Harris Hill & Willow Springs

[loumindar]

Where are the reports from Harris Hill and Willow Springs? Winker, where are you? I'm missing my ChumpCar fix for the weekend.

[lonestarrpm]

Where are the reports from Harris Hill and Willow Springs? Winker, where are you? I'm missing my ChumpCar fix for the weekend.

Friday we battled with a bad alternator -- put a new one in before the start of the race on Saturday.

We struggled with a low hanging muffler and some late season agricultural research on Saturday.

Saturday night we solved our muffler issue. Tucked her high and tight

we were looking forward to a productive Sunday.

Wasn't to be.

30 min in on Sunday we lost something in the bell housing.

Was unable to rectify it -- and called it a day about 1PM.

Valiant effort and a whole lot of fun.

When we left it was a battle between I think the Nudist Ranch and the Mid-Drive Crisis.

Ironically we were pitted right in the middle of the two.

We hope to be back on track for the 4 Chump Car Texas races next year!

Mike

[Guest VRO]

There was a race at Harris Hill this weekend?

Oh yeah..

Great track!

I arrived on Thursday as John (Head Chump)and Phillip (track staff) were sealing up the pavement where a fresh timing loop now lay. Noise was 16db, well below the 20db nominal. Great success!

Test and tune went well on Friday. We watched a beautiful sunset from the Clubhouse atop the hill. Then came the rain. What my old grandpappy used to call "a real frog strangler". The rain stopped around 8, then in the middle of the night gale force winds made an appearance, scattering and folding pop-ups, tarps and anything else not weighted down with a bus.

Saturday, however, turned out to be sunny and clear. Teams took the track at 9:00a and after a xpnder test lap the green fell. Several teams immediately tested adhesion to the cold surface in T1. But as everyone got familiar with the track, excursions into the weeds fell off. First flat tow occurs Sat morning and off to fetch the dead was the legendary Audi A3 tow car.

What the? Yeah, it was glorious to see the A3 blast past everyone and pull otherwise inert metal back to the paddock!

There was the obligatory car-nage. The 61 MR2 came into the paddock, engine rattling like a metal trash can full of bricks in a tornado. They later gave the car to another MR2 team for salvage parts so that team could get back into he race (#61 PRF Racing subsequently won the Spirit of Chump award). The #1 Opel GT spent much of the day on jackstands as the team feverishly worked to replace the diff/rear axle.

Last minute entry of an 04 Focus "flood car" drew a lot of attention (and laps) but retired early due to apparent crankcase ventilation issues.

Three impressive engineering feats:

1. The #8 Spridget retrofitted with a Hayabusa high booster motor. Awesome - when it was on the track.

2. The #57 Renault Dauphine with a mid-engine 3.0L V6 transplanted from a Sable. Another paddock queen

3. The #90 Mitsu Mirage converted to center drive.

At the end of the day it was:

90 Mitsu

31 E30

0 Porsche 914

Sunday was overcast, and temps dropped as the day wore on. Another MR2 on the paddock with no compression, intake vales would not close. Team considered replacing the valvetrain shims with quarters, but decided to pack it up. Another MR2, making use of the donated 61 car worked all night (with the help of the #9 Gashole team - PROPS!) to get the driveline issues sorted out. The #10 Loony Toons 5.0 Mustang replaced a bad head gasket Sat night and was healthy again. A (95?) Mustang 3.8 was not as lucky and left on a trailer.

1 Grass fire

6+ spins by the #39 RX-7

SHO passes in the grass on the straight

Several "race in the race" battles including a 240SX vs 300ZX, the SHO and the Mirage, and a Mustang and a Camaro for 4th at the end

Dauphine Fu (or did it have the Flu?)

Rabbit wheels wobbling

TR7 wheels wobbling

1 "EC" RX-7 abandoned at T4

A floating E36

Massive skid marks into T10

Opel spits up another diff

An air cooled motor dead

A3 Antics

Hayabusa hiatus

De-torqued torque tube

It was a ton of fun but at the checkered it was:

90 Mitsu

9 Accord

31 E30

This was the first W2W race ever held at the track and it went off without a hitch! If you ever get the chance to visit San Marcos, you have to stop by H2R. Beau, Eric, James, Cameron, Phillip and the rest are great folks! The track is all it was made out to be (including "intimate" paddock). Many, many thanks to the track staff and the 12 volunteers for making it a flawless weekend of racing. And thanks as well to a helluva group on the paddock - drivers, crew, friends and families - New Chumps and old, you all made it a great weekend!

[Superdave]

Three impressive engineering feats:

1. The #8 Spridget retrofitted with a Hayabusa high booster motor. Awesome - when it was on the track.

2. The #57 Renault Dauphine with a mid-engine 3.0L V6 transplanted from a Sable. Another paddock queen

3. The #90 Mitsu Mirage converted to center drive.

I sure would like to know more about these cars and how chump handled them, including what they drew for penalty laps.

We have announced a comparable project to these.

[WinkTimber]

Where are the reports from Harris Hill and Willow Springs? Winker, where are you? I'm missing my ChumpCar fix for the weekend.

I wasn't at either race, much as I wished I could have been. But wishes don't pay the bills.

If I can cobble together some results and tales from those who were there, I will try to post summaries.

[speedo]

How cars took the green flag?

[WinkTimber]

off to fetch the dead was the legendary Audi A3 tow car.

An Audi??? You were in Texas and couldn't find a truck???

[Guest VRO]

I sure would like to know more about these cars and how chump handled them, including what they drew for penalty laps.

We have announced a comparable project to these.

I'd have to look. but aside from laps - the two radical engine swaps spent a lot of time in the paddock with issues and neither came close to cracking the top 10. If you're doing a swap for the sake of winning, might want to re-think. If you're doing one for the hell of it, go for it.

[Guest VRO]

How cars took the green flag?

More than 30, less than 70

[Guest VRO]

An Audi??? You were in Texas and couldn't find a truck???

It was the track's weapon of choice. It was cool, not sure how the DSG held up.

[Jason]

So what is the results?

I'd like to know how the looney tunes and that sweet Festiva turned out.

[Guest VRO]

So what is the results?

I'd like to know how the looney tunes and that sweet Festiva turned out.

See Post #3 above.

Loony Toons DNF on Sat with a blown head gasket late in the day. They made an eefort to nurse it through the end of the race but decided to save the motor. The motor re-fired at about 6:30p. They finished 4th on Sunday.

The Festiva did well and finished both days (not sure where). They won the "John Cameron Swayze/Keeps a Licking and Keeps on Ticking" award.

[HTRDCowboy]

This was my first ChumpCar race. Unfortunately not in the race, but that'll change real soon. I went down to see what exactly went on at these races, that I've been reading about for the last few months. All I can say is WOW, everyone I met were a class act from the staff to the racers. This visit has done nothing but light a fire under me to get our teams car built and joined the madness.

This trip worked out great since I was able to work as a volunteer, and see things from a different perspective. This organization is very organized and efficient. If anyone has been following this forum as I have, and have been contemplating participating in ChumpCar, you couldn't find a better racing series to join.

Ronnie.....

[Guest Stovebolt]

The '98 Mustang v6 #25 got about to noon before its final tow in by the Audi, a victem of head gasket leaking, high engine temp detonation fragging the heads and blowing out a spark plug and freeze plug. I have never seen head combustion chambers eaten up like that before, looked like they were sand blasted.

I wanted to thank Mike from the Nudist team (no, he was clothed at the time) for literally jumping at the chance to dig in with both hands and tear our engine down and try to get it running again. He was very gung-ho and got filthy on our not so clean engine. He refused any offers of beer or steak dinner for his efforts. All the teams were great, and like usual we borrowed and lent tools to help try to keep the cars on the track.

We left mid-day Sunday to get home to deal with carnage of car, but wanted to tell everyone "bye" and it was great. Our team had done a test day at HHR and the race was as fun as I had hoped it to be. Its a technical track - you have to "up on the wheel" pretty much all the way around the track. The majority of the turns are either decreasing radius, off-camber or both! Add in some very interesting elevation changes like the "blind drop" that echos leguna seca's corkscrew, and you have a heck of a track.

John and his Chump folks had some well thought out solutions to deal with pitting in the paddock, awesome trophies, even some Chump Wine. I did not miss the tomfoolery with the LeMons series for routine things like spins and 4 offs, it went smoothly letting cars get back on the track. I wish we could have done more racing before our car expired, but we'll be back, already tearing into the engine.

Scott

[Guest AWiley1953]

How come there are no official results from this race? Did the Mylaps thingy break? I hope we don't have to wait three weeks like we did at Hallett.

[chisek]

How come there are no official results from this race? Did the Mylaps thingy break? I hope we don't have to wait three weeks like we did at Hallett.

All the mylaps data is saved on John's laptop, and he's still on the road. When I went to upload it after the race, I couldn't get a wireless signal and I didn't have an aircard with me. Be patient!

[parid]

This is why you need a smart phone mike . Just sayin' 2008 called, they want you to come join them.

[robertm]

I sure would like to know more about these cars and how chump handled them, including what they drew for penalty laps.

We have announced a comparable project to these.

Not sure what if any penalty laps the Spridget got. It was fast in a straight line but the suspension seemed pretty wacky in the corners and effectively slowed him down enough to limit the engines advantage.

The Dauphine got bonus laps for engineering and penalty laps for spending to much money. It evened out to 0 laps to start the race.

The center drive Mirage got 5 bonus engineering laps. They were one of a couple cars that started the race with laps up on the entire field. Imagine our surprise when after like 30 minutes of racing we discovered we were 5 laps down on first place. I about flipped out! I never did find a publically posted list of penalty/bonus laps. Possibly they were shown on the screen before the race began. The information I have provided I learned from the perspective teams.

The big issue a lot of us had was the center-drive car was FTD for almost all of Saturday and one of the only cars that got bonus laps. Really didn’t make sense. I’ve been told for 2011 there will be no way for cars to get bonus/extra whatever laps to equal more than zero at the start (charity laps aside of course).

One thing I would very much like to see is a printout of all penalty, bonus and charity laps for all teams posted somewhere. This transparency will end a lot of the confusion and limit the possibility of any perceived officiating favoritism (real or imagined).

It was a great weekend overall. There were a few growing pains with the new track but everyone played nice. I’m pretty sure most that attended had a great time and I have a feeling Chump will grow by leaps and bounds in TX for 2011!

[parid]

You are correct, no bonus laps for theme or engineering in 2011. We do try to post the penalties publicly but sometimes it ends up as one of the things that doesn't get done when we run out of time. We are working to improve the consistency and you can expect that to get better with time.

[lordmulgath]

About publicly posting penalties. I realize everyone on the forums is curious to see who got what, but at the events have you guys started to put up like a white board that lists the offending teams and the #of laps they got when going through Tech?

[chisek]

For H2R, all bonus/penalty laps were loaded into MyLaps the night before and displayed on screen before the race. Once the race started you wouldn't have known what the base bonus/penalty lap count was. This system will remain for 2011, but many of you want to see penalty laps only at any time. This would be pretty easy to do with a 30 car field, but would be more labor intensive with 70. Perhaps we can try the whiteboard idea at Roebling and only list cars that received penalty laps.

[Guest JungleEddy]

I know the results have not been published yet, but the center-drive Mirage won both days on its own merits even after subtracting the 5 bonus laps for engineering (and the 3 laps for a previous win!). I've got pics of the techs and other persons looking at the car after the event. I wish I had the audio to go with them... Comments were something like, "It doesn't even have a rear sway bar" or "the calipers are cast iron" or "are those Ford Mustang wheels?"

[Rex]

This is why you need a smart phone mike . Just sayin' 2008 called, they want you to come join them.

Really Parrid? You know where Mike is from right? To him 2008 is still 7 years down the road.

[Guest ParidsOtherAccount]

Burn. His car runs a lot better than mine so I should probably stop barking up this tree .

[3G]

Really Parrid? You know where Mike is from right? To him 2008 is still 7 years down the road.

is he from eugene ?