The Road to ChumpcarThe home of "Apex of Failure" a crap-can racing team.

24 hours is a lot longer than you think it is.  You can fit quite a bit of activity in that amount of time.  You can start a race, say, in a BMW 3-series and end your race in 20 minutes. You can buy a replacement Bimmer at a local junk yard and transfer cage, seat and safety gear to your new car in less than 12 hours, get on track for 20 more minutes only to crack your front cross-member.

A team could put in a couple solid 2-hour stints with their freshest drivers, only to break their header wide open, one of their axle’s inner boot torn to pieces, the fuel sending unit disconnected violently.  After spending a few hours mending things up and moving through the driver list only to discover that the axle issue would come to haunt the team more than a few more times, and later, disaster would strike again with a failing bearing that not only split from the car, but took the passenger rear wheel, hub, and center portion of the brake disc with it.  One or two team mates would call it quits at this point.  And one or two did.  But miraculously the car was back on the track hours later and the team was able to make another rotation of drivers before the engine atrophied.  No doubt, a lot can happen in 24 hours.

Lessons Learned
Prepare for all types of conditions – We had the disadvantage here in that we flew down for this event, so we had to rely our “good” judgment in selecting appropriate clothing. I was smart in bringing a coat for the mid-30s temperatures for majority of the race, but I was not smart enough to bring a warm enough coat.
Sugar Free Red Bull is nicer on the stomach – Usually after a track day I will keep a Red Bull or some form of caffeine to keep me from dozing too heavily on the drive home.  But I have always disliked how these drinks make me feel besides a little more awake accompanied by an unnaturally quickened heartbeat.  I tried the sugar free Red Bulls and loved them.  Bam!
Breathe – Shortly after the driver meeting I discovered I would be first in the car.  I also discovered the race was starting an hour earlier than I had originally thought. I had just enough time to get in the car and get to the starting line for the parade laps.  In all the hustle of getting suited up, strapped in, radio installed, hans device…hans’d, I felt the onset of a mild anxiety rush.  I wasn’t afraid of the racing, or what might happen, I was simply overwhelmed with the claustrophobia of the cockpit with the harnesses and rapidly rising temperature in my suit.  But as soon as we sparked up the motor and got the car moving under its own power, calm returned.  Breathe.  This is suppose to be fun.
Time moves much faster in the car – I cannot emphasize how quickly two hours on the track goes by.  Grabbing gears, braking hard and quite literally FEELING the particulates coming from the Z-car’s exhaust pipe hit your forehead as you blindly feel for the entrance from turn 14 onto the front straight only to see the entrance of the straight is about 5 feet behind you.
Embrace the Darkness – I felt like I had to completely re-learn the course without the sunlight, each turn felt completely different.  You take the great visibility of the day for granted, and you realize this on the first lap out in the dark.  I went off track more times than I can count in that first half hour of my 2 hour stint.  I stuck it out there for 50 minutes thinking I would pull in after a few more laps.  By then though I gotten over the fear of going off track and chalking it up to learning my limits.  I got over the fact that some corners were just going to be blind every time, I focused on the feeling of when I got the turn right, though still blind as the first time I went through it.  After the 1-hour mark on the timer, I had really warmed up to the night driving, setting my personal fastest laps overall for the event.  I had more fun at night than I did during my day stint.  I even got over my fear of a few nasty little corners that I pussy-footed through during the day.

(To enlarge the selected photo, click on the image on the separate page, it’s annoying but I did not want to spam the page with 34 full-sized photos. Enjoy!)