This was not one of my better weekends. For those of you tuning in
late I will fill in some of the background.
The Drivers:
Larry Colen, that's me. I just spent my summer racing on 4 tracks
in 3 states. It was a lot of fun, it would have been darn near
impossible to do, but I was unemployed most of the time. This
summer has a lot to do with my current dismal financial state.
The week after my last race I started my new job, and started working
at the Renaissance Faire on weekends. I did the Ren Faire at
least in part to keep me from spending money that I didn't have
on racing. The problem was that not only does it take up massive
amounts of time, but my commute had just gotten longer by almost
an hour each way. Just about a month before the enduro, the Faire
finally ended. It was at about this time that Sam offered to
underwrite a lot of the costs of driving Foocar in the Enduro.
Sam Sjogren, my teammate and co-driver. It's been said that
he is so competitive that he'd come in first *and* third in,
well another type of speed contest anyways. Sam's job has
him doing a lot of travelling, their industries largest trade
show was also the weekend before the enduro.
The Car:
Foocar, a 1968 English Ford Cortina GT. Just over 3 years ago
I decided to turn it into a race car, or some sort of approximation
thereof. At the last race I ran it in, it turned a 2:13.8 lap time
at sears point, over 7 seconds a lap faster than it had done last
year. It also almost rolled in turn 2 when the abilities of the
tires exceeded the abilities of the suspension.
The Race:
The Illgen Enduro, is a 4 hour endurance race open to all fendered
race cars except showroom stock. It is the last race of the season
in the San Francisco Region. The premise of the race being,
"We have all winter to fix the cars, so let's have a fun race where
we just run the cars until they break".
The Preparation:
Due to a multitude of factors, including the ones mentioned above,
as well as needing to finish the engine transplant in my van so I
could move it and have a place to work on the race car, we couldn't
even start the prep until less than a month before the race. In this
time period we had to:
1) Make a headrest that would satisfy tech
2) Fix the differential that was starting to go out
3) Upgrade the suspension so that it would keep at least 3 wheels
on the ground when the car was cornering at the limits.
Despite the usual assortment of crises, and just general screw ups
we almost got it together. Unfortunately very late friday night,
when we were putting everything back together, we ran into difficulty
bleeding the brakes. We put that project on hold and came back to
it later. By about 3 AM, it became apparent that the master cylinder
had chosen that moment to start sucking air.
We decided to have Sam drive up to the track then, while I stayed at
home to look for a new master cylinder saturday morning. I'd miss
the regional, and (at least) most of the Enduro practice, but
should get there in time for the race.
Putney and Perry came through in the pinch (as they have in the
15 years that I've been buying british car parts from them) and
had a rebuild kit for the Cortina. By the time we were done
fighting all of the minor problems as well as cleaning the car an
packing, it was after 5PM before we left.
We got to the track about 8, in time for dinner. After eating a bit,
it was time to get back to work on the car and install my new sway
bar which was waiting for me at the track. It turns out that the
new bar was about an inch longer than the old one. This caused the
lower control arms on the suspension to be bent back at an "uncomfortable"
angle.
About 10pm, we had done all we could and crawled into bed for the night.
The next day, we had one practice session before the race. We got the car
teched, just as the session was going out on track. I hopped in and asked
Ancilla if anyone had checked the tire pressures. Nope, noone had gotten
around to it. I drive down to the hot pits, snag Jack and he checks the
tire pressure while I strap back in. Fire up the car and make it almost
out of the pits before the car starts in with a very nasty vibration.
Back the car back up and into the paddock. Turns out that the U-Joint
in my driveshaft had become an Un-Joint. Fortunately, I had a spare in
my Oh-Shit-Kit and we were able to get everything together in time
for the race.
The Race:
The strategy was that I would go out for an hour. Come in for the
first 5 minute pitstop and change drivers and fuel up. We would use
that fuel stop to guage how much fuel the car was burning per hour.
After 2 hours, Sam would come in, we would put in enough fuel for
another hour and I would go back out to finish the race. If all went
well, we would each get two hours of seat time with an equitable split
of risk of not driving if something went wrong.
My first session was fairly uneventfull. We had a pretty good 3-way
dice going between me, Rochelle and a Fiesta. Rochelle and the Fiesta
(the only other English Ford out there) never quite caught up to me,
but I never quite got away (until she pitted).
Fairly early on, I found out that the net effect of all the Trick
Racing Shit that I had bought for the suspension, made the car handle
worse, rather than better. Fortunately it was the front end that would
suddenly "go away" rather than the rear end. This made the car a
lot more frustrating to drive than scary. The fact that the car
was still taking turns 2 and 4 on two wheels made it scary.
At one point, I was going into turn 7 and saw a couple of faster cars
coming up. Rather than taking a defensive line, I took the "school"
line, allowing them room on the inside to pass. As John came flying
past me in his Orange 510, I noticed the smoke coming off his front
wheels, which were doing just about everything but turning the car.
He drove straight past me, off the track and into the dirt. He
got it reasonably back under control and came back onto the track
behind me.
The driver change uneventfull. Fuel got put in, as did Sam.
I gave him a couple of pointers on what gears to use and told
him that the handling was evil. You'll have fun, it'll scare you.
About 40 minutes into the session, Sam pulled into the pits for
a quick drink of water. At this point he commented that Foocar
was the worst handling car that he had ever driven.
Unfortunately, noone had taken exact note of when I came in for fuel,
or how much fuel had been used. We knew that it was more than 5 gallons,
but we didn't know how much. Since the Cortina only has a 12 gallon tank,
we pulled Sam in after an hour and 40 minutes for gas. We asked him
if he wanted to go out for the last 20 minutes, or just do the driver
change then. He asked about his laptimes, which were within a second
of what I had turned in the first session. He said "That's good enough,
this car scares me".
When I went back out, I was reasonably warmed up from my first session,
rested up from the hour and a half break and was psyched up to go out,
kick some but and turn some hot lap times. The first thing that I
noticed, was that the car seemed to be handling better. I guessed that
it had just gotten warmed up and back into the rhythm of things as well.
A few laps into the race, I noticed that I went through turn 4 sliding
two wheels. Interestingly enough it was the left two wheels as the
right wheels were several inches off of the ground at the time.
As the race wore on, I could feel myself improving. By my shifting points,
I could tell that I was driving faster as well. As shitty as some of my
lines were, I think that during the next 40 minutes I did some of the
best driving of my racing career. I was pushing new limits in the
envelope of what I could make a car do, I didn't spin, and the only time
I put a wheel off course was while I was being passed while taking
the esses flat out.
After a while I even started to dice with two cars. A datsun 1200
(ITD) and an Rx7 (World Challenge). They caught up to me a lot
slower than anyone else had, and I realized that all I had to do
was put together a few perfect laps and I could pass them back.
It is at these times, when I am out to catch a faster car that
racing becomes almost a trancendental experience. You can call it
"hunt and kill mode" or "the red mist" but a perfect focused calm
decends. You are not aware of fear, you become one with the car
and you drive faster and better than ever before.
Then the pacecar came out, right behind the datsun. For the next two
laps, he was able to drive at full chat while the leader, the Rx7
and I dawdled along behind the pace car. When the pace car went
back in, I *had* to catch the Rx7. He, unfortunately, was just
a little bit faster than I. After a couple of laps, he had gained
about 5-10 car lengths on me. I crested the hill in turn 2 to
see him spinning off to the left. I steered to the right, exulting
in my chance to pass him. Unfortunately, just as I caught up to him
his rear end came the rest of the way around, squarely slamming
the front of my car (doing about 40) with his drivers door.
The next thing I know, I am sitting on the course, drivers right
facing counter course. I try restarting the car. It doesn't start.
I try again. The mazda drives off. I try again. I notice the flagger
watching me. I give him the driver ok signal and try to start the
car. Eventually it becomes obvious to me that the car is not going
to start. I sit there thinking about the situation. I know that
there is something I should do, but I'll be damned if I can remember
what it is. Oh yes, maybe I should get out of the car.
Getting home:
The trip home could be described as a dozen monkeys trying to fuck a
greased football. Just getting to Vallejo for dinner was a minor
epic in itself. When we finally got to Felton, chris followed me up
to Sam's. Unfortunately he didn't know the subtleties of Sam's
(15+% grade) driveway and stalled the van just below the hairpin.
We eventually ended up, backing Crisco down the driveway, tying the
vans together with a tiedown and used both vans to tow the car up
the driveway.
Epilogue:
Foocar is most probably history. The left front frame rail is fairly
seriously buckled. It's first race was the '89 enduro, It's last race
was the '92. I figure that it racked up about 20 hours of track time
in the past 12 months alone, probably a total of over 60. Not bad
for a car with 225,000 street miles on it. It has seen 3 drivers
through drivers school, never broke down during a race, has performed
aerobatics on camera and did it all for less money than a lot of the
cars in the class cost for a single season.
My racing career will be on hold for some indefinate period of time.
I have neither the money, nor the time to build another race car
right now. When I do build my next car, I don't know whether I
will move the cage and TRS into my spare Cortina, buy a formula
ford or something else entirely. I have been planning on putting
a Mk II sprite on the road for my commute to work, and was going
to make it "vintage legal", but it would be no more effort (other
than smog) to put a round arch midget on the road and make it
"IT legal".
I would like to thank Sharon and Chris for all of their help getting
the car ready for this race. I'd also like to thank all of the people
that have helped out with Foocar over the years: Ix, Don, Chris, Judith,
Sam, Andy, Jeffie, Dave, Geoff et. al.
A toast to automotive Valhalla, for surely that is where Foocar is
now. It came home on it's trailer, not with it.
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