Good News After the Bad News
As most everyone who follows this blog now knows, we went out of the race on Sunday when we suffered a blown half-shaft. We completed a total of 210 laps; the winner of the race completed 442 laps. We ended up in 75th place out of 96 cars due to our inability to replace the broken part and get back into the race. Initial video review indicates that the fatal blow to the half-shaft was probably when Dave took a hard hit to the driver’s rear quarter courtesy of a brown RX-7. It was a very hard hit that probably sheared several of the bolts holding the half-shaft together.
The good news is that for most of Saturday, we were quite competitive — we held first place for 20 laps, apparently including a driver change! This coincides with what somebody told Sam on Saturday, that our first false black flag was because we were in first even after the driver change.
Congrats, team!
I’m adding this in afterwards (on March 10) because the Twitter feed is bound to go down eventually and some of the information captured there is relevant. So here’s a little more background on how our race went.
Sam drove first on Saturday morning and the data shows that she did a great job. She drove for just about 2 hours and advanced our car from 34th position (out of about 96 or so, I think) up to first! She achieved first position on lap 37 and was able to hold it through lap 57 when she came in for the driver change.
I drove next and was out there for what looks like about and hour and 45 minutes. The data indicates that I drove a pretty good race too, but I know in my heart of hearts that not only did I leave a lot of speed on the track (for example by not driving it hard enough deep enough on turn 1), but I was unnecessarily reckless at times. Dive-bombing the inside of the turn into tires on the back of the course instead of taking the racing line put our car in jeopardy. That’s precisely the kind of risk we do not want to take, and yet at the time I couldn’t stop doing it. I didn’t even think to stop doing it. I’ll chalk that up to being a total rookie and let it go.
It is clear that all of the driver changes and pit stops really cost us a lot of time. We must improve upon that for the next race. At Houston we should be able to do 1 pit stop per day with a driver change and full fuel. But for this, our first race, we wanted to get everyone in the car sometime on the first day so that everyone would have a chance to drive if something went wrong on Sunday. That decision ended up being a good one, as everyone got a turn on Saturday before our half-shaft failure on Sunday morning.
Dave followed me in the car and had a solid drive. I know that Dave never got very comfortable with the manual transmission, although the data shows that he got better with it on Sunday morning. It’s probably fair to say that Dave drove the car more conservatively than the rest of us, and it’s a testament to this car’s basic setup that Dave turned some fast laps and was able to move up in the field even with a pretty conservative style.
Matt went after Dave and really burned it up when he had the chance, although he was beset with a rash of yellows. Brad came after Matt and also tore it up, when he wasn’t busy hitting other cars. 
And of course, our Sunday wreck-out is already documented, but in short, Dave got hit by the #9 280z on the left rear quarter. Although it doesn’t appear that any of the suspension parts got bent, the inboard joint tulip took the hit badly and ended up failing. I’m sure it’s decorating part of the former rice paddy known as MSR Houston. I’m not very confident that the prior owner of the TARP Special re-installed the joint tulip correctly, either.
In regard to the weather, it was nothing like we expected. Both days were VERY windy. Saturday started off chilly, especially with the wind, but ended up sunny and pleasant once the clouds moved off, although it was always very windy. Sunday was just flat out cold; it was 35 degrees when I woke up on Sunday morning and the winds were still blowing hard, well over 15 mph. Although it did get sunny and warmer later in the day, it was still pretty cold if you were in shade in the observation tower.
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