Update #3 - Through Saturday 5/10/03
Friday, May 09, 2003<br>
By Andi Baritchi
The One Lap [before it overheats] Supra rolled into Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania about a quarter to midnight last night. We had tested the coolant for exhaust gas with that Snap-On tester we picked up in Charlotte and the health of the head gasket was inconclusive. But we got all we needed to know from (a) the overheating at CMP and (b) the oil we found in the coolant.
Racing a turbo motor with a bad head gasket is bad news; that's exactly how I unwittingly blew up my original motor just before One Lap last year. So Clint and I decided to learn from our mistakes and not race on a bad head gasket again; even just a possibly bad one.
Armed with all the necessary tools, a new Toyota head gasket, and Clint's cool flashlight that he wears as a hat, we got to work on replacing the head gasket at around 1am in the motel parking lot. Note that I was scheduled to be racing at the track at 8:30am. I wasn't too worried about the early scheduling though, as I could run as late as 11:30 with just a ten-second penalty.
More One Lappers continued arriving at the motel as we worked. John Boos was the first one to help us by giving us an extra bottle of coolant. Then, Dave Campbell of the car 69 Impala team came by and offered a hand. Needing all the help we could get in order to get finished in time, we took him up on his offer. We can't thank him enough; he stayed up and worked with us on the car all night until completion, and his help undoubtedly shaved hours off our repair time.
The Car & Driver television crew showed up around 2am to see what was going on, and Billy from their crew hung out with us, filmed the repair job, and even lent a hand as needed the rest of the night. I ended up fading around 5am, deciding to get a couple of hours of sleep so my driving would be halfway decent on the track.
At about 7:30, Clint walked into the hotel room, told me to wake up, and went back out to keep working on the car. I was pretty delirious and had a rather tough time waking up, and it took me a few minutes to remember that Clint and Dave were outside doing a head gasket swap on the car. When I stepped out of the room to take a look, it was about 8 o'clock, and it was just starting to rain. Rain! Dammit, all this work on zero sleep and it looks like we probably could've skated through the last day in the rain off boost anyway.
We finished the head gasket swap and reinstalled the hood on the car at around 9, and now came the moment of truth. Will it start? Crank, crank, vroooom, bluh bluh, vroom. A misfire? What the hell, we didn't even mess with any engine control stuff. Clint pulled out his poor man's stethoscope (long screwdriver), and diagnosed that injector #1 wasn't firing, so the car was basically running on 5 cylinders. He tried the quick fix attempts like tapping the injector, and disconnecting/reconnecting the wire, with no luck. What were we to do?
It was still raining, I was already late for my run group, so if the rain were to subside a little bit between now and 11:30, that would only help me get a better time. We drove to the track (on 5 cylinders) to see what was going on. Nobody was running, and the Boos/Marks silver Vette was sitting in the paddock with a bit of body damage. It turns out that they tried running the morning session on time at 8:30am, but Boos found some standing water in the back straight that sent him spinning into the guardrail. Luckily the damage was light and John wasn't hurt.
The good news was that, instead of the planned two sessions, there would be only one session at the BeaveRun north course. And we wouldn't start until they decided the track was dry enough, which was an indefinite timeframe as it was still raining. Not being able to locate any covered areas in the paddock, we went back to the gas station to continue trying to fix the malfunctioning fuel injector. It turns out the injector was fine, and somehow the wire going to it from the ECU must have gotten pinched inside the main harness (we couldn't find any breaks in the visible part of the wire). The fix, although a bit ghetto, was easy and it worked; we severed the broken wire from the ECU and replaced it with another new wire going to the #1 injector. Since time was so limited, we just ran the cable through the door sill and fender rather than trying to run it through that pesky firewall grommet above the ECU.
We finally started up our Supra in top running form at around 10:30am, about 15 minutes after the rain had subsided. Arriving at the track a few minutes later, we were told that the first session still hadn't run yet, so we unpacked quickly and got ready to run WITHOUT a ten-second late penalty. I guess it's a good thing we changed the head gasket after all, as it didn't cost us any time like we thought it would.
Since it was so late, we would run just a single 4-lap session on the north track road course, after which we would have the rest of the afternoon to do a couple of two-lap autocross (go-kart track) time trials at our convenience. Yes, I said go-kart track. More on that later.. They finally put us on the north course to do our time trial session at around 11am, and even though it had stopped raining, the track was still pretty damn wet. And the river on the back straight that sent had John into the wall earlier was still there, albeit slightly smaller now.
So, here we were, at the last track day of One Lap of America 2003, and the top 3 were all really close to each other in points. The top 3 lap dogs were all very close to each other in the points, so the pressure was on strong for those guys. They went in the first run group, and put on a good show, albeit drama-free except for Ron passing Brian.
Then it was my turn. It's a good thing I had practice this track a few months ago, as it's pretty technical, with at least two blind uphill apexes. Nobody can argue this is a fun track, wet or dry. Since it was wet, I just ran 16psi on pump gas, which was more than enough. Attrition needed to be my friend, not my enemy, I kept thinking to myself, trying to have the willpower to just cruise around the track at 7/10ths.
Not gonna happen. 4 laps of 9/10ths driving in the rain later, I did a cool-down lap and exited the track. Not a bad session I thought.. It was a 9th place finish, which would be a disappointment in the dry, but not the wet. Wet is not this car's strong suit, nor is it mine.
Alan Modzelewski's Viper broke during this session, causing them to DNF and actually skip the remaining two time trials as well. They were in 6th place before this failure, meaning their DNF brought us up from 7th to 6th place overall in the standings. We now had a 200+ point margin on either side, so all we had to do to preserve 6th was do the autocross and not royally screw it up or DNF.
Now it was time to do the go-kart track time trials. This was basically an autocross with grass between the cones. 2 wheels off is an automatic DNF, so we had to be very careful here. The speeds were between 10 and 50mph, and it was still wet. A lot of people had already run, but the big dogs were waiting for it to dry up. None of the big 3 was willing to run before the others, and they just kept waiting each other out. Seeing as how this is a ridiculously slow course and I need all the help (dry surface traction) I can get, I decided
to follow their lead and wait it out myself. Finally around 1, it was starting to look like another storm was approaching, so we got in line and ran.
Whoever had the idea to put us on that track definitely has a sense of humor. I couldn't figure out whether to hold 1st or 2nd gear through different parts of the track, and most of the surface was still slightly damp. There was only one straight, right in front of the audience at the start finish, and I don't think my car ever traversed that straight pointing forward. It's pretty funny when the track is so small that you're counter-steering down the entire length of the front straight, isn't it? Meanwhile, Clint was just sitting there watching the insanity, praying that I don't do something stupid or screw up and go off track and DNF.
His prayers were answered, and I finished the last time trials of One Lap 2003 with no spins or DNFs. If I recall correctly, my times at the autocross were 11th and 13th place. Whoa; on a 10-50mph wet autocross?! I figured I'd do a lot worse than that. Cool. I guess the strategy of waiting till it dried up to not let the slower, better suited for the wet cars ahead of me paid off.
It was now almost over. We went back to the motel down the road, packed up all our stuff into the car, and drove the last leg of The Lap back to Painted Post. Well, I should say I drove, as poor Clint finally got to get a bit of sleep after driving 500 miles yesterday and then changing a head gasket all night. After a couple hundred bone-jarring miles on the worst freeway ever made, we arrived at the Lodge on The Green at 8:30pm, with two hours to spare before the 10pm cutoff (50-point late penalty, not that it would have changed our finishing position). Most everybody was already there; I guess they were smart enough to take another route rather than making the mistake I did by following the route book; worst drive ever.
The awards ceremony was the next morning at 10am, and was attended by a largely hung-over collection of car nuts. Brock Sr. ran the show, and handed out the awards. I couldn't remember if only the top 5 get trophies or if it's the top 10, so I was pleasantly surprised when Brock called us up to hand us our 6th Place Overall trophy. Cool. 4th and 6th in consecutive years, the direction may be wrong but that's still a good finish, especially in
an ultra-competitive year like this one. I guess that podium finish I was shooting for will have to wait till next year.
One day, I will win One Lap, and until then, I'll continue to have a lot of fun trying. One Lap really is an awesome event, a convention of sorts bringing together some of the coolest, nicest gear heads out there. It really is the people that make One Lap what it is. To all the new friends we made at One Lap this year, I look forward to seeing you guys and girls again next year!
To those of you that have read this far but haven't done One Lap, you really should. It's a really fun, challenging adventure, and you'll be glad you did. I hope our story was entertaining and gave you a good taste about what One Lap really is all about.
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