Champcar Barber Race Weekend - December 12-13, 2020
It was a weekend of lows and highs. The new chassis is being prepared for the transplant of drivetrain and suspension, and this was going to be the last official race of Grumpy Butt (Mule). I couldn’t find a person to crew so Mike, Nabil and I would be “working drivers” during every pit stop. With a good strategy we were able to fuel and get a driver into the car in 3 minutes, leaving 2 minutes to check oil and clean the windshield.
One new factor that came into play this weekend was the use of a “Code 35” Flag. Barber had a recent incident with a safety crew getting hurt and decided that there would be no “hot pulls” during the weekend (dead cars are removed from a section of track under yellow flags while the rest of the course is still at race speed). Each time a car died on track this weekend the Code 35 flag was displayed at every corner station, which meant that all cars were to maintain 35mph and maintain the same distance to the car in front of them. The new flag created positive (Sunday) and negative (Saturday) situations for us.
Grumpy had some new items to claim in the budget so I drove to the track in the early afternoon Friday to go through Tech again. I added the S2000 header and the aluminum oil pan which both should have added points to my budget. It turns out that you can use any OE header for free as long as it came from a car on list of legal Champcar vehicles. The oil pan added 25 points which brought me to 480, well below the 500-point limit.
Staging and tech were done in a large parking lot outside the track while a Porsche driving school went on inside. Tech went quickly so I had a few hours to kill before the paddock opened at 5pm. It was fun watching tech and chatting with friends, and checking out some cars that I’ve never seen up-close. I saw some things that I might want to incorporate into my new car. At 5pm we were allowed to enter the paddock and we got the car ready and the pit set up.
Saturday
After a great test day at Barber with Just Track It in November I didn’t have much work to do to get the car ready for the Champcar race. I installed new front brake rotors and pads (cheap rear pads never seem to wear out). There were a couple of small oil drips from the transmission and diff but nothing serious enough to worry about. With 4 new tires mounted we were ready to go. We started the race in 15th with Mike in the car. The weather was drizzling to start and never dried out all day, there were just different levels of rain. Mike drove for 1.5 hours and got into 6th place before a Code 35 flag for oil on the track. It seems that someone oiled the entire track so a truck with a large tank of liquid soap was sent out along with a large sweeper.
That turned into a Black Flag All and all cars were brought into pit lane (no work could be done on them). Drivers got out of the cars for an hour while the cleaners slowly made their way around the track. The driver clocks were reset so we put Mike back in and he drove another hour. We got a Full Course Yellow and put Nabil in the car – Mike had only used 12 gallons of gas in 2.5 hours of rain driving.
Nabil made about 20 minutes on track before the car died. After a tow back into the pit the car started running again so we sent him back out, only to have the car die on the first lap. We had him towed to the paddock this time and started diagnosing the problem. At first we thought it might be a fuel problem so we replaced the fuel pumps and sent him back out only to have the car die again. This was the negative part about the Code 35 flag – every time we were towed in all other drivers had to go 35mph for at least 2 laps so I felt bad for taking their racing time away. After a third tow we started looking for an intermittent electrical problem. We started moving wires near the ECU and finally tracked the issue to the white connector of the MS3. After 30 minutes of playing with wires we couldn’t make it die any more so I took the car out. I still have no idea what the problem was.
After 20 minutes in very wet conditions the car was running fine but started clunking when I let off the throttle. It started getting worse so I came back to the paddock. We jacked up the car and started looking for the source of the clunk. I’ve had issues in the past with diffs, driveshaft u-joints, and even a rear crossmember bushing that disintegrated. I found the left rear crossmember bushing had broken off the poly “flanges” and the crossmember could move vertically about ½”. I sent Mike and Nabil shopping for window weld (it worked in the past for the same issue). They came back with a stack of large washers, a tube of window weld (urethane) and some steel the make end plates.
Thirty minutes later we had cut a couple of endplates, filled the bushing space with washers and window weld and bolted it in tightly. We would have to wait until morning to see if the urethane “set” and would do its job. Earlier in the day another team mentioned that the right rear wheel looked to be wobbling, but it had no bearing play and the lugs were tight.
Sunday
I took the car through the paddock slowly and the first time that I let off the throttle the clunk was still there. Dammit.
We jacked up the rear end and started searching again until Mike mentioned the wobble in the right wheel. We pulled the wheel and removed the brake rotor to find a broken hub – this was the real problem. Fortunately, I had a spare control arm with a hub installed so we replaced it in 25 minutes and got Nabil to pit lane before the start of the race at 8:30am.
The track was still a bit damp from the previous day but started drying quickly. By 10am there was a dry line and lap times were dropping. We caught a well-timed caution to pull Nabil in and fuel the car, then it was my turn to drive. Nabil had driven us from 30th to 7th place. This was the positive about the Code 35 flags on Sunday – it was much easier to catch slow laps where we could dive into the pits for fuel and not lose too much track position. There have been races run with NO full course cautions and teams gamble with pit strategy that could make or break a good finish.
I was next to drive and would go about 40 minutes until “Quiet Time” – a common Sunday happening at race tracks where all cars are brought to pit lane under Parc Ferme rules. Drivers got out for an hour and no work could be done on cars. In a first for me personally, I was the driver with the Fast Time of the Day in the race to that point, which led to a very humorous hour in our pit. There are apps for phones where you can follow races with live timing and most teams are glued to them during a race. When a car turns their fastest lap of a day the time will show up in Green rather than white. When a car turns the fastest lap of the race it will display in Purple. As I was getting out of the car Mike yells “nice job Mr. Purple”. This set off an hour of laughing as we watched the naming scene from Reservoir Dogs. Go look it up, I’ll wait…
OK, maybe you had to be there. Anyway, we were in 5th overall at this point.
At 11:50 I got back in the car for the restart at noon. I was about 30th in line so there would be a lot of traffic for a while. After one lap behind a pace car we were set loose again. The car was running great and only one car got past me (a C4 Corvette). The Supra is such a joy to drive that I wanted to stay out until the fuel tank went dry, but we had a strategy that opened “windows” of time and if a Code 35 was displayed I was supposed to come in a bit early. After an hour I pitted in 2nd place overall and Mike took the wheel. I checked the oil and we cleaned the windshield then sent him off.
On his second lap he took my Supra FTD with a 1:43.2 and I knew he’d only go faster if traffic allowed. Unfortunately, the clutch decided to stop disengaging not long after that and he couldn’t shift at all. To make matters worse the radio in the car died at the same time so the last message I heard was “something broke” before silence. He jammed the transmission into 4th gear and kept racing, and actually turning respectable lap times that probably would have kept us in 2nd until the end of the race. 20 minutes later Mike must have gotten tired of feeling slow because he decided that 3rdmight be a better choice of gear to race in.
He waited until just before “pit-in” during a Code 35 lap and attempted to get the transmission into 3rd in case something went wrong. On video it looked reasonably smooth but he never touched the shifter again. Mike turned some stellar laps considering that he only had one gear, and even passed the leader to get us on the same lap. The engine hit the rev limiter at least three times each lap, but there are no “slow” corners at Barber so he didn’t lose much time where a downshift to 2nd would help. Fortunately, there are no long straights either. Mike would hold the throttle in a position to hold rpms just under the rev limiter and maintain as much speed as possible.
With 2 hours to go in the race we prepared for the final pit stop. Mike knew the situation and pitted when a Code 35 came out within our window. Nabil barely got any driving time Saturday so I gave him the second Sunday stint. He shifted the car into 3rd before starting the engine and somehow made it down pit road, stopped so they could remove the timer that Champcar uses to monitor pit stops, and started driving. This is the worst time in a race for me – waiting for something bad to happen… for the next 105 minutes. The outside edge of the left front tire had no tread but I didn’t tell Nabil. Mike thought it would be fine.
I can’t sit still and watch what happens so I started breaking down the pit stall, cleaning up the paddock area from the repairs, and organizing my truck for loading. We had a tire and tools ready for a quick change, and a fuel can ready for a splash and go if necessary. We believed that the fuel would last even with all of the high rpm running. I checked Race Monitor occasionally and saw that Nabil was running laps between 1:43 and 1:47 depending on traffic, so as long as the car stayed in one piece we could finish strong. Mike was right about the tire, too, it lasted until the end. With 15 minutes left I checked to see if any B class cars could catch us in the time left and there were none close. 5 laps from the finish Nabil ran the FTD for the Supra at 1:42.7… with 3rd gear only!
The car survived the thrashing to the end and we finished in 2nd overall, 35 seconds behind the leader. Impound and trophies followed along with a well-deserved beer.
Mike Sunday Stint with the start of the clutch problem.
Nabil finishing the race.