I had hoped to be more competitive than I was. But really I should be grateful to be there at all given the car was sticking out of a tire wall two weeks ago... The guys at Raven and Maaco of Markham literally worked around the clock and through a long holiday weekend to get me back on the track in time. Even so, I spent most of the race school fixing little things that you don't find until you run the car: small fluid leaks; severed wires, tire rubbing, etc.
Ultimately, I was plagued by a still bent chassis. Though the wheels were correctly aligned, the chassis was not. One side of the splitter was about 2in higher than the other side. So I never got the front end to stick properly no matter how much I fiddled with other stuff.
Too bad really because for once I was at a track where my horsepower disadvantage would not be such an issue. I got down to the 1:34s. But I think the car had quite a lot more in it than that. Moral of the story... Don't crash 2 weeks before O'Fest. Or at all...
I was far too cautious on the starts. I had a corrupted flash card for the feature sprint - so no video (or dash for that matter). And I broke a throttle cable in the enduro...
More excuses:
- Hitting a wall will mess you up. The car never "felt right" all week. Even if it was. Zapped my confidnece.
- I was also really thrown off by Randy's 12mph start... Not in the right gear at all. And everybody else capitalized on it. My bad...
- That Turner car is wider when it's sliding sideways. And it does go in a straight line.
- Later in the weekend I also discovered - in chasing a fluid leak - that all 6 of my spark plugs had vibrated loose. The coil-packs were just sitting on top of the plugs. New plugs and snapping them back on helped a bit too.
I was fighting a pushing car all weekend. It was so bad that I had to take camber out of the front end. I wasn't getting full tire contact. This is not a track for push. Normally, the thing would be on rails through those corners. It felt like it had no splitter at all. I fiddled with the wing angle to compensate but it made little difference. We were not really going fast enough for the wing to have a significant effect.
Getting beat by Randy and Seth is no disgrace. But I would have liked to be closer in the hunt...
