Encore Repaving Challenge at Infineon

Hi all,

With the new Koni shocks installed I was looking forward to a mechanically uneventful weekend. We arrived around 8 A.M. giving us plenty of time to make the 8:30 practice session. ;-) I made it to practice and was turning 2:01s. This wasn’t bad since I was just checking things out. The car was quite a bit louder with out the muffler but was not over the sound limit of 103db. It sounded good though. :-)

For the second practice on Saturday we adjusted the ride height and camber. We took out about a degree from each side of the rear. This put the rear camber at about 4 degrees. The toe was off but we decided it wasn't a good idea to change it. The rear toe was at 5/16 in. I went out and turned 2:00s so it was going okay. We were low on gas and all the greedy SUVs had used up the 91 octane. It was priced at $1.87 so I guess I don't blame them just wish I had gotten there first. Robert Quintero had come up for the race with his RX-3 but had neglected to renew his licenses. I was able to borrow two 5 gallon gas cans with gas from him. We dumped the 10 gallons in to the wagon and went in to get some food and fuel.

Qualifying was in the afternoon and we were back with the gas with plenty of time to get ready. We filled the Fiero and were ready to go. We went down to pre-grid and waited, and waited. For some reason they gave us three 5 minute signs over the coarse of 20 minutes. Needless to say we were getting hot! The finally let us out and we rolled on to the track. I wasn't out first and had to work through traffic. The first lap was a 2:01. Then a 1:59 and a 2:00, 1:59, 2:00, 2:00, 2:00, 1:58.9, 2:00. Not quite as quick as the 1:58.6 that I had at the beginning of the season but certainly not to shabby. It also got me the third spot in ITA for the start of Sunday's race. Qualifying first was Bob Bradfield with a 1:57.2, qualifying second was Steve Borlik with a 1:58.4, and a 2:00.2 went to Rick Maki for fourth place on grid. So it looks like there would be a race between Steve and me.

During the last few laps I started to here a rumbling/growling from the left side of the car. It was the same sound that I heard during Laguna. I was determined not to let it deter my going for a good qualifying position and I did. Now that qualifying was over it was time to deal with it. I figured it was a rear wheel bearing and decided to change it. Chris and Gary pulled off the old hub/bearing and asked me to take a look at it since they didn't see a problem. I had to agree that I didn't see a problem either. I decided to put the new hub in just to see if there was difference. While I was putting on the wheel I noticed that there was cord showing through in quite a few places around the inside of the tire. Maybe that's the noise I was hearing. We won't know unless I reuse that hub. Well we decided that we'd replace the tire with one of the spares, really hard decision ;-), Sunday morning.

Sunday morning rolled around and I took the two wheels over, one with the spare and the one all used up, to Roger Kraus Racing. First thing Roger said was, "Why didn't you tell me yesterday evening? "I have a set of tires at the shop for you.” Well now I know, oh well. Anyway back to getting ready for the morning race. I drove the car around the paddock to settle everything. Gary retorqued the bolts and we put the car on grid. I had qualified 8th overall putting me on the fourth row. This was perfect place to watch the start of the race. The 1st and 2nd place ITA cars were in the 3rd row and Andy Banta with his ITS BMW was next to me in the 7th position.

They gave the 1 minute signal and we went to line up in the hot pits. We started out following the pace car. Everybody was scrubbing their tires trying to get them warmed up. As we came around turn 12 the pace car came off of the course and it was now up to the poll sitter to set the pace. He looked to be setting a very fast pace and I was going to be left behind so began to get in to the throttle. The green flag flew! Bob and Steve got the jump on the second row. Steve just squeezed in between to ITS cars. I was following as best I could but couldn't make it past those two cars. I did get in front of Andy Banta (ITS) and Randy Evans (ITS) so I was able to get something out of the start finding myself in 6th place overall. Randy and Andy got by after one lap, Randy would end up winning ITS. ITB driver Steve Carbone was right in my review mirror. Andy and I hadn't got up a decent running speed; we had just turned a 2:03. So with Steve capable of turning 1:58s I would have to find some improvement in my lap times if I was going to keep him behind me. I chose a strategy of not blocking Steve since I believe I had enough power to keep him behind on exiting the turns. This turned out to be a good strategy. Steve tried the inside line several times during the next few laps but I was able to get in to the 1:58s by the 4th lap and duplicated that 6 of the 16 laps. From about the 6th lap on had a gap on Steve and was slowly reeling in Andy. By the 8th lap we were starting to lap back markers. I was still focusing on keeping it together and not losing my current third place position in ITA. Andy had to drop out on the 12th lap do to an alternator problem. The rest of the race went smoothly and I finished 3rd in class and 7th overall. Bob and Steve broke new track speed on the course. This is a newly resurfaced track and it has enabled almost every class to add a track record. Bob set a time of 1:56.1 which is amazing. Steve set a track record of 1:55.9. I set a personal best on of 158.4 and that was on tires that had 6 events on them. Even though two of competitors ran 2.5 seconds faster than I did I may have a chance to run with them if we are able to focus on tuning rather than fixing.

Encore Repaving Challenge at Infineon - 08/23-24/03