1st place! NASA Midwest @ Autobahn 4.5 hr Enduro - "Into The Night"

Waiting for my final stint I was chugging water and heading to the bathroom.  The advice I got from a friend in regards to my first ever time racing in the dark was to be careful not to fixate on brake lights in front of you; and also not to look directly into the rearview mirror as you could get instantly blinded with all the hi-tech LED lights others were running.  Great...  Oh and trust your knowledge of the turns!

At about 8:10pm with 50min remaining David radioed that he was coming in next lap.  Everyone started setting up for what would be our 4th pitstop and 4th driverchange.  I would be going in; along with the final 10 gallons of fuel for the last 45min.  Once again, the pitstop was extremely flawless and everyone was moving even quicker.  Being my 2nd stint of the race, I was quickly buckled in and waiting on fuel.  Davids only advice to me was:  "look for those reflective apex cones; they are your only hope!". 
After the all-clear, I headed out of the pits with about a 2-lap lead over 2nd place in class.  With the car all warmed up obviously everything was sticking well and I headed past the first set of turns away from the lighted pitlane into turns 2/3.  What did I find - DARKNESS!  And lots of it for the next 3 miles basically.  Wow, words can't really explain it as there was just no light out there besides our OEM headlights that focus straight forward.  Looking L and R for the reflective apex cones (the ones that remained that is) was difficult at the least and you really had to trust your knowledge of the track and assume everything was all clear.  The corner workers had a tiny light to let you know it was manned; and we were told a larger flashing light to indicate a yellow. 
After about 2 laps I realized that car was very 'hooked up'; better than before as the track wasn't as hot since the sun went down.  It felt really good, but the fact I opted to go without the coolsuit was not a good call as the Mustang did not have much natural airflow in the car.  I had one of the overall leaders - an older Daytona Prototype - come up on me down the lighted pitstraight so it was an easy pass to let happen.  I then tried to stick with him to get the aid of his better lights but watching the taillights did indeed lead me into an offline approach and danger really quick, just as my friend had noted.  A few laps later I caught up to a Miata and set him up for a pass down the lit straight too.  Then I had to deal with about 1/2 a lap of mirrors with insanely bright lights and I just tried to hit my marks and put some distance on him.  Other than that, there was NO traffic out on the 3.56 mile course that I had to deal with.  Even though it was dark, I was running about the same laptimes (2:53-2:54's) as I did in the daylight.  The car felt good, and I felt more comfortable with the car and the North course portion which I had not ran since 2008.

After the traffic; trying to settle into a more relaxed groove, I instantly ran wide in T2.  Wow that was quick and dark!  I tried the same groove approach I use for longer Endurance races on the next lap and the same exact thing happened - I missed my turn-in badly and nearly ran wide!  Being my 2nd stint, dark, having driven 3+ hrs to the track, no other traffic to work with; whatever... it was difficult to concentrate in the pitch dark.  So I instead decided to start turning hotlaps.  With my mind focused on improving every laptime I started stomping out 2:50-2:51 laptimes.  After about 10 of these  I started really looking for the white flag - and was beginning to think about the fuel situation.  Having not been passed by any in-class car I was assuming we had the win but still focused on getting the car back safely and enjoying it! 
After a 2:50.3 I got a hesitation on very next lap on the front straight!  I know knew I could now complete 1.5 laps after the initial hesitation (David did earlier) so I decided to conserve some fuel circle with short shifts and hope for the white flag.  And I got it; with a slower 2:55 laptime!  I had no idea if I could make another lap but I was committed.  I just hoped I would not run out of gas and get rear-ended somewhere!  I coasted as much as I could and don't think I ever touched the brake pedal the last lap.  Once to the N course (the last 1/3 of the lap) it was struggling to pick up throttle at all.  Once I got to the final turn before pit-in it was barely sputtering and I was down to 20-30mph of momentum.  I coasted into pit lane where the lights started and I knew I would be ok, the car then died completely as I rolled into a pit stall only 6 short of ours!  I flashed my lights, shut off the car and waited for the team to reach me.  We exchanged a few quick high-fives and they pushed me back into the pits.

Joe quickly handed me out beers (Stella Artois) and we quickly headed up for awards.  As suspected we finished 1st in class E0 and 5th overall.  Turns out the Miata I passed in my final stint was for position!  83 totals laps complete; nearly 300 miles.  We finished 1 lap ahead of 6th overall; 21 laps ahead of our nearest in-class competitor - which apparently came into the pits with a cracked brake caliper soon after I left for the last stint!

Packed with adrenaline the team stood around and talked for nearly an hour after the awards.  Everyone was shocked at the laptimes I was putting down in the dark.  Maybe I found a calling?  Since everyone else seems to hate the extra challenges of night racing!  I downed a gatorade and headed home.  Pulling into the garage around 1am - my day consisted of 6.5 hrs in the 335i to/from the track and two 50 minutes stints in the racecar for a total of 8+ hrs driving!  Thanks to everyone for their help.   
New firsts:  1st place in an Endurance Race (after piling up 2 seconds), my 1st time ever racing in the dark, my 1st time ever with 2+ stints in the same day!

NASA Midwest @ Autobahn 4.5 hr Enduro - "Into The Night" (Stints 4-5 overall)

Having handed the car over to Joe for the 3rd overall stint it was about 6pm at this point, right about the time you need your headlights.  And boy did some of the field have some crazy LED light bars and sideways 'Apex' lights.  We... had 100% OEM brights on the Mustang.
Joe's stint quickly ran into the night with the last 1/2 being completely pitch dark.  Since my stint was over I took in some water and took stock of the situation and the competition.  There were about 6 cars in our class to start the race and 2 had immediate trouble and another had fallen back.  It was really between us and 2 other AI (high hp and higher prepped) mustangs with us holding onto a 2-3 lap lead at this point which Joe stomping out 2:51's and then 2:54's in the darkness.

Next up was David again - the owner - for his 2nd stint.  We were already running calcs to figure out how long David would need to run before we had enough fuel to finish with the following stint (me).  This was partly strategy and partly because David simply did NOT light driving at night; much less racing.  We figured he needed 30+ minutes based on our earlier stints assuming they checkered the race at 9:25pm to allow for a cooldown to clear the track at 9:30pm.
Joe brought the car back in terrific shape right about the 50min mark.  Our crew (including me) went to work; this being our 3rd pit stop and all things were moving very well.  We took another look at the Front Left tire and it was decided to go ahead and change it - once the fueling was complete, since we had a couple lap lead we didn't want to take any chances.  I grabbed the jack, jackstand and wrench - cleaned the windshield while waiting on fuel to finish - and then set about swapping out the tire.  I got some help from the fuel guys since they were done and everything went pretty smooth overall.

David headed out and struggled initially to find a pace in the pitch dark - pretty much just like he thought.  Having the radios working helped though and he soon radioed that he was coming in!  I was like 'Already'?  Then he mentioned he'd hit an animal - like a fox - and we just needed to check out the car.  Well, the bumper had shifted a bit, but it looked fine.  He wanted to stay in (there was 1 hr of race left; more than a fuel load) so he headed back out and started lowering lap times like a pro.  The crazy mishap def helped him out!

Still with our ~3 lap lead Dave was finishing up and I would be the closer....

NASA Midwest @ Autobahn 4.5 hr Enduro - "Into The Night" - My Stint (#2 overall)!

After the 1st of many pitstops, I was leaving for my stint (#2 overall) around 5:55pm and the car was literally 1st in class; I think 5th overall.  Our fuel window was a few laps after the other in-class Mustangs and some of the GTS cars were having issues so we were in luck.  Suddenly running for fun and experience turned into 'we might have a podium chance'!
The car was pretty nice to drive really.  It was just before dusk, with only a few cars running lights and after the first few laps the sun was no longer blinding me - although my tinted visor came in handy; it completely blacked out the gauges so I had a difficult time figuring out the best shiftpoints at first. I was utilizing a borrowed cool-suit for the first time ever and very much enjoying that.  Being that we were utilizing the entire 3.56 mile course, there wasn't a lot of traffic but just enough to keep you occupied. 

Overall, after about 3 laps I settled into a pretty mellow pace, I think around 2:50 - as to protect all the gear.  My theory was if I was going to drive a full fuel load; why not try to stretch out the mileage a bit longer!  I was short-shifting and being easy on corner-entry for the first 1/2 of my stint as we discussed front tire wear being a potential issue over the 4.5 hrs of the race.  About midway through my stint we reached the overall 1.5hr mark which brought out a checkered flag (for those that optioned for the 1.5hr portion and not the full 4.5hr portion).  This cleared out a fair number of cars and the remainder of the my stint was even clearer.
After that I started picking it up; dropping a few tenths with each lap and running some 2:49's until the car hesitated under throttle - the sign my fuel stint was over!  I had ran for about 55min altogether and it wasn't even dark yet!

I brought the car into the pits and the team went to work on the 2nd pitstop as I helped our 3rd and final driver - Joe - get buckled in.  Note; I turned over the car 1st in class!  Once again; a flawless stop by the team of volunteers including 10 gallons of fuel and we were off once again.  Joe's stint would climb into the dark of night and the team was already trying to figure out the updated pit/driver strategy being our 50-55min fuel window we had been running; versus the 75min hopeful window we had initially.  Being we were still leading our class, the decision to stick with safe 10gal fuel loads had already been made.  The reason being if we spilled ANY fuel, we incurred an additional penalty of a pitstop and a 5min hold penalty - essentially costing 3-4 laps.

David (the owner; driver #1) thanked me immediately after I got out of the car for a terrific consistent pace and keeping the driving clean.  I told him - that's what I do!  He then said - count on another stint later tonight!  More to come...

NASA Midwest @ Autobahn 4.5 hr Enduro - "Into The Night" - Start!

STRATEGY:
This would be a fuel-mileage race, without question. We had six cars start the E0 class, us, three American Iron-prepped S197 Mustangs, and two E46 BMW M3s. We were the entry with the lowest horsepower, so our strategy was to run full fuel-load stints, hoping for around 75 minutes each, plus a quick splash-and-go towards the end. We assumed that the night-time stints would be at a slower pace, with no lights at all (save pit lane) on the 3.56-mile 21-turn course, and based strictly on the horsepower and weight of the AI cars, we believed that we could run one less fuel stop than they did, worth around eight minutes, or two and a half to three laps. The question was whether their pace could put us more than three laps down. The BMWs were the wildcards, with unknown fuel consumption characteristics, unknown fuel-tank (or cell) capacity, and had the potential to simply bury us with those hyper-efficient I-6 engines. All we could do was run the best race we could, and let the chips fall.

THE RACE:
John, our crew chief, had an excellent strategy lined up for us. Dave (the owner) would take the first stint, to establish pace, and (hopefully) get us in a solid position on track for the first fuel stop and driver change. Then I would take over, running us through dusk and into the dark. Our last driver - Joe - who has a good amount of time in the car, would handle the anchor leg, and take it to the checker, if the car survived. As they say, plans NEVER survive contact with the enemy, and this was no different! After I came in from practice, Dave hopped in the car and got all belted in, while John handled the data and video setup for the stint. After a quick check of tire pressures and lug torque, the field was off for the formation lap and the race start.

Based on a random pit-stall layout, we wound up starting roughly P9 (out of 22 starters), right behind a Daytona Prototype, and right ahead of one of the AI Mustangs, an E0 BMW M3, then another AI Mustang.  What we wanted was to get up to pace as quickly as possible, find some spacing, and then just dial into a solid, consistent lap time that didn’t overly punish the tires and brakes, and make maximum use of the fuel onboard. That went out the window as well!

Right around 5pm, the green flag flew, and Dave dropped the hammer!  The race would run until 9:30pm!  I believe our fastest lap of the entire race was lap #5 while he was battling for early position. 
For another forty-five minutes, Dave just kept knocking off the laps, in the high mostly in the 2:48 range, flying by the Miatas, and getting run over by the DP and the Sports Racer, then 20 laps after the green flew, the car started to hiccough on left-hand corner-exits, and he knew the fuel load was about gone, so (as planned; since radio's weren't working) he signaled the crew by dropping the clutch and blipping the throttle three times on the pit straight.  We knew we had about 4min including the roll through the pits to be ready.  I was already suited up; just had to put on my helmet!  The sucky part; this was NOWHERE NEAR the 75-minute hoped-for fuel window; hell, it was less than an hour! We were uncertain exactly how much fuel the car would take after a fuel run, so we were planning on a 14 gallon stop, and praying not to over-fill and spill, and take a 5-minute penalty plus a second trip through the pits. Dave rolled into pit lane at a sedate 25mph and my stint was next!  More to come...

CMC Mustang - NASA MW/GL Quals/Race @ Putnam Park 5.19.2012

After the difficulties with the water temps on Saturday, I was not sure how Sunday would unfold.  And I would know right away with warmups at 9:30am.  The outcome; water temp issues persisted still.  I left the car in the owner's hands again with Qualifying coming up around 11am.  At this point I was pretty much leaning towards heading home and not wasting my entire day once again.
After a chat with the owner prior to Quals, he explained an updated repair plan.  The new plan was to swap out the water pump with a new model - thinking that Ford made 2 models and it could be broken or possibly even the wrong one.  So that change along with another full system flush.  A repair like that would fit between Quals and the 3pm race - but not before.  So I was instructed to top the car off with water and just run 1-2 laps to get a Qualifying spot while the owner ran quickly for parts.

I went out late for Qualifying and fired 1 hot lap as best I could.  I ran a new weekend best of 1:23.1 w/o the tires being fully up to temp and navigating a bit of traffic front & rear (see vid).  It felt a bit better actually but I just simply needed more seattime in the car and with all the issues I was not getting many laps.  My time placed me in 7th today however, about 1 second out of 4th, with only 8 cars making it out as there was some attrition.  Below is a pic of the in-class cars (me in the #20) of CMC - Camaro-Mustang Challenge.

After Quals, the car went under the knife again and I relaxed with the wife and chatted up some friends around the paddock.  The car returned later and was deemed ready for action with about an hour to spare.  We packed up most of our gear for a quick post-race getaway and I got suited up for the race.  I hopped in the car to start it about 10min before the race and it would not crank over.  The owner immediately hopped under it as we jacked it up and with some quick 'massaging' to the starter it cranked over.  We all hopped in our cars and headed for grid with a few mins to spare.  Crazy crazy quick fix!

The race was another standing start, and again I was not the best out of the gate.  I think I made 2-3 laps keeping an eye on the water temps and they were unfortunately shooting up quickly once again.  Coming out of T8 it felt like something burst and the car slid sideways briefly as I decided to exit immediately.  Turns out the radiator hose came off.   Total laps for the day:  9.

CMC Mustang - NASA MW/GL race @ Putnam Park 5.18.2013

I got to Putnam Park about 8am on Saturday.  Just in time to find the car I'd be driving and meet the owner prior to the 8:15am required drivers meeting. This would be my first time ever in a Mustang; and first time in class CMC (Camaro Mustang Challenge).  The specs are 264whp @ 3205 lbs.
We went over the car briefly, as it recently had the shortblock replaced.  The plan was to keep an eye on the temps (of course) and basically just give it hell.
First up at 9:30am were warmups; which would determine the grid for Qualifying as the event was pretty full as usual.  I ran some laps getting used to the Toyo RA1's and shiftpoints as well as the clutch and steering.  The car was fairly well balanced and I was pleased to have power steering for once!  The water temps did start to rise and eventually the car started squirting what looked like oil from under the hood.  As it had started to rain during the session and Putnam is horribly slick in the rain, the session emptied out about halfway through as I ran a best of 1:27.8.  Back in the pits I figured out quickly it was the radiator overflow tank as the car simply ran hot and the water was very rusty and/or dirty.  We also discovered the car did not like to start once it was hot (more later).
After talking with the owner, the fix was to run the fan immediately on HI on track.  Qualifying went ok; after being stuck behing a FFR for a few laps I finally got 2 open laps and put down a 1:25.7 which was 2 seconds faster than my practice time and slotted into 3rd of 10 in class for the race.  However the car overheated again after pulling off the track.  I also got stuck behind another car leaving the track and the idle got low and it died - and unfortunately would not restart since it was hot.  I sat and waited and eventually had a friend come and help pushstart the car and I put it in the tech line as I didn't want to get DQ'd and lose my gridspot.  I was not called into tech but the car died again and we left it to cool down.
With the race not for 3+ hours, there was some new fixes planned.  After eating I found the owner replaced the radiator cap and thermostat I believe along with more water.
The race... it would be a 3-wave start.  Our class - CMC - would be the 3rd wave and would be a standing start which is normal for the class; but my first ever!  I was 3rd and did ok (didn't kill it or light up the tires too much) but I was late based on my video I've watched as I waited for the flag to drop rather than going on first movement.  Newbie...  I fell to 4th going into T1 as I was more watching my mirrors for the rest of the pack rather than going aggressively into T1 and taking 3rd back as I had the inside line.  No matter; I was in 4th and held that for several laps - best of 1:23.5 - best I could manage as the tires started to degrade and the temps started to rise once again.  I was quickly forced to back down the pace in hopes to help out the water temps but eventually I retired after 11 laps into the 35min race.