CarolinaHondas.com Racing just wrapped up our Chump 24 Hours at VIR race. In spite of some glitches, it was a great weekend. Here's a quick rundown with some pretty pictures.
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| Ricky crosses the checked flag at 10am on Sunday (sans windshield) |
We (Roger, Ricky, Kraig, and I) made it there Friday after having to drop the race car off the trailer and drive it the last 10 miles. The tow bus transmission was slipping and overheating. It needed a break, and is in need of a rebuild. But we all got there, got teched, and were all set to go racing. Chump Car races tend to be a little less picky about some of the rules, and the cars are generally much faster than your average LeMons field. Definitely much faster than us. We were not looking for a win, but a nice top 20 would be a victory to us.
Oh, and it was HOT and humid. A couple of hours working during the day could wipe you out. Ice would melt out of the coolers in an hour or so. Brutally hot to go racing. It would be tough on both the car and drivers.
We started off about 77th out of 101 cars that actually made the start, By the end of my first stint we were 27th and less than 10 laps off of the leader. As we pitted our position hung between high 20's and mid 30's and we generally stayed about 9 laps off of the leader. With the attrition at this sort of race we were looking at top 10 potential. Then it happened.
At our 8pm pit stop the hood pins were either left out our fell out. One lap into Kraig's stint the hood flies up on the front straight at over 100MPH. Kraig amazingly keeps his cool and makes it to the pit safely. The roof caved in, the windshield smashed, and the hood crumpled we just took ourselves out of any competition for the top 10, and had some work to do. After 2 hours of removing the windshield, cleaning up glass shards, and bending some metal we were back.
A few more relaxed pit stops later we crossed the finish at 44th. How could that be a victory? Well, the car ran great. Handling and braking were fantastic. It is a good race car and we learned that if we don't screw it up we have top 10 potential in a field of much faster cars. And, we had a blast; late braking past cars, schooling BMW and Miata drivers through the turns, and pwn'ing most of the field in the rain. Just a few pics below;
