Racing Diary: It's Alive!!

by Lisa Devlin Arken

As of 12:30 or 1 am on April 10, the DSR was officially ready to go onto the trailer and off to the track for testing. 12:30 or 1 am? The night was a blur by that time. Every once in a while I would point the video camera at the clock, so I'll have to go back and check.

We had the car loaded by 2 am, shrugged and said, well we have to leave in an hour to make it to the track on time... no point sleeping now. So we took a shower, threw some clothes in a bag (no we hadn't packed yet... we hadn't even done laundry) and hit the road for the four hour tow to Thunderhill at 2:42 am.

The idea was that I could sleep while Ted drove, but I was too excited to sleep and Ted kept drifting all over the road, which made me nervous, (he insisted he was fine to drive) so I was the music monitor. (You don't like Metallica? Fine let me drive and you be the music monitor) By the time we made it to Williams (are we there yet?) we met up with Pat, and Ted admitted that he was too tired to drive, so I did the last leg while Ted slept.

After stopping for breakfast, we were good to go for another day. (If you go inside when it's dark and don't watch the sun come up, technically you're starting a new day when you go back out and it's light) Since this was to be a morning school with open track sessions in the afternoon, we got to the track and got ready to start instructing. After our instructor briefing, we were advised to go take an observation lap to see how the course was set up.

Observation lap? What would you do? Yep, I jumped in the D (no nose, no helmet) and went observing. Ted rode with Pat and they followed me. At Turn 2, Ted stopped me because the right rear wheel was wobbly. I had noticed that, but since I watched him tighten the lug nuts, I knew the wheel wasn't loose, so I wasn't going to worry till I got back in. He checked it again and sure enough the wheel was tight... keep going and drive it slow until we can get it in and check it out.

That would have worked except when I started up the hill to Turn 5, the car just kind of wound down to a halt. Ted stopped to find out what was wrong. It's acting like it's out of gas. That's impossible, we put two and a half gallons in a dry cell and we haven't run it enough to be out of gas.

Fortunately, it broke down near the access road, so we pushed it off to the side and went in to talk to the stewards (and apologize profusely). The tow truck was dispatched immediately. I ran down to the starter stand to hitch a ride with the tow truck, but as I was about ten yards away, off it went. I'm NOT hiking through the freshly rained on field to go meet the truck, so I hitched a ride with another instructor. By the time I got there, my car was already in the air on the hook. (Nooooooooo not my baby!)

At least it was Roger, my favorite tow truck driver, who took one look at me, shook his head got this huge smile on his face and said "figures it's you. Troublemaker." Who me?

The problems were just a couple of 1 am whoops'. It turned out that the wobbly wheel was from a washer that had been left under one of the lug nuts on the rear wheel (Ted's bad) and the fuel problem was from a loose fuel line to the fuel pump that I had consciously not checked because I thought it had been done (my bad). So the car was ready to go, but it started pouring down rain, so the car went in the trailer for the rest of the day, while I instructed and got drenched.

I actually made it to 11 pm before I crashed.

Sunday dawned and it was still raining, but after breakfast it had stopped and by the time the first car went on the track at 9 am, the track was dry. The sun was out by 11 am, and although there was a cold wind all day, the weather was very nice for driving.

My first session out, I just went out on the cool down lap at the end of the session. This turned out to be a good thing, because I started smelling something from the front of the car... and there isn't much at the front of the car. It turned out that the right front tire was rubbing on the bodywork, which is typical for the bodywork that I'm using. Ted hacked away at the bodywork while I cringed and once again the car was good to go.

The second session was pretty basic... take three laps, come in and check it. Two more laps, come in and check it. Two more laps, end of session. This session was kinda fun since Saroja had her new GT3 RX3 out for the first time so we played together for the first three laps.

The next session out was to be an all out go have fun and make sure that it turns left and right at speed. The car ran great! The ride was a little bumpy, but I wasn't sure if that was the car or the track. We had to move the wheel weights on the front tires when we put them on because they were hitting the uprights, so I was concerned that maybe the front wheels were out of balance.

Everything else was going well and my times were steadily coming down until the last lap. A corvette had parked on the wall and when I slowed down for the black flag, I noticed that I was having some problems shifting. I thought it was because I was going so slow and the rpm's weren't high enough, but as I pulled into the pits I stopped the car and it died. My foot's all the way on the clutch, why is there no clutch? That would explain the shifting problems.

We bled the clutch and Ted took the car out for the last session. He agreed with me about the bumpy ride, but he thought it was the front swaybar binding up. Either way, something needed to be fixed. The clutch also went out on him towards the end of the 20 minute session. LOS for next weekend... 1) fix bumpy ride and 2) find problem with clutch.

So the first track excursion with the D was a success! We got some great weather for driving and we found some problems that would not have shown up until the car was pushed.

The first race is this weekend at Laguna Seca. We checked the shocks and the wheel balance and they were both fine. The front swaybar was very tight at the front pillow blocks, so we opened those up and re-adjusted the swaybar mounts. We also bled the clutch again and found a lot of air still in the line so, hopefully, that problem is fixed. I've also been having fun finishing the painting and putting on the stickers. It's been nice not feeling frantic this week.

If you're in the neighborhood, stop by the track and say "hi." Otherwise, I'll fill you in on what happens.

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