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We were loaded up, the car was strapped down by 11 am and were on the road back to Vorshlag. I had called our fabricator and head technician Ryan, who was luckily in town and not off supporting a pro race team, as he does on some weekends. He agreed to meet me at Vorshlag and we'd fix the car quickly, then get it reloaded and back to Oklahoma for Sunday. Just a quick 10 hour round trip, no problem! After seeing this kick ass track for the first time I wasn't about to let my curb smackdown end with a DNF for the entire weekend.
Onward!
Amy and I went and got checked out of our hotel outside of Tulsa (and cancelled that night's stay), stopped for lunch, then drove back towards Dallas. Made it back to Vorshlag, unloaded the car (again, with the help of lots of boards), got it on a lift, and
Ryan was wrenching by
4:15 pm. We robbed the part we needed from an S197 Watts Link kit we had in stock and he got the propeller and one of the lateral links (that dragged the ground for a ways and had some road rash) replaced and re-aligned by
4:40 pm. We checked out the rear tires for damage, they looked fine, and I reloaded the car and took the trailer to my house for the night. Got to sleep in my own bed instead of a hotel, which was a bonus.
NASA at Hallett, Sunday June 23, 2013 - CCW
We woke up by 1:30 and hit the road by 2 am, to make the 5 hour trek back north to Hallett. Yes, 2 am. We needed to be there and be unloaded by 7:15 am to make the grid for the first TT session. Amy had agreed the night before to give up her seat for Sunday to let me drive 3 if not 4 of the sessions. She also volunteered to drive the truck & trailer the entire 5 hours up, so I could sleep on the way. Amy... freagin... ROCKS!
Sunday was going to be unique in that we were going to run the track in the OPPOSITE direction for TT session 4. It wouldn't count for points, but it would count for a track record, as TT had never run Hallett Clockwise. Since this car has been racking them up this year, I
really wanted a chance to set two TT3 records on the same day. I was determined to get out on track for all 4 sessions, learn the layout quickly (in both directions), and get fast/clean laps going both ways. Remember, a 4-off or a spin is a DSQ for a TT session, so I had to learn the track layout quickly, stay clean, and go fast.
This ended up being a very hectic, busy day, and I neglected many normal "track test" procedures. I think I checked tire pressures
once, fuel got so low it starved in one session (my quickest session, as it happened - this wasn't a good thing), and had zero time to make any real adjustments on the car or brand new set-up. Not having Ryan there for track-side support was tough, but what put us behind was the fact that we were in front of a lot of new faces. We had dozens of people stop by our trailer to say "hi" who had never seen us at Hallett, which was a lot of these folks' home track. Many were old and new customers, and lots who have read this build thread. Some wanted to talk about BMWs, Mustangs, suspensions, TT, and more. And one of our Mustang customers (Mark Council) who lives in Oklahoma was at the track on Sunday and I had promised him a ride-along in a TT session. He was there Saturday as well, but missed seeing us run, as I broke the car right before he got there. Not complaining - we always love talking to customers and friends - but I should have just asked one of the guys from Vorshlag to tag along to help with the car between sessions. We got spoiled at NOLA having Ryan and Brandon there with us.
Anyways, I went out in TT session 1 with Mark riding along for most of the laps, throwing away my times for the session as I was taking a rider (automatic DSQ in TT with passengers). I was also taking it a little easy driving, which we're supposed to do if we have a rider along with us. I ran some dismal 1:26 laps, and after 4 laps I came in to let Mark hop out, hoping to get back out and take another 1-2 hot laps with only one person on board. By the time I got around to the start/finish they were throwing the checkers. Crap. I was still so green on this track I didn't take the same line on any consecutive laps, so far.
We were watching the ambient and track temps rise and knew from the forecast that it was going to get close to 100°F as the day progressed. This meant I wasn't going to be fast on track towards the end of the day. I threw away that first session (and was clearly still learning the track) and had only racked up a total of 7 laps over 2 days. I went into session 2 knowing that this was likely my last shot at getting clean, fast-ish lap going CCW, as session 3 would be HOT and session 4 would be going Hot
and ClockWise. The video below is from TT session 2, shows about 5 laps with lots of driver mistakes, and right when I'm getting faster in the car... well, you'll see.
So as you see in the video above, my fastest CCW lap of the weekend happens on lap 2 (1:24.3). I made some driver mistakes on lap 1, 3 (and it fuel starved a bit in the 100 mph left hand Turn 1), and 4, but was really hoping to get a quicker time on lap 5. The predictive lap time on Lap 5 looked better even after passing a TT1 Viper coming out of Turn 6 (excellent point by, I lost no time). It was looking like a 1:23 lap, right until I exited Turn 9 (aka: the Bitch) when the motor laid down. I think it fuel starved again, which sent it into some sort of limp mode. Not the first time this has happened. The engine temps were fine, right in the middle, but it was down to about 50% power until I cycled the key. And when you turn the engine off and on, it resets the Traction / Stability control systems. The only way to turn them off then is to come to a stop for 5 seconds and mash a bunch of buttons, so that ended my session. No, we haven't found a way to disable the traction control system permanently in the SCT tuner, yet. The only "solutions" so far also kill the ABS, which I'm damn sure NOT going to do... Nope! I'm an ABS whore, and proud of it.
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