OK it has been a long week away in California and now recuperating and re-acclimating to my work environment. Here's a race report from the weekend.
This year's NASA West Coast Nationals was held at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in Buttonwillow, CA. This is roughly an 8-hour tow from my location near Phoenix, AZ. It was an uneventful tow out and that is always a welcome experience. My "new" 2015 F250 diesel hauled my fully-loaded rig up and down all kinds of hills including the Grapevine and barely broke a sweat doing it. The lack of stress involved is quite refreshing. I averaged 11.5 MPG over the course of the trip (roughly 1100 miles round-trip).
The event was planned to run Friday/Saturday/Sunday, with an optional practice day on Thursday. My goals for the weekend were to survive, and also to beat the one other racer in my class (ST2) that showed up from Arizona, to extend my season points lead. If I could get a shot at the podium, I'd take it.
Most of my fellow AZ racers and I elected to run Thursday's practice, so we arrived Wednesday afternoon and started setting up camp. Beers ensued. We took a break at dusk to bike the track and get a few tips from some of our AZ racers that had been here before.
This was my first time visiting Buttonwillow, and the odds were definitely stacked against me with three of my five other competitors being locals with a lot of experience on this circuit. From the beginning of Thursday's practice to the end of day Thursday I had managed to shave about 6 seconds off of my time, but I was still about 3 seconds off of the projected race pace of 1:52.xx for the Championship configuration. I was hoping I could make that up in tires, as I had a sticker set of Hoosier A7s squirreled away for Sunday's race.
This event featured live video coverage as well as timing and scoring so many of my friends at home were able to follow along for the weekend.
This event was quickly turning into a repeat of 2015's West Coast Nationals at Laguna Seca, with reliability being the name of the game. One of the Corvettes in my class lost a (relatively new) LS3 engine during qualifying (and the resulting caution ruined my qualifying time), and another 'Vette broke a wheel during Friday's qualifying race. Strong winds and frequent offs from other cars resulted in many dust clouds obscuring views on and off track.
Due to the issues my faster competitors were experiencing, I was able to sneak onto the podium for the weekend's first race.
At the end of the race on Friday, I noticed my front brake pads were looking a bit lower than I expected for this weekend, and that I would probably need to put another set in before Sunday's 45-minute race. I put in a call to Paul
@74mach at Paul's High Performance and he acted FAST to get some fresh pads shipped to the track and in my hands by Saturday morning. A+ customer service from these guys!
Saturday's qualifying race was gridded by our fast times from Friday's race. This meant I was starting 4th of 5, despite finishing third the day before. I made a few mistakes at the start and dropped down to 5th in class, but had a great battle with the 'Vette in front of me and managed to get by and reclaim 4th. Unfortunately, I ended up getting stuck behind a slightly slower lap-traffic car that I could not pass (safely) and the 'Vette was able to capitalize on this opportunity and got back around me, meaning I finished last for Saturday. A disappointing result, but a very good race.
My third place result from Friday and 5th from Saturday meant I would be starting 4th for Sunday's championship race. It was clear that I didn't have the speed necessary to outright race any of the top three guys, but I did have the Mustang's reliability on my side. Aside from this, the "championship frenzy" was starting to take hold, so it was even more important to drive clean and not have any contact that would DQ me or take the car out of commission. The goal now was simply to survive and beat the other guy from AZ.
The main risk for the race was fuel economy. Due to the long sustained WOT sections at this track, my fuel burn rate looked to be about a gallon every 3 minutes--which meant I needed 15 gallons to finish the 45 minute race. With the stock tank holding 16 gallons, and filling the neck all the way, I might have 17 gallons; on paper this seems like enough but there were a couple fast sustained corners that could trigger a fuel choke-out at anything under 1/4 tank.
Fortunately for me, there was an incident about 15 minutes into the race that caused a full-course caution for another 15 mins. I didn't have to worry about fuel anymore, but I only had a couple laps once we got back to green to race ahead of my AZ competitor in the white 'Vette.
At the end of the day, I was able to bring the car home in 4th of 5. No accolades or trophies but the car was unscathed from the weekend (save for the free sandblasts) and I was able to capture more AZ season points to extend my regional championship lead. The new radiator ducting and oil cooling worked great, netting ECTs of 225* on-average and oil temperatures stabilizing in the 260-270* range in 85* ambient temperatures and significant amounts of WOT for extended sessions of 30-45 minutes.
I have one more race weekend here in AZ with NASA that counts towards season points. If I can win that race, the regional championship is mine.
After that we have a track weekend with our local AZ group ProAutosports at Wild Horse Pass "MONDO" track, which combines the "Main" track and the "Bondurant" track to make a 2.75 mile layout--the last time we ran this track was when I debuted the race car in 2013, so I am looking forward to running it again now that the car and driver are both a bit more mature!
Until next time...