This year I was lucky enough to drive with Tiger Racing in their 2006 BMW M3. Compared to the low-horsepower cars I typically drive, this 400+HP car with 10″ slicks and big Brembo brakes was a completely different animal, and it was fast. Even at a comfortable enduro pace to preserve the car and exercise caution when passing, the M3 is capable of running lap times 12-15s/lap faster than my Spec Miata. It also sounds absolutely glorious.

Here are a few laps of in-car footage from my stint driving just after sundown into the darkness. Driving at night is one of my favorite times: you settle into a rhythm and just click off the laps (click through to see a larger version and make sure to enable HD):

I was in the car for 2.5 hours until earlier damage created a mechanical issue that forced us to retire. This was the team’s 8th running of the 25 Hour and it’s their first retirement which speaks to the great job they do before the race each year. The car is prepared by Bavarian Tuning in Santa Rosa and TC Design in Milpitas, CA. Big thanks go out to the crew – one of the best in the paddock – and my fellow drivers John Larson, Billy Maher and Tony Colicchio for inviting me to be part of the team!

For some amazing photos, check LifeBlasters.com write-up of the event.

Watch the larger version on contour.com.

I’ve participated three times: crewing for a Subaru WRX, driving in an 1989 BMW M3 and managing a 1995 BMW M3. This year I’ll be driving a second time in an 2005 BMW M3 in the ES class with Tiger Racing. ES is for unlimited cars: slicks, dry-brake fueling, air jacks, four-wheel tire changes, 400HP, the works. This is going for the overall win, the glory and the 11-foot trophy that NASA gives the winning team. We’ll be competing against Porsche GT3 Cup Cars, a Super Truck and who knows what else will come out of the woodwork before the event begins. Previous years have featured Daytona Prototypes in the mix so anything is possible.

I’m very excited to be part of this team – their organizational skills, people and overall demeanor are professional but friendly and I know many of the crew and other drivers from previous track events making it an easy environment to get up to speed. Last Friday we shook the car down at Thunderhill. I got in the car about an hour before lunch to get oriented with the car. Coming from primarily driving Spec Miatas where we turn around 2:07s at Thunderhill, this car has some serious juice!

I got to work over the next seven laps and brought my times down to a high 1:53 before disaster struck: the motor exploded, filling the cabin with smoke and sending me off track. I coasted up to a flagging station so the corner worker could assist in case the car caught on fire but, minus the hole in the engine, no additional drama. While this ended our day prematurely, it was a blessing in disguise that it happened a month before the race and not on the test day, or worse, in the first six hours of the race itself. The motor is already out of the car and a spare is being readied. Very nice work by Chris Watson at Bavarian Tuning.

New Helmet

I’m sitting in my office writing this post while I’m wearing my new SA2010 Stilo ST4F helmet from SafeRacer. I’ve got my custom molded earplugs in and my balaclava to make sure everything is comfortable. I’ll be driving the Tiger Racing BMW M3 for as long as 3.5 hours at a time: comfort isn’t a convenience, it’s a necessity. A headache in 30 minutes would be a cranium splitter after all that time in the rough, buzzy car. A lot of places won’t let you return a helmet but SafeRacer will let you try it on and return it if it doesn’t fit (did the same thing when I was shopping for race suits). They have free shipping on orders over $99 so there’s only a minimum amount of cost to send something back if it isn’t the right size or fit. Stilo helmets are quite new in the US, I’ve only ever seen one in person, so it’s not like I could run down to the local speed shop and try one on. I’m very satisfied with the fit and features: built-in radio electronics, forced air and quick-disconnect drink tube are all awesome options. If you order from SafeRacer and are a road racer, be sure to specify that you want the road race electronics package rather than the rally electronics.

Skip to :22 if you’re impatient. Never unbuckle your safety equipment on track unless you’re on fire. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a Formula 1 race or a 171-car themed nutjob race.

My transport to the Sprints wound up blowing his T1 Corvette motor and hitting the wall in his first session at an open track day on Monday ahead of the race. He packed up his car and left, leaving me stranded with not so much as a torque wrench to my name. The guys from Long Road Racing were testing an MX-5 and SM and were nice enough to let me use their impact guns and jackstands so that I could at least rotate tires. I was running mid-pack times on junky tires in my first couple of sessions but without any tools I couldn’t really make a lot of setup changes so I focused on getting comfortable with the track and getting my braking points figured out. Road America is 4 miles long and we get into 5th gear three times which is unusual for (west coast) Spec Miata.

Short video of qualifying through Canada Corner

Thankfully once the official event started, Jason Hoover and AMG were supporting me. It was like a high school reunion with Justin Hall present as part of the concurrent MX-5 Cup race and Tony Silva helping run AMG’s show. Lots of fun to be around old friends and have some familiar faces since everything else was new: track, racers, cars, setup, fuel, etc.

SM allows adjustable fuel pressure and timing this year and from the California 87 I usually run here, the spec’d 93 (at a bloody $9.50/gallon!!!) did not make the car happy. lumpy/crappy idle and with a brand-new AFR gauge in the car, we weren’t 100% sure how much to adjust the pressure. Without a truck or trailer, there was also no way to get to a dyno so we had to wing it. I was warned in advance that the top 10-15 ‘99 miatas would be sporting 128-130 horsepower and they weren’t joking. I had to drive the wheels off the car to stay in the front runners draft and after the two qualifying sessions I sat P6 out of 45 cars.

Then the fun began. While rain was forecast all weekend, Saturday held off but Sunday would not bring the same luck. Radar showed a big front moving towards the track and at the 10 minute mark, Hoover made the call to switch to rains and we rolled the dice. We were the only car up front on rains but a grid worker mistake and subsequent failure to correct the situation resulted in the P1-P10 cars starting P11-P20. Yes, you read that correct, I started P16 and the pole sitter started P11! Major cluster.

The race was a scheduled 13 laps and we had incidents right away. With all of the slower cars up front, I think the field was 5 wide at 115mph going into T5 and it was ugly with a lot of bent cars. I was trying not to give up too many spots running on brand new full-tread Toyos, biding my time until the rain came. There was a black flag all after about 4 laps because of the number of safety trucks on course and the general lack of respect that the drivers were showing for hot tows. At this point, we’re thinking we’re golden: the weather is taking a bit long to get here, but here’s a little extra time for the race to come to us.

Race restarts and a few laps later, we get the first sprinkles. We’re working lap 10 at that point and by the time we come out of Canada corner, it’s full on raining and suddenly everyone is sliding around but us. Yes! I started using my advantage on lap 11 and passing cars under braking into T5, T8, before the Kink and Canada corner. I’m thinking we made the right call, there’s a really good chance that in the next two laps I can make up all that time and win this thing. Then I crest the hill coming towards start/finish and…. they throw the checker! Two laps early, the checkered is out and the race is over and I finished P16, right back where I started.

What a week! On one hand it was a great week/end for me: drive a (great) new track, meet some new people and get a bearing for where we stand on the National stage competitively. On the other hand, it’s hard not to be upset that our race was over before we started with the grid screw up and the subsequent shortening of the race meant that a smart strategic call was nullified. Being far from home and my regular supporters compounded logistical issues; getting a replacement radiator from SafeRacer, vinyl from RacingVinyl.com and a set of rain tires from AIM Tires in Sonoma on short notice were all expensive propositions.

Ultimately the goal is to be competitive at the Runoffs… if my credit card hasn’t been cut in two and we can find a few more hp, I think we’ll be in the hunt.

Final results still aren’t posted, but here are qualifying results.

Due to work, I missed the first two opportunities of the year at Phoenix and California Speedway (also the longest tow…) but we hit the road for Willow Springs, Thunderhill and, two weeks ago, Buttonwillow.

We struggled with our first-ever trip to Willow Springs for a Double National, getting a late start and not bringing the right tires. Unlike our smooth Northern Californian tracks, Willow Springs demands fresher, more treaded Toyo RA-1s. Weather predictions included heavy rain, snow and very cold temperatures. It actually stayed dry for the weekend but it was below freezing at night and never warmer than about 50F during the day. We brought home a 5th and a 4th but the event was a Rational (combined Regional and National on track at the same time) and half the field were running as Regionals. Typically we earn one point up to 10 for each car we finish ahead of so our points pull was about 10 points less than it would have been at a regular double national.

Thunderhill was the next race, our home track, and we had a good field of competitive cars including one of the Willow Springs race winners and a group of always-fast Oregonians who came down to compete. The weather prediction was, again, for lots of rain but the skies were mostly kind, only raining on one practice session. We were much better prepared for this event and brought home a pole position, win and 2nd place for an almost maximum points weekend.

We just returned from Buttonwillow for another Double National. This event was a bit special in that it was a BFG Super Tour event, one of six special events held around the country as part of the SCCA Super Tour. The feature race on Sunday would include a podium, press releases, live timing and scoring and a champagne spray so we were excited to take part. We were racing configuration 25CCW which includes Star Mazda and the Dog Leg (back straight). I’ve driven Buttonwillow back in 2003 but never in this configuration so we headed into the weekend confident we would be able to get on the pace more quickly than Willow Springs but still have something to learn. Adding to the mix was a complete driveline refresh; just before this event we swapped in a new motor, transmission, differential and brakes.

The Friday test day went relatively well but we learned primarily one thing: the track surface is ROUGH. We’re talking radiator-cracking rough! Cotton corners, a series of S turns on the East side of the track was like an off-track 4×4 excursion each and every lap. The car was oversteering and understeering each lap in different parts of the track due to the rough and inconsistent surface so we wound up making very little changes to the car aside from tire pressures.

In Saturday qualifying, we ran a reasonable time, qualifying third, but Tyler Vance was 1s/lap faster and Sammy Valfar was another 1.2s ahead of Vance! The finishing order Saturday was reversed for P1 and P2 but the closest race was between myself and Clement Lee as we ran mostly nose to tail for the race trading positions several times. In the closing two laps, lapped traffic played into my hands and I was right up on Lees bumper and made a last-lap pass for third coming out of Riverside onto the back straight. Unfortunately we made contact with Lee’s front wheel hitting just in front of my rear wheel turning me around at 112mph and sending both of us into the infield dirt. I came out the loser dropping from the (almost) 3rd place to 5th as I limped the car around with a torn up fender and smoking tire. The contact was deemed a “racing incident” so no action was taken and that’s how we finished.

My mechanic Thomas beat the hell out of the fender and aside from some missing paint, made it look racy again. We re-aligned the front end of the car and resolved to run Sunday and see how things looked. Sunday qualifying we were much closer to both Vance and Valafar and again started P3. Unfortunately I missed a shift on the start and fell back to 5th and Valafar, Vance and Lee raced off as a train pulling a gap. By the time I recovered to 4th, I had my work cut out for me to catch back up. A lap or two later, Lee had an off at Riverside allowing me to drive by and then the 5th place car Westmoreland had issues at the end of the back straight causing him to spin into the weeds and cause some back up. At that point I had no immediate pressure and clean track ahead so I set about trying to track down the two leaders and secure a Super Tour podium. In contact with Thomas over the radio, I was slowly reeling in the leaders setting the fast lap of the race at the mid-point but my hard pace eventually drove the tires off and my lap times started to slide. I kept pushing to maintain my gap to 4th and be sure that if anything happened between the leaders that I could capitalize on it. Valafar made a last-lap pass on Vance for 1st and I finished 3rd.

I was pleased with my performance up to that point as I felt we were a little off on some of our driveline changes but we finished 13s behind the leaders and 17s ahead of P4, just 1/10th of a second off of the fast lap set by Valafar. Unfortunately, what should have been the best part of the weekend also turned out to be a major goof on my part. Eric Prill from SCCA Pro called me up to the podium first as the 3rd place finisher and began interviewing me. I wasn’t really prepared for that. He asked me a few questions and then asked if there was anyone I wanted to thank. Have you ever wondered how someone can go to the Grammys, be nominated for an award and then freak out when it’s time to acknowledge the people that support them? Well, now I know why kids aiming to race professionally receive media training. I raced to plug my sponsors MotorsportReg.com, engine supplier Haag Performance, safety equipment and parts from SafeRacer and graphics company RacingVinyl.com. But I forgot to thank the people who make my racing possible. Specifically my rock star mechanic Thomas Barrett who was standing in the crowd. Ouch.

To be honest, the entire thing was a blur. I don’t exactly remember what Eric asked or what I said. I’ve done a lot of public speaking but I’m used to being prepared and I really dropped the ball by failing to thank Thomas’ efforts to get us back on track and on the podium. It hurt his feelings and although it was a mistake, it was my fault. It wasn’t a lesson I didn’t already know, but it reinforced that people are the most important part of any program.

At this point, we’re qualified for the Run Offs and sorting out logistics to send the car back to Wisconsin for the remainder of the season. We’re hoping to race the June Sprints as a recon for the track and drivers we’ll be competing against in September. Lots of work to do between now and then so… time to get to it!

Homemade Cool Shirt System

Usually after about 20 minutes in the car on a hot day, I start making mistakes. Nothing horrible, but I know that it’s fatigue setting in that makes my brain work less well. Driving a Miata is a physical experience, but less physical than doing something really physical like playing basketball. So the fatigue isn’t the same kind of fatigue as what you’d feel after running 5 miles, instead it’s a mental fatigue that is mostly due to overheating.

With a race at Thunderhill in July approaching, Derek and I decided to do something about the heat. A typical summer afternoon in Willows can be 105 degrees or more, so of any race this season, that one was likely to be the hottest.

We looked at the existing cool shirt systems out there. All look very well made and definitely have the kinks worked out. However, there were two big issues with them from my perspective: they’re expensive, and they look like they’d be easy to make. Time for some D.I.Y.!

The overarching concept with the shirt is that cold water is circulated in a lot of tubes attached to the shirt. A small cooler serves to contain icewater. The water is forced out the cooler using a bilge pump, through tubing into the shirt where it pulls heat out of your torso, flows out of the shirt, and is dumped back into the cooler where it mixes again with the icewater. An important part of the system is a way to quickly connect and disconnect the shirt from the cooler — this is accomplished with dry-break fittings normally used in medical and industrial applications.

Parts

8+ Quart Cooler – Make sure the one you pick will fit where you want to mount it. Measure the available space, and get the biggest cooler that will fit. We got ours from Target for $10 or so. In hindsight, we TOTALLY should have gone with this one, since it looks to have a WAY better seal and the one we got leaks unless we cover the whole top in racer’s tape.

Pump – I got a 600 GPH Bilge Pump from West Marine for $25. The ones at OSH take AC power so those were out. The one I bought takes 12VDC power, so wiring it up to the car is easy.

To get the water in and out of the cooler, we used 1/2″ diameter, 3″ long nipples (pipe threaded on both ends). We may have been able to use 2″ long ones.

Fittings And Such – We found all of this in the plumbing aisle at the local hardware store (NOT HOME DEPOT).

- (1) 3/4″ female to 1/2″ female adapter

- (2) 1/2″ diameter, 3″ long nipples (pipe threaded on both ends). We may have gotten away with 2″ long ones.

- (4) Thin nuts, 1/2″ coarse thread. The nuts need to be able to thread onto the nipples.

- (16) washers that can slip over the nipples.

- (2) 1/2″ female to 1/4″ compression fittings with inserts to fit in 0.170″ ID tubing

- Roll of teflon tape

Tubing

- 50 feet of 1/4″ OD vinyl tubing. This is what goes in the shirt.

- 10 feet of 1/4″ OD polyethylene tubing. Typically used as the cold water supply for refrigerators. This is what goes from the cooler to the shirt. It needs to be different tubing because you use a compression fitting on the cooler end of the tubing.

- 5 feet of foam pipe insulation. 1/2″ inside diameter works fine.

Quick Disconnects

- (2) Sockets – McMaster-Carr part number 5923K31 – $8 each or so

- (2) Inserts – McMaster-Carr part number 5923K61 – $7 each or so

Optionally, get an extra insert so that you can connect it to the ouput line from the cooler and run the pump to drain the water from cooler without throwing away ice if you’re going to be running closely spaced track sessions.

From Brian…

Btw, I ordered the real FAST Carbon-X shirt so if you ever want to build the cooler again, you need to use the PLC line of couplers (metal thumb clasp) rather than APC line (plastic thumb clasp). The male end on the FAST shirts requires the thin metal connection. Luckily McMaster-Carr sells them also. It’s McMaster-Carr #5012K662 for $9.93/ea. The general parts number btw is Colder P/N #PLCD13004

Mounting – keeping the cooler in position

- (3) pieces of 90-degree aluminum, 1.5″ on a side, 6″ long

- (6) 1/4″ Bolts and nylock nuts

- Nylon strap with ratcheting tightening mechanism

Shirt – Get a TIGHT shirt. If you wear a Large, get a medium. It needs to be skin tight.

Fabric – An old cotton pillowcase is great source of the fabric. You sew the fabric onto the shirt to hold the tubing in place. Details to follow.

Silicone – A small tube of GE Silicone II works well.

Putting it Together

Cooler

Start by setting the pump in the cooler. Put the outlet against one of the sides of the cooler and mark its location. Find where the center of that circle is and drill a hole just big enough for the nipple to slip through. Drill another hole the same size toward the top of the cooler for the return line.

Spin one of the thin nuts onto one end of one of the nipples. Then, wrap that end with teflon tape and thread the 3/4″ to 1/2″ adapter onto it. Tighten. Slip one of the washers onto the assembly so it rests against the nut and goop up the washer on the side facing away from the adapter with silicone. Slip it through the lower hole in the cooler from the inside to the outside. Put the pump in the cooler, put teflon tape on the 3/4″ threads on the pump, and thread the nipple and adapter assembly onto the pump. Tighten. Goop up the hole on the outside of the cooler, and stack up enough washers on the nipple so that you can tighten one of the nuts onto the nipple’s threads all the way to the bottom of the threads. The goal is to maximize the threads exposed on the nipple after you tighten the nut.

Slip the other nipple through the top hole in the cooler and goop up around it inside and out with silicone. Don’t be shy. Use one or more washers on the inside and out. Stack up the washers just enough so that you can tighten the nuts on the inside and out all the way down — so the nut is threaded as far down as the threads on the nipples go. I used all 16 washers for this.

So at this point you should have both nipples mounted firmly in the cooler, with the pump attached to the lower nipple. We used some short sheetmetal screws to attach the pump to the cooler floor. We drilled holes first and squeezed silicone into the holes so that the water would not leak through.

Drill a small hole through the side of the cooler near the top for the pump’s wires to pass through. Goop up around the hole with silicone so this is not a source for leaks.

Put teflon tape around the exposed threads on the nipples on the outside of the cooler and thread on the 1/2″ to 1/4″ compression fittings. Tighten. Cut the polyethylene hose into equal lengths, slip in the compression insert to the tubing, and attach to the compression fittings. Wait to install the dry-break connectors until you get everything together and know exactly how long you want the polyethylene tubing to be.

Shirt

Hopefully you or someone you know has a sewing machine and is not afraid to use it! The concept here is that you will need to sew two panels onto the shirt — one on the front and one on the back. You will only use vertical stitching on the panel since the tubing is going to thread up and down between the panel and shirt. The tubing enters the front of the shirt one one side, goes up and down through the “channels” in the panel, hooks around to the back, does the serpentine thing again, and ends up next to the inlet tubing.

Here are diagrams of the front and back. The grey shaded area is the panel you cut out of pillowcase or sheet material. The red lines are the stitching, and the blue lines are the clear vinyl tubes.

Start out by putting on the shirt (TIGHT!) and your HANS and sit in a chair. Mark on the shirt (water soluble markers from my daughter’s art box worked great) where the HANS lays. Also mark 3″ or so above where lap belt falls – that’ll be the bottom of the panels.

Cut out the panels. Center them on the shirt horizontally, and line them up with the line you drew that’s 3″ above the lap belt. Sew up the sides of the panels, then sew the channels that will guide the tubing. The channels should be 1.5″ wide or so — but make sure there is an even number of them so the tubing works out. I used 12 channels on both the front and back.

Thread the vinyl tubing through the shirt, being careful to not twist it in the shirt — it’s not a huge deal, but it will not lay flat if there are twists. Leave 5 feet or so of extra tubing at the beginning so you can have flexibility in where things go at the end. The tubing should enter and leave the shirt on the same side, e.g. in the front on the left, and out the back on the left.

Finish Up

Cool! So now put the shirt on and get in the car. Play with different positions of the tubing to figure out what’s best for you. Don’t forget that the shirt tubing needs to get outside your firesuit somehow — I put mine through the lower zipper opening. Some people will cut slits in their pockets, which seems like an OK idea too.

Once you figure out where everything should go, trim the tubing and hook up the dry-break fittings. Also figure out where you want the cooler to mount in the car. Use the aluminum and nuts and bolts to locate it. Figure out how to mount the nylon ratcheting strap to keep everything tight. I used eyebolts that were already there for the passenger side lap belt.

The nice thing about this mounting setup is that to remove the cooler to dump it, all you have to do is loosen the nylon strap and pull the cooler out. No tools required.

Wire up the pump, ideally with a fused and switched circuit. You don’t want it on all the time, and if the pump burns up you don’t want to take down the car’s electronics. I made a power distribution block and fuse block that sits in the center console and used a metal toggle switch for the pump circuit.

Aftermath

I was excited to give the system a try at the Thunderhill race. The forecast was for 95 degree temperatures. In the first practice session, I hooked up the system and powered it on at the 3-minute board on grid. To my dismay, I didn’t feel or see any flow in the system. After all this work, I was really bummed out. I resolved to work out the system after this practice session. So I went out not expecting anything. Well in Turn 6 on the first lap, the cold goodness started flowing! OH IT WAS SO NICE!

I’d fill the cooler with ice, then pour in just enough water to run the system. This gives maximum cooling for the longest time, since the warmer water returning from the shirt will start melting the ice right away. If it’s too cold, run less ice and more water in the cooler, though I don’t see this as a possibility unless it’s really cold outside. After the session, I’d either remove the cooler from the car and dump it, or attach an extra insert to the line coming from the pump and run it to pump out most of the water, add more ice, then go out again.

It worked great through the whole weekend. Through the entire 30 minute races I felt sharp, and not once did I wish for the end of the race. Where I’m usually totally beat at the end of a session or race, I was not fatigued a bit.

I’m sure the $400 systems would work better to some degree, but for 1/4 the cost and a day or so of work, I’m satisfied.

Editor’s note: I followed Zack’s advice and built the cooler but bought the real FAST Carbon-X shirt from SafeRacer. I wanted Carbon-X for the comfort and a second layer of fire protection but it also looked like it was sewn really well. In retrospect this was definitely the right move. The shirt fits well, the tubes are awesomely sewn on and there is no goofy bulging. The shirt is pricey but it’s the last piece actually touching your body so I feel the price was worth it. I used it just yesterday in 60F weather at Willow Springs and it was nice! Don’t underestimate how much heat you generate trying to hustle your car around.

I drove for Team Bimmerworld in an early 1990s BMW M3 and was in the car at night when the race was temporarily stopped due to thick valley fog. The changing visibility from lap to lap was challenging but fun and all of the drama was captured on a ChaseCam. Unfortunately the memory card disappeared with BMW E30 rally-star Bill Caswell and we never got more than halfway in exchanging the data. The main problem? Bill is a non-stop motorsport animal always on the go and the file was 13GB.

At one point Bill managed to get the file uploaded to getdropbox.com but even installing their desktop client, I was unable to make it more than about 500MB at 5k/sec before timeouts or other network shenanigans would restart the process. Frustrating!

That was twelve months ago. This week I was cleaning out some old emails and came across the link to the file and, for fun, tried clicking it. Hey, it’s still there! And still 13GB.

On a whim I logged in to my web server to see what I could do with the venerable command-line utility wget. Turns out wget has a few tricks up its sleeves and some 60 hours later I’ve managed to download 5GB of the video. Here’s the magic in the command line:

wget --continue --progress=dot:mega --tries=0 <URL>

I was unaware of the continue option before which tells wget to try and restart any downloads where they left off. The progress option indicates 3MB per line of dots rather than 384k; appropriate for a file of this size. And finally, tries=0 means keep trying forever regardless of how many times the connection fails. Here’s what a failure looks like:

2010-11-26 10:25:48 (38.4 KB/s) - Connection closed at byte 5314183343. Retrying.

--2010-11-26 10:25:58--  (try:20)  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/PRIVATE-URL
Connecting to dl.dropbox.com|75.101.129.115|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 206 PARTIAL CONTENT
Length: 14425877949 (13G), 9111694606 (8.5G) remaining [video/quicktime]
Saving to: `2009 25 hours of thunderhill reel 10.mov'

         [ skipping 5188608K ]
5188608K ,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,, ........ ........ ........ ........ 36% 61.7K 2d0h
5191680K ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ ........ 36% 38.1K 2d2h

Success! This is the 20th restart for 5GB averaging 500GB between connection failures. Thanks to these few little tweaks it should keep trying until it finishes and then I’ll finally have my footage!

Like with my sabbatical, this accomplishment didn’t happen overnight. Last year I sat down and planned a multi-year program to test my skill in driving a racecar. Although I had reasonable success with limited time in 2005 and 2006, I had not put together a complete season or run for a championship. I made it on to the front row and podium several times against guys who won the SCCA Run Offs, raced in World Challenge and Grand-Am but never put it all together nor took pole position nor won a race. Close, but no cigar. So I drafted a personal ladder that each year would test my competitiveness and if I could prove to myself that I belonged, I would continue forward to the next level. Step number one was to challenge at the regional level in the competitive San Francisco Region Spec Miata program where each race is contested by an average of fifty equally prepared cars. The cars aren’t that fast in a straight line but the field size and limited preparation options place an emphasis on driver skill and consistency.

Starting in late 2009 with a rolling 1999 Mazda Miata chassis and my crew chief Thomas Barrett, we stripped the car to the tub and rebuilt it paying attention to all of the details. This is my third racecar but the first I’ve built; I knew what I wanted in the cockpit and we knew what we needed to be competitive in the drivetrain and setup. Thanks to SafeRacer, I had the best of the best in driver gear and safety equipment and we worked with Mike Haag of Haag Performance to make sure we had the motor to compete. Despite a generous build schedule, we fell behind due to illness and missed our first two shakedown opportunities. We rolled the car off the trailer before the first race weekend with less than sixty minutes of running time and parts still waiting to be bolted on. By all measures though, the car ran flawlessly on the test day and finished 7th in the Saturday regional while a torrential downpour was too much for our tires and we sat out the second race using up one of our two permitted drops.

Thankfully our preparation, though late, paid off and things got better. I scored my first pole position and race win in round 3 at Laguna Seca. A group of fast racers from the Pacific Northwest came down for rounds 5 and 6 and I scored another pole and win and a 3rd place finish. We had found a groove for the car, the driver and the team and our confidence was high. The car was still new though and after a failed wheel bearing at Laguna (which we caught and repaired without issue), we doubled down on between-race prep to make sure mechanical issues wouldn’t keep us on the sidelines.

Rounds 7 and 8 at Thunderhill were redemption after our slow season starter with a pole position and both race wins falling our way putting our car into the championship lead by just a few slim points against who was ultimately our primary challenger, the #51 of Darin Polsley.

Rounds 9 and 10 were the most challenging for our car at Infineon Raceway because our minimum weight is nearly 200# heavier than earlier model cars. The constantly turning circuit was burning up our rear tires and causing the car to lose its handling later in the race. The car was crazy fast in qualifying taking both poles but it was a real dogfight to stay out in front in the 30-minute races. Polsley and I split the weekend each taking a 1st. We rewarded our sponsors, friends and families with a paddock party on Sunday and then put on a proper show as we won the non-points Spec Miata Challenge race.

We found ourselves back at Thunderhill for Rounds 11 and 12 and the fast cars from Oregon once again joined us as well as former regional champ and Run Offs podium finisher Matt Cross. Despite the good results earlier in the season, we’ve struggled at Thunderhill to balance the long fast sweeping parts of the course with the tight twisty bits. The weight difference really shows up in the quick transitions and off-camber turns between T2 and T6. Tim Barber from TFB Performance played an instrumental part (all season long) to find the right setup to be P1 for race 11. Then I made my first serious driving mistake of the season and spun from the lead finishing 6th while Polsley finished 2nd. I was not happy! I was down on myself, knowing that I had thrown those points away and tightened up the championship race by being too aggressive. I slept terribly that night, just replaying the incident over and over again in my head but come Sunday I got my head together, put the car on pole again and made a dramatic last-corner pass for the win while Polsley did not finish after hitting a tire wall and bending a tie rod.

All of this jockeying back and forth only set us up for a big finale. The final race was double points which meant my slim lead over Polsley counted for nothing. Although I had won 7 of 12 races, Polsley usually finished second so whomever finished ahead of the other would be the regional champion. Everyone I spoke to loved how close the race was and the drama continued as Polsley just edged me out for pole position in the final lap of split qualifying. But as the title of this post states, the cards fell my way and a spin in turn six by Polsley helped me drive to my 8th win and the season championship. My #1 fan, radio operator and incredible wife Jennifer met me at the finish line for a victory lap that both of us will remember for a long time. Here are the final points:

While this is a just one small feat in a local racing series, the emotions I felt were as powerful as what you see on TV after a big race: my team set out with a plan, we worked hard to meet our goals and we were rewarded for our hard work and consistency with a championship. I’ve succeeded at meeting my own (demanding) goals of my ladder system and before the trophies are handed out on November 14th, we’re already planning the next step: SCCA National racing for 2011. It’s going to be a much deeper pool both of talent and money and we’ll be spending a lot of time at tracks we’ve never raced like California Speedway, Willow Springs and Portland International Raceway. If we qualify for the superbowl of amateur racing, the SCCA Run Offs, we’ll ship everything back East to Road America in Wisconsin to see how we stack up on the National stage against the best drivers and cars in the country.

Thanks again to everyone who supported us financially and emotionally and to everyone who came out to the track. We hope you’ll be back next year as we try this crazy thing again!

Unfortunately four points does not a lead make, because the final race of the season is a double-points race and the separation between the top positions are four points. So, it’s going to be a single race winner-take-all showdown at Laguna Seca on October 17th. If I finish ahead of Darin, I win the championship. If he finishes ahead, he wins. Laguna has been home to some great racing for me this season including my first overall win so I am glad to be heading to a track that suits our package. We had some minor mechanical issues at Thunderhill with a CV joint going bad and that will be repaired in time for the next race putting us back at 100%.

There is also a four-hour enduro on Sunday which while the #12 car will be sitting in the trailer (hopefully covered in champagne!), I may be co-driving another car at the race, possibly in preparation for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill enduro in December. I will post here when I return and you can follow along in real-time on the event weekend as I post updates on twitter as @ghidinelli.

Regional #11 Qualifying (1st overall)
Regional #11 Race (6th overall)
Regional #12 Qualifying (1st overall)
Regional #12 Race (1st overall)

With twelve of thirteen races in the books, the current standings are:

The final race will pay a total of 100 points so if Tommy is still mathematically in the hunt. If either Darin or I DNF and Tommy places inside the top few cars, we will swap season-ending positions. To finish first you must first finish!