Grand Bayou Race Series Round #1

Well, the 2008 - 2009 Grand Bayou Race Series got underway this past weekend (October 4th - 5th). It has been a while since I have been to No Problem Raceway as the #32 Eagle Talon TSi has been down getting allot of new goodies under the hood for this season. I was really looking forward to seeing how the new engine setup was going to work at this track. We tested the car at Road Atlanta in August and did very well. But No Problem is a completely different track than Road Atlanta. So here we go into the series....

Saturday October 4th Practice Day - The morning started off good as I got to the track around 7:45 in the a.m. Drivers meeting at 8:30 and my group would be on the track at 9:45. Tire pressures set, lug nuts torqued down, fully fueled, everything seems good to go for the first run of the day. We all get out on the track fairly spread out and getting the tires heated up. We go green and everything is going fine for about the first 10 minutes of the 20 minute session. The next time I get onto the front straight away I punch it and basically I am not going anywhere in a hurry. Look at the boost gauge and it is at zero. Check the other gauges and they are all well within operating limits. So I just slow the car down and take it back to our pit area. After a good 20 minutes at looking over the car, I find that a plugged vacuum line has lost the plug and I have a nice boost leak at that point and am not creating any boost at all. So I dig through my pit box and find a plug to stop this thing from leaking. I tie wrapped it on this time to try and hinder that from occurring again. After that, we go back out onto the track for our 2nd session of the day. Not much better to be honest with you. The boost is all over the place. It goes to 17 (where it should be) then spikes to 21 - 22 on the front straight when i am at the end of 3rd gear. Going through some of the higher speed turns, it is only going to 10 psi in 4th where it should be around 15 at that point. So I cut the session short to go in to mess with the fuel maps to see if something could be off there. After lunch, I go back out for the 3rd session of the day. Everything actually is working quite nicely now....That is until around 15 minutes into it. I head down the back short shoot straight and heard that my exhaust sounded louder than usual against the concrete retaining wall. So I go ahead and pull back into the pits; where it seems I spending most of the day, to find that I did in fact have a huge exhaust leak. It seems that one of the bolts had come out of the 02 housing and the downpipe and had blown the gasket there completely in half. Very nice exhaust leak there. So I am scrambling to find a gasket in my box and around the pits but no one seemed to have one. Well I had to basically call it a day at this point and ride around to try and find an auto parts store that was still open on Saturday here in Donaldsonville Louisiana. No luck, so I ended up calling a guy we race with Chris Carver and he was going to bring one to the track in the morning for me. Could NOT have run without him finding me one. What a way to start the season off you know?

Sunday Practice - Well, I get to the track nice and early 7:30 a.m. to find some guys already jumping on my car to help me change this gasket out. The guys that race in the GBRS are a great group of guys. I mean I get to the track and they already had found me a new bolts and had the gasket on and all that was left was to tighten the bolts down. Saved me ALLOT of hassle. I can’t say enough about those guys. So we get out onto the course for our practice session. I never do too much in practice, I just wanted to make sure the gasket was holding and everything was in better working order than yesterday. Everything seemed to be fine except the car pushes like a dump truck on rails in the tight corners. With all the new power, the Tanabe GF-210s can’t get the car planted enough in the turns and it is REALLY effecting the cars handling in the tight stuff. In the high speed portions of the track the car is FLYING. I am going through turn 1 now at 110 - 115 where as I use to only go through there around 95 so that is a HUGE step in the right directions. But the car is under steering so badly I am losing massive amounts of time in the tight sections. After practice I check my laps time and am disappointed but not surprised to see my times are basically where they were last season. This is ALL due to the car not turning in the tight corners. Coil overs anyone ???

Qualifying - In qualifying most of the time I take about 3 laps to get the car warmed up, 2 laps balls out and then a cool down lap and done. So that’s what I did. I hang back in the grid so I can get a pretty clean track out there. It went much as I thought it would with the car still driving like a brick in the turns, but managed to take the pole with a time around 1:30.8. I bested 2 BMW's, Miata and an RX7. Not anywhere near where I thought I would be, but with the way the car is handling, I'll take it today.

Heat Race - Gridded up on the track I am lined up and ready to go. We get the tires scrubbed in and the brakes heated up and we go green....Well this race started off on the wrong foot, I miss a shift on the start and get passed by at least 5 cars before the first turn. No big deal it’s a 20 minute race I tell myself. So lap by lap I start to catch the BMW's I am chasing in class. After about 8 - 10 minutes I pass one of them on the front straight and set my eyes on the other BMW. We battle it out in the tight stuff for a lap or two then I set him up in turn 14 to over take him on the front straight. Everything worked just as I saw it in my mind; for the first time today, and I rocket around him and continue on with the heat race. Towards the end of the race, I notice the rear end is starting to skate around a bit. I had a descent lead so I took it easy for the last 5 minutes or so of the heat race. Back in the pits I take a look at my tires to see I have corded 2 of them pretty badly. I make the decision to move the 2 "good" ones to the front and the corded ones to the rear. Should be an interesting feature race at least.

Feature Race - So here we are in the feature race on basically 2 corded rear tires and 2 descent front tires. Should be quite the race here in my car. We are gridded up and off to the track. Down the front straight with 24 cars weaving in and out scrubbing in their tires and getting focused in on the start. I have an RX7 to my inside, a BMW behind me and a Porsche 951 in front of me. We come 2 by 2 to the starting station and GREEN FLAG RACING !!!! Cars go everywhere on the start, left right, all over. So I hook onto the bumper of the RX7 and we split the difference and pass 3 cars in the 1st two turns. I am ahead of the BMW's (my main competition today) as we head onto the front straight away. We all rocket down towards turn 1 and here i go for the first time on 2 corded tires at 110 mph through turn 1. VERY interesting to say the least. The rear slides out a bit but I keep it under control and try and get the car slowed down to go through turns 2 & 3. The car goes completely sideways through turn 3 and I am reeling on the wheel to keep it out of the side of a Porsche. Get her straightened up as both BMW's go flying past me. Well this should be a good 20 minute race here. So here we go, not in dead last place, but close enough. I went from passing 3 cars on the start to being almost in last place in 3 turns. Well, time to buckle down and try and catch the BMWs. After about 8 - 10 minutes into the race I finally catch 1 of the 2 BMWs I am chasing. I swing past one of them on a short shoot straight and lay the power down to zip around him. I focus in on the 2nd BMW and set him up for the front straight pass again. I rocket around him there and try to pull away from him though turns 2 & 3. But the car is really sliding all over the place now so there he is all over my tail pipe. It takes all I have to keep him back there and going into turn 10 I cook the turn in a VERY bad under steer and he slips to the inside. So I tuck up behind him and once again take him over on the front straight. Back into the lead somehow and away we go fighting it our once again in the tight turns in the back of the track. He is ALL over me in the tight turns but I easily pull away from him in the fast sections. We go by the start/finish line and I see the 5 minutes to go sign from the flag guys there. At this point, the car is basically steering from the rear in some turns. With the bad under steer it is getting very hard to keep the car under power at all in the turns. I am just sliding all over the track and can’t wait for the race to be over with. Somehow I have found a way to pull away from the BMW I have been fighting out with on the straight-aways and have about a 3/4 of a straight lead on him. All I have to do now is contend with some faster cars approaching me, get out of their ways and keep my car from getting into the wall. Going down the short shoot between 8 & 9 I see the start finish line off to my right and they have the checkered flag out and ready to wave. This was a great sight for me. The car is really hard to drive at this point and all I can hear is rubber hitting my fenders every time I put the power down. I basically limp it around the final few turns and ease onto the throttle on the front straight and took the checkered flag for the win in the blue bracket. Man, I am worn out fighting this thing for 20 minutes. What a way to start the season off. I am spent just remembering it again

Wrapping it Up - After the feature race I get the car back to the pits and take a look at what is left of my tires. The right rear tire is all but gone. There is about a 2 inch wide section all the way around the tire that is just the metal cords now. 3 spots that are about 5-6 inches big that is nothing but the cords. The left front tire; bless its soul, put up with such a bad under steer the cords on the outside were showing through almost as bad as the right rear was. Chunk of the tire were missing and you could see the shinning metal cords clearly in some sections of the tire. WOW, what a first round of the series. I took the pole, heat race and feature wins somehow...But overall I was disappointed in the way the car handled with the new power in the turns. Coil overs will be ordered today and try to find some tires for the next round which is only 4 short weeks away. I would really like to find some extra 16x8 rims so I can have a practice set of tires and my race tires ready to go. But the money situation now with having to spend $650 + dollars on new slicks is really going to hamper the possibility of getting to Round #2 of the series. I hate to say that as well with me getting the win and taking an early points lead in the class. But with the new coil overs on I will be picking up allot of time on the track so I will most likely be moving out of the blue bracket anyway. I may not have a shot now at an overall championship (who knows though), but with the coil overs the car is going to handle SO much better. And that is all I am working towards as of right now. The under steer was killing me and the car as well. There are still some bugs to be worked out of the new engine setup. That boost spike deal bothers me at the end of 3rd gear, but I am sure we can get that resolved fairly easily. Well, that’s about all for this blog. A win, some blown gaskets, boost leaks, corded tires, battling BMWs with massive under steer. Gotta love racing don't you