Deals Gap 2006 - The Best Road Trip!

At last, the end of the racing season! (I know, I'm a few months late...) After the last race of the season our benevolent team allows us a week off as the shop closes for that time. A great time so sit back, relax and reflect on the year's happenings? No way! This means 'Road Trip'! A road trip I had been looking forward to for half the season. Sam (one of the mechanics on our team who happens to own a Mini Type 'S') had said he was going to Deals Gap, and gave me a dvd of his previous trip. The main section, called the 'Dragon's Tail', has 318 curves over the short span of 11 miles. This looked like great fun, and being a racer at heart, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take my newly purchased '06 Subaru STI to have some of that 'great fun'!
With all the anticipation behind, the end of the season finally came and we journeyed south. Meeting at the Greenwood exit on I-65 S, we had breakfast and began the trip. Overcast and sprinkles was the beginning, however, most of the trip down gave us a deluge of rain. Yay. 6 hours of skating around in rain on the freeway. If that doesn't say 'great fun', I don't know what does!
We got to Knoxville in the evening and planned our drive for the following day. Morning. A brand new day, a fresh start! Get ready, shake off the sleep and open the curtains and.......more rain...... Great. What a lovely surprise. The rain did not cease. We managed to make our pilgrimage down Hwy. 129 and had brief moments of dry spots. Despite the rain we had 'great fun' and found many things which were quite humorous along the drive. One of which was, after all the preparation, I missed an exciting portion of driving as the camera wasn't recording. Mr. Technology here.
Alright! Day two! Started out great! Sam went the wrong direction on I-40, but we righted ourselves and went on. We got to the exit for Hwy. 129 and what did we find? More rain....and a lot of fog added! This wasn't funny anymore, especially for Sam. His car doesn't handle well in wet conditions, and that's all we had! Apparently, neither does mine. Well, the car does - I don't. I had, as we say in the racing world, an incident. No harm, no foul; I just spun (check the video below). Weee! We trudged through the end of day two, and made our way back to the hotel.
Day 3. Our return home. Hmm...I wonder what the weather will bring? Wait....what's this? Sunshine?! Yeah....great. Sunshine for the trip home! Of course, you know what that meant. "I wonder what the 'Dragon's Tail' is like?" Needless to say, we left the 'Gap' around noon! Wonderful sunshine brought dryness and traction to the drive allowing us to 'rip it up'! I foresee many trips to a dry 'Dragon's Tail' in my future!
The trip home was good with no incidents, very uneventful and we made great time! ;-) Cannot wait to go back, and maybe infect more friends with the dragon's venom! Until then enjoy the video...

Buenos Dias Mexico......

Wow! What a season! It's had its ups and downs for sure. We have reached the finale in Mexico City. Finally... I think I resonate a big 'whew!' for all crew members involved. This season has seemed to be especially long. But the end finally came!!
Most arrived in Mexico, and asked 'Are we done, can we go home now?'. The weekend started normally, unloading the trucks and setting up our garages. The truckies had most of this work done already by the time the team landed and made the van ride to the race course. The cars were setup and we were out of the track en route to the hotel. By this point in the season many people just stay at the hotel during their evenings. I'm not sure if it's because we're in Mexico or it's the end of the season and we're just tired!
Friday morning practice rolled around and the cars went out for their warmup lap. Nelson got 3/4 of the way around the circuit and I heard a phrase no gearbox guy wants to hear...'I think 5th and 7th are backwards!'. I looked at the engineers on the timing stand and they confirmed the mishap. This is a mistake all gearbox guys who've worked with a Lola gearbox have made. About 15 minutes later the switch was complete, we poured the oil back in and Nelson was on his way.
Dan had a pit lane incident coming back in after his warmup lap. He banged up the car a fair amount, but the crew repaired it in time to qualify later that afternoon. The rest of practice and qualifying was uneventful. We didn't set the world on fire, but qualified alright.

Warmup was pretty normal, no issues to speak of. Everyone was ready to go racing. The green flag dropped for our final battle of the season and the carnage began. Not even off of the front straightaway, three cars were involved in a scuffle which left two cars without front wings! One of these cars was hometown hero Mario Dominguez. You could hear the crowd 'boo' over the roar of the cars as they passed the pit lane. Dan had radio issues early on in the event and pitted to try to resolve the problem. He later had an issue with a mysterious situation which would stall the engine when he would down shift. We later found a faulty line coupling was the culprit. Nelson had a decent run keeping himself alive to finish 7th, which secured his 4th place finish in a very competitive championship points battle. We were happy to be able to garner 4th position; competing with much larger and better funded teams!

Well, a van ride and a couple of flights later, we were back on our home soil and finished with a grueling season of ChampCar racing. Looking forward to the promise of next year, but happy to have some rest! Adios...

Road America Redemption; or 'No Worries' Down Under...

Busy time overseas; this is going to be a jam-packed blog! It’s quite long, so pack a snack and rest up!

Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. Beautiful weather nearly all year. After a 4 and-a-half hour and 14 hour set of flights, both of which were delayed, your body is thoroughly confused. What makes it worse is you leave Sunday night - fly all night, and then arrive early a.m. on Tuesday morning. Upon our arrival at 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning in Brisbane we went through Australian Customs and meandered out to the busses, dreary and ready to get to the hotel to shower (and probably get a nap to make up for the poor sleep on the flight). The bus drive is about an hour and a half, and after the 18+ hour flight you just don’t want to ride anymore! So, getting to the hotel and moving around is quite the accomplishment! Showers usually never feel as good as after around a 20 hour travel trip!
Tuesday is a full ‘day off’ for most crews and the time you can go out and see Australia. I was fortunate enough to be one of five guys to go to the 'WRX Rally Experience' course using nearly the same car as I recently bought back in the US. I had a blast!! I have a new respect for WRC and any rally driver for that matter. Car control is much more difficult than it looks! The pros make it look so easy. Nevertheless, a great time was had by all and I have new experience which will help in driving my car. The instructors ride with you and critique how you drive, and as Mark said to me ‘I’m not here to tell you how to drive, just how to drive this car on this track.’ The car handles nothing like any other car I’ve driven and car control tended to be opposite that which I had learned up to this point. One of the most confusing parts is Australian cars are right hand drive, which means the shift handle is on the opposite side! That was quite weird, but by the end of the day I was getting pretty comfortable with it.

After the rally course, the course owner had a surprise for Luis. We drove for about another 15 minutes to… well, a cow pasture. We then realized, in the midst of this pasture was a grass air field and soon saw the reason for coming. Luis was getting a ride over Surfers Paradise in a Gypsy Moth (very close to the Tiger Moth) airplane! As they came back to land after their 20 minute flight, the pilot gave Luis a great time of aerobatic maneuvers including loops and wing-overs! The Moth is quite an agile plane being so rudimentary in design and construction. This was built in 1942 and was a cloth covered plane!

Wednesday was ‘unload day’, time to sort out our crates, cars, pits and garages. Setup went quite quickly and we were out of the track by 1:00 pm. This gave Marty, Mark, Brett, and me some more time to venture Australia! We decided to hit a mall (the guys needed to pick some souvenirs for their families) then journey south. We made a trek to Byron Bay. Very interesting in the compact rental car we got - the Toyota ‘Starlet’ – great name for such a car! It made strange noises and we wondered if it would make such a trip! You could barely see out of the windshield, and the brakes ground to a stop!
Byron Bay is the East most point of Australian mainland and has a beautiful lighthouse and rugged coastline.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to there the sun had set; but it was a beautiful sight to see the lighthouse at full beam lighting up the night sky!

Thursday brought another short work day. We made the trip back to Byron Bay, during daylight hours this time! This time we traded Mark for Foggy (one of our ‘truckies’). So, now we have almost all the biggest guys on our team in our ‘Starlet’! The brakes sounded worse every mile, but some rain kept the windshield clean! Being such an adventurous group, we hiked all the way down the trail and beyond onto the jagged sandstone rock shoreline. ‘The sea was furious that day….just kidding! It was actually a beautiful day and even though there was great power in the waves we saw, it was quite calm. I decided to make passage out to the ‘safest’ far rock to have Marty get a picture of me at the most Easterly point of Australia. I climbed out and waited for him to shoot the photo. He snapped a couple of shots and as I started to return he told me to wait because there was a better wave coming. Me, being so trusting, stayed, and as you can see it was a great wave! I think my clothes are still wet! After this, on the climb around to the other part of the Bay, I managed to lose my cell phone. So if any whales call you, tell them to send my phone back! I think it may return to me when we travel to Long Beach next year, with the sea currents and all! We did get to see some whales and some dolphins as we walked back up to the lighthouse. Amazing time!

The ‘race weekend’ went quite well, to say the least! Everything was smooth; no dramas. Nelson gained his highest qualification position of his ChampCar career on Saturday obtaining 5th position. Dan ran 8th. Red flags hampered both he and Dan on their qualifying runs, so the results weren’t quite up to expectations.
Raceday is always exciting in Australia! They have many festivities going along with the race and it is great for the fans to enjoy. Our day was extremely thrilling! The race was very eventful, and unfortunately one of these incidents included Dan. He made a mistake and found himself sideways in the tire barriers. This was especially bad because he had the opportunity to close the gap from 2nd place behind Will Power for the ‘Rookie of the Year’ points. Oh well; we’ll get him in Mexico!
Strategy and skill finally paid off for Nelson down under. Pit stops went well and he and the car were working seamlessly together! The team was at last able to convert to victory!! An exhilarating end to a great trip! Well….except for the 19 hour long series of flights home, but… ‘No worries mate!’

Special thanks to Patrick and Hugh for their help ‘down under’!!

Status Quo....

Nothing exciting to report. The team got the cars turned around for our Australia pilgrimage. We packed all of our equipment into its respective 'overseas' crates and bagged the cars in preparation for installing them on the shipping racks.
After all this had been accomplished the team (well most of it) had to repaint the interior of our shop. We TriSodiumPhosphated the wall to clean the years of dirt and grime off. We suggested the use Kilz primer, but to no avail. Unfortunately, this meant most walls received at least 4 coats of paint. In hindsight they realized the Kilz would have worked more efficiently. :-) After this feat, we then had to strip what seemed like a decades' worth of wax off the shop floor. Zep heavy duty stripper was our weapon. Through many tries and a few phone calls to some janitorial companies, we figured out how to attack the floor. The fumes were quite antagonistic and the floor was being exceptionally difficult, but in the end we prevailed! Many hours of scraping, mopping, and well, for lack of better terms - 'getting high', we triumphed over the nasty wax! Our parts manager is going to re-apply wax to the floor while we are gone to Australia. Oh the fun....
My friend Neil and I have taken up bowling many nights of the week. It is always interesting when we venture to the alley! Our most recent trips have brought frustration, as the alley we attend usually has less than courteous people. We always manage to enjoy ourselves. Even when we have nights we won't mention we ever went bowling!
I have done a little tuning on the 'ol Subie. I just installed a new 'Cold Air Induction' kit as the first step of customization for my car. I have a couple of weeks after resetting the Engine Control Unit before it 're-learns' the fuel mapping. In other words- it's quite sluggish!
Other than that....blah blah blah....just the status quo.

Discovering Disappointment

The Road America racing circuit, Elkhart Lake Wisconsin. Chilly, rainy, pretty miserable. The circuit is over 4 miles and laps seem to take forever. Being in a park setting, it is quite a beautiful track with areas to camp and enjoy on nicer days.
The practice sessions were typical, no surprises there. Nelson was getting over being sick and gave his best effort in qualifying, but the weather didn't cooperate with our setup.
Dan and his engineer made a great gamble during Friday's qualifying session. The track was quite wet, but the rain had subsided and the driving line was drying off. Having just had an off track excursion, they decided to change from their rain tires to run a set of slicks. The crew nervously put the new tire set on and sent him on track for the end of qualifying. After a few laps the gamble payed off for Dan, having run a lap 2 seconds faster than anyone else! The time allotted for qualifying ran out and he was on top! Charles Zwolsman was the only other car to follow suit and run slicks. He also had favorable results and ended up 2nd.
Our team had been selected through ChampCar to be part of a new Discovery Channel television program about jobs which have significant risks. We had the host of the show, and all of the behind the scenes personnel following the crew and interacting with us all weekend. The show begins next January, and the episode filmed with the team should air sometime in February.
Dan drove well, but through course of the race fell back to 6th place and couldn't regain positions. Toward the end of the race, a horrendous looking accident by Katherine Legge caused by a rear wing failure brought the cars to pit lane and caused a subsequent 15 minute red flag. We are glad to say Katherine walked away from the accident! After the restart, and with only 3 laps left in the race, 6th place is where Dan would finish.

Our engineer and strategy team had developed a plan for our less than desirable 16th place starting position race day. Through this plan and some opportune yellows Nelson was able to get to 3rd place. Nelson drove extremely well and kept his opponents at bay after he got up front. This all would change during what would have been the final pit stop. The stop went well except for the outside rear tire changer had a problem that I did not see. As the airjack operator, you must observe the tire changers and make sure everyone is finished with their duties before dropping the car. The tire cannot be tightened with the car on the ground, as the tire is not aligned correctly and won't pull up fully to be completely tight. Needless to say, the tire wasn't tight and I dropped the car and it was sent on track. Nelson made it to turn 5 before the tire came off the car. He was able to limp back and get new tires to finish the race, but this error cost us a lap and sent up back to 14th position. A devastating error, costing not only damage to the car but moving Nelson from 4th to 5th in the points behind Paul Tracy.

Quite a sickening and humbling experience, but we'll do better 'down under'!

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!