Race 1: MSR-Houston 1/26-28/2018

#50 Fox Body Mustang - CMC

This is a long post detailing my first race weekend in the new car. Long story short – it couldn’t have gone any better. There were highs and lows all weekend, a real drama. Thunder is the best group of racers out there, and I’m happy to be a part of it.

Some backstory, I purchased the car (a ’90 fox, formerly #13) from Tyler in late 2017. To work the cost down to something I could afford, we worked a deal to remove some nice-to-haves (ie. AiM Dash) and spares from the sale. In the off season I built a new gauge cluster for the car, installed a driver and passenger seat (I like to give rides when I’m instructing), figured out ballasting, spent way too much time trying to figure out the awful ticking noise that engine has always made, buffed the paint (proved to be a somewhat futile undertaking), applied new graphics, threw on a new set of R4s, and made a few small alignment tweaks to the car. I was able to shake the car down and get to know it a little bit on track before the race weekend. I dyno’d it with the group at Chris’ Car Doc. The spectators thought it was going to blow up - instead it made perfect numbers. Couldn’t be happier with the state of the car to this point.


Friday T&T: Worked way too late into the night Friday AM, and didn’t really have enough old tire to run the whole Friday anyway so I decided to sleep in and showed up before noon. 1st session on track I baked in a fresh set of RR’s and bedded the new brake pads. Car ran great and was instantly running competitive lap times. Switched to a bald set of tires to continue learning the car, had a few more good sessions playing with tire pressure to get the 20 heat cycle RRs to perform a bit better. By the last session, I was faster on old RRs than I was on the fresh set. Last session of the day, I probably stayed out a bit longer than I should have considering I’d be running the car all weekend when the transmission starts rattling and shaking the car like nothing I’ve ever heard or felt before. Got off track, got the car in the air and with the engine running and the clutch out in neutral the car sounds like the driveshaft is falling out even though it’s not spinning.

I loaded up the whole kit and caboodle and headed back to my house to trouble shoot. After talking to Richard P. he suggests bringing the car to his place where he’s got a lift and some spare parts. Pull the clutch fork cover - everything looks fine in there. Drive shaft and U-joints are fine. At this point we decided that it must be the transmission. Richard is more than ready to pull the A-5 out of his AI car, including the clutch, bellhousing and driveshaft (my car is a TKO) and won’t take no for an answer. We work through the night until about 3am playing musical cars on the lift. There’s something just not right about dismantling a perfectly functional race car to rescue another. Dead tired and soaked (oh yeah, it was raining) we load the car and I head home for food, a shower and a few hour nap.


Saturday: I get to the track a bit later than I would have liked to, the cars are coming off the track from morning warm-up. I am a bit worried about qualifying; the track is currently wet and drying. I had never driven this car in the wet, nor have I ever driven in the wet on slicks. I get to grid for qualifying, telling myself to focus on my fundamentals, don’t over drive the car, and for god’s sake don’t get stuck off track! I already burned one car doing that.

Qualifying: We go out on track and start turning laps. There’s a bit of passing as we fall into order by speed. I’m behind Cody and Craig by about 5-10 car lengths, close enough to see but they’re not holding me up. I’m focusing on finding grip out there, altering my line slightly to find maximum grip mid-corner. Run the session, surprisingly not a single yellow flag. As I roll in my crew and spectators are all holding up an index finger. To my amazing surprise taken pole position by a fraction of a second – not just in CMC but overall. Best-case scenario over all, completely unexpected by me. I owe a lot of it to the conditions at the time.

R1: Standing start. I’ve only done these a few times, and I was always in the back because I was a rookie. Now I’ll be in front and setting the grid. I tell myself on the out lap “DO NOT GO OFF ON THE OUT LAP”. I wasn’t sure which side of the track to take. Its still a drying track but a definitely dry line is forming. I pay close attention to the color of the track as we go around. I decide to take the right lane on the dry line into the carousel. Daniel Records is next to me. The green flag flys and Records gets a bit of a jump on me. I keep it pinned through the kink into the carousel and forcefully claim the inside line. I don’t lift at all through the corner and barely keep it on track at the exit. I’ve got a couple of car lengths to Records and focus on running qualifying laps to put some distance between me and the field. The white #34 Mustang is getting smaller and smaller in the rear view as he defends his spot to Tyler in the #006 Firebird. The battle going on behind me allowed me to pull away and focus solely on hitting my marks and not making any mistakes. I was able to hold that lead for the remainder of the race, Cody and Craig safely passing without issue later in the race. I took the checker in disbelief and got to roll through post-race tech for the first time ever.

R2: Starting at the back, now this is what I’m used to! The difference with me starting at the back this time though is that I actually have some confidence. It’s been raining for a few hours now, lots of standing water on the track. Records is the only guy in CMC with rain rubber, I know that I’ll probably never even see him in this race. Michael Mosty is gridded one spot ahead of me. On the out lap is when I realize that this race is going to be a huge mess. I can’t cross the racing line without being completely out of control. The green flag falls on the rolling start and we take off. Something that I didn’t expect (silly me) happened immediately. The spray from everyone in front of me is completely blinding. I have to stay close enough the Michael to see his tail lights, and hope that he can see something. If I fall back, I STILL can’t see and won’t know where I am on track. I get through carousel with Michael making a bunch of inside passes, narrowly missing a mustang (#55 I think). Down the straight into diamonds edge completely blinded and surrounded by cars. Narrowly missing Al broadside, but capitalize and stick with Mosty. Down the back straight and into the sweeper. Coming through the tight section of the track, Paul Culp spins after bus stop and I swear I thought I was going to ruin his very shiny #88 door. Escape that by an inch at most. Now it’s Records long gone in front, Mosty and me. As we all spread out I realize it’s even harder to drive without other cars cutting the water off the track. I search for grip for the rest of the race, but Michael is way better at it than me. We run the rest of the race passing local yellows uneventfully. 3rd place, another amazing finish. Only way to go from here in my racing career is downhill and I’m OK with that.

The car ran amazing on the borrowed transmission. I couldn’t think of anything to do to it. Attended the BBQ and spent time with the best group of dudes in racing, went home and got more sleep than I had gotten in the past few days.

[Continued in next Post]