So Here We Go ... VRL 2008

After what seems like an eternity since finals last October, we returned to Button Willow this past week for our first race weekend of the 2008 season. This was the first track that we ever ran at last year and it was the first time that we revisited a track for the second time. The run configuration was the same except for the extended "Mazda corner" that we did not run last year. We estimated that the extended distance accounted for about 6+ seconds and our times were about the same as last year meaning we were that much faster.

Over the winter our team struggled with several issues that cropped up with respect to mechanical decisions to make our car as competitive as possible. In particular, we knew that several of our competitors had freshened engines with a newly approved McLaren rebuild of the engine that is said to add up to forty extra horsepower and a choice of two new transmissions with superior internals and altered ratios for better pull. After serious debate about spending $25 grand on such upgrades, we decided that "if it ain't broke then don't fix it" was our best, and most cost-effective, strategy. While the jury is still out on the advantages of these upgrades, we did note some superior acceleration performance in lower gears that we had to make up for in braking and corners.

The weather over the weekend was quite volatile and included everything from sun to rain and winds Saturday night in excess of 7o mph as reported by the local weather agency. Unfortunately, something as simple as a faulty spark plug wire cost me almost all of my Friday testing so the "rust" didn't have a chance to come off until Saturday. As a result, we were unsuccessful at hitting our lap time objective for qualifying that ultimately cost our team the feature win for the weekend. As always, this was a reminder that every element is critical to be fast from practice to qualifying to the race. Russ Oasis, who ran in the Daytona 24 hrs last month along with Jim Stout were my main competition for the weekend with Russ and I trading first places in the races. By out-qualifying me by about 4/10's of a second, Russ secured the feature win sticker. Congrats to him for the win and for his finish in the Rolex Daytona 24hrs!!

For those that were able to attend the event, they all agree that this race was my most aggressive and Skip Thomas, VRL founder, commented that this was also one of the most exciting VRL races in a very long time. For me, the highlight of the weekend was the comeback that we had to make in the Sunday race after overshooting a turn that sent the #89 car well off-track and into a tire wall that cost significant time and track-position. After fighting our way back for over twenty minutes, we were able to close on Russ and execute a "point-and-shoot" on the very last turn, of the last lap, that earned us the win by half of a car length at the checker flag. After reviewing the tape, I realized I hit the rev limiter on each shift of that final straight away!!

All things considered, we had a decent start to the '08 season and we reminded ourselves that we really want to build on the momentum of last year. We have an outstanding field of competitors in our class this year and we are determined to get faster and more race-savvy at each event (with the continued help of Neil Hannemann of course). Lastly, once we feel confident in our performance assessments, we might even invest in the upgrades for that extra little edge ... hopefully we won't need them and I can still send the kids to university. And that, as they say, would be a "win-win".