we came across mule deer (maybe 10 in all), three elk, one of which was dead in the road, fox, rabbit, and an owl. Basically there were animals everywhere. The poor rabbit was the only casualty caused by us. I guess he didn’t fit under the front air dam since the loud “thunk” woke me up. I asked Dave what the heck that was and he flatly said: “Rabbit.” I then asked if he killed the rabbit and he again flatly said; “Yeah… Sorry Rabbit.” Sometimes the best eulogies are the shortest ones.

Fortunately none of the much heavier fauna of highway 50 became a hood ornament and we made the run to Pueblo without major incident. This night was another in a collection of sleepless nights that are really wearing Dave and I (and the rest of the pack, for that matter) down badly. Both of us are so wiped from all the other crap we have had to do on top of the very long driving that we have no reserves. George mentioned the same feeling just before we left him, so we certainly are not alone. In fact, since I am writing this in the past tense I had a chance to talk to Glen and Lou and they were switching drivers every 45 minutes to an hour. That is almost unheard of since it is very inefficient, but the alternative is much worse when you are that fatigued. Usually we try to switch each tank of gas, unless the person driving simply can’t go any further. We arrived at the gate for tomorrow at about 5:30 AM, just as the sun was coming up.

Day 6 of Competition - May 5, 2004
Jesus that was a short night. The sun was shining in the driver’s window despite the atlas I wedged between the door’s window frame and the A-pillar. We were one of about five cars that had bagged a hotel for the comfort of the track’s main gate, a pair of firm racing seats, and a collection of shower-free occupants. Today is supposed to be very hot, clocking in at around 90 but again, no rain. The track opens at 7:00 and Dave wanted to walk it with Ron Adee or one of his employees Chad, who had also been to this track.

Pueblo Motorsports Park is a town owned facility that is stuck on the outskirts of Pueblo Colorado. It is a reasonable length at about 2 miles, and has some interesting corners, most of which are decreasing radius curves onto deceivingly fast straights. The front straight of the road course is the drag strip which makes for entertaining displays as the cars come on to the front straight.from a fast right-hander that takes them across four different grips of pavement under full lateral load. The other neat thing about this corner is that you can walk right up to the Jersey barriers and take pictures so close to the cars that actually hit the apex properly, that you can literally reach out and touch them. The fast cars are coming so fast and close that one guy taking pictures commented he could feel the vacuum as the car went by.

It is also interesting to watch from there because you can really see everything that is happening to the car as it is going through this stage of the track. Coming into this curve you can very easily see the brake zone, which starts when the driver initially loads the nose of the car by transferring weight to the front wheels, then continues as the brake forces are increased, then decreased as the car is turned in to the corner. Most of these guys break in a straight line then once they are done slowing the car down, they make the turn into the curve, with the top drivers being the exception. One driver in particular is different and he is Paul Girard. He is a professional driver hired to drive a Mitsubishi Evo II which is basically an all wheel drive rally car. His line through the turn is completely different. He seems to break like the others, but instead of maintaining speed through the curve and accelerating out, he simply points the car after he has done his braking, and once the car is rotated toward the apex, he is back on the throttle hard. The car simply claws its way around the corner in a four wheel drift. I’m not sure it is the fastest way but it was definitely entertaining, especially since he seemed to place the car right on the apex lap after lap. Dave Murray did that as well, once he got the line, but Paul didn’t drive through the apex, he simply destroyed it with four pads of spinning, clawing rubber.

The Yokohama AVS sports are really coming into their own, in that they heat up well, and have very good grip.		We increased the pressures in the fronts slightly and that seemed to take even more of the push out of the suspension.

Before competition, Dave was able to get his bearings by walking the track with Chad, and on his first run, he did very well, ousting Glen by three seconds. We increased the pressures in the fronts slightly and that seemed to take even more of the push out of the suspension. The Yokohama AVS sports are really coming into their own, in that they heat up well, and have very good grip.

Once Dave heard he had done well in the first run, he was back up for the second run. He felt good about the run, for very good reason. The second run he shaved 9 seconds off his time and increased overall position by two slots. Another class win, if only we had more time to catch Glen in points.

We were able to leave Pueblo behind around 2:30, where we are really looking forward to a real night sleep. We are scheduled to be in Tulsa Oklahoma tomorrow which is about 800 miles away. The only hitch in the plan is there seem to be an inordinate number of Kansas officers lining the way down I70. Hopefully we won’t have to have any discussions with them. continue>