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Great CA Speedway Weekend


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Posted

Al, you missed it...

 

Great weekend for me, as well as almost everyone else. I'm sure there will be an "official" write up, but:

Carson grenaded a motor like Ive never seen. Strange, being able to see shiny rotating crank bits from the top side! Ouch.

I found myself with two square tires (down to the cords) after picking up two drafting situations in one lap and finding myself trying to enter T3 @~140+ instead of the usual ~130. Tires are cheaper than car damage, so I sacrificed the rubber and saved Mike and Kevin's cars.

Speaking of Kevin, he was all over me all weekend. And the in races we were close too. Start to finish (seriously), it was tough holding him off.

Sunday's qualifying had 50% of the field in the 1:59s. We had a TIGHT bunch of cars!

 

Thanks to JBA Headers for the Saturday night BBQ as well!

Posted

Damn, cancel my post and put it here, good stuff....... I got Brad on the first race (no camera). Then the next two are filled with his rear bumper filling up my windshield so he got me on the other two. All three races were like that for the two of us.

 

Weird, 36 and 63 (ying/yang?), Ford and Chevy, both silver and one with red numbers and the other with blue.......

 

The most fun you can have with your clothes on

Posted

I saw lots of F-bodies, including a very nice white and blue 73ish Trans-Am that also shows up at Buttonwillow. There was also another root beer colored 2nd gen Trans-Am and some nice 4th gens in the HPDE, I liked the black LS1 TA in particular. A purple 3rd gen Camaro showed up I think with Super Chevy.

 

Here's my race report:

 

Got back at 2:00am last night after the 10 hour tow home! Completely worth it BTW, there is nothing like flying around at 130+ on the oval banking at CA Speedway! The car performed flawlessly, the driver (me) was a bit cautious and inconsistent resulting in mid-back of the pack finishes.

 

I did manage to join the under 2:00 club which most CMCers present belonged to. There were about CMC 18 cars, some failed, one spectacularly! CA Speedway is definitely the acid test....Carson Scheller in the #6 Firebird was on the WARM-UP lap and threw a rod out of his motor, which I had the only spin of my weekend in his oil. wink.gif That motor was a sight to see, you could see the crankshaft in the motor through a rather *large* hole!!!

 

Mike Plum in the #38 3rd gen Camaro put a huge hole in his radiator, was lucky to find a spare from 7s Only and got it in before the race that day. That same session a piece of metal hit my car somewhere, did not cause any damage though. A piece of Carson's rod? wink.gif

 

I had a great battle going with Ed Hamilton in his #189 Mustang, in our last race he overcooked the last sweeper before the oval entry and I held my breath for a minute until his car stopped sliding towards the wall. No damage and lots of fun was had. We both drafted and passed each other several times!

 

Our Nick Steel got some birthday cake as well as some podium finishes, congrats Nick!!!

 

The group as a whole ran a spectacular weekend. We were in a 60 car group, that's right, 60 cars!!!! We CMCers did not have any major incidents to my knowledge. That says a lot running with that many cars and in a place that is largely unforgiving if you do make a mistake. We did get unhappy when some of the faster classes grouped in with us kept taking away the turns from us in being impatient for passing, some are just not brought up right!

 

Back to the lap times of the group, I have never seen it so tight. CMC is truly the driver's class!

 

Whenever we go to CA Speedway we get a lot of attention. This time it was Super Chevy, who wanted to see all the GM cars except mine for photos. sad.gif Something about Pontiac High Performance and contractual obligations, I said send them out here! The Society of Automotive Engineers interviewed me for a feature on women racers in their publication, that was pretty cool! To top it all off JBA threw us a nice BBQ Saturday night.

 

Chris Knight from AI was seen behind her two foot wide smile all weekend! wink.gif Her black Camaro was runnin' good! We missed you Mike P. and your AI Camaro!

 

Lastly I cannot be more enthusiastic about our new rookie Karl Chicca in the #33 4th gen Camaro. He had never been to CA Speedway, barely any track time in his car and he drove great all weekend! Great job Karl!!!

 

It is really good to be back!

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Posted

Wow, 60 cars in one group is a lot of traffic on that track, particularly with the 180 degree turns in the infield. Still, I think I'd take that over the rain we had last year. Who knew that above 130 4th gen windshield wiper motors arent strong enough to bring the wipers back down?!!

 

Glad to hear about the close racing and the fun. I did hear a rumor about someone spinning and not hitting anything on the bank??? talk about scary!

Posted
Who knew that above 130 4th gen windshield wiper motors arent strong enough to bring the wipers back down?!!

 

I think you need new wiper motors, my street car's wipers worked great last season when California Speedway was all soggy. Not that they did much at that speed, but they did move like they should!

Posted

Hey, I can't find the GM section!

 

I got one on my desktopsalook.gif

 

gmsection.jpg

Posted

What a weekend. Brad Simpson was scary fast in turn 2-3. I was one of the cars he drafted momentarily as he blew by. Julie looked good in her Firebird. Kevin is getting hard to get by, really hard. The real fast guys kept in fast and clean. Addison Lee made it too. I don't know if we should allow his Dad to keep that car tuned. It' way too fast. Dave Morin got the #68 back up front. It did feel odd sitting in a Mustang watching my beautiful old #33 go by. karl really did a great job and you couldn't wipe the grin off his face. Now he knows what we've been talking about. The great group of people we spend our weekends with. Tough competetion and great friends. Thanks for the help to Tony on the radios, it's nice knowing what's going on. Kyle on thr grid, and all that the directors do to make sure the weekend goes well. Gotta sign off now and go find 30 hp and 40lbs. torque so i can get back up there and apply some pressure to the front guys. Man this group is getting fast. I think the west coast guys are getting to be a real threat to repeat as CMC Champions again.

 

 

Pat stone

Posted

Yeah

 

I had a great weekend as well

 

It was to bad for all the bad luck that happened to everyone

 

It was great to see everyone again

 

Can't wait for Thunderhill

Posted

Kevin...Nice videos...Makes me think the 1100 mile round trip to Fontana would have been worth it. Maybe next year. See you at T'Hill! Gary

Posted
Here are two vids from the Sunday races,

QR2 is Qual Race,

R2 is Race

 

Way to recover the stall there near the end of the race (19:50). What happened there?

Posted

I went in a little too hot and didn't want to let the clutch out until I had the rear under control. Easy spot to loop. My heel/toe isn't all that great

Posted

Aha! So that's what the back of my car looks like!

 

Seriously, I'm in that so much I ought to be in the credits. That was a ton of fun - hope you enjoyed it too Kevin. That took a lot of work holding you off all damn day.

 

For you guys just watching, there;s a TON of good clean give and take in both of those!

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