Hello race fans, Here is the official story of the events at VIR this past weekend. This years drivers were Champ Car hopeful and Atlantic series veteranShields Bergstrom, Chuck Peterson, Larry "Air" Boyer and me. Randy Slaglewas crew chief, Steve Drukman and Jim Peterson were the crew. The weatherwas 65 and sunny during the day, dipping down into the low 50's atnight...MUCH better than last year. Travel was smooth since Larry has a true Man's Truck...a Dodge (Hit It -DaDa, Da Da Da Da, Dat) dually with a Cummins Turbo Diesel, 6 speed manual anda Jake Brake. Oh yea, the auxiliary fuel tank meant we drove for 17 hoursand still had 1/4 tank left! Jeff Willert's loaded trailer barelycompressed the springs. We (Shields) qualified about 32nd out of 85 cars, 4th of 12 ITS cars, and wefelt good going into the race. Shields started things off and was cruisingalong when 18 laps into the marathon, the transmission broke. It took anhour and 42 minutes to get back on track. Deja vu??? We sent Larry out next and 6 laps into his stint he earned his newnickname...Shields and I were taking pictures in Oak Tree corner and pimpingLarry on the radio. He obliged by waving a few times, then he went a littlewide...since the run off area was not nearly as smooth as last year, "AirBoyer" launched the car. The landing was the hard part since the exhaustcame apart and the front fender got deformed, but Air kept her headed in theright direction. The real bitch was I had the video camera focused on SouthBend, and missed him coming around. Shields missed the shot too. It wouldhave been a great slide for his DE presentations, something about making anearly apex.... The Paul Rembas designed exhaust was pretty easy to fix, and the fenderpulled out so you couldn't even tell it was bent (yet again). 5 minutes andall was well. Chuck jumped in the car and completed a full stint, then handed the car overto me for an hour and 10 minutes of driving excitement. Things seemed to beon track until Shields saw the mechanical black flag for fuel leaking out ofthe vent hose. We were in the pits yet again while Randy zip tied it andsolved the problem in 5 minutes total time. Shields finished off the stintand handed it over to Larry. Then, the gremlins came out. Larry reported the ignition going dead and theswitches turning themselves off...WTF! Since Randy had not had a break, Itold him to go check the track out from another corner. When Air came in, Icleverly put duct tape to keep the switches in the "on" position. I wastruly shocked and surprised that it did not work. Randy saw that somethingwas up and came back to the pits. We made 4 pit stops trying to find aloose wire before we brought it back into the paddock to check things overin more detail. I'd like to take credit for finding and fixing the problem(which I did), however, I need to state that I actually caused it to beginwith. See, when we pulled the transmission out earlier in the day, I noticed alead going to the starter was about to break, so I "fixed" it with my magicelectrical connector kit and crimping tool. The problem was that I did notcrimp it very well, and although it was connected to the starter terminal,the wires were not in solid contact with the metal part of the plug. Inever claimed to be able to fix mechanical stuff. I'd bet it was fine untilLarry decided to go off-road some 300 miles earlier!!!! 25 minutes in the pits and Larry was back out and was having a nice run.When he was just about finished with his stint, the field went to a fullcourse caution so the corner workers could get meals delivered. Larry wasset to come in when he radioed that the front wheel had locked up at theopposite end of the track going into Oak Tree corner. We had a tow truckdeliver the car to the paddock. Images of John Belushi in Animal Housepopped into my head..."It wasn't over when the Germans bombed PearlHarbor!!!" Let's fix this SOB. The front left hub and bearing had failed, luckily at a very slow speed.The failure caused the caliper to grind away at, and eventually lock up therotor. No problem thanks to a combination of Jeff's trailer bins, Randy'sand my spare parts collection. The only piece we needed was a locking nutand retainer for the hub. I went to ISC Racings trailer and Mike VanSteenberg GAVE one to me. He said there was no charge and wished me goodluck since we had already beat his 3 cars (including the overall winner fromlast year). I felt pretty good about that in some demented way. So an hour and 38 minutes later Chuck Peterson bravely hopped in totest/race the collection of discarded parts. The course was under a fullyellow to clean up a few cars that had rolled over in the dark, so he wasable to feel things out before having to drive at full race speed (don'tforget about the 60 or 70 maniacs still out there racing at night).Everything was well except Chuck's radio did not work. We kept seeing himgo by, so we knew he hadn't gone off into the Dan River. Chuck came inright on schedule after the fuel ran out. His only complaint was "avibration from the front", so I had Randy put on 2 new tires. It turned outthat Chuck avoided hitting the pack of slow moving cars under yellow by flatspotting the fronts! That'll do it. Randy pulled out the special stagger set we had been saving, and I was off.After a few get-acquainted-to-driving in-the-dark-laps (which included a 944forcing me off track as I tried to pass- then I spun since I was so pissed,and believe it or not a door-to-door collision with a Miata), I got my mojoback and was having a blast. With about 6 laps to go, 5th gear failed in the transmission and I had tolimp home. I was slowed a bit, but we took the checkered flag a scant 124laps behind the leader. After all those issues, we still managed to racenearly 650 miles. Shields was the class of our group doing laps close to 4 seconds faster thananybody else. The big surprise was Air Boyer logging the second fastest lapoutside of Kid Bergstrom, eking out a 2:24.127 compared to my best of2:24.450 (last time I let that guy drive my car!!). He must have caught ahuge tow since that was nearly a second and a half faster than his nextfastest lap, at least that is what I'm telling myself. Chuck turned a2:25.594 and drove 2 clean stints thanks to his extra heavy brake foot. All in all, it was a blast. The track is beautiful, the weather cooperated,and almost everybody was super nice (with the exception of a few jerks onthe track and in the pits). While it was a little frustrating with all theproblems we had, it felt good to persevere and not get down with theadversity. If we were winning and a pit stop took an extra 30 seconds,maybe somebody would have been pissed, but there was a certain calm in beingout of the podium positions. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to go the full 13hours in a row and see how we do, but that was not in the cards. Special thanks to Randy Slagle for doing most of the work and being theboss. Also, thanks to Steve Drukman and Jim Peterson for being the crew.I'd also like to thank Jeff Willert for letting us use his trailer andmiscellaneous parts he left there, and to Ron Olsen for use of the 2 wayradios. Extra special thanks to Todd Roberts of Calibre, Inc. for our very firstcorporate sponsorship!!!! Was the strain of driving 17 hours to race 13 hours only to drive 17 hoursback home too much? Was the frustration of laying in kitty litter whileburning your hands on a hot transmission while you could hear the race goingon too frustrating? Will the embarrassment of not being able to make asimple electrical connection or getting beat by somebody in my own car getme down? Will I be going back for next years 13 hour???? I sure hope so! Steve "Cap'n Wankel" Smyczek

 

Good stuff!

 

lol guess you and i are the only ones who enjoy road racing, or atleast care to comment anyways. thanks to you for this and hope to see you next year at VIR









randy

 

were you on speed when you typed that?