Strange Mondays…

For this trip I was part of the ‘early crew’ who went in on Wednesday to setup the trucks and give the truckies a break. The weather was fairly nice; quite brisk in the morning and I didn’t bring any cold/wet weather clothing.
Setup day: Thursday. Our ‘car chief’ (Brian) broke his wrist, so we had to practice pit stop scenarios to see where we would best fit over the wall. Brian changed the outside rear tire, so we had to find his replacement. We ran through three different options and after that we loaded the truck and were able to then leave the circuit.

Friday morning we learned what the management staff decided on pit stop positions. They found Jeremy (the current air jack operator) was the best choice for the outside rear tire and that meant I would be running the air jack. Having never even touched an air jack, I was a little nervous about my new duties! We practiced stops every time the car came to pit, and they got better and were more natural every time. After the practice, Will (Nelson’s engineer) wanted to make a ‘diff’ change. Unfortunately we had a radiator leak we had to repair as well. Big time crunch! We had to rush out to pit lane before qualifying, fire the car, and get setup with only a couple of minutes to spare. We haven’t had very productive qualifying runs this year, so the results weren’t quite what we’d hoped. Dan garnered an 8th and Nelson a 12th.

Sunday was quite interesting. The forecast called for rain, at least 1” of it; and we got every bit of 1”! When we started the race, Andrew Ranger got together with Nelson and gave him a flat right-front tire. So on the first lap we had to stop to change the flat – this was my first ‘race condition’ pit stop. It actually went quite well and was uneventful, which was a relief! After the green flag, we realized the radio antenna beneath the right side sidepod had not been connected and we couldn’t communicate with Nelson. This brought some problems! There was so much rain it was too dangerous to run and ChampCar red flagged the race. The red flag helped our radio situation; under red flag conditions the cars are released to work on. They ended up postponing the race for the day.

Monday was overcast, but there was no rain. Our first pit stop was for tires and a full (tank) fill of fuel. Everything was seamless for the tire changers and Frankie (the fueler) did very well. I however left the car up too long after the tires were done, which will slow down the fuel flow into the car. The stop was safe and my error really didn’t hurt our position so it wasn’t really a costly mistake. The crew chief came over after the stop to make sure everything was operating correctly and ask if something was wrong. I told him “No mechanical problems, I just forgot to pull out the air jack wand sooner!” Oh well. The rest of the stops were very good; we have an excellent crew! Nelson got offline and had a spin which took him back to 14th position. He was quite upset with himself at that point and had lost some focus. He would fight back to the front after Vince (the team manager) helped him calm down. Nelson was able to lead a few laps and managed to run the fastest laps of the race! Vince told him ‘I need you to run the best laps you’ve ever run!’ And he did! Unfortunately for us, we just didn’t have enough fuel to stay there. We made a late race pit stop for fuel and had to fix part of the rear wing during the stop. Only a few seconds of fuel and Nelson was on his way out of pit lane. He managed to get back out into the 3rd position after the stop. Dan had worked his way up to 3rd early in the race, but pit stops and 2 penalties put him back in 6th place by this point. He was able to quickly re-pass the Team Australia cars and get to 4th place, just behind Nelson. He ran a very smart race and it paid off for him! Other cars were slip-sliding away and crashing, but he kept a cool head and let everyone else make mistakes and then capitalize on them! We brought home a podium and 4th spot from an otherwise lackluster weekend! Sometimes Mondays aren’t that painful! We managed to turn our strange Monday into something profitable. The race will be broadcast on September 6th at Noon on Speed Channel.

Get Well Soon Shorty!!

Mountains and valleys...

Ups and downs make up the racing life. We began on Wednesday flying out in the morning to setup, but ChampCar only allows 3 people per team into the track on ‘load-in’ day. They also limit the amount of work done. Usually on Wednesday, teams are only allowed to setup the awnings, kiwi tile and the equipment under the tent. The team has 3 total ‘truckies’, which filled one team’s worth of people to setup. Our crew chief picked 2 other mechanics, in addition to himself, to make up the other setup group. Unfortunately, he forgot they close the paddock at 5:00 pm. We arrived so late in the day, by the time that group got to the track it was too late to get anything done. The #14 side was able to get the awning up and the tile down before the track closed. For those of us who didn’t have to go to the track, this did allow for a nice evening! A few of us walked around the 16th Street Mall area, ate, and visited some of the stores.

Thursday was uneventful, and we left the track pretty early (around 3:00 pm). Having an early day, one of my fellow co-workers wanted to take a trip to Central City, which was near where he used to live. It was a beautiful drive winding through a canyon right through an area which used to boom with gold mining. The city now has been developed quite a bit by gambling outfits, which is a disappointment. We drove past all the commercialism to go see the old, original section of town. We parked as we entered town, and walked around the rest of the time.

Friday was a long one for both sides because the cars seemed ‘out to lunch’. Neither car did well in practice or qualifying. The day was especially long for the #4 team, as we had to do an engine change after the qualifying session. Miniscule hiccups would end up giving us quite a delay that evening!

Saturday was extremely busy because we changed the differential format completely after practice. The ‘Imagineers’ (as we sometimes call them!) decided to change to completely different differentials. The cars were a little faster, but definitely not setting the world on fire! After getting through qualification, we repeated ‘splitting’ the car as we had done the previous night, to do the final race prep. The ‘diff’ we ran requires more maintenance then the previous one, so we had to pull it out to check measurements and change the setup. The mechanics had done some pretty drastic setup changes both Friday and Saturday. The engineers finally had gotten an idea of what worked, and the mechanics applied it to the race setup.

Sunday morning warmup went very well, and the cars’ performance seemed to have improved greatly! Both drivers continued to gain confidence in their cars, and were optimistic for the race. The start was pretty clean, except for an incident where Alex Tagliani spun Paul Tracy around in turn 1. During the first portion of the race, many of the cars were very ‘loose’ and Nelson was no exception! He pitted early and took on tires and fuel. He was happy to have gotten rid of the ‘reds’ - an alternate compound tire which is usually has better performance than the standard tire. They are termed ‘reds’ because they have a red stripe on the sidewall, as opposed to the standard tire (called ‘black-walls’ or ‘blacks’). After that pit he told us the car was much better and was persistent to not make any more changes. Dan’s car was handling very well and his pit crew had great stops. The #4 car had a detrimental failure with a wheel gun during the 2nd pit stop, and that cost us some precious time and 2 spots on the track. Because of his early stop in the beginning, Nelson was tight on fuel at the end of the race and had to conserve during his second stint. A late crash between Paul Tracy and Sebastian Bourdais helped get Dan his first ChampCar podium finishing 3rd, and Nelson his sixth top five! This 5th place also moved Nelson from 9th up to (tie for) 4th in the championship points! We began the weekend with a couple of mediocre cars and turned it around to have a great finish!

Ups and downs indeed…






Get Well Soon Shorty!!

Grading on...well...many curves!....

Testing again; not a 'pop-quiz' though.
After San Jose we stayed and turned the cars around for the upcoming Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin - Road America open test. It ended up being a very. Coming in at 6:00am on Sunday and having to leave the hotel at 4:30am on Monday, made for an exhausting day and a painful morning! Home for a day, you (try to) catch up on sleep you've missed and wash laundry, and... that's basically it! From San Jose transporters went straight to Wisconsin and the crew drove up on Wednesday (2nd). We worked until 9:30pm on Wednesday to unload the trucks, setup the pits and finish the cars. We had a decent day of running on Thursday, neither one of our cars set the world on fire though. We ran from 9:00am until Noon, ate lunch, and then ran from 1:00pm until about 3:00pm. We were scheduled to run until 5:00 but a crash shortened the day. The track went 'red' (red flag-no running, all cars back to pit lane) for a car in the pea gravel run-off area near turn 6. That's not usually a big deal but as we later found out it was a very serious crash. One thing you learn being around racing for any period of time is when you hear or see the Lifeline helicopter moving, it's a bad wreck. This was true Thursday. Christiano da Matta (#10 RuSport) was coming out of turn 6 and a deer jumped on to the track in front of him causing the crash. The doctors flew with him to the hospital where the they later had to remove a subdural hematoma (a mass off blood between the skull and brain). He aparently has no more bleeding, but still has some cerebral adema (brain swelling) and is recovering. Please keep him in your prayers.

On Friday morning the ChampCar staff made the decision to continue testing. The Players/Forsythe team decided to load and return home. This left a total of 6 cars to test for the day.
We ran the full day, until 5:00pm. Dan ran well for his first experience with this track. He had one major 'off', but really didn't hurt much. Nelson's car had a wiring issue which lead to changing the engine. After the change we went out for a couple of laps and discovered an engine oil leak which meant going back to the tent and shut us down for awhile. We were able to finish the day without incident after that repair. Disassemble the pits, load the cars and parts, and finally the awnings and equipment and we were ready to go home. Most of the team took showers and then piled into the team vans for the 6 hour journey home. It was my turn to drive, and the trip went quite smoothly. I managed to, somehow, beat the other vans home! I put the key in my front door at 2:07am this morning; almost a 20 hour work day! I'm resting up today as we are back to work at 8:00am tomorrow! Racing is the life for me!

GET WELL SHORTY!

No Way Jose'.....

Finally, some 'down-time'! The past few weeks have been pretty crazy, and quite busy. The team has been showing promise and optimism since the beginning of the season at Long Beach. However, we seem to continue to fall short when the time comes to convert for victory. The San Jose, California street race continued that trend. absolutely beautiful weather on the west coast made for a pleasant time preparing our machines for their three day journey. The majority of our time was spent inside the large convention center building as this was the paddock for the teams. It was nice not having to build and remove the transporter awnings, which we typically setup at events where the trucks aren't housed in a building. It tended to be more enjoyable outside the building where there was a nice breeze and the air wasn't stuffy.

We had a good day Friday. The drivers were comfortable with the track configuration and we finished the day knowing we had more speed left in our cars. Saturday began gaining performance and advancing positions on the track as we tuned the cars for the later qualification session. Then qualifying came. Dan had a fairly good run but was hampered by traffic and qualified 9th. However, in the pre-qualifying practice, I heard the worst words to cross a gearbox guy's ears - 'I lost drive...the gearbox has broken'. After obtaining all the information about the issue, we pinpointed the problem to the 3-4 dog ring being the initial part failure. There were other parts broken as a result, but we were blessed as this failure could have done much more damage to the 'box'. Nelson missed the final qualifying session and had to start 11th.
The Sunday morning race warmup went well, nothing out of the ordinary. After the warmup, both cars' gearboxes were 'race-prepped' to check for anything suspect and put in the best possible parts for the coming race. Nelson's gearbox had no issues and was ready to go quite quickly. Dan's gearbox maincase had problems though. The left-side cover studs had loosened; which at the time had not caused any issues. Marty (my fellow gearbox guy) had tended to the issue and both cars were ready to go, or so we thought. Due to the regulations (headaches) of working inside the convention center, time was always short and most operations were hurried. This is never a good thing! Because of this, both cars' engines were warmed up in pit lane just minutes before the start of the race. This shouldn't be a problem, and for the 4 car, it wasn't. Car 14 was a different story. Two tiny screws were left out of the gearbox because of the time crunch. During the engine warmup the gearbox pumped out all of it's oil onto the undertray; leaving no time, a sizeable mess and a gearbox with no oil! The crew forged ahead, fixed the problem and was able to make the 'grid' on time.

Whew! Finally, race time! 'Lady and gentlemen, start your engines!' That was a great thing to hear! The race began very well for both CTE Racing HVM cars. Both drivers fought to get to the front, and we were having a great race! About two-thirds of the way throughout the event, Dan had clawed his way to 2nd place and was hounding Sebastian Bourdais for the lead. Nelson had been held up by an earlier incident and had battled his way back to the 4th position. I wish this is where it ended. About this time in the race, ChampCar officials went to the #14 crew and told them track observers had seen smoke from the left rear area of the car. Smoke... Smoke that would end a podium, and most likely victorious day for Dan Clarke. The same studs which had loosened in warmup had now backed out enough to allow the oil to escape the box and cause it to fail. Yet another disappointment of near victory stolen by a failure. On the other hand, Nelson had fought valiantly through adversity and brought home a respectable 4th place finish.
Now, we'll play 'Taps' for the late gearbox #040, go on to the Road America test and get back to racing in Denver. We'll stand to fight another day.

My new blogsite!

I am happy to have found an open-source blogsite everyone can view without having to sign up for some service or account. I believe I will continue posting in my MySpace account. Most likely a 'copy and paste' of what I write here! :-) I hope this is a better format for everyone to view and enjoy and I will try to keep it updated often!