Continued from above
We arrived at the track on Wednesday afternoon at around 4 pm and headed straight to the front office (outside of the gates) to check in. Many folks got there on Monday or even Tuesday to do some testing - we just couldn't afford the extra time away, but probably should have been there to learn this track. Signed a bunch of waivers, got our event shirt and hat, checked in, bought paddock passes for the extra crew we were flying in, and they then promptly sent us on a wild goose chase to the "South Gate" entrance, which was chained and locked. All week. Then I backed the trailer and truck up a very narrow 1/4 mile long entrance road, 3-pointed the rig, then headed to the North gate, which every sane person was entering into the facility.
Vorshlag NASA Nationals Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...als-at-Miller/
Once inside (everyone was super nice, btw) we drove the entire length of Miller's paddock looking for an open spot to park... apparently you could reserve a closer parking space or garage for a fee, which we had neglected to do. And the place was packed already, anyway. The small amount of unreserved parking was at the
far end of the paddock, where we found a space right next to the grid but still a good distance from all of the buildings, bathrooms and garages. Good thing we brought our bikes - we learned that from going to many SCCA Solo Nationals, where you walk a mile going here and a mile going there, many times a day.
As we pulled up I was in a bit of a panic, as my NASA TT3 classing sheets were a mess and I needed a fresh blank copy to re-calculate and finish my classing, and we needed to download and print our dyno certification sheet that we had True Street fill out for us. Amy went to find a printer and I went to Tech to see what I needed to do. See I am still used to the SCCA way, where they insist on Teching the car at every single event, so I figured I needed to do the same here. Once at the Tech garage and scales I met Alan Blaine of Blaine Fabrication face to face for the first time (we've purchased his products and cage kits before), as he works tech at many NASA events on the west coast. He said the scales were open until 5 pm, so I sprinted back to the trailer 47 miles away to unload the car and try to get the front end and splitter installed by myself, while Amy was looking for that printer. I didn't ask him if I
needed to tech the car... he assumed I knew, which I should have.
Left: My TT classing sheet was all jacked up when we arrived (but I fixed it). Right: These guys were doing it right - garage, air jacks, GT3
Got the car out of the trailer (without side mirrors and a dead battery - ever try to push a car out of a trailer with one hand, while sitting in the seat and steering backwards, blind, then bump starting the motor in reverse, coming down the 12 feet of ramps??) and started by myself, somehow. Left it running to charge the battery (it sat for 2 days in the trailer with something left on), then I crawled up to the forward part of the trailer and made a hole to get to the front bumper cover/splitter assembly. Once I dragged it back to the "cliff" of the front of the trailer, I tried... but it was just too heavy lift up over the generator, compressor and other junk on the floor that were in the way. There was nobody at my end of the paddock - it was a ghost town. I had the front end perched on my back like a donkey and tried to drag it out, but there was no way to get to the side door on my own without dropping it. Nothing replaces an extra set of hands. Time ticked away and some expletives may have snuck out. Right when I'm about to wrench my back doing some stupid contortions to get this massive splitter assembly out, Amy rolls up and we together we got the front end out of the trailer without scratching the fresh paint, and started the front end installation and alignment.
This should only take 15 minutes, but that's assuming everything goes smoothly. My side bolted together fine but Amy ran into problems from the beginning. She stripped not one but two bolts during the bolt-up assembly, and that blew our 5 pm "tech deadline". Once I finally got the front end bolted together properly I finally drove the car to tech at 5:20 pm, and it was all locked up.
Crap! How did we plan this - to drive 25 hours across the country and miss Tech closing by 20 minutes??
Then I found out from Facebook NASA TT friends, who were more familiar with NASA Nationals, that
we didn't need to go to Tech at all. Our NASA Annual tech + logbook was good enough. Tech was only there for people with new cars and/or no annual tech.
Sweet! I cracked a beer and calmed down considerably, talked to a few friends we ran into at the far end of the paddock, then we both rode the 21 miles across the paddock and got to the 6 pm welcome dinner that NASA held in the Clubhouse. Decent meal, cash bar, lots of event specific chatter from the higher ups, and there were hundreds of people there. There was a moment of silence for the recently departed Roger Miller, who was part owner of the track and the NASA Utah region director. Tragic loss, with a family and 9 kids. The dinner broke up after the opening talks and we met with our race group leaders, where TT was told simply to "be at the 8:30 am meeting Thursday morning". Good enough for me.
As we left the dinner the rain started rolling in. WTF - I thought this was the desert?! We buttoned up the car as best we could (it wasn't going back into the trailer until we left on Sunday, because doing so would require the front end to come off - and we weren't about to start wrestling with it!) and put a big plastic trash bag under the hood ducting and over the motor, then headed to our hotel in nearby
Toele, Utah. Amy and I stayed at a little Hampton Inn in Tooele, less than 10 minutes from the track, for the first 2 nights - which was a big mistake. See, the folks in Tooele know when there's a race at Miller and they jack the hotel rates WAY up. Also, this town has very few restaurants, with Applebee's being the number one rated place to eat. Great...
We got to the track early Thursday morning and I went and weighed the car, just to make sure our scales matched up with their scales. They warned me, "Every weight is official". Luckily our scales matched and the car came in plenty heavy at 3853 lbs, with nearly a full tank of 93 octane from back in good ole Texas. This track (and state) had only 91 octane for their premium pump gas, but luckily the track had racing fuel in 98 unleaded, 100 unleaded and 110 leaded. The rest of the week I would fill up with a 50-50% mix of 100 (at $9.22/gallon) + 91 (at $4.44/gal), using roughly 3-4 gallons per session. And we ran 9 sessions that week, so there were a lot of fuel top-offs.
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