8-hours of fun, excitement and disappointment!

MikeA

Well-known member
Wow - what a long day for all yesterday. For those that weren't around to watch on PIRlive or in person...you missed another awesome event.

Quick background on our team.
Team Name - Two Adams and One in the Chamber. (we are very witty).

Drivers - Mike Adams (Owner), Steve Adams (No relation), Matt Chambers (Another 944 junkie & happens to be my cousin).
Car - '87 944 (not a pretty car, but a great running car with a pretty nice motor in it).



The day started off very wet (it rained pretty good all night friday) and with the thick grey overcast it made for a pretty moist track for the first couple hours of practice.

The pit crew challenge was a little disappointing as all but two teams competed for the "prize" of best pit crew. I'm sure many folks were making last minute changes and just paranoid about the time commitment. Maybe next year this can be something for the night before for those after move-in. My crew was ready to pit off, but we came up short because of not realizing it wasn't just a 1v1 matchup. We pulled the fastest time of 1:26 vs. 1:40, but since we had noone else to compete against...we matched back up with them but we had to add 14 seconds to our next stop. The other team (Mike/Dave/Brandon) had their crew practicing to drop a little more time... however we only had to improve our previous best by approx 6 seconds to win. It was still fun and the team enjoyed bragging about both stops were faster than our competition, but rules are rules! *note* We were offered to "share" the win and 50/50 on the prize money of $100. My team was quick go after an ALL OR NOTHING approach, which I think made it that much more exciting.

On to the race...Lemans start - This is always a hoot to watch and if you're lucky enough to participate in it...it's even cooler!


I had the pleasure to be the owner of our car so of course I took the chance to compete in it. We were a little nervous since I'm coming off of knee surgery in august and lets just say I'm still recovering. We personally had a quick start, however Team Dunn was pitted next to us and they pulled away first... but I was close behind (enough to watch the M-Coupe tire lockup to avoid collision). Overall it looked like a clean & quick start for everyone.

http://youtu.be/22ME_9uTTGI

Lap 1 - For me this was pretty eventful as I approached Turn 10 brake zone I was watching my mirrors as I saw an E30 closing in on my car quickly. To my surprise we had some contact on entry, which sent me spinning into the grass and luckily missed all the oncoming traffic. Radio'd in for a visual but of course Driver's Side rear quarter damage is hard to see from the inside of the track. It ended up being a pretty nice sized dent behind my tire, but luckily didn't damage our tire or effect us much more than the time lost on track.

Like everyone we had a strategy and quickly that changed as we realized others were doing just as good on their gas mileage as we were. The first hour I drove directly behind (and I mean directly on the bumper of) Team #78 (no idea what the team name was). This was Jason Vein's team and found out later that I think it was Cavan driving?!?. What a blast that was... we jockey'd around for position a little bit but I just enjoyed finding someone with a great pace that I could easily manage for my stint. It would have been too risky to try to "hot-lap" by him as a 944 just doesn't have the power to keep the motor down the straights. And it was much more fun lap after lap dancing with him even if it wasn't "in class".

About 90 minutes in we started to discuss possible changes to our strategy and the car was running great... I hadn't made any mistakes to lose track position. We decided to keep going a little more... Soon I received the call to run about 4 more laps and get ready to pit.

After two more laps it seemed like the car stumbled a bit and lost power... I was amongst some fast lapping traffic and trying to stay focused on what the car was doing while being smooth & consistent. I radio'd in that I was going to come in one lap early. I made it to about turn 10 when I saw the oil pressure drop significantly and my warning light go on. OH NO!!!! I immediately shut the car off and broke it off the racing line for a coast into the pits... no oil anywhere on the track but certainly a terrible feeling in my stomach. I coasted all the way to our pit area and we maintained a normal pit stop strategy. Driver change...fuel up and wait to inspect the car. Upon inspection there was no oil on the dipstick. Oh boy. Let's fire it up again and "listen".

You can only imagine our facial expressions when we heard what we feared and guessed was rod bearing failure. Our day was done!


We packed up and took the crew out for a good dinner as there was disappointment in the air... we really felt great about this race and the start. We returned to watch some really competitive racing and quite an interesting Yellow/Black scenario that played out. Heard lots of gripes in the pits about that one that I'll leave open to others to discuss.

Thanks again Steve Adams for being a great team member all weekend long. Thanks goes out to all of my crew that showed up and kept my spirits up even if we only made it 25% of the way...



Looking forward to the final results... we headed out right after the race was over due to our many hours of mourning. A long drive home into the middle of the night...




How was your experience? Drivers share a recap of events as there's always fun stories to be told. Ours was pretty short and sweet.
 
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Thanks for the replay Mike! Sorry about your misfortune, glad you at least had some fun while it lasted.

Very curious about the yellow/black comment ... what happened?

Hope to hear from more participants ... housecleaning while waiting for the final IndyCar race from Vegas to decide the champion between Franchitti and Power ... go Will!
 
My team had a good result by the end but started kind shaky. morning got behind and had to send the first two drivers out on transportation slicks (3 years old and multi enduros on them) in the wet only had 1 spin. then switched over to race rubber with our 3rd driver who was our least experienced and it showed by getting a black flag for trying to be a rally driver. then settled down and was running ok. then right before the start of the race at the end of final practice the car started cutting out, we figure out that it was most likely sucking air, we fill the car and get it to grid last i think. first driver out set the belt to tight and we were last to pull out of the pits. had the hic up the first few laps as we are holding about 1/2 lap behind our competitor. about 60 mins in our competition pits and we are only 12 seconds behind we still had another 60 mins before out planed fuel and driver swap then at 90 mins in, the car hic ups again we think its fuel and call for an emergency pit at this time our compeditor also had an emergency pit from about 20 seconds infront of us so we do fuel and driver change but only 9 1/2 gals went in if it was fuel cut we should have been able to put all 10 in. 2nd driver goes out and says the problen is still there we have him drive around to give us a few laps on our comp before coming to cold pits to try and figure out. we change the ecu maf and altitude sensor fixed a loose spark plug wire conector and sent him back out no issues, 130 mins later a hic up which this time was fuel so we pit for fuel and driver change, 3rd driver goes in and all 10 gals goes in pull off light covers install a forward facing camera and away we go. some contact was made by a car that was testing for the 25 which in that race we will be in the same class no damage to either car i believe. car still running good trying to save more fuel to get back on track so we dont have to do a splash at the end from only putting 9 gals in on the first stop. car ran 115 mins then hic up so we come in for drivers change and fuel clean the lights and wind shield, sent back out with our final driver with 146 mins to go. that would be a long strech for fuel which i dont think the car could save with fuel consumption earlier in the race, but then the esr broke and oil line and completed most of a lap, my driver was the first car down the front straight i told him motor blew braking for chicain he slow early and over the radio basicly said wow thank for the heads up thats a lot of oil then i saw a few yellows in turn 4 from cars not slowing enough threw the oil. about 36 mins of yellow and black time which put us close without doing a splash of fuel at the end so we go for it. with 10 mins togo i tell my driver to watch for the hic up of runing out of fuel we have about 3 laps after that, so if i saw the 5 min board first i would tell him to stay out. sure enough had a hic up so we pit for a splash and as we send him back out the 5 min board comes out then we finsih and Bloising saddles record in class at endurance races is now 3 1st, 1 2nd, and 10th. cant wait for the 25hr this year where we are shooting for a podium.
 
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The CSCC Safety Team presented Gary Bockman, the driver of the Norma sports racer when the engine let go, oiling the track with a memento. Adam Jacobsen, the Safety Chief of Cascade, grabbed one of th empty grease sweep bags, had every member of the Safety Team sign it and presented it to Gary after the race. What a mess to clean up!
 
Pretty much goes without saying that I had a pretty good time. Jeez, what's not to like? My sincerest thanks to the workers for "enduring" 8 hours at their posts.

If anyone has a good shot of our team at the awards ceremony I'd really appreciate a link or something. Thanks.
 
Yee- haaa, that was fun.

My thanks too to the workers-
more like 12 hours for them!

And we really couldn't have had much better weather for racing.

Who knew that sports racer had 8 corners worth of oil in it?

(Randy, ask Karen Stimson- her daughter (Lauren?) is the Cascade historian, and was taking lots of pics)

t
 
Wow, what an event and the ending with all the crews, drivers, workers etc along the wall with cars screaming by to take the checker at 9pm was just unreal! Team Two and a Half Men Racing ran a strong 2nd in L3 less than 2 laps off the pace. We fought a really severe vibration in the car for the better part of 4 hours. We changed the RF on the 2nd fuel stop and then the RR on the 3rd fuel stop. The car was shaking so badly, especially entering T4 and T10 under braking, that it felt as if the wheels were ready to fall off. The problem seemed to have been caused by a new sticker Hoosier spinning a bit on the wheel and going out of balance by nearly 6 ounces. Thank you Cascade and workers for making all this possible. The car ran beautifully and used only about 1/3 quart of oil for the entire 8 hours...and this in a 126K original motor. Gotta love them Miatas! Congratulations to Frank, Geoff and James for their L3 win and to all the class winners. For you guys who choose not to do this event at the end of the year......you are missing out on what I think is the Best Event of the Year!! Endurance racing can certainly get into your blood!! I think I am suffering. Till next year folks......
 
Echoing Randy (and others) thanks to all the workers for enduring the race and watching over us. Thanks to Bullet for a great car (and food!), and Joe and Randy for being great teammates.

Dan
#15 (for that weekend, anyway), now back to my old #102
 
Congratulations to the class winners, and really to everyone who put in the time to run this race.

Re pictures--Lauren's camera was being cantankarous about taking pictures at night. She was complaining about it not working well for the awards, but I'll ask her to check for your team.
 
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