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Still Racing After All These
Years (Part VIII) by Butch Kummer
As I was packing to leave for the
Mid-Ohio Competition school and National points events the weekend of August 25-27, Donnie
Parks stopped by the house to drop off a course diagram and talked about the track from a
Corvette driver’s perspective. The last thing he said as he drove off was "make
us proud". What I’m reminded of right now is, "if it was easy, anyone could
do it". This was also to be the debut of my new ride, but I took Godzilla (my current
car) in case the new car was not ready (and it wasn’t). That ended up being a good
thing, because running that track for the first time and learning a new car would have
been overwhelming.
In the past three seasons (19
races), I have had two incidents involving other cars - at Road Atlanta last Labor Day (a
Porsche took me out) and at Savannah earlier this year (tapped by a Mustang but
continued). At the school on Friday I had two – one with a Sports 2000 racer and
another with a Formula Mazda. Both were overtaking me at right hand corners in the midst
of the "busy" section of the track. I saw the S2000 just as I smacked it as I
turned into the corner and I didn’t know the color of the Mazda until Harriett &
I watched their first practice session Saturday morning (i.e. – they’re so low I
never saw either one). If you can visualize a 135-pound running back getting thumped by a
300-pound lineman, you’re pretty close to the results here. Godzilla had some body
damage and is bruised up a bit, but I drove back to the pits after both incidents. The S2
made it back under it's own power after getting hauled out of the gravel trap while the
Mazda lost his left front corner and came back on a hook. In restrospect, it made me very
gunshy and tentative the rest of the weekend.
We also were having problems with
the transmission on Friday and didn't want to take the two hours to swap them then, so I
ran using third & fourth all that day. After patching the connection to the starter
and bleeding the brakes twice, the final (mid-afternoon) incident with the Mazda meant I
got a total of twelve laps at speed - the best being a 1:37.80. I was pretty bummed (about
the fibreglass damage and being a moving chicane), I still needed to change transmissions
and my back was hurting (strained it earlier in the week). I was ready to cut my losses
and come on home when I called John Miller to see if there was a snowball’s chance in
Hell of the new car being ready. There wasn't, but he also said a 1:37 wasn't that bad so
we went over and timed the other GT-1 in the 34's & 35's. Then another student (a
buddy of the Mazda driver) gave me a pep talk about just making some laps and getting some
race experience there, so we (Harriett & I) patched things together with cable ties,
pop rivets and duct tape, changed the transmission and bled the brakes again.
On Saturday I did three laps during
the practice session to check things out (best was 1:43.26), then ran out of talent at the
end of the straight and decided to bring the car in while it was still in one piece. We
changed tires for qualifying, ran four laps and came in for Harriett to check the
pressures, then went back out. Traffic was much lighter the last ten minutes of the
session and I ran a best of 1:40.706 - good for 23rd (of 32) overall and 14th of the 17
GT-1 cars. At least I had survived the experience without getting hit or hitting anyone.
Maybe the "If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you!" sticker on
the back helped.
Our race on Sunday was scheduled for
3:30, so Harriett & I did a bit of sight-seeing and hit a couple of yard sales that
morning. That part of the country is really beautiful (rolling hills, nicely manicured
lawns, old barns, etc.), but then we were also there during their best part of the year.
We were reminded of that when we noticed a sign at the Lexington city limits –
"Parking on the street not allowed when snowfall exceeds 6 inches".
During the race I passed the GT-1
Camaro beside me on the start, then dropped in behind three GT-3 cars (didn't want to mess
up their race even though I could have passed one or two on the straight). I ran a
1:39.502 on lap 2 backed up with a 1:40.01 on lap 3, then the transmission started acting
up again. Ends up I looped the car in the Carrousel finishing lap 6, restarted and made a
couple of slow(er) laps to check things out, but something in the rear end didn't feel
right (I thought maybe a tire was going down). It wasn't, so I wish now I had gone back to
the third & fourth gear only technique to see if it was the rear end or the
transmission, but I put it on the trailer instead. On the official results, I was 26th
overall.
We finished loading up, picked up
our rescued Greyhound (Daytona) from the motel, dropped Harriett off at the Columbus
airport, then drove to Richmond, KY, on Sunday night. I got to Johnson City right at noon
on Monday and, while the new car is certainly coming along, it will NOT be ready for the
Labor Day weekend at Road Atlanta. What we're now looking at is a test day at Kershaw, SC,
on 9/11. If I have problems getting up to speed, we're also looking at more testing and
maybe running the Regional at Mid-Ohio on Sept. 23,24 before the Runoffs.
My next local event is the Solo I at
Peach State Speedway near Commerce on Sept. 9. I'll probably patch Godzilla back together
for that event (poor guy is a poster child for the "prevent car abuse"
campaign), but we'll see.
See you at the track…
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