Sheri and I went to Harris Hill Road for a Driver’s Edge track event this weekend. I went to practice, because more seat time is better. Sheri was breaking in her new black Vette and learning to shift a manual transmission under track conditions.

We also need to get used to the heat.

It was 97 on Saturday and Sunday was hotter. That sort of heat is quite something for a 40+ out of shape person. It erodes your timing, clouds your judgement. You drink water all day, and it’s just enough to keep hydrated.

In short, if you want to drive in the heat, you need to warm up to do it. So we did.

We were joined by Phil Holland from AT&T. It was his first event in his new Lotus Elise, and he had a blast. Roger Wong came out and took pictures. Our nephew, Nic Graner, helped change tires, load and unload the truck and was a good assistant all day.

I spent most of the weekend chasing a black 997 GT3RS around. The driver was good, probably the third best 997 driver I’ve met. We traded leads in the red run group often; no one else was close. As I was loading up, the Porsche guy found me and let me know that he had turned a new personal best lap, chasing me around. I told him that we would race again, when the track was fixed.

Harris Hill has always suffered from roughness issues. It’s critically bad now. There’s a section of one straight coned off because of a dip, and the bumps through one of the big left sweepers are so bad that you need to take a non-optimal line to avoid getting shaken to pieces. The owners are supposed to fix it this summer, but I think it’s time to start now!

Those bumps did in Sheri’s new car. Both eccentric bolts on the rear of the Corvette were shifted after Saturday. I managed to eyeball align it enough to drive, but there was no way it was race worthy, so she had to sit out Sunday. Other than the alignment issues, the car did well.

I also got to take a record number of passengers. Three of my runs on Sunday were with a passenger. One guy remarked, as we were cooling the car off: “When I grow up, I want to be just like you!” At least nobody got sick in the car.

The blue car ran flawlessly. The Hoosiers, new tires at Hallett, are getting a little slower. Not bad, but I’ll replace them before the next NASA event. If they have enough left, I’ll swap them onto Sheri’s wheels and she can finish them off. I’ve got two new ones waiting, and I’ll buy two more, hoping for a win at TWS in July to get me four more. The car is still leaking oil, but it’s not getting any worse. If it’ll hold together for one more event, I’ll have time to tear down the motor and get my power back.

I’m still getting faster. I’m wondering where it will stop. I expect that at some point, I’ll get old enough that I’ll start to slow down. I suppose that has to happen, but I’m not seeing it yet.

Overall, it was a good practice weekend. I was not worrying about times, just driving and thinking about driving. I ended up at home Sunday relaxed if a bit sore in the hands (much wrenching getting two cars track ready and fixing alignment issues on Sunday between sessions).

Hallett is remote.
Hallett does not have garages.
Hallett is a long drive.

Thing is, once you go, you can’t wait to go back.

Part of it is the track. It’s short, but well laid out, settled in the Oklahoma hills. Yes, Oklahoma has hills. Who knew?

It’s not hard on brakes, has smooth corners and rough (so you can’t set your suspension up for either, really) and is managed by Connie Stephens and her family.

The signature turn at Hallett is The Bitch. It’s a complex of turns that leads to a straight, and it also passes you through two hills and the little draw between them. You enter a climbing left sweeper, clip a curb on the left, then on the right, then hit the top of the hill (where you really need to be turning, but you have no grip), plunge down into the draw, brake like mad for the right turn up out of the hole (which has a blind exit) and turn up the slope enough to compress your suspension so your car doesn’t spin out in the extremely tight turn. Then you accelerate down the straight, wondering if you could do that better next lap.

It is a real bitch to do right.

I drove up with John and Patty, following their RV. We took off Thursday night, slept on the road and drove in Friday in time to get a couple of practice laps. It’s been two years since either of us were here, and we’re rusty. I had forgotten about how to do the back section of the course, but it came back to me.

Saturday morning, we woke up to the chickens. Connie plays “In The Mood” at 0700, but sung by chickens. It’s one of the little touches that makes Hallett so fun. We drag out of bed and get to the drivers meeting, then rapidly out on track. Time Trial is the first group out.

It’s a big group. Hallett is the longest drive of the season, even for the Dallas crew. We have 17 people! It’s a hoot. Kong Chang in his LS powered RX7 spins in the first turn, trying to get the jump on a Ferrari. Both TTS Porsche spin the the hairpin. I go two off in the back section, and spray rocks all over the track, but hold it together. It’s a good run, and we can all see where the improvements need to be.

Second session, John goes into a tire barrier, hard. In six years of racing together, neither of us has hit anything like that, but it’s his turn today. His pewter Corvette goes off track in the Bitch, and slams driver’s side into the air barrier, then the tires. The barrier catches his car, rotates the nose into the barrier, then pitches the whole thing into the air. The car rotates, thinks about flipping over, then falls back to earth on top of a barrier piece, which catches on fire from the hot exhaust pipes. John is signaling thumbs up, but doesn’t know about the fire.

Hallett has top flight safety crews, and they know where folks go off. They are on top of the car in a few seconds, and put out the barrier fire. It takes two tow trucks to get the car out, and tow it back to the paddock. I cool my car off and pit, ready to help with the damage.

It’s not as bad as all that. One wheel badly out of toe, and every body panel save the trunk lid and one rear quarter have rips and cracks. Driver’s window won’t work.

We effect repairs. John missed one session, and was back out that day. Kudos to him for getting back on the horse.

The video guy comes around as we’re working on the car. He tells John that he’s got the whole crash on slow-motion video, just by luck. He asks formally if it’s OK to show to other people, as some folks are sensitive to such things. John, distracted and working, waves him off and says sure, no problem. The vid plays as part of a loop in the club house for the rest of the weekend. John gets his 15 minutes of fame!

I do pretty well. I’m chasing Kong Chang around, and a TTA Porsche that gets reclassed into TTS. I end up faster than everyone except the TTU guys and Kong. I’ve won a tire! Huzzah!

That night, the Camaro/Mustang challenge guys put on a party. BBQ, cold Fat Tire, and frozen margaritas. Everyone is invited, and I watch racers get drunk. It’s pretty funny. After a while, someone breaks out a laptop and a projector and starts showing race video on the side of a trailer. The corner worker staff and to truck guys are unhappy with the weedy margarita machine and break out a gas powered blender with handlebars for extra stability. Good times. Bed at midnight for me, as I want to see about turning a faster time on Sunday.

Sunday was fun. I got faster. I came within a few hundredths of Kong Chang, but could not catch him. It rained for one session, and I took the opportunity to practice in the wet. I was almost ten seconds faster than anyone else under wet conditions, on slicks. I’m getting the hang of the rain driving thing. I end up getting second place, but still in the tires, so I can claim two for the weekend. That makes it roughly a break even for me.

Then we start the long drive home. I sure hope NASA comes back to Hallett next year, because it’s a nifty track. It feels good, in a different way than other places that race cars. It’s older too, by several decades. Maybe that’s why. Or perhaps it’s Connie, who always tells us on the PA when there is ice cream in the concession stand.

I highly recommend going there if you can.

We finally bought Sheri a track car. A 2000 fixed roof coupe Corvette. It’s very stock, save for a set of very loud exhaust pipes, a piggyback ECU and a new head unit for the sound system. We got a very good price too.

That will change.

In order to turn a stock C5 vette into a sustained use track car, this is what you need:
Air intake (stock is horrible)
Oil cooler (It’s Texas, in the summer)
Transmission cooler (see above)
Extended wheel studs (for racing wheels)
Stainless steel brake lines (rubber lines expand under hard braking, these don’t)
Harness bar (race seats later)
Full alignment (hybrid street/track; -1.5 camber front, -1 rear, little toe in back, toe out front)
Catch can (for oil)
Power steering pump (the stock pumps melt at high RPM or boil the fluid)
Bigger sway bars (doesn’t hurt street manners and corners much better; includes better end links too)
Track wheels and tires (for Hoosiers!)
Upgraded brake pads (obviously)
Full synthetic fluid change (AMSOIL)
Radiator fill with pure distilled water (in case of spills on the track)
Dyno tune (most stock tunes are crap)

Nothing to it. I can do most of this, save the dyno tune.

Actually, we have a lot of this stuff, since Sheri had her convertible almost converted to track use. I’ve got some of it done, and the car is better for it. The alignment was way off, and that’s fixed. I swapped the air intake out for more power and the oil cooler and a host of other parts are on the way. It’s fun to have another car to play with, however…

We are out of space to park cars. Really. It now looks like there is a constant party at our house. Thus, we are looking seriously at making the garage bigger. As it turns out, we can do it in the existing plat for our lot, and we will begin the design and finance process Monday of next week. I can’t wait to have a real shop.

I competed in the Chrono X time trial again, in the second round of that series. I had a blast, though I came second to a very fast Lotus Exige. By 0.004 seconds. I’m good with that, as he had to switch to autocross slicks to get that time. Were I on four new tires, I’d have had him. And mine are coming. I received my prize tires from Hoosier for the TWS event and purchased two more for the race wheels. I’ll be on new rubber soon, which is good because I have too many events coming.

Next weekend is Viper Days. It’s a TWS event and wild as hell. I’d like to go for the full three days. Early next month is Hallett NASA in Oklahoma, then we have the third Chrono X back here, and the Driver’s Edge event at Harris Hill too. Going to be a busy couple of months, which is good.

I have a lot of friends who drive cars to get from point to point. Cars are a way to take you someplace you can’t go by foot or other transportation. I used to deride that point of view, because driving to me is an end in itself, no matter where you end up. However, I have to say, a racecar can take you places no other vehicle can. It’s really impossible to explain in words more than that.

We’re now three events into the 2010 NASA time trial season, at the halfway mark. I was pretty down going into last weekend.

MSR Cresson was disappointing. There is a very fast BMW driver in my class now, and he thrashed everyone, by a couple of seconds. Hard to believe that he’s that fast in a lightly modified M3, but the times do not lie. I ended up fourth or so, not any better than Houston. I was forced to buy two new tires too, when my old ones went bad. New tires are $300 per, so that was a big hit. However, they were very sticky, so I did what you should do with new tires: I ran one session on them and took them off. They season like that, and last longer.

I got some good news with the local Chrono X time trial though. I was first in “class” (they are still working out the class structure in this new series) with a 1:27 time at Harris Hill Road. That’s not a bad time, but the car is capable of more, I’m sure.

On April 23rd, at around dusk, I rolled into TWS for the event. The car was unchanged from last event, but I was happy to finally get to run TWS counter clockwise again. It’s the first track configuration I learned, and is thus a good benchmark.

Saturday was a short day, as there was a six hour enduro in the afternoon. We ran two morning sessions with the DE guys. I proved I was around a half second off my fastest time recorded at TWS (a 1:58) and so I switched the two new tires from Cresson back in.

My main competition in time trial A is Josh Hilts. He drives a C5 Z like mine, but with half the miles. He was a full second faster in both sessions. Thankfully, the BMW driver had never been to TWS and was still learning the track, so he was unlikely to be a threat.

In the lazy afternoon on Saturday, listening to the enduro race go on around me, I started to feel better. The car was running good, I was surrounded by friends, and the weather was terrific. The day was capped off by a real feast put together by Mike Zina and the rest of the time trial group. Great bunch of folks. Went to bed around 11, and slept like a rock.

Sunday, I posted my best time ever at TWS. 1:57 flat. Josh had put all four new tires on to my two, and so was 0.5 seconds faster. I came in second, and we were far and away the fastest drivers in the class. My depression was at an end. I remembered how to find the edge and skate along it and remain detached. I guess it took being at my home track and getting into a groove again to help me remember how to do that. I felt as if one part of me was driving, and another was planning where to pass the next car, and keeping track of where everyone was. I knew where I needed to be a full lap before I got there. It was great.

The lesson here is that I’m done with scrub tires. I need to have new rubber to be competitive, and so that’s what I’ll do. I won two this weekend (Hoosier contingency paid out for first and second place), and I’ll buy two more to put on my lightweight wheels. That will be the edge I need to win the remaining events of the season. As my friend Sean pointed out “New tires are only expensive if you have to buy ’em. Just go win ’em.”

Next event is Hallett in June, and there’s another Chrono X trial in Austin at the end of this month. Looking forward to it.

I’ve been doing the driving thing for five years this March. It’s taken over my life, in a way. I’m thinking of houses that have more garage space, my dining room as a partly assembled race seat and two cases of oil in it. The guest bedroom has a racing game setup with a seat and a steering wheel. It’s only natural to think about taking the next step and teaching others about what it is to go fast in a car.

I’ve been getting some nibbles in this direction. Some of the groups I drive with are asking me. The benefits are pretty good: You get no-cost track weekends. You generally have two students, so you ride two sessions then get to drive one. You carry lots of passengers, since it’s easier to show folks the line than to tell them.

Then there’s the hidden benefit of teaching: As the instructor, you learn a good bit.

However, in motorsports, there’s a huge downside: More track time, with novice drivers, can lead to injury and death. It’s brutally simple numbers. The odds are that if you ride with learners, you will get into more situations that are out of control. Moreover, the person controlling the car will not know how to react in the moment, and thus will compound the problem. Lastly, most learner cars do not have race-level safety gear. Even when they do, it’s sometimes not enough.

I want to give something back to the sport. I would like to be able to teach my younger relatives how to drive when they get old enough. It would be cool to find that prodigy who sets the track on fire. I just don’t know if it’s worth the risk.

This week, it was reported that at a Porsche event at CMP (Carolina Motorsports Park), an instructor and a student in a fully race prepped Porsche ran through spilled coolant and slid off track. The student driver walked away. The instructor was killed instantly when a tree branch penetrated the cockpit. Not sure on the details, since I have that third hand, but that’s pretty bad.

If that’s the way it happened, I’ve been there. I hit coolant (dropped from the car in front of me) in a big left sweeper when I was fully committed to the turn. Me and the blue car left the track at 95 or so, spinning. I got everything back under control after a couple of rotations and drove back to the track, but there was not one thing I could have done to avoid that spill. It was simply bad luck.

I think I’ll take some rides with some of the instructors I know. I don’t know if I have the endurance to ride eight sessions a day and drive three of my own. I’ll take some rides and find out if I can ride four (with instructors) and drive mine without getting wiped out. Then, I’ll decide if I like the odds.

I hate Houston. Not just the track, but the whole place. If there’s a more un-Austin place in Texas, I don’t know about it. Ugh.

I got the car on the trailer at around 7:00 PM and headed out for the MSR Houston track, south of the city. It’s around a three and a half hour drive. In order to get there in that time, you have to take the Sam Houston tollway, which costs $4.50 per stop. There are three stops before the 288 exit that takes you to the track. Jesus, I hate this place, and I have to pay before I even get there.

Last year at Houston, I broke my transmission. Because of that, I had no gears other than fourth. I chose to come home on Sunday, rather than drive a session with fourth gear only. That turned out to be a mistake, and cost me the Texas championship. Had I driven, I’d have at least had a time, and would have beaten the rest of the TTA field on points. Ah, well. Just one more reason to hate Houston.

The track is a diagram on the back of a napkin. It features one of the longest, most irritating carousels in the world. It’s a circular section of tack that’s too long to think about apexing. And it falls away on the outside, so you can’t use the edge. You just have to maint throttle around it, and hang on. So boring. The back side of the track is characterized by a large rise in the surface, just as you go past a turn. This is called “The Launch” and that’s what happens when you hit it. Your car goes airborne, or nearly that if you are going slow. You have to pay attention to how you land too, or spin off into the weeds. Finally, the last turn onto the front straight (which is so freakishly bumpy that you think there’s something wrong with your car) is bounded on the outside by a concrete barrier. Not a tire wall, not armco, but a concrete wall. Thus, the most important turn on the track is the one you can’t afford to push on. I hate Houston.

And yet, the event was not bad. NASA is taking time trial seriously this year, and we went through weigh in and impound and everything. I improved my time at the track by five seconds (personal best) and came close to winning the event. I pushed hard enough to get DQ’d in one session and had a generally good time, except for the awful track, the bad food and the stinky Houston air.

I became fearful, though, that I have no talent for this sport that I love. I watched folks out there go faster than me, and was bewildered. I just do not learn fast enough, I think. Yet I picked up five seconds. I can improve, it just takes time. I have to tell myself that I’ve only been doing this for five years, and I’ve only driven Houston three times. I’ve not got too much practice there. I’m within striking distance of the track records for my class at TWS, HHR and MSRC. So on my known ground, I’m decent. But I still got the yips. I might just be too old to do this. That would suck.

I’m going to see. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to contend for the regional title this year, and perhaps a national title this year or next. I think that I just need more seat time, and that my driving style is methodical rather than brilliant. I do get faster by increments, rather than leaps. That’ll have to do, I guess.

I drove home and had to pay $13.50 in tolls outbound too. I hate Houston.

We lost 41 pounds yesterday. The carpet is out of the car, and I took it for a test drive round the neighborhood today. It’s loud inside now. That will actually be a good thing, since with the face shield of the helmet down, most sound is muffled. This compensates.

The first test event is next weekend. I’d like to cut another 20 pounds or so before then, by removing the radio. Lighter cars go faster, and I’m down a little horsepower now, owing to the miles on the engine.

Since I don’t drive the car every day, I start it on the weekends. I miss driving it to work, but this way, I don’t put more hours on the motor.

I’ve been thinking about trying to race greener. Racing uses an awful lot of fuel. Fuel to move the cars, fuel to tow the cars and so forth. I think I get around 4 MPG while racing. The tow vehicle gets around 10 while towing. I need to figure out a way to balance those numbers without buying carbon offsets from Norway or something.

The first way will be to make the tow vehicle run on either veg oil or biofuel. This is not so hard, as it happens, if you start with a diesel. The next tow vehicle will be that, and we’ll start with biofuel immediately, with a later conversion to veg oil.

The race car is harder. The pro teams that race are using alcohol or e85. The problem with that is I’m pretty into the theory that corn does not make good alcohol, in a global sense. I could, at least in theory, figure out a way to make a biodiesel corvette. The existing engine would not work, of course. I think that I’ll end up using e85. There are alternatives in Texas made from mesquite and other sorts of biomass that is not corn.

It’s an interesting thought exercise, in any case.

I saw a good movie today. It was called “Love The Beast” and was done by Eric Bana. He’s a racer from way back, and is devoted to his old car, a 72 Ford XB (Australian model; I was not familiar with it).

The film chronicles his journey with the car which he acquired at age 15 and restored, at least twice. The last restoration was into a pure race version, which he and his mates took to a road rally in Tasmaina in 2007. Driving flat out, he crashed the car.

The film was interesting because it explored the relationship we form with inanimate things. Commentary and interviews were done with Jay Leno, Dr. Phil and Jeremy Clarkson.

Leno was of the opinion that had Bana done the work on the car himself, he’d not have crashed it. Either he would never have raced it (since he valued it so much) or he’d have known the car better and thus would have not wrecked it. He also said he ought to fix the car regardless of expense.

Clarkson said “If your wife got a cold would you toss her over for someone else?” Pretty funny.

Bana said, in the wake of the wreck, that he would have to race a car he was not attached to in the future.

Therein lies the conundrum, I think.

In order to be a good driver, you need to be in touch with the car at a wholly different level than most folks are. You have to know where the tires are, to a fraction of an inch. You need to know how much body lift it has at high speed, so you know how much understeer you’ll get.

The problem is that as you get to know the car, it takes on a personality. We expect machines to be perfect, since they are machines. They do the same thing the same way, every time. Except that we put cars in such highly variable situations that sometimes they appear to act differently, and thus more “human.” It follows that you’d take pains to not hurt it.

Yet, you must drive at the limit. You’re not competitive if you don’t, and what’s more you’re not being true to the sport. A car is essential to racing as a bat is essential to baseball. The problem is we don’t get attached to bats.

So we have an interesting conundrum. You have to be close to the car to race well, yet be willing to take chances.

I’ll figure it out eventually, I hope.

The NASA time trial rules are out, for 2010. There are a few changes that affect my class, but nothing big.

The big thing is that I need to lose weight. In order to be perfect, the car needs to lose 200 pounds. That includes me. Thus, every pound I lose is one that I don’t have to strip from the car.

The blue car is mostly a race car now. It is no longer street legal, and I start it only once a week to run it around the neighborhood to keep the diff from rusting. I can strip it with impunity.

The AC will go, along with the condenser. The passenger seat will become a race seat. The carpet will come out. Radio and speakers. Battery will become a race battery. The side window glass will go too.

After all that, I will still have to lose some weight. This is a good thing, and I’m starting an aerobic training cycle. I hate doing it, but it needs to be done. Helps blood pressure too and breathing.

I’ve not got too much to say this time around, except that driving has become more of a meditation. For the first time last time I was out, I was able to forget the slip angles and other analytical details and just drive. In the rain, I found I just had to in order to get faster. It’s very hard, and I admit reductionist thinking has a real place in racing, but I think I prefer a more holistic approach. Once I know a track, I can let it fade into the background and just enjoy the drive. I come off the track relaxed rather than tired. That’s progress.

The end of the ALMS season is upon us. Last weekend the last race was held at Laguna Seca. It’s one of the best tracks in north America.

The ALMS (American Le Mans Series) is one of the best sports car series in the world. It attracts quality drivers and there are several classes of cars on track at once, making for interesting racing. There are endurance events and sprint races.

This was a big year since Chevrolet retired from the GT1 class (there was no one left to race against) and entered the GT2 class with their Corvettes.

The dominant cars in GT2 are Porsche and Ferrari. The field is large, and the Corvette team would surely have some growing pains. However, they field a team of the best sports car drivers anywhere, so they were ahead of the game. They raced aggressively though they did not race the whole season, winning there first victory at Mosport in August.

Their opponents were not backing off though. In the final lap at Laguna those that watched the race saw some of the hardest racing ever between Jan Magnussen driving the Corvette and Joerg Bergmeister, driving the Flying Lizard Porsche. The race ended with Corvette coming in second after a big crash into the wall and the Porsche winning. There was much contact in that last lap, and a really good inside pass by the Corvette through the pit lane (which was disallowed). Thankfully, no one died.

In the next to last lap, the Porsche was using all available tactics to keep the Corvette from passing. Due to the superb driving by Bergmeister, it was working. Then, the Corvette executed a pass to the left of the Porsche, using the pit lane surface. That was ruled out by the stewards, and the Corvette was ordered to give the position back to the Porsche. Corvette did so, and then proceeded to drill the Porsche from behind going through turn 11 onto the final straight. The Porsche responded by squeezing the Corvette into the wall on the left, and subsequent to that, the Corvette spun across the track, impacting head on into the right wall.

There’s forum posts galore about this, and the footage is available anywhere, and it’s worth looking at. The question is not whether the drivers did the right or wrong thing; both have been penalized for next season. The question is when do you back off?

Most race drivers would never back off, I don’t think. What we do is dangerous and everyone knows the risks. That last lap looked a lot like the Porsche putting the Corvette into the wall on purpose. Likewise, the Corvette likely hit the Porsche from behind to try to upset him through the last turn. Is it hard racing? What if the Corvette driver had died?

That’s the real question I think. I don’t believe I have the right to take a life on a racetrack, and for that reason, I’d like to think that had I been in that Porsche, I’d have backed off and let the faster car go.

I don’t know though. What would you do?

It’s a good question. John Steakly wrote “We are what we do when it counts.” It’s very true I think. We certainly know the character of both those drivers now, and how far they are willing to go for the win.

Look at it another way: What if the Porsche had backed off? Corvette wins after muscling their way to the front. Would the Porsche driver keep his ride? Would his career suffer? Overall, in racing, it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Would he have been characterized as too soft? That’s also a good question to ponder.