Sunday
Sunday started with me in the garage after 2.5 hours of sleep. Normally you would think that is painful, however if you have read about our other race at Houston then you know this is about the norm for us during a race weekend. The verdict… after another hour and a half tracking down wires and possible problems we start packing to head out to the track hoping for some magic to happen. Once at the track we setup shop for the day and continued diagnostics with our now well used multi-meter and repair manual… with no results. It was not time to get desperate.
At this point in the race one of the other teams, Team Blue Goose, who were running a similar CRX was also down for repairs. As a last ditch effort they lent us an ECU and main relay to test in our car. We installed the two components and…. nothing changed so no luck there either. The car behaved in exactly the same manner. So we thanked them for the help and actually help them out a bit with a critical lug nut. So in a way we helped them earn a heroic fix award. Or it was them replacing a transmission, tracking down an ECU related problem, as well as fixing one of their crew members with a trip to the hospital. Either way it was looking more and more grim for us.
After about another hour or so of valiant efforts we tried to pull a spark plug to make sure we were getting a spark and saw wet spark plugs, sign of yet another head gasket failure. This marked the end of any hope we had of getting the car repaired. So with our car broken what does a race team do? Easy, take in the carnage of seeing another competitor’s car crushed during the people’s curse.
The same team that “won” the curse last race in Houston had the distinction of being the winners again. What did they do to deserve such a repeat fate? Judging from most of the teams we talked to on track shenanigans such as playing chicken into the chicane, repeated rough passes, and other tom foolery played a big role. There was also talk that they even pulled a fast one in order to save their fast car. They were a two car team and had one fast car and one that was somewhat slower. Right before they got pulled from the race to be offered up as a sacrifice to the racing gods, (also to appease the bloodthirsty crowd) both cars magically went to the paddock and when they emerged had some fresh paint where the numbers were on both cars. The current theory is that they switched numbers so that the faster chassis they had did not get destroyed, it was instead the slower (not cursed by the people) chassis that was destroyed. They say they have one more chassis to destroy and will be back for the fall race so more justice could still be dispensed if they have not learned their lesson.
So after satisfying our blood lust with car destroying carnage, what do you do next? How about a race at the karting track next door! The cast and crew of Project Yellow (Justin, Whitney, Ian, Ben, Atul, and Saki) all lined up for some karting action, and we have the pictures to prove it. After bombing around the kart track for about 15 minutes, yours truly managed to spin on the first lap, our session was over and 2 hours later the bench racing finally stopped. Judging from the grins on everyone’s face they all enjoyed the track time. The rest of the day was spent watching the finish of the race applauding the finishers and bragging about how well we would have done if only it wasn’t for our problems. While it was tough to watch from the sidelines, but that’s racing, you have to take the good and bad when you go endurance racing, and even more so when you try to do it with a $500 car. This time was supposed to be different, it was, but not in the way we all hoped…… but like with every race there is next time and we will take what we learned and move forward and maybe next time will be different yet again.
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