2019 Spec e30 Season Finale

The NASA Norcal Spec e30 Championship blasted into Sonoma Raceway October 26th and 27th for a no hold barred double points smackdown of a weekend, consisting of qualifying and three races with the usual suspects, as well as a few ringers that showed up to try to take a win away from the usual suspects.

Saturday!

In the morning meeting, series organizer Nick Theimann pointed out that Andy Chittum was the points leader for the season, leading by a formidable 117 points, but with 600 on tap for the double points weekend, one misstep could shake up the order significantly.  Just to prove his point, Thiemann, in second position for the season then went out for qualifying and set a fast 1:56.8 lap on the twisty technical 2.52 mile course a good 8 tenths faster than previous round winner Chittum. 

But it was veteran Spec e30 racer Scott Clough that did Nick one better with a 1.56.3 that initially set the pace until local race hero Tim Barber stepped in with a legitimately fast 1.56.0 to take pole position.  Brian Shiflett, and Forrest Cook filled out the top 6, and the rest of the field fell within the 1.58s, just behind the leaders.

At the drop of the green the roared off the line without a single bauble on the standing start, but the right hand side of the track seemed to be slightly faster, with Clough getting the jump on Barber and Chittum just edging ahead of Theimann.  By the time the field poured into T4, the side by side had worked its way out and they filed into T6 in that order.

But Chittum missed a shift coming out of T6, allowing Theimann to come motoring by, and the rest of the field right on his bumper into T7.  Chittum got his act back together narrowly got out of the reach of the field, and chased down Theimann, while Barber took advantage of his speed advantage to sneak back by Clough with an over-under into T7 and making it stick in 8.  By the end of the first lap, the field had mostly settled down, except for sometime Spec e30 hotshoe Aristotle Balogh who had missed qualifying and making up nearly half the field on the first two laps.

While Barber slowly pulled away from Clough, Chittum caught up to Theimann and began pondering how he could make it by the fast #21 car.  Initially, Theimann proved difficult to figure out, but with Balogh free of the rest of the field, and starting to bridge a 6 second gap up to 4th place, Chittum began to push harder.

With a fast run through 10, Chittum made it through 11 just inches from Theimann's bumper drafted down the front straight, then cut inside, overlapping in T1 and up into T2.  But Theimann still held an advantage, and was able to stay ahead in T3.  Next lap Chittum did the same thing, but this time doubling up in T2, and was able to get up the inside of the exit of T3, making the pass stick.  Slowly, Chittum was able to pull ahead, just as Balogh reached the battle.

With Barber and Clough checked out, Chittum got a good gap, and was able to hold it as Balogh made his way around Theimann.  The two held even for a few laps, but with lapped traffic, Balogh was able to catch Chittum and make it past just before the end of the race.

Sunday!

With a hard fought race on a oddly greasy and difficult track the day before, cooler temperatures were forecast, but higher winds, which were sure to produce the battle of the year.  Unfortunately, due to nearby forest fires, NASA was unable to secure Emergency Ambulances for the Sunday event, so they were forced to cancel the event.

Season Points!

With a 117 point lead going into the final weekend, Chittum then retained the lead at the end, and pending official results becomes the 2019 NASA Norcal Champion.  This is Chittum's 3rd Championship, but 1st as a solo driver, previously teaming up as Team BTM Motorwerks and winning in 2011 and 2012.  Nick Theimann, while leading for much of the year held on to second place overall, and Forest Cook was able to make up enough points on JP Cadoux in the final race to hold on to third.

NASA Norcal Spec e30 will return March 14-15 2020 back at beautiful Sonoma Raceway for a whole new season, stay tuned for more!

Just Slow Enough to Succeed

Losing Our Head

Last weekend USTCC Round 4 took place at the Utah Motorsport Campus, and I was really excited.  Not only would I be back in Rich Petersen's outstanding MINI, but the car was in really great shape after a promising podium at Laguna Seca in Round 2, and a dangit-could-have-passed-that-guy result at Sears Point in round 3.

The MINI had been to the engine doctor, tuned, re-tuned, had a minor miss and an ever so slight vacuum leak fixed, and looked to be really competitive compared to the rest of the USTCC TC field.  The other more powerful heavy RWD competitors were sure to be good on the long drag race from a standing start at UMC's 3500ft front straight, but fresh optimal tuning, forced induction, a base elevation of over 4000ft, previous experience on the track and the possibilities looked quite good for the little car.

In fact, morning practice on Friday went well - in the midst of a busyish NASA Utah practice session, we dropped down to 2:14s during those first few re-discovery laps.  Given the allowed mods and power to weight ratio for the TC class, this looked pretty promising for the following day's race.

But in the second practice session, the car had difficulty starting, and didn't want to stay running.  A problem with an improperly mounted tire brought the car right into the pits, and then a small coolant leak surfaced.

After some diagnostics in the paddock, it became apparent the small coolant leak had been letting just enough water out of the engine for just long enough to not set off any major bells or whistles, but to cause the engine some serious problems.  The old 'turn it over with a spark plug out' test produced a perfect geyser of clear coolant right out of the cylinder 1 spark plug hole.  Not good.  Need a new head gasket.  At least.

After a few minutes of consideration (we'd come a long way, the field was reduced in size, some other cars had issues as well, good opportunity to score points) Rich began the intricate process of removing the head gasket, and I scoured every auto parts store from Tooele to Ogden looking for the right head gasket.  If the car could be just patched up to finish half the laps of the race, we could salvage some of the trip.

After locating the part in Napa Auto Parts of Salt Lake City, I hopped into my rent-a-Prius and motored away, made the 74 mile round trip, and returned to the final unveiling of the head as it came off the block.

Brad from BTM Motorwerks applied his expert eye to the cleaned up head, and few things became apparent at that point.

1. There was about an 8 thousandths gap between two cylinders.
2. The valves weren't sealing properly in their seats anymore.
3. The MINI would not be racing this weekend, at least not with that head.

Plan B

There are a number of top notch motorsports shops and race teams headquartered at the world class UMC facility, and between talking to anyone that would listed to me, and touring the paddock for anything that would remotely fit into the USTCC Touring Car class (this discounted the race-prepped Lamborghini Rich found for rent) three reasonable options:

1. Tatum Racing's beautiful Martini & Rossi liveried Porsche Boxter.
2. Another team's professionally prepared 350z.
3. A Touring Car B Spec Ford Fiesta.

The Boxter seemed like the best option, but there was some question as to how close to legal I could get it in the short time I had before the Saturday race.  The 350z owner quoted me $3000 plus tires rental fee.  =:-o

Pass the Nachos - we're having a Fiesta!

The Race

The first thing you notice while sitting in a grid of legit touring cars making between 220 to 300+ hp at the wheels is how competitively quiet a TCB car is.  I was also glad I'd chatted with the driver of the USTCC Sportsman class e36M3 that was gridded behind me, so he was aware I would be doing my best, but proceeding from my standing start in my 120hp Fiesta, it would not be a breathtaking procedure to say the least.

I did manage to keep the back of the field in touch for the first lap, but once the field hit UMC's main straight, they basically disappeared, and I set about the business of proceeding as fast as I could manage.  One area the Fiesta has going for it is a really outstanding braking system.  But I quickly found in my first few turns that if you used more than about 50% of it for more than a fraction of a second, then you'd slowed down way too much.

Sometime later, the GT and Super Touring leaders came through at what seemed like FA-18 passing a pigeon speeds, and finally the TC class cars.  BTM Motorwerks' Mike Shawhan's e46 328 was closely followed by Speed SF's Patrick Chio's 350z and Gogo Gear's Gary Sheehan's Hyundai Genesis.  Looked like if I could just keep it on the track for a few more laps, I'd end up a respectable 4th.

But a few turns later, I passed two huge clouds of dust, one on each side of the track - I couldn't tell at the time, but I'm told the Hyundai was in one of them.  I came around for a white flag, finished the race, and learned I'd managed to squeeze out a podium from a weekend where we'd completely lost our head.

I can't thank the fine staff of NASA Utah, Dave Kizerian for helping me scope out rental cars and especially Cheri Miller for loaning me a great little car...that went just fast enough.

USTCC will be back at Sonma Raceway at Sears Point Oct 29th and 30th - stay tuned to USTCC.COM and FinalDrive.tv for all the hard charging action.

USTCC, WTCC and the BTMMINI

September 21-23 the BTM Motorwerks of Campbell tuned MINI Cooper S build by Rich Petersen of RM Petersen Construction is racing at Sonoma Raceway! Stop by the BTM Motorwerks paddock area for a tour of the mighty MINI.

In addition to the US Touring Car race, FIA World Touring Cars are racing, along with a number of other series.

Keep track of the weekend's action by following Andy @mmmotors on twitter, and come on down Saturday and Sunday to root for the little car!  And get a MINI T Shirt!

Ship Date!

The two main areas my waking consciousness lingers on are the latest technology and building race cars.

Sadly, my thankfully steady but drab day job testing software somehow long ago ceased to follow the exclamation-point filled headlines on the forefront of technology, but having been in this industry for a few years and marking the changes through the fabulous tech coverage of sites like Engadget and Gizmodo, the perspective of our progress in the past few years is truly dizzying. 16 Gigs on your fingernail? Amazing. Translate words real-time through the camera on your off the shelf handheld? Stupendous. Maybe even a good synchronized mobile Gmail client. Unbelievable.

The lovely online real-time media facilitates us hanging on the words and terrific evil plans for world domination of our tech overlords…they promise amazing gadgets, and often deliver them, sometimes even when they say they will. It’s a tough balance - my favorite mobile devices are announced, and have to survive a bevy challenges -- the company’s own ability to execute on time, carrier approval, and finally other competitive company’s friction just to make it into my hands. Not an easy job.

To date, I’ve participated in the dis-assembly of a number of reasonably nice street BMWs and other cars, all for the express purpose of making them better for racing against other people on the track. Every one of them had a plan behind them, a shipping schedule as it were, of when the dis-assembly, fab work, reassembly, upgrades, and testing needed to be complete, and when I’d unleash them on the unsuspecting racing public, with better or worse results.

It’s a simplified comparison to be sure, but there’s an interesting point about racing that’s not as prevalent with the tech industry...the hard ship date.

Sure, plenty of companies shoot for a device to be ready for the Christmas selling season, or for a magazine reviewer to have a piece of software to review it in time for a publication date, but there’s always an alternate plan or schedule slop to work with. But when I strap into the race car I’ve built, the grid marshal blows three blasts on his whistle, and I’ve got just about 5 minutes ‘til my ship date has arrived. Checklists should show tire pressures have been set, suspension aligned and tuned using any recent test data, wheel nuts torqued, gas and ballast set correctly. Yes, it’s easier to get a race car certified for competition, and to pre-flight it. But while dropping a call using an Infineon chipset can be frustrating, dropping a wheel off the side of your car at 110mph in turn 10 at Infineon Raceway invokes a whole new perspective on one’s problems.

So, hopefully in the weeks to come, I’ll find a few more things to say about racing, and about tech...all I need now is a hard ship date to get my attention away from other shiny things and tickle the keys on my laptop on a regular basis.

-A-

Infineon photo by Head On Photos. True to form, the BTM Motorwerks Spece30 pictured leading through Turn 10 was DQ'd from 2nd place on its first race for being a few pounds too light, then soundly won its second race, in abysmal February weather with the author behind the wheel.