Race Report: Where the Elite Meet to Cheat 2011

Where the Elite Meet to Cheat at Charlotte Motor Speedway was a riot as expected. Plenty of this report snipped & edited from Driver Dave's email.

We finished the race with a blown head gasket; 53th place out of 66 entries; we were in the pits the last 4 hours with the engine ripped apart. A noble effort!

 

Rain. And more Rain. And no windshield wipers. And no RainX (plastic windshield).

Friday: set up day: Judge Phil comes over with a friend and says something like “this is my friend Randy, he’s a pretty good driver and your car really caught his eye… any way he could sneak a few laps in it sometime?” … Carl is in a great mood and of course said “hell yeah”… good karma and all that. Also - it's always a good idea to do the penalty-wielding judges a favor.

Tech Inspection: should move under-hood fuel filter closer to pressure regulator so it is more protected and doesn't flop around; brake light switch may need adjustment (woops - more on that later).

Paddock all set up Goldbrick style: XBOX, fridge, leather couch, snacks. We'll unload the car sometime... oh wait did anyone remember to actually bring the car?!?!?!

Saturday, Race day one: we finished the first hour as the top class C car.  Carl was driving in the rain and doing a great job.  Until he passed under yellow - scratchy plastic crap windshield with no wipers was almost ok until it stopped raining and muddy water coated it.... oops. Penalty: driver change *whew* Second hour we had a terrible driver transition and refueling.  Dropped 30 laps back of top C car.

Then Ray got the best black flag in the history or racing.  He gets stuffed by some other car on a corner and ends up hitting some cones (mandatory black flag here.)  His penalty was to sit out for an hour... OR...  Let Randy Pobst drive our car during the penalty. Randy is a professional car roadracer.  Check out his info on Wikipedia.  So, during that hour Randy posted 60 laps, one of the top 10 fastest laps on the track (1:21), got us back to within 5 laps of the lead!  He was doing stuff we didn’t know the MG could do.  UNREAL! It's written up here: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/randy-pobst-lemons-mgb-gt-handles-well-bad-brakes-low-on-power/

I had forgotten to replace my lucky stick-shift knob with a "real" one... sorry Randy!

Randy dropped the rear tire pressure to 2 or 3 psi below the fronts, so now Front 29psi, Rear 27 psi; also said the rear drivers side would "clunk" on the one hard left, and that we really should adjust the pedal travel.
 
Then the problems started....  While Kurt was driving, he got flagged for brake lights.  Took us 2 HOURS to fix the stupid brake light switch on the MG.  So, we were well behind.  Dave made up some of it and was having a GREAT hour.  Posted a 1:24 lap and was trying to emulate Randy.  Was gaining 1 lap every 4 laps against the 2nd place C car and 1 lap every 5 against the 1st place C car.  Then Dave says he turned into a moron and ran out of gas while on the track...  Lost everything he’d gained waiting for the tow truck.  "I’m advocating a gas gauge Carl..." We added 7.5 gallons... so that is our new volume (thanks for measuring that Dave!) Max went out... into the heavy rain... zero visibility.

We finished day one pretty well though.  160 laps even with none of Kurt’s last 20 laps in the rain registering - several transponders were not working in the heavy rain towards the end of day one.  We were only 30 laps out of 2nd C class car.We were 47th place, "good enough" with all that lost time.

I guess 43 is old enough to smoke, so what the hell was I supposed to say?

Sunday, Race day two started well.  Ray was putting in some good laps.  Posted a 1:28 lap time!  Then 1/2 hour in the car started overheating.  When we looking it over, discovered water in the oil... unfortunately AFTER we refilled the radiator.  We’ve driven it without water before, so sent it back out!

Exhibit 1: A major disadvantage of having a light colored paint job

Kurt was driving when he was black flagged for the oil pooring out of it... :( 

We cleaned it up (drained everything; replaced oil filter plus oil change) and let it idle for a good 15 minutes; revved it a few times. We were thinking of sending it back out with new oil and no water.  

Judge Phil drove up and so no f@(#)%^ing way. Probably a good call.

 

So, we had no choice but to try to replace the head gasket.  Judge Phil assured us it was an easy job... Then disappeared...  We had some generic too-thick cork for other gaskets and decided to go for it. With four hours left we tried.  Couldn’t get it done by the time they called the race 1/2 hour early with lightning.