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Team WTF?! BMW Club Racing Debut at VIR |
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Written by Nick
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Monday, 17 April 2006 |
Well, suffice it to say that this weekend was very interesting. For those few of you whom I haven't blathered endlessly to, I went down to the Tarheel BMWCCA Club Race at VIR this weekend. This was my very first race weekend, so my primary goal was to avoid hitting anyone and/or balling up the car. Luckily, I fulfilled my primary goal.
Unfortunately, this weekend was absolutely plagued by mechanical problems. On my first session out, I noticed that the car was behaving strangely - transitional response was not good. The uphill esses were pretty terrifying, and the clanking through hogpen was really not encouraging. Eventually this was diagnosed as a blown out (again!) right front Advance-Design strut. Unfortunately, no one had the tools I needed to open the little fucker up, so I was restricted to adding nitrogen every session.
Even more interesting was the faint smell of fuel. After several failed attempted to diagnose, we gave up looking for it. Until I brimmed the tank for the enduro, that is. With fuel spilling out, we had to park the car. Eventually, we found the leak (a hole that a friend's crewman had drilled into the fuel tank while installing my fire system - ironically this was for the nozzles he ran TO the fuel tank) and patched it up with a screw and some JB Weld. This got me all set for Sunday and the sprint race.
I qualified adequately, with rain screwing up our session. Third in class (KP). I didn't want to stress the car too much, so I only ran a few laps. The race was an absolute blast. I had a fantastic start - I gained something like six places overall and got up to second in KP. Unfortunately, the bad strut was making the car's handling downright awful. I was losing an enormous amount of speed in Hogpen, which absolutely killed me on the straight. Just imagine having a jackhammer going on one side of the car. Now imagine a swaybar transmitting the vibrations to the outside tire. I'm sure you can imagine what that did for my grip levels. Eventually, something really went in the shock and I ended up understeering off the track there. I kept my foot in it and drove through for a while, but the tail started coming around in a big way so I just locked up the tires. It isn't worth trying a big save off-track - you might save it, but more often tryign too hard results in hitting something hard and/or rolling the car. About all I can say for my finish is that I wasn't DFL. Barely.
But I'll be back and next time the car will actually be working.
I'll post pictures and video at some point.
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