Chump Car racing live

For those that are interested, the Chump Car race today at PIR starts at 9 and goes until 9 tonight. The race tomorrow starts at 9 and goes until 3 pm. Live video of the event is at http://www.pirlive.com/. There are over 70 entries.

Adam is down at the track for this event and tells me that they will not be using a chicane on the back straight. Last year, that chicane was far more trouble than it was worth, so doing without it this year is a blessing. I don't know what process they will be using fo the start this year. Last year, they got everyone out on the track in no particular order, circling the track. After a few laps, they threw the green to a random car and the race was on. There are hazards to such a procedure, but if they pick a car that has a large gap to the car ahead of it, then it can work. I have my doubts about it working with 70+ cars on a two mile track.

Adam tells me that there is a mini-van entered in the race. He hasn't commented on any of the other entries. I wonder how many regualr racers took advantage of the no-claiming class for spec miata and others racers like them?

Less than an hour in and they have already had to flat tow 2 cars from the chicane area. Dan Wilkins is Adam's monkey in the yellow PIR truck. They are stationed at the infield tower when not playing in traffic.

Adam reports that the turns are using lights rather than flags. I got to wondering when I didn't see a flag for a car at turn 1. Seems the lights there are hung low on the fence and don't show up on the live video feed.

Well, they just finished up a red flag period. Saw Ken and someone else repair the tire wall driver left exit of turn 3, but the other truck and the wrecker went on past that and around the track. Are the two related or separate events? Back to green.

Turns out the tire wall in turn 3 was unrelated to the red flag. Just cleaning up the wall damage from earlier while the traffic was stopped. The cause of the red flag was a double wall hit in Turn 8. Adam said that one of the cars was able to continue. The wrecker was for the remaining car.

Last I heard from Adam, the wroker car was running 20+ somewhere. He wasn't certain just where. Not bad with 70+ cars in the race.

Did Adam mention anything else interesting? Turn 11? In the wet?

Do tell.... He said he was too busy to give me much info. Said that they had so many responses that they lost count.

I see the cars are back on course for the final 6 hours.

I just got the word from Adam on the turn 11 incident. He was driving the little yellow PIR safety truck down the back straight and as he entered the turn, he was braking on the dry line, but had to stay right which took him onto the damp part of the track. He spun the truck. The only damage was to his pride, thank goodness. Surprise!

Well, Adam reports that the worker car had a flat RF out at turn 3. The car was brought in on a hook and is now back in the race. Less than an hour remains.

I was there driving - for all of 6 laps, lol - a clapped out 1977 MGB. The highlight of my race was getting flat-towed out of T6 after I spun and couldn't get the car restarted.

As far as I could tell, the Worker's Revenge car was doing well. Yes, there was a minivan. I think it was called the Soccer Mom van or something like that. It had a mesh bag full of soccer balls hanging off the rear window. It looked to be a new and very clean build. I think it had a manual transmission, too!

Results are up on Mylaps. Spokane put three teams in the top nine on Saturday, and had the overall winner on Sunday.
A bunch of Conference drivers were among them.

Yep, I saw a good number of Conference and SCCA road racers as well as the regional rally racers. There was some good racing going on this weekend.

Next year's ChumpCar Schedule is on it. Portland will host a 7+7 hr April 9-10, and the Halloween date is an 18 hr.

Somebody came up with the thought that ChumpCar is in competition with the (for all intents and purposes) ICSCC endurance races.

Apples and oranges?

Just racin'?

Maybe a little bit when they offer to allow cars to run in their event which are not ChumpCars, Especially when the event is close to one of ours. Otherwise, just racing. I am in the build process myself.

Chump results....

Here's the link for PIR Chump results if anyone interested. Seems like a ton of entries...IF one was interested in doing something like this in the future, where can you find the rules, etc.....



http://www.mylaps.com/results/showrun.jsp?id=1742468

www.chumpcar.com

@Kyle. I don't know for sure, but I don't think anybody took them up on their 'extra' classing for real race cars. And with 71 cars on the start, I'm pretty sure that nobody would want to expose themselves to the potential body damage (least case), just to compete in this event.

I believe that it may have been, at least initially, a little gimmick to see if they could create more entries, but as it turns out the play was unnecessary. It seems that there is plenty enough interest in this geographic area to keep them solvent. But who knows?

I'm interested to find out how many of these new drivers that get a full flavor taste of w2w competition might take it the extra 'mile' and start track day/DTs with the local clubs.

There's a potential benefit there if our clubs are able to see beyond the end of their proboscus, and put themselves in a position to support the real 'racing' effort.

It may take a while for those of us that campaign to remain status-quo mongers, unwilling to go beyond those phobias to consider the 'para-normal' advantages of this.

There's the challenge. We can take advantage of being co-active, or choose to be stagnate and let those opportunities pass by, keeping heads buried. (Usually in a dark, and smelly place)

Knock-knock!!