Saturday's race: 

We had six drivers on the team with three new rookie drivers in their first wheel-to-wheel race.  The race started with cars going out on the track and circling under the yellow flag.  A team was selected at random as the lead car and the green flag dropped when that car pass the start/finish line.

 Our main objective for this event was to have FUN! We didn't know what kind of car we have since it was untested.  The car could break down or we could get  taken out by another car.

We rotated drivers about every 30 minutes on Saturday because we wanted the entire to team to have an opportunity to race and have fun even if it costs us four to five laps per driver change.  Since Jerry and I had a chance to drive the car on Friday's test day, we let the other drivers go first and we went last.

 It was a wild start with 87 cars racing around in just one mile of track.  There were more car-to-car contact then I expected, some by overly aggressive drivers but mostly by the sheer number of vehicles on a small track.

 We had a simple strategy:

1. Stay out  of trouble and protect the car, let the other cars/drivers take themselves out.

2. Start the race on the set of 225x50x15 Kumho Ecsta (400 treadwear) street tires figuring it should last all of Saturday.  If our car was still running Sunday we would change out to a faster set of Falken Azenis (200 treadwear) tires for better grip.

3. Stay in 3rd gear if possible to save the failing clutch.

Strategy and reality are two different things.  We tried to avoid contact but that didnt't prevent other drivers from bumping and pushing into us.  During our fifth driver rotation/session, one of the rear tires got punctured.  Staying in 3rd gear at times wasn't an option because of the traffic.  We had to downshift to 2nd and deal with the clutch backlash. 

With the punctured rear tire, we had no choice but to change out the rear with the Falkens we were saving for Sunday.  The Falkens were mounted on 16" BBS wheels whereas the front Kuhmos were mounted on 15" phonedial wheels.  This made for some strange handling characteristics so on the next pit stop, we changed out the fronts also to the 16" wheels.

We only had two full sets tires and if we were to experience any other wheel/tire problems we would have to go back to a mix of 15" & 16" wheels again. 

I had called Art at AutoPoint Motors knowing he was dropping by after work to watch the race.  I asked him to bring a set of wheels and tires from a 944 roller one of our guys bought recently

Despite all the driver rotations, tire changes and problems with the clutch, we were still running into the night and was 28th overall when the flag signaled the end of Saturday's race at 9:45PM. 

 After the Saturday night race break, Art was trying to see if he can do anything about our clutch.  We weren't very prepare for working at night and just had one flashlight.

Other experienced teams had generators and work lights to do repairs before Sunday's restart.

We put the car up on jackstands and Art crawled underneath.  In the process of checking the clutch  hydraulics he found the clutch bell housing was missing two bolts.  The bell housing was separating when the clutch was depressed, Yikes!!!

John got a bag full of miscellaneous nuts and bolts from his parts van and dumped it onto the pavement.  We were sorting through the bolts in the dark with just a flashlight trying to find two bolts that might fit the bell housing.  Amazingly, we found the bolts and were able to make the repairs!  It was a little before 11:00PM when we left the track.