First Round Racing

Here are the rest of my pics from PSCA Vegas, September 19th, 2010… Enjoy!

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Some photos from the PSCA Vegas race on September 17-19, 2010

Friday slideshow:

More after the jump…

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Fontana was a mixed bag… I had a terrible time in qualifying, with my first hit wasted when I flickered the stage bulb and broke my routine, then a LBTA in the second when I thought I was going in the way I always do but ended up so deep that the car bumped out as soon as I got on the converter. I rolled through AGAIN in the third round, but so did the guy in the other lane so we both got to restage and try again. The net result was about as bad as it could possibly be - 13th out of 24 on the ladder, meaning I’d have to race the number one qualifier Dan Hale in the first round. I figured I was done, first thing on Sunday.

Fortunately, even though I wasn’t doing my job at the tree particularly well, the car was actually running consistently for once, and I escaped certain death in the first round. That put me up against the guy I was tied for fourth place with, Cal Gordon, in the second round. He’s another very good racer, and it was no gimme either.

Though Cal beat me at the tree, I managed to break him out at the top end, and since I had beaten Dan in the first round, that meant I just had to win in the quarterfinals to get a bye in the semis.

Up until this event, Terry Anderson hasn’t won a round, much less gone to the finals, so he was certainly due. I clicked off the nitrous a tiny bit too early, and Terry won straight-up by .01 seconds. If I had to lose, and give up that freebie, I couldn’t have picked a more deserving guy to lose to. Congratulations to Terry, and I just wish he’d won the final round, too!

Las Vegas seems to be a much better venue for me… At the third race of the 2010 PSCA season, I managed to hold off making a fatal mistake until much later than usual, and ended up making it to the finals.

In qualifying I managed to pull off a .017 light on the first hit, but for some reason the nitrous system didn’t activate. The glitch went away by itself, as did my #2 qualifying position - by the end of the day I’d slipped down to 5th out of 16.

Since I have vowed to stop killing myself with breakouts, on Sunday I didn’t change anything in the car. Paired against Adam Dahl in the first round, my usual luck kicked in again. Since he was having trouble with a slow transbrake release, he decided to leave off the footbrake and rolled the beams. When I saw I had the win light, I ran the pass all the way out and discovered that even without lowering my window switch, the car was still 2 tenths faster than it was in qualifying.

For round 2, I figured I was done, because the non-standard ladder (a subject for another time) had me up against #1 qualifier Scott Dool. Scott was having his own issues, though - he got a broke single in the first round, but because the tree had a 12-second offset on it, he had to wait a long, long time before he got the green, and when he launched the car hesitated a bit. He eventually came to the conclusion that he’d fractionally backed off the throttle while the car was sitting on the transbrake, causing it to hiccup, but I encouraged him to take a quick look under the hood anyway, just in case there was anything obviously wrong. While he was checking the transmission fluid level with the car idling, he discovered this:

The cracks on both ears were literally within a quarter inch of breaking all the way through, and that would have REALLY sucked. In retrospect, that bobble in the first round was about the luckiest thing that could have happened to Scott, since he probably wouldn’t have discovered the broken alternator until it was too late otherwise. It was also lucky for me, because without the load on the engine from the alternator, Scott really didn’t know how much quicker the car would be running. Of course, he also knows I can be depended on to break out when pushed, so it turned out to be a pretty good race. He had me at the tree, .069 to .101, but despite knowing I was running quick for my dial, he just couldn’t bear to give me the stripe and ended up on the losing end of a double-breakout, running almost a full tenth under his dial to nose across .0498 seconds ahead of me (and break out just .0178 worse).

Into the semis for the first time this season, I was paired with Chuck Keehne, who is perhaps the only racer in the class who is more compulsive about numbers and recordkeeping than I am. The big difference is that he actually uses that information to kick ass, as opposed to just keeping himself from falling asleep on Saturday night like I do. Of course, knowing that Chuck was totally aware of my Achilles heel meant I had a chance to do something about it, and with Scott’s advice, a plan was hatched. Chuck would depend on me breaking out, and that meant all I had to do was actually run my number, because it was likely he would give me the stripe. Off the line, I absolutely killed it with a .012 light to Chuck’s .093, and I ran to plan, clicking off the nitrous at 1000 feet. Couldn’t have been more perfect - my 15.734 on a 15.73 dial is the best pass I’ve ever ran in competition, and Chuck actually broke out by .017 and still was six hundredths behind at the stripe (a little over nine feet, if my math is right).

That put me into my first final round in a PSCA points race, against Paul Wolfe. The plan was to do exactly the same thing this time, but my treacherous self-destructive streak finally caught up with me. I’d been doing the same staging routine every pass - Light the prestage and wait, then roll deep until the staged bulb lit and went out, with one more little bite to get in extra-deep because my car is so slow off the line. In the final, I brainlocked and didn’t take that last bump, and the result was twofold fail - a glacial .227 light, and a two-tenths breakout because of the quicker ET from staging shallow.

Disappointing in that I didn’t win, but still a very good weekend, with some lessons learned that I hopefully get to apply in three weeks when we’re back at Fontana.

The first 2010 PSCA event at Fontana has proven to be a little rough for the quicker cars….

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After shanking it at the PSCA finals in Fontana by going out in the first round, and only holding on to third place for the year by a scant 40 points, it was sweet vindication to capture a runner-up finish (as well as an undeserved but still gratifying round win against Mustang Madness champ Dan “Clobbersaurus Rex” Marciano) at SCSN.

I’m not going to say that I plan on taking racing “more seriously” in 2010, because that might be misinterpreted as a chop on the many very good, very dedicated MM racers that collected fewer points than I did this year. But I will be stepping it up a bit, fixing a few things on the car and taking a run at moving up from #3. First on the list will be setting things up so I no longer have to use the parking brake to hold the car against the converter, and taking care of my pegleg diff. Basically, I want to start the year with no excuses - if I pooch it in eliminations, it will be because I didn’t do my job, not because of the quirks of the car.

Just two races left in the season, and amazingly I find myself in possession of third in the points chase. The last regular 2009 points race in Vegas turned out to be an interesting one - #2 qualifier, made it to the semifinals for the first time, and got to hang out with some old friends from Bothwell Motorsports.

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Please excuse the shitly formatting…

The third PSCA race of the season was a mixed bag - my best qualifying performance so far (sixth out of 25) and two round wins, but both were thanks to broke byes rather than any particular skill or effort on my part. Third round was the end of the road, up against #3 Kirk Bouchard.

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This is what it looks like when you put a bullet in your own brain at the dragstrip…

The good news is that I didn’t take myself out until the third round at the second PSCA event of the ‘09 season, and that I seem to have my reaction times figured out. After trying to intentionally redlight in the third qualifying session by going deep, bumping a little farther in, then giving it one more nudge for good measure, I pulled a -.030. In eliminations, going deep plus a single bump resulted in a .073, a .089, and a .032, which seems like about as much as I can expect considering I’m using both the foot brake and the parking brake to hold the car against the converter.

I also discovered that just bringing in the nitrous 400 or so RPM earlier is more than enough to give me three or so tenths cushion, so I won’t be on the brakes through the traps in qualifying any more. Going from a best of 15.825 in quals (resulting in a 15.72 index), I got a no-show single in the first round and ran it out to a 15.379 - almost a half-second quicker. Against Carl Gagnon’s much-quicker 3.8 in round 2, it worked out OK - On the brakes hard through the traps, I ran a 15.824 and still crossed first by .338.

Third round, it bit me in the ass. Taking nothing away from Dan Hale as a driver, I had him covered. I was a hundredth quicker at the tree, and by the 1000-foot mark I was wondering why he wasn’t catching me. I was hard on the brakes again in the traps, but I misjudged it and broke out with a 15.702-on-15.72, while still three and a half tenths ahead of him. Live by the sandbag, die by the sandbag, I suppose…

Well, lesson learned. I got three rounds worth of points, made it to the quarter finals, and worked out a bunch of stuff that I’ve been messing around with since the end of last year, so hopefully I’ll be able to do a little better next month in Fontana.