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.