Lisa Devlin's Racing Diary

Testing the D

by Lisa Devlin

Yes, I'm still alive...

I know, it's been a while, but things have been a bit hectic recently. My last race was at the end of July and at that point, I made the decision to sell the Mazda and just concentrate on building the DSR. I will write this in a somewhat logical order - kind of chronological - by subject , so if you want to just skip to how the season ended... it's at the end. Otherwise you get to wade through my ramblings....

THE GREAT STARTING LINE
Three weeks after my last race (in July), Ted and I (and Sandi and Saroja) were at the Monterey Historics at Laguna Seca - my favorite track. I think the fumes from the race gas or something got to Ted 'cause Saturday night he proposed. Yes, I accepted. We were married on December 27 and spent a week in the Caribbean on our honeymoon. I have a .jpg of us in Stingray City in Grand Cayman with a stingray. Email me if you want me to send it. With the wedding planning going on, I took some time off from building the race car to building a wedding dress.

VIRGINIA CITY FROM THE PASSENGER SEAT
The Hillclimb in September was a bit different this year. We decided to go to the Hillclimb even though we didn't have a car. Virginia City is always a lot of fun whether you're driving or not. This was the first year in a long time I got to take rides and see how other people drive the Hill. There were a lot of people who wanted to know how I got my stock Mustang up the Hill so fast (the long pedal, the one on the right, push it down, leave it there) so I had some requests for instruction.

He started asking on Friday night. "Would you please ride with me?" Then Saturday morning "You are going to ride with me?" Then right before his first (key word here "first") run he asked again "I'm going now, can you ride with me?" Sure, why not, no rest for the wicked, so I got my helmet and met him at his car. As I was buckling up, I commented that I couldn't see over the hood (I'm 5'3 1/2" - I can't see over much). He commented back "It's OK, I can't see either." I thought he was joking. As he took off, I was beginning to wonder.

I wanted to see what he was doing and then offer some pointers at the top of the hill, but soon realized that we might not make it that far. After Turn 4, I looked back to make sure the car was equipped with a roll bar - 4 pt, better than nothing. I was afraid to say too much since I didn't want him to look over at me, so I limited my instruction to "SLOW DOWN!" and "TAKE IT EASY!" and figured I'd go into a little more detail when we got to the straight coming up after the next complex series of turns - a left uphill to a right sweeper. He went into the left hander slow and right on line - I breathed. Then he nailed the gas as we started up the hill, but before he'd finished the turn.

My life flashed before my eyes as we drove up the almost vertical side of the cliff with the right side of the car. I knew we were going over and I still can't figure out why the car didn't flip. All I know is that the car ended up in the middle of the road and I sat there looking up at the tire marks on the side of the hill. The car ended up with a bent frame and a broken rim. There happened to be a photographer on that turn who captured this Kodak moment on film. When I get (if I get) pictures, I'll get them scanned and send 'em if you wanna see 'em. (Sure, as soon as I get all those other pictures done...)

DSR PROGRESS
As I said earlier, I took about a month off from building the car to make my wedding dress (and to plan the wedding... and Christmas... otherwise life was boring). Before that, work on the car was progressing very well. I'm still making all the little doo-hickey parts that hold on the unimportant items like fuel pumps, harnesses and engines.

My most recent project involved sprocket carriers. The sprocket carrier is the part that mounts to that holds the chain that turns the wheels. To say making these parts has been a pain is a little too close to the truth. The first night I worked on them I managed to get my finger between the saw (the heavy part of the saw, not the blade) and the aluminum and crushed my finger. The most impressive thing about this is that I cut and bruised the end of my finger, but didn't break a nail. Then, a few weeks later, I was machining out the center of the aluminum cylinders I had cut and one of the shavings bit me. Oh well, who needs all that blood anyway?

Tonight will be the first night back to work on the DSR. I'm still planning on finishing it and getting some races in this season. I just really need to sell the RX7 first...

RX7 RACING
I still have the RX7. I'm really pushing to sell it for driver's school this year, but if I still have it February 21-22, I'm going to try and take it racing down at Willow Springs. WSIR is one of my favorite tracks and this would be a race just for fun in the ITA class.

Last year ended on a surprise positive note. I got an email asking me if I was going to the Racing Driver's Club Awards Banquet to pick up my trophy. "What's the trophy for?" I ask (always the curious one). Fourth Place in RX7. Yeah, right. But I really did place that high at year end in the RDC and received this really cool engraved glass mug.

PLANS FOR '98
This coming year looks like it's going to be mostly finishing the DSR and getting in as much testing and racing as possible. Now that things have settled down, I'll try and keep everyone more up to date than I have.

To send a letter to Lisa, email to devlin@thunval.com

Check out the Distant Thunder archives for previous entries from Lisa Devlin's racing diary