May 24-25 was my first visit to Grattan Raceway, in western Michigan. The
track was wet Saturday morning, so I qualified on wets. There were three
cars in GP - a nice Spitfire, and a nice looking, but slow, VW Rabbit. I
out qualified the Spit by about 4 seconds in the wet, and the Rabbit got in
a couple of laps before retiring for the weekend. I was qualified 17th over
all, out of about 25 cars. My best lap was around 1:56
I got a great start for the race, and out horsepowered a stock motored 2L
Fiat running in EP. A big pileup with the ITS cars in turn one, plus a few
other assorted incidents brough out the pace car for a couple of laps.
After the restart, the Spitfire gradually caught up with me, and we had a
good clean battle before he eventually passed me. The next lap, he spun off
the track after the "jump" turn, and I got a substantial lead on him. He
was closing back in on me, but my lap times were getting better every lap,
sometimes by over a second a lap. About two laps from the end, I threw a
fan belt, but the water temps were still OK. In the turn 2-3 complex, the
coolant overflow hose came off of my new, trick, radiator, and I got a face
full of water! At that point, the battle was off, and I pointed the
Spitfire by me. I was able to limp the car home, and get a finish. My best
lap was 1:43.8, and I finished 14th overall, 2nd in class.
On Sunday morning, about an hour before qualifying, I re-injured my back
that I strained loading the race car on Friday night. Getting my driver's
suit on was a real chore, but once I got in the car and strapped in, I was
fine, and I could still get out of the car in a hurry, if I needed to. I
took things easy, dealt with traffic during most of qualifying, but was able
to get a couple of quick laps in towards the end. I was a few 10ths faster
than I was in the race on Saturday. A little improvement each time, but I
was 3-4 seconds slower than the Spitfire. So, I qualified 17th overall, and
2nd in GP again.
I had a pretty good start, and was working on getting comfortable with the
car, although I noticed that I initially had to pump the brakes once to get
a firm pedal on the pace lap, which was unusual. I really started to push
the car a little harder, as I saw I was gaining on the Spitfire, and he was
only a couple cars ahead of me. I passed and out-braked him going over the
"jump" turn, and started to pull away from him. I found out after the race
that I turned a 1:39.0 that lap! The next lap, I thought I could hear some
sort of dragging or scraping sound, and I started having a fuel pick-up
problem coming up through turn 3. So, the Spitfire eventually re-passed me,
but I was able to bring the car home in one piece.
All in all, I'm very satisfied with the way the weekend went. The new
radiator works great. I normally had 160 water temps out on the track.
Carbs were running good, and I switched SU needles on Sunday to improve
performance, and also dialed in a little more advance, which seemed to work.
My hot-start problem that I had at my first race weekend seems to fixed as
well. My goal for lap times was to try to be below 1:40 for my first time
at the track, and I met that goal. I'll look at brakes and suspension this
week, and I'm planning on racing out at Waterford Hills, MI on May 31-June
1.
Keep the shiny side up!
--
Chris Coker
69 1600 SPL311 <http://mywebpages.comcast.net/chriscoker/roadster.html>
66 1600 GP Race Car www.risensonracing.com
Royal Oak, MI
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