This was a long week for Flying Bandito Racing and #34. Thanksgiving/XMAS decorating and family stuff got in the way of any weekend work on the car prior to Sunday before the event. Started Monday night with a light rewire of the interior to try and figure out why the car kept having weird ignition events — eventually found the ignition relay and relay socket were bad as well as a bad ignition switch and a few other things I’m forgetting. Worked until 1am from M-Wed when we loaded up.
Work duty called and I missed half the test day due to having to attend some conference calls in the ever swanky Decatur La Quinta hotel room. Returned for the afternoon to find awful brake moan from the new rear pads (diff compound) and a very pushy car. Removed rear spacers to fix the push, scotchbrited the rotors to try and make the moan better (it wasn’t) and the test day was over.
Saturday qualified on pole with a 2:11.8 with Mosty .033 back and Martin just over .1.
Race one my reptilian brain decided a burnout would be cool on the start and Mosty got by me for the lead — I worked hard to stay with him but missed the tire pressures and there was nothing I could do to get close enough to make a move. Coming out of the last turn for the checkered flag I went for third and found out it was now a neutral as well as 4th so I coasted across the line and now own a 3 speed Astro with 1,2, and 5th gears.
Race 2 since I was in the points battle with John decided to start and park and collect what points I could before changing the tranny. My spare is a 10-spline input shaft versus the Astro’s 26 and a clutch change would take too long between races. Matt White let me borrow the lift in his stacker after the race to change it out which made that job infinitely easier and Ryan Mcfall stuck with me and helped me with the whole job which was awesome and a huge time saver. Ended up taking us over 3 hours due to a galled starter bolt that fought us for over an hour. Eventually heat and vice grips won the war though. Huge thanks to Matt and Ryan for the help!
Then it rained Sunday night. Qualifying was akin to driving on Vaseline, a total blast and the CMC field outqualified every SU car which was funny. I almost hit a thunder roadster who decided the apex of T3 was a good place to stop and smell the Roses and killed my fast lap, but qualified P3 behind Martin and White.
Race 3 was absolute insanity. Mosty and I touched tire to tire leaving 13A resulting in me going agricultural for a hot minute and losing a spot, then managing to catch back up and get into the lead. Last lap Curtis tried a hero move on the inside of the left hander to the back straight that I wasn’t prepared to cover and got the lead. Going into 14 he got his RR on the curbing and spun the car around handing me the lead and the race win.
Race 4 was also wild. I think there was contact in 3 of the 8 remaining cars (I stayed clean this one) and Gernon led most of the race until an impressive spin leaving turn 15. At that point it was Curtis in P1 and me P2 leaving a battle of the #34’s. He had some axle hop into T1 which gave me an easy pass for the lead and was able to hold on and win R4.
Great weekend.
As most of you know I’ll be moving to the newly created American Muscle Car Masters series next year and hope it’s half as much fun as this weekend of CMC racing was. I’ll also add that there’s no way I’d still be racing if it wasn’t for the CMC paddock and looking forward to hanging out with you all almost as much as racing every race weekend.
