Race Report 7/6/2007

What's the old saying?

I'd rather be lucky than good.

Well, last night I was lucky. My starter solenoid failed, I ran into another car, and I had a catastrophic mechanical failure. Somehow through all that I managed to finish 2nd out of eight cars.

I've been using my street car battery to power my back-up car, that means I take the battery out of my little Mitsubishi Mirage and mount it in the battery box of the #86 Back-up. This has worked fine for a couple weeks now. Last night I mounted the battery and tried to start the car *TAP* *TAP*. The solenoid failed meaning my car could only be started by jumping two terminals with a screwdriver or other piece of metal with an insulated handle. Luckily, my solenoid is mounted on the floor next to the driver's seat and therefore even if I was buckled in I could restart the car. That came in handy when I went to enter the track and the car stalled. It re-fired after some fumbling in the dark to find the right terminals.

After the race started I got caught behind Dave Moore who was using the entire track and not giving me an opportunity to pass him. On one corner I came in a whole lot harder than he did and clobbered him pretty good. Luckily we were both able to continue on almost without incident. I eventually passed him for that position.


Just after the white flag fell I raced into turn one to find spinning cars. I jammed on the brakes and drove around while noticing a large chunk of debris sail up the track and into the pit area sparking and nearly glowing. Luckily I finished the race and took home second place.

After slowing down and checking out the scoreboard I turned around and drove to the pit area. The official was looking at me and pointing to the large chunk of debris.

My thought process as I drove past the debris and to my pit stall was something like this:

Hey, that looks like my fuel cell.

If that's my fuel cell, How did I finish the race?

Holy crap, that sparking glowing piece of debris was fifteen gallons of gasoline that ejected from the trunk of my car.

Luckily, I finished the race. Luckily, nobody was hurt. Luckily I'll be able to put it all together and do it again next week.