Dale Cook, Ovr Fovnder and new list manager, just gave me the
"Send away!" message, so here's something that ought to test
the mettle of the new list mechanisms... It's the account of
my first drive in my MGB race car, at a track session at Sears
Point last Sunday.
--Scott "Safety REALLY Fast!" Fisher
Well, I finally got to drive my MGB on a race track yesterday.
I learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and got more confirmation
that if I'm going to do this myself, as opposed to winning the
lottery and hiring a professional race team, MGs are the right
choice for me for a lot of reasons.
Andy and I had stayed up only moderately late the night before
the race. We got the car to start Saturday about dusk, which
meant there could be no testing since it has no headlights;
since it also has a REALLY LOUD EXHAUST SYSTEM on it, we would
probably have caused a minor revolution in the neighborhood.
But in the starting process, we discovered the cause of the
noise that had scared us a little at the Enduro: the alternator
fan was rubbing on the body, having machined a nice bright
semicircle around one side of it. Hoping that my parts car's
alternator had been in good shape, we put the car on the trailer
and towed it to my house (after at LEAST driving the car up and
down Andy's block to get it in position for the trailer).
Andy and Linda got the alternator changed in record time ("This
must be one of the easiest things to replace on these cars,"
Linda said) while I cooked dinner. We admired my lovely parking
job -- I'd managed to get one of the trailer wheels up on the
curb -- and went in for some bell pepper fettucine with scallops
and shrimp in cream sauce (see rec.food.cooking for details :-).
At 3:30 in the morning we got up; Kim, blessings upon her, made
several pots of coffee while Andy and I tried to go over the
list of things we needed not to forget. Jeff and Jill showed up
shortly before 4:00, having decided to stay up all night at one
point. Ah, youth. We scraped some of the frost off our tow
car and started it; a block from home I noticed the coolant light
glowing on the dash of our '77 Pontiac wagon. We turned around,
filled the radiator and reserve tank, and the problem never
returned.
The Pontiac's handling is interesting. When unloaded, it makes
a minor, slow oscillation about its own yaw axis in right-hand
bends at speeds near or above 50 mph. When loaded with the
trailer, the oscillations are a little more severe but they
start the trailer joggling back and forth in a very frightening
manner. Or at least, it was frightening in the morning; by
the trip home I had done more exciting things and I figured out
the way to deal with the oscillations -- slow down to reduce
the speed, then nail the gas to put load on both trailer wheels
evenly and in a straight line. That works.
We got to the track well before dawn and had the wonderful
experience of seeing the sunrise over the eastern edge of
San Pablo Bay while walking the course. We did the uphill
section of the course, walking from about turn 1 through
the exit of the Carousel before we decided to get my car
through tech.
Starting my car on a frosty morning was another story. My
improvised choke connection didn't do the trick; we'd meant
to time the car at the track, so Andy loosened the distributor
pinch bolt and played with the distributor while I ran down
the battery. We pushed the car to where Sam Sjogren was able
to bring his Mustang and a set of jumper cables; Andy finally
hit upon a timing setting that seemed to start the car well
and I tried warming it up and charging the battery. I learned
that it wasn't yet 8:00 when Jerry Kunzman, one of the head
guys at the Capri Club, pointed out that the track was pretty
serious about not firing up race motors (race motors? moi?)
before 8:00, so we passed a quiet and very cursory tech (yeah,
that looks like a race car, here you go).
We broke into groups with our instructor; my instructor used
my tow car to take us on a track tour, since no one else
had a large enough vehicle to take four students and an
instructor. I then went back to the paddock to start the
car and bring it out near the pit lane, where we'd line up
to go out on course.
Lesson 1: Always do a quick sanity check under the hood
before each track session.
The car was running rough, but I figured it was still cold --
the temperature gauge, one of only two we'd managed to get hooked
up before going out on course, was only reading 140 degrees.
In the middle of my first lap, it became obvious that the
rough running was NOT just the car coming to temperature. It
sounded like the car was running on only two or three
cylinders -- a very Walter Mittyesque tapocketa-tapocketa
noise as I tried to climb the hill. After a couple of laps
of this, and as I realized the car was dying when I'd shift
and starting when I would let out the clutch, I pulled in.
I drove all the way back to the FAR OUT IN THE GODDAMN STICKS
paddock site that my braindead and sleepless teammate had
selected for us (or is that brainless and sleepdead, Jeffie?)
and decided to start troubleshooting. Torrey came up to the
car as I was unpinning the hood. "You car is broken, Daddy?"
Fortunately, the problem was obvious and simple. There
isn't supposed to be a 1/4" air gap between the front
carburettor and the intake manifold. A half-inch wrench
made short work of that problem. "Is it fixed?" Kim asked,
as I climbed in. Flip the kill switch to ON, raise the red
covers on the aircraft-style master and fuel pump switches,
and hit the black rubber button. Torrey covered her ears.
Yeah, I guess it's fixed. Too late to go back on course,
so I drove around an empty portion of the paddock trying to
bed in the brakes.
Lesson 2: When you think it's right, check it again.
I lined up for the second session, chatting (yelling is
more like it) to my instructor who lined up on grid next
to me. We got the go-ahead and I took off, this time with
something approximating power. We hadn't really tuned it
since the Enduro, except to get it to start that morning,
but at least it was better than running on two cylinders.
The track is very different when you're able to accelerate.
My bedding-in of the brakes helped some, though they were
still a little spongy -- I guess I hadn't really got them
all perfect with the new Mity-Vac brake bleeder, but they
were starting to grip well as they heated up and the pads
and discs bedded in to one another.
I had a good line through one, turned in well for 1A but
was going slowly enough that I had to drop into second for
2, a right-hander that crests a hill. From there it's a
short drop to 3, which is a climbing left-hander; I think
that once I get the nerve I'll be able to take 3 flat out,
since it's cambered well and climbing enough to load the
suspension.
3A is a fun turn. When you apex 3, the track-out line
takes you to the right across the track, towards something
you can't see because it's on the far side of the hill --
you're aiming for the end of the berm at the exit of 3A.
In turn, when you do that right, you track out to the left
and continue to round the crest of this hill, which means
you can't see your track out point either. If you've
done it right -- and later that day I got to the point
that I could do this repeatably -- your left two wheels
touch the edge of the track, just barely getting in the
dirt.
The first time I did that, I corrected by steering right,
which of course screwed me up for 4. What you're supposed
to do in 4 is keep your wheels at the left edge of the
track, where they've been since track-out from 3A, and then
start a traditional late-apex turn-in for 4, which is a
90-degree right-hander with a few twists. For one thing,
the short straight leading up to 4 is downhill, so you pick
up speed well once you get the car back on the pavement.
However, it turns out that 4 itself is flat or slightly
banked, so the suspension loads up somewhat and gives you
good grip.
On my first few laps there, I didn't get it right. I kept
getting spooked by the sensation of having my wheels just
nudging the edge of the track at the exit of 3A, and that
made me wimp out and take a shallow line to 4. Fortunately
the car was sticking really well, the exit to 4 has a lot
of runout, and 5 is a gentle, climbing turn to the right,
so mostly this mistake just made me slow and I missed the
apex to 5 most laps.
Again, that wasn't dangerous, because turn 6, the Carousel,
has a number of lines through it. It's a good place for a
dirt-track pass (as I learned later when Sam passed the
Ferrari F40 on the outside of that turn). The Carousel is a
longer-than-180 degree sweeper, a fast turn; I could take it
in fourth by later in the session when I'd learned to carry
a little speed into it, but even early I was taking it in
the upper quadrant of third gear. The B just stuck there,
its modified suspension making good use of the A008Rtus that
we had mounted for the school.
About two-thirds of the way through the Carousel, there's a
piece of rippled pavement in the innermost car-width or so
of the track. I'd been taking a conservative, consistent and
safe line about midway through the turn and using this pavement
as my throttle-on point. When I'd do that in the B, the front
tires would get grip, they'd turn the car in towards the apex
and I'd get that wonderful sensation of the car pointing first
into, then out of the turn -- without moving my hands on the
wheel.
If you have enough power, you track out wide from the Carousel
onto the tail end of the drag strip. From there you've got a
left-hand kink that leads into a short straight, then the
braking area for 7, a 180-degree right. The line through here
seemed to be to give up the kink -- apex late but hold your
position with your wheels on the painted line at the inside of
the exit of the kink, so that you're lined up to take the very
outermost part of 7. 7 is a classic late-apex; right near the
apex there's a patch of rough pavement, and the berm is a little
broken so you get good audio/tactile feedback when you cut
across it. Track out from 7 ends you up at a pothole at the
end of the berms across track from the apex. There's another
little throwaway bend after that, to the left; you want to hug
it, clip the berm at the exit, and power on to make the right-
hand part of Turn 8.
Turn 8 begins the esses (unless the unnumbered kink after 7
does). 8 has two berms, separated by an escape road, in
the middle; the far end of the second berm is the apex. You
want to feel that berm nudge your car as you've applied the
gas to start tracking out towards 8A, a downhill turn that is
also slightly blind and to the right. After that comes
turn 9, a long left-hander that takes you within hailing distance
of 1, across the infield. From 8A you want to move the car to
the right of the track and stay out in the middle of 9 till you
pass the corner worker's tower and see the CAMEL GT bridge.
You want to start moving left so that when you get to the
bridge, your wheels are on the painted line at the inside of 9
and you're passing under the C of CAMEL.
Then you start turning in for 10. 10 is a fast right-hander with
a lot of room at track-out, at least if you have apexed it at
the right point. I was apexing at about the next-to-last painted
square on the berm at the inside; apparently for racing you want
to apex it a little earlier, but later is always safer. After this
your car slides left, into the wide apron if you've clipped the
berms at the right point, and then you come up on the straight
leading into 11. I was always applying just a little nudge of
confidence on the brakes to enter 10; I've been told that if I
really carry enough speed through the esses I'll have to brake
a little harder.
11 is a 180-degree right, a very tight hairpin that has a scary
looking concrete wall at its outside and a flat, painted
virtual berm and several piles of white-painted tires on the
inside. There's typically a lot of passing into, in, and out
of 11 during a race. At the Enduro, for instance, a light
sports-racer would outbrake the GT1 Pontiac Trans-Am into 11,
hold the tighter inside line but be stuck apexing early, and
the T-A would fall back in the turn but nail the gas early,
take a late apex (somewhere between the virtual berm and the
last stack of tires) and win the drag race up to the end of
the pit wall that marks 12. These two cars did this on every
lap of the last fifteen or so. I tried a couple of lines through
11, some of them on purpose...
There's a medium straight from 11 to 12, which is a left-hand
kink at the end of the pit wall, and from this you let the
car drift to the right as you head for turn 1 and your next lap.
So anyway, I did this for about 20 minutes, hving lots of fun
and gradually feeling comfortable with the car, learning to
use its grip, and enjoying the way it still feels like an MG --
correctable, stable, solid, responsive, and nimble -- while
at the same time rolling far less, reacting to pavement imper-
fections far less, and generally behaving like the best-handling
car I think I've ever driven.
When I took the checker (and I saw it this time, Andy :-), I
slowed to take a cool-off lap and just practiced driving the
lines well. About Turn 7 I felt something wiggle in the rear
end -- something's loose. Trying to will it to get me to the
pits, I slowed down, raised my hand to indicate my slowing to
those behind me, and pulled off the racing line. Another
wiggle, bigger this time; I made it through 8 and 8A, only maybe
a quarter mile to go. More wiggles; I was coming up on 9 when
the car slewed to one side. I steered into the slew, which was
the way I wanted to go anyway -- to the left, off the track --
and braked. The pedal went to the floor and I went off track,
heading over a patch of pavement and onto the dry grass. As
I was aimed for the tire wall with no brakes, I looked to
my left at the gentle hill, made a very fast assessment of my
speed (low), and turned uphill. That did the trick; I got
about fifteen feet and stopped.
Fortunately, Larry and Michael were working that corner; I
gave the Driver OK signal that Larry had thoughtfully shown
us at the Enduro, he signalled across the track to where the
rest of Team Fizzball, not to mention my family, were all
wondering why I had parked on the hill to chat with Larry.
("I'm sure there's a better time to talk to him," Kim later
told me she had thought at the time.)
I shut off the car, climbed out, and inspected the damage.
It was pretty obvious -- Morgan may have made 3-wheelers,
but MG never did. Fortunately, Larry had seen my wheel go
across the track, and when the last car went by I went off
to retrieve it (which explained my behavior to the people
across the course).
Yup, some dipwad had forgotten to tighten the lug nuts when
he'd finished bleeding the brakes the day before... which
had gone on while Andy was out putting fuses in my tow car.
Moral: Check them EVERY time the car goes out on course.
I would like to point out, however, that the car waited to
break until after the checker, and that it gave me lots of
warning and let me pull off at a safe place. Safety Fast.
Lesson 3: Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.
(P.S. Thanks for the wings!)
Larry offered to let me drive Ricercar the Wonderhonda in
my last session after lunch. Jeff and Larry went to get it
teched while Andy and I faced the disappointment of not
seeing the car we'd worked on finish the day. (However,
Jeff's day went even worse; his FV had developed a serious
case of solid-state engine as he left the pit lane for his
second track session, and this came on the heels of having
had a very unsatisfactory first session when the Capri
Club folks had put him in with the Advanced students --
a bad move for someone who'd never driven the car before.)
Before my final session of the day, though, Sam and Ruth
managed to shame me into riding in Sam's car. THAT was an
interesting experience. The Mustang doesn't steer, stick,
or brake quite as well as the MG, but it does push you
back in the seat in a great tearing hurry, and Sam was
in the thick of it with cars all around us. We had about
three laps of dicing with an SVO, a Toyota Celica GT-S with
an instructor's mark on it, and the winner of the Aw, George
award for the weekend, the F40. (The Aw, George award is
a prize that I have been giving on and off since my autocross
days; it signifies the person who makes the most expensive
fool of himself at an event, like the Cobra replicar who
spun into the sand trap three different times, the last time
stopping the event for about 15 minutes while he dug out, or
like the Calloway Twin Turbo Corvette roadster that was
20 seconds slower than my dead-stock MGB, on an autocross
course designed be a Corvette club, no less -- not quite
two pylons 1320 feet apart, but close.)
For my last session, which thankfully started just as the
sun dipped below the hills to the west of the track, I went
out to get the feel of Larry's car and work on hitting
the apexes.
At that time, I appreciated David Brown's comment, after I
drove him around Laguna Seca in my GTI, about how once he
realized that we weren't going to tip over he started having
fun. The Honda is taller and narrower than the Rabbit, and
I'd been driving a race car all day, one with less than an
inch of roll under most circumstances; here I was driving
a phone booth with a yard of ground clearance on very sticky
tires, and I was spinning (lifting?) the front wheels in 2,
3A, 4, 6, 7, and 11 (by the time I got the hang of it, anyway).
I got black-flagged early in the session because the hood
had come open; obviously the peril-sensitive bonnet is a
Fizzball tradition, but in this case the catch held and
the pit-lane workers latched it and sent me back out.
Eventually I got comfortable in the car, and learned where
to push it and where it was pushing enough for the whole
field. The Carousel in this car was enlightening; I'd
enter it hot, turn the wheel and keep going straight, so
I'd lift, brake a little, and get some turn-in along with
squeals that sounded like a hog happily molesting a set
of bagpipes. We'd plow through the middle of the track
till I passed the rough pavement, then I'd floor it, spin
the inside front a little, and wonder of wonders the car
would kick up a plume of dust as I clipped the dirt
just off the track at the apex.
I did get 3A just right in that car, though, and did it
enough times that I stopped getting scared when the outside
wheels went off, to the point that I was able to take a
good line through 4 and 5. In fact, I not only held off but
outran an Acura Integra (hi Josh!) that had closed up on me
coming up the hills between 1 and 3. I also got waved past
by an IROC, a satisfying feeling.
It was in this car that I tried the many and varied lines
through 11. The car wanted to take the Tin Man Goes To Oz line
("scrub scrub here, scrub scrub there"), but it responded
well enough that I was usually able to get withing a couple
of carlengths of the apex and at least used up all the track
at the exit. The checker fell, I waved to the corner workers
around the track ("You don't have to wave to the workers on
EVERY LAP, Jeff," Larry told him after his session), and pulled
into the pits to hand Ricercar the Wonderhonda over to Jeff.
Larry's car wins the cooling system award for the weekend, though;
the gauge was never more than a quarter of the way up from C. My
race car got up to about 240 at one point early in the second
session, Sam's car came in spewing glycol the way Sam spews loud,
foul-smelling belches, and of course Jeff's FV was blowing
its coolant all over the track and the paddock. But then,
it's supposed to -- "It's not a car, it's a Volkswagen."
After the last checker, Andy complimented me on my lines through
1, 1A, 2 and 3, where he had been working. "I guess those years of
autocrossing really taught you about lines," he said. "I hope you
don't get too good -- I want some competition next year," he told
me with a grin.
Special thanks to:
ANDY BANTA, without whose garage, car, tools, engine hoist,
welding equipment, knowledge, drill bits, good humor, beer,
and ability to live on 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night I would
not have been able to get this car together.
KIM FISHER, for putting up with two weeks of having me come home
at 1 AM, screeching but never flinching as I tried to thaw my
frozen buttocks on her toasty-warm thighs in bed, and fainting
when she saw the condition of the checkbook after each trip to
Post Tool or Orchard Supply Hardware -- but never giving up,
criticizing, or doubting that I'd get out there one day.
TORREY FISHER, who no longer cried each night when I'd get ready
to leave, and learned to ask with a resigned air, "Daddy, you
going Andy's house to work your race car?"
Also to:
Jeff Zurschmeide, for fronting me the money to buy the car in
the first place; Larry Colen, for letting me fill out the day
in a car related to the current F1 champion's ride; Sam Sjogren,
for showing me a little about the difference between RACING
and driving fast (hey, at Fizzball, racing almost *never* means
driving fast!); Melissa Heinrich, for the yummy lunch selections;
Linda Waterhouse, for letting me clutter her garage, driveway,
and yard while I kept Andy up every night for half a month;
Robert Keller, for putting the fuel cell together; Chris Kent,
for soldering instruction and wiring assistance; Butch Gilbert,
for having built a pretty cool race car in the first place; and
of course, Cecil Kimber, Syd Enever, and John Thornley, the men
who made "Safety Fast!" so much more than just a slogan for MGs.
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