I let the Bridget's engine idle to warm up for second
runs. As I moved up to marshal, Ken Folch's Cortina
GT, two cars ahead of me, started to smoke like mad.
Ken seemed not to notice. I thought, gee, that's
enough smoke to make a Spridget pilot worry. When I
got up to the same patch of pavement, guess what
happened. Yup. Britcar curse of some sort. My car
started to smoke more than his. One guy came up to me,
waved the smoke out of his face, coughed a couple
of times and told me he thought I had just broken a
piston ring. No, I think it is just valve seals, I
replied. I blasted off on my run, and the smoke
stopped about halfway through my first lap. This run
felt much better than the first. If this isn't faster,
I thought, I don't know how to judge. Times came out.
Bill had beat my first run with a 1:19.506, but I had
cut 8 tenths to 1:19.031. Bob had dropped to 117.442
and Sean had improved to 121.019, so the first four
were unchanged. Sean told me he didn't think he could
catch Bill and me and he was not really worried about
those behind him. He also told me that we were never
going to catch Dr. Bobwrench. Since he, Linda and
the kids were already late for a party at his sister
Colleen's (I told you I'm Irish on my mother's side),
he took off, abandoning his final run. So it was
apparently down to Bill and me for second place. Deja
Vu. It was a Honda Civic at MOWOG I. This time,
I was a half-second ahead and still had a run to
go. No smoke this time. I was pushing Bridget a
little too hard, and she was doing a lot of pushing
herself. I have to learn to steer out of understeer a
little. Sometimes letting off on the power is not
enough, and I don't have the kind of torque to recover
when the revs drop. In the Sonett, it was always
enough to let off on the power. I was scrubbing too
much speed this way. I backed off for a bend once and
the rear went. I countersteered and hit the power and
the Yokos bit so hard It felt like I had been hit by a
car. Now I was tracking again, but was steering
towards the cones. A quick flick of the steering
snapped me back on course. When I got back in after
my two laps, a guy told me it looked wild and asked me
how it was. end of part 3
phile@pwcs.stpaul.gov
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