The Festival of Speed was promoted by the Altered Gas, the guys who put on Flash Light Drags. With some collaboration with the BeaveRun management they wanted to expand it and put on all these other events. So the whole Festival thing seemed to attract a lot of interest, spectators, and a lot of nice cars. Most of it was for the Flash Light Drags. Some old husband and wife brought a ZR1 (him) and some other 427 badged C6 (hers), there was a bunch of Porches, ///M s, at least one Ferrari, Loti, classic American, modern ponys, STiEVOs, and other rice, big Diesel trucks, and a bunch of other shit I ignored. Honestly I’m not into looking at cars, but I know there were a lot of cars that other forum members would appreciate seeing. I’m told about 130 + cars did the Flash Light Drag with about 800 spectators.
I didn’t check out the auto-X or the karting, and I guess the drifting fell through. The $10 hot lap turned out to be the instructor ride along :rolljerk: so I’d be embarrassed if anyone listened to what I originally posted. Garick did the “miny flat out day” because he didn’t make Friday night practice. For $45 he did parade laps following instructors, then rode in the instructor’s car, and probably did 6-7 laps driving his Banana. Some that got instructors early got 15 laps, others got screwed. A little unorganized, but for someone that has NEVER done any performance driving it probably was a great experience.
Now the important shit, the enduro. We showed up Friday night for tech, we get there and see 3 other cars there. A really shiny SHO, a 95~96 Altima, and some square late 70’s early 80’s Malibu? Chevy V8 that has done a LeMon race before. A Z34 Monte Carlo shows up making the total car count with Cookie Monster a whopping 5. We quickly earned the dubious title of the “LeMons Veterans”. We do practice, break some hood pins, take the hood off, and learn the course. Change the brake pads in the dark to some old pads we want to get rid of (.200" of pad) that we figure will last 6 hours.
The race started 20 minutes late, but everyone was new to this so some clusterfuckery was expected…
Race Session 1:
Shiny SHO piloted by an instructor that has done 15,000+ laps* (this was pointed out to us more than once) gave us a great fight between laps 2-18, but loses a wheel 19 laps in. Z34 comes in with a stuck throttle, loses 4 laps, but gives us a good battle when we get together, much more power than us. The Altima and Square Chevy are battling too aggressively and get an in and out black flag. We are in the lead. Our strategy was to do 1 1/2 hr. stints, so Jon comes in and I go out. 2~3 clean laps and the Square Chevy thing blows up in the blind downhill right hander coating both inside and outside of the track in oil, there is no clean line through the corner. I signal to the car behind that I am slowing down, he does the same, then return to race speed. After pussy footing around 3 laps they black flag the entire course for clean up. So I got a whole 6 laps.
Shiny SHO -50ish laps
Square Chevy -10ish laps (out)
Altima -3 laps
Z34 -2 laps (made up 2 laps with our driver change)
Cookie Monster - Lead
Intermission:
During the intermission the Altima decided it wanted to change the pass side driveshaft just because. They asked us if we had a spare, I said sure, but it won’t fit, they took everything apart anyways. Sent out for a new driveshaft that I’m guessing was for an auto, and were still in the air at the start of the race. The Z34 had the hood open exposing a Supercharged 3800 (unless the S/C fits on a 3.4?)
Race Session 2:
The Z34 put on wheels that didn’t clear the calipers and couldn’t make it out of the pits, only the Shiny SHO and us took the green, but the Z34 got scored on the same lap and merged with us. Garick was still unfamiliar with the track and he Z34 and SHO walked away from us, we were a solid 1/2 lap down. The SHO came in for a driver change and a splash of gas, the Z34 for a wheel change and we were 1 lap up. We came in for our planed driver change and 10 gallons, not as fast as the SHO’s splash and go, went back out 2 laps down. The Z34 was 4 laps down and we were tied for the overall lead. We tell Ken to take it easy as the SHO is planning one more driver change and we overhear the Z34 needs new brake pads. The SHO does a driver change only no gas and comes back out still with a 1 1/2 lap lead. The Z34 brake change goes wrong and they push a piston out at some point. And then the SHO breaks wheels studs again, they park it for the day. With 50 minutes to go we had it pretty much locked up. Tell Ken to take some hot laps and I’m going back in 20 minutes to make up for getting screwed over earlier. So I do a few Banzai laps trying to get 1:14 laps on the transponder to match what I did in practice, but the brakes weren’t as assuring as before and I was down 500 rpm at the end of the back straight so I could only muster a 1:15.2, still FTD, but I know there’s more.
After I took the checker I tried to do a reverse burnout J-turn and then rip through 1st and 2nd, but the clutch stuck to the floor and I looked like a tard. Still took a reverse lap with the checkered for idiocratic purposes.
So there it is, we be the NATIONAL champs of a 5 car race.
