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Laguna Seca Mazda Raceway - A Rockin' New Year's Eve


Guest posnova

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Looks like the West coast chumps have more important things to do than talk about the race on the forums. Meanwhile the Central region still has an active thread from the October Road America race. Maybe I need to move West. B)

Not that I don't like talking about racing.

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Some teams are still traveling home :).

From a steward's standpoint, everyone was really well behaved all day! No full course yellows. No red flags. No tire, barrier, or wall hits. 3 reported incidents of contact, only 1 where a corner worker could clearly claim "fault". Plenty of early-on sound incidents, but all teams with sound issues did repair them. A few later in the day after exhausts were bent, broken, or blown-out, also repaired.

Everyone I talked to on the pit lane was having a great time. Many were looking for extra horsepower or alternate gearing to climb that hill. Some cars could attack it. Others.. 4th gear and "bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" chug-a-lug it'll get there eventually :).

Cometic Gasket Certificates to a team member of FoMoCo LoCo's who had all his team members bail on him, so he arrived alone, with the car, from Victoria, BC, Canada. Once he arrived he ran in Exception Class, drove for near 2 hours, got out for an hour, drove for two, out for one and lunchtime. Then decided to chill and make some friends, then jumped in and finished up the race. All alone.

His next door pit neighbors, the F1 Wannabe's (F1 1ab) helped him out with his fueling, as it would be incredibly difficult to hold a firebottle at attention 10 ft away and fuel the vehicle simultaneously. Additionally, very early on North Loop damaged a tie rod, and didn't have one available. F1 1ab's lent North Loop a tie rod so they could repair and return to the race. To F1 1ab's - a Cometic Gift Certificate.

Car #258 of Dubrovsky Law, a 1991 Honda Accord, was a driver short. A team member's wife or girl friend, I cannot remember, who had never driven a manual transmission vehicle before, took some time during tech and registration to learn how in an adjacent lot. She geared up and got out there and had a great time in the car. A certain 1st-timer with no prior experience whatsoever. She earned the Chump Award for herself :).

3rd Place - F1 Wannabe's (F1 1ab) - E36

2nd Place - Racey Diva - 280ZX

1st Place - Southworst - Fox Mustang 5.0 2bbl

After competing in nearly every West Coast event since the dawn of ChumpCar, Greg Fuss and his friends have finally campaigned Cathy McCause's car to the podium! Congratulations! It is exceptionally bittersweet, however, because Greg and Cathy..... were not there. Cathy had to leave the race (as did Greg) to go to Cathy's son's wedding back home. They left mid-race and sent their best from afar. Greg's friends finished up, with help from Cameron of Red Line Oil Products behind the wheel, to land in 2nd place.

Also, many congratulations to Southworst on their 1st place finish. This was their first ChumpCar race after competing in a few Lemons events.

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Guest posnova

John and his recruited friends / kitchen crew conjured up a worthy feast! It was quite good, from the cioppino to the lasagna, salad and rolls. All of it prepared in an outdoor camp-kitchen and John's Chumper-home for the oven for the lasagna. Cheers to Parabellum racing who happened upon some "distressed" Guinness.. as in.. 70-something pallets worth in a semi trailer, and the Rockstar guys (cannonball bandits) who made sure there was enough rockstar and vodka for all, amongst other offerings.

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Also, many congratulations to Southworst on their 1st place finish. This was their first ChumpCar race after competing in a few Lemons events.

Isn't this the first time a V8 has won a Western Region event? I recall Mr. Condren saying something about this before.

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We (F1 1ab's)had a blast. My first time at the corkscrew, I was looking for trees, and before I knew it I was totally off track to the right! Its surprisingly smooth out there. That was the first and last time though thank goodness.

We headed back to Kansas City via Vegas and I 70. We crested the continental divide, near Vail, 11,100ft, 6.5% inlcline, dark, packed snow and more snow falling.

The car was gradually going slower and slower, down to 35mph, foot to the floor, flashers on. It was way more intense than the corkscrew. We came out of the tunnel to be faced with flashing ice warning signs.

We made it home safe and sound.

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We (F1 1ab's)had a blast. My first time at the corkscrew, I was looking for trees, and before I knew it I was totally off track to the right! Its surprisingly smooth out there. That was the first and last time though thank goodness.

We headed back to Kansas City via Vegas and I 70. We crested the continental divide, near Vail, 11,100ft, 6.5% inlcline, dark, packed snow and more snow falling.

The car was gradually going slower and slower, down to 35mph, foot to the floor, flashers on. It was way more intense than the corkscrew. We came out of the tunnel to be faced with flashing ice warning signs.

We made it home safe and sound.

Never go that route this time of year unless you're prepared to stay till June...a wise ole trucker told me 30+ years agoo

And i have ;)

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Never go that route this time of year unless you're prepared to stay till June...a wise ole trucker told me 30+ years agoo

And i have ;)

Yep we we learned that lesson the hard way. We went out on 40, and had planned to come mback on 80 or 40. We got a message from our neighbour that conditions around the tunnel were great and that we should meet up in Denver. We took it hook line and sinker! Never again.

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Never go that route this time of year unless you're prepared to stay till June...a wise ole trucker told me 30+ years agoo

And i have ;)

Hell, even *I* know better than that! I used to make winter drives from Omaha to L.A. and back; the route was down through KC to OKC, then west along 40 to 15 and into the Basin, or make a left turn at Albuquerque (I kid you not) and a right at Las Cruces and take I10 into the Valley of Smoke. Anything north of that was marked "Eintritt Verboten".

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I'm local to the Bay Area and ran at last week's event. I normally race in the Clutch on Fire MR2, but he was not able to tow down from Portland for this race, so I rented a seat from North Loop, in the E30.

This was my 4th race at Laguna, we ran all 3 of the races last year, where we were 1st, 12th and 4th place. So the nice thing was that I had a decent handle on the track, I just needed to learn the differences in the new car.

First off, let me say that Tom runs a top notch operation, these guys are well prepared and have all the i's dotted and the t's crossed. It was a pleasure running with them, and I would not hesitate to run with them again, given the opportunity.

As a team, everything didn't go our way in the race. Our first driver had an off/crash on the second lap that Chris mentioned in an earlier post, leaving us with a broken tie rod and a couple flat tires. The lesson - Don't run off at turn 5, that's nasty. :(

I ran 3rd in the driver rotation, I got in the car at about 11:20 and ran about 1.5 hours. Here are a couple of videos of longer runs I put up.

This starts about 1/3 into my stint, it's mostly clean air. My fastest lap is mixed in here, a 1:52.397. It's the 5th lap of the 8, starts at about the 7:50 mark of the video.

[media=]http://youtu.be/pZw3RaldDjY

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And here's a second video, a battle with the F1 1ab E36 toward the end of my stint, that car was tough to get by. :)

[media=]http://youtu.be/_9SavpSOpKU

I had a great time at the event, we ended up finishing in 9th place. We had the crash, and then some sound issues in the afternoon while Tom was in the car that took some time to clear up. So finding the top 10 was still quite rewarding.

I was not able to stay for the party, so I could not speak to that piece. I went over to the center they were holding it in for about 20 minutes. Everything looked to be well planned, and I'm sure a great time was had by all.

Thanks to the ChumpCar team for putting on another great event at Laguna Seca.

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Had a great time at Laguna Seca as Rusty Rotors returned to complete some unfinished business (engine failure - It's a Corkscrew Christmas).

Thanks to Chumpcar for putting on a great event and for an awesome New Years Eve dinner and party.

Just finished processing 80GB of video and data.

Here we are starting the race...

http://youtu.be/LqOUgWdHW3g

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