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by Lisa Devlin Arken Time for the race marathon report. Less than a month after the DSR was completed, I've finished three races in it. Time really flies when all you're doing is racing or fixing the car for another race. As of the last report, the car was all ready to go to Laguna Seca for the first race on April 17-18 - one week after the car had been completed. For being the first race, things were pretty uneventful in our pit. The car breezed through tech and I had no problems with the car all day long in practice and qualifying or in the race. This turned out to be my advantage.
It weighed in at 799 pounds... we won't discuss the weight with driver, but we can say that car and driver combined weight is above the 900 pound minimum. The next weekend, April 24-25, was the next race at Thunderhill. All the DSR's pitted together and we had a lot of fun all weekend. I got a great group picture of all of us drivers - just ask and I'll send it out. Again, Thunderhill was pretty uneventful for us. The car continued to run well and I was getting my shifting sorted out. As soon as I came in from practice, I wrote down what I was doing with my shifting and braking points. Then I reviewed them with Bob Fox (remember - the DSR guru). We found a few turns where I could pick up some time, so I drove the track mentally, then put my notes away for review right before qualifying.
As far as my times have been going, I have been pretty much methodically whittling them down. What my pattern has been is to go out in one session and run a time that I slowly bring down in fractions of seconds. Then I'll do one or two flyers, or laps that are 2-3 seconds faster than my average. When I go out for the next session, I do the same thing, but start at my fastest time from the session before. Sunday morning was the race. I had a great start and then it went downhill from there. I had trouble in the first turn because the tires were lousy, and then someone spun in front of me in Turn 3. Then things went bad. For as on as I was in qualifying, I was off for the race. I couldn't hit anything right: apexes, shifting points, gears... At one point I went to shift up a gear and went down. Don't even ask me how that happened, for some unknown reason, I pushed instead of pulled. It was immediately obvious, so I didn't over rev the engine, but it did slow me down a lot in a critical corner. The good part was that I only got lapped by two cars in my class, and I lapped a Formula Atlantic that I had been dicing with at Laguna Seca the week before. I actually lapped a few cars and Andy didn't lap me this time. It was near the end of the race that Bob and Rich lapped me. It was in Turn 8 and they were going tooth and nail. It looked like a great race from where I got passed. Then as I was heading down into Turn 10, I saw a trail of blue smoke between Turn 10 and 11. This is pretty much a blind section until you're into turn 10, and I know what blue smoke means so I put my hand up and slowed way down. There was a formula car who really wanted to pass me going into 10, before the yellow and debris flags came out. Hey, if it means that much to you dude, go for it. But if the car let all the smoke out between 10 and 11, I would bet that it's pretty slippery there. I think he realized it just before he went to pass and about that time, the flags came out. Good thing I had slowed down as much as I did (I had a real bad feeling going into the turn), because Rich was sitting there, in the middle of the track, just after Turn 11 in a puddle of oil... and yes there was oil all the way from 10 to 11. The race ended under the yellow flag so everything could be cleaned up. I ended up with another third. Next time I want to really earn the trophy.
Now for a word about the tires I'm using. Bob gave these to me and the initial story I heard was that they had about six races on them. Used up, but not too bad. I did one day of testing and then the first race at Laguna and then decided to use them at Thunderhill before putting the new tires on since Thunderhill is hard on tires and I figured I wouldn't be up to speed anyway. Some time at Thunderhill, I heard that the tires I had actually had seven or eight races on them when I got them. I was starting to notice that every time I heard about them, the tires had more races. Between Thunderhill and the next race at Sears Point, we were at Bob's one night and I asked him to tell me honestly how many races were on the tires. I didn't care, I appreciated them, but I'm putting new tires on and I want to know what to expect. He estimated ten races! Before I got them. No wonder they didn't work at all. Bob said to expect the new tires to be warmed up in three turns. The old ones had been taking three laps! I was really looking forward to Sears Point. Bob also gave me some really good driving pointers. I had felt beat up after the races at Laguna and Thunderhill because I felt I had been fighting the car. He said that the car shouldn't be that hard to drive. I should be relaxed and have very light control. He also suggested that I try doing some maneuvers I would otherwise never do, like driving through the middle of the turn and adding more turn. He said I would be surprised at what the car is capable of.
I had gotten my time down to a 1:50, which was catching up to Andy. When we got back to our pit, he got out of his car and asked "So how much faster are you planning on going?" I like racing with Andy. We have a lot of fun.
Saturday practice was our only time on the track. Bob was there watching and he gave me some more pointers on my line through the carousel. Saturday night, a few of us sat in Andy's motor home and talked about shifting points and what we're doing in the turns. I picked up a few more things to try on Sunday. Sunday morning was qualifying. I couldn't get any kind of clear track, but I was with Andy for a bit until traffic messed me up. I ended up qualifying with a 1:51. Disappointing, but since I had run with Andy during qualifying, I knew I was capable of keeping up with him if I could get a good start. I did get a good start and had caught him by the first lap. We spent the rest of the race like that. I was tucked up under his wing then entire time. Then my oil pressure light went on. It had been coming on a little in qualifying, but my temps were all OK and the pressure never stayed down. Bob and Ted figured that I was just letting the revs drop so don't worry about it. This was different, though, the light came on at the exit of two. I pulled over and stopped and was going to shut it down, but the pressure was fine, by the time I got it stopped. OK, maybe it was that I was letting the revs down. I can still catch Andy. And I did. And I almost passed him.
It was a great race. I ended up coming in second, but it didn't matter. I turned a lap time of 1:47 and managed a faster lap than Andy during the race. And the car actually held together until we got the checkered flag. On that last lap, the motor started sounding funny. In the pits, I was expecting to have to park it and miss the sprint race. Bob and Ted looked at it, listened to what I said and figured that it was low on oil which was why it was losing pressure in the high gee turns. They added more oil and started it up. It sounded OK and the oil didn't smell burnt, so we decided to run it, but if it started making any noise or if there were any problems, just come in. I got to pre-grid with no incident, and the engine was sounding better. Then when we got onto the track for the pace lap, it started making noise again going into Turn 4. I turned down into 4 with the intention of coasting it down to the drag strip and watching the race from there. As I was at the top of the carousel, the noise stopped. Uh-oh, that's Very Bad. I went to shut it down just as the number 4 rod beat a hasty retreat out of the front of the engine, spewing oil and engine parts all over the carousel. So that was the end of that day. When we took the engine apart, the carnage didn't really look all that bad. The damage was pretty well contained in the number 4 cylinder barrel. The crank didn't look bad either, but we sent it off to be magnafluxed and found that I had gotten very lucky and had not cracked the crankshaft. In the meantime, we're getting Ted's other spare motor (the motor in my car was Ted's first spare motor) ready for the next race June 4-6 at Laguna Seca. I'm looking for leads on Kawi ZX-10 parts (particularly cases), and I've been kind of looking for that Ducati motor that I want to put in. That's what's happening for now. The next race is at Laguna on June 4-6, so if you're in the neighborhood, stop on by and say hi. Saroja's coming up, so this is going to be a "must attend" event.
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