Altamont Motorsports Park « The Racing Geek

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Race Review – Sunday

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

We got to the track at 7 am on Sunday so that we could prep the car for the 9 am start. The car was in reasonable shape and the main thing we wanted to was to replace the transmission mounts and the driveshaft with parts we had managed to scrounge up from various disreputable sources . However just as we were about to jack up the car we realised that we had left them at home wallbash . Seeing that we had no way of further patching up drivetrain, we got to work fixing the front end bodywork which had taken a few hits on Saturday and was dangerously close to the radiator. Rob hooked a chain from the car to the trailer hitch and stood on it force the bodywork back into shape.

Guy once again started the day and gave a good account of himself. Midway through his stint there was some contact which ripped our front bumper out of the car and left the radiator unprotected. Though Guy was still continuing, we knew that it would be too risky to run for to long without a bumper. At this point we went around the pits to see if we could scrounge up any spare parts. In a typical display of Lemons (and racing) spirit one team gave us about 5 feet of hollow iron bar while another team lent us the use of their welder. Unfortunately I don’t remember the team names but major thanks to them for helping us out. We lost about 45 minutes as Rob welded the bar in as a replacement bumper and then Gabe went out for his first stint.

Unfortunately just a few minutes into his stint we has a run-in with some very heavy Detroit iron that felt that smaller cars should magically disappear from its path. Since we haven’t yet mastered the fine art of teleportation, there was some fairly hard contact which ended with the other car getting a flat tire and our car slicing its lower radiator hose. We pulled the radiator and got to work fixing the powersteering bracket which was bent out of shape. After another round of begging in the pits I got a spare hose from the Edge Motorworks team while Team Blue Goose donated a hose clamp. In all we lost about 20-30 minutes during the fix.

At this point we had lost some 3.5 hours due to repairs and we were way behind on laps. Gabe, Rob and Jyri did some great stints but we knew that our only chance of making up ground was to do long stints and pass people while they pitted. I got into the car with a full tank of fuel and went out to do a hour stint. The lack of a real front bumper meant that I to be extra cautious about traffic and sometimes had to step HARD on the brakes to avoid any front end contact (even got rear ended a few times as a result ). After a few warmup laps I really got into the groove and was pulling of some pretty fun passes through the traffic. My laptimes were good enough that the team asked me to stay out there as long as possible. About 90 minutes into the stint, driver fatigue started becoming an issue. Interestingly the effect first started during the yellow flag laps – I started feeling a bit hot and uncomfortable. However the second the flag dropped adrenaline would start flowing and the fatigue would disappear and I would get back to race pace. After going through another 2-3 yellow flags I decided that enough was enough and ended up pitting after an hour and 45 minutes on track.

Jyri took on the next stint and was doing quite well until he was punted off the track. As you can see in the video, he recovers well from the first hit in the esses but a few seconds later he gets hit again while going through the right handed sweeper and goes into the tirewall. This ends up bending out left control arm and completely messes up our toe settings. Rob once again came to the rescue and eyeballed a toe adjustment to get us back on track. Gabe then took over for the final stint of the race and despite a couple of ‘moments’ he brought the car safely to the end.

Ouch from rnair on Vimeo.

We finished 44th out of 85 cars which is a pretty good for a group of Lemons newbies who were lying in 62nd on Saturday night. A big thanks to our sponsors – Dietsch Werks, Griffin Motorwerke, ChaseCam, Livermore Performance and Autopower – for helping us prep the car. All of us had a great time and we are already planning what we need to improve in time for the December race at Thunderhill

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, Arse-Freeze-Apalooza, race review
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, photos, videos | No Comments »

Race review – Saturday

Friday, November 9th, 2007

Our tactics for the race were to run 45 minute stints at a healthy pace and to avoid any unnecessary contact. Guy was our first driver and got to experience the Lemons start procedure. All the teams are asked to lineup in the pits and are slowly let out onto the track for yellow flag laps. Once the whole grid is on the track, race control randomly picks a team and throws the green flag the next time that team crosses the start/finish. At this point the race is on and its every man for himself. This is a short video of the start of the race – Guy enters the frame from the left at the 40 second mark.

Race start from rnair on Vimeo.

We were keeping up an excellent pace and were among the faster cars out there. Our pitstops, while not spectacular, were decent enough and saw Rob and Jyri taking stints 2 and 3 respectively. About 2 hours into the race, Jyri pitted and I got into the car for stint #4.

I started out pretty tentatively, this was after all my very first race in a real car. On lap 2 I started to feel really brave and tried to pass a couple of cars around the outside of the banking. While I did end up going around the cars, I was unsighted going into the esses and found that someone had dragged quite bit of gravel right at my braking/turn-in point. This being Lemons there was no debris flag and I basically had two choices: a) squeeze the car on my left and attempt to avoid the gravel with the possibility of getting broadsided if it doesn’t work out and b) hit the freestanding tire barrier and hope for the best. Having seen other cars hit similar barriers without too much drama, I decided on option b and hit the brakes which locked the second I hit the gravel.

Debris flag anyone? from rnair on Vimeo.

As you can see I hit the barrier with a glancing blow and knocked them over. You probably also saw that there was a third option available – turn right, avoid the barrier and skip the esses. Unfortunately I didn’t think of it at the time so that route really didn’t come into play. After the it the car seemed to be working fine and after slowing for a few corners I continued on my merry way. The following clip should give you a good idea of the action we encountered on track. Watch the grey Subaru wagon (Team Scooby) as it tries to pass me, it was one of the fastest cars on the track but I kept getting him stuck behind slower cars until he finally passes me two laps later

On track action from rnair on Vimeo.

About 30 minutes into the session I came around the banking and was about to pass another car when the back end of the car suddenly let go and spun me around. Luckily the car missed the tire barriers and ended up facing the wrong way on the inside of the first S. I tried putting it in neutral to start the engine but the gearshift had sunk about 6 inches lowers and I could not change gears. I tried starting it with the clutch in but only got an loud banging noise from the transmission with no forward movement. I then sat around waiting for the tow truck and watched cars coming head-on towards me at race speed – I even had one guy blow the turn and drive across the front of my car. After a few minutes the race was yellow flagged and the tow truck pushed me into the pits with the transmission making loud banging noises all the way.

Spin out from rnair on Vimeo.

When I came into the pits, we got down to diagnosing what was wrong with the car – the transmission was obviously busted but we didn’t know how or why. When we opened the hood we saw a most interesting sight, the radiator was bent outwards rather than inwards. It appeared that when our car had any forward contact (such as the tire barrier I hit), the engine was actually flexing the engine mounts and moving far enough forward in the engine bay for the distributor to hit the back of the radiator. This motion kept pulling the transmission forward until the transmission mounts finally snapped. At this point the transmission stressed the driveshaft enough that the two piece driveshaft just separated at the joint. /the driveshaft snapping was most likely the cause of the spin – it was equivalent to lifting mid corner which produced lift-off oversteer with no drive to allow recovery. Our car was now officially dead and we did not have any spare parts to fix it.

Enter our in-team mechanic: Rob Dietsch of Dietsch Werks. Now Rob usually spends his days doing high quality repair work on his customers cars, this obviously was NOT the time for quality work so he settled for quick and dirty fixes (emphasis on quick ). He started out by removing the two pieces of the driveshaft and used a hacksaw to clean out the joint between the two pieces before mating them together once again. We did not have any spare transmission mounts so he fixed the transmission in place using straps and bolts passing through holes drilled in the car floor. The final piece was to anchor the engine in place using chains so that it would no longer move forward if there was any impact.

The repairs took about 2.5 hours and dropped us to 62 place in the standings. Rob took the car out first to see how it would hold up. He put in some good times before handing it over to Jyri for the final stint. By the end of the day the car had suffered only minor body damage and was still putting in some excellent times. We were just glad to be running at the end of the day despite having such potentially race ending damage to our drivetrain.

P.S.: If you have nothing better to do and want to kill a full 30 minutes you should watch this video of my entire stint.

Saturday stint from rnair on Vimeo.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, Arse-Freeze-Apalooza, chasecam, in-car, race, racetrack, video
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Race review – Saturday pre-race setup

Monday, November 5th, 2007

I am finally getting down to writing my review of our Lemons experience – this first post will be about Saturday setup while following posts will be about things like on-track action, mechanical breakdowns, jury rigged repairs and other bits of lemons fun.

As I had mentioned before, we had some tire wear issues on during our Friday test session. The banked turns were enough lateral load (sustained 1.3 G) on the car that we were blistering the outer edge of our right front tire. While raising the tire pressures did help, there was no way that our tires would last an entire race with such uneven wear. The first thing we did was call pretty much every the tire shop in the Bay Area to find one that stocked Falken Azenis and was open early on Saturday. Eventually we found a place in Milpitas that opened at 8am and Gabe did an emergency tire run to pick up four tires.

The new tires would however only be a bandaid to the tire wear issues – we really needed a way add negative camber at the front in order to get even tire wear. In keeping with the Lemons philosophy of cheap and easy fixes, Rob brought out his trusty strut bender. The strut bender is a hydraulic tool that is bolted to the wheel hub and uses a combination of a positioning chain and a hydraulic ram to bend the strut and thereby adjust the camber on the wheel. Its quite an interesting device to look at and as you can see below, Rob had a large crowd of interested onlookers asking him what he was doing.

Once we had sorted out our suspension, we went to the tech inspection area. The inspection had two parts – first they inspected at the car and the drivers equipment to ensure that we passed the minimum safety requirements. Once that was done we went over to the judge to get our car costs accessed. The “Judge” (who wears judicial robes and a wig) inspects the car to see if it is worth $500 or less. Cars that are judged to be too expensive are accessed a BSF which calculated as follows:

To prevent cheating, all cars will be inspected by a panel appointed by the organizers. At that time, all teams will be given an opportunity to describe the car’s purchase and prep. If the panel believes the $500 limit has been exceeded, it will assign a Bullshit Factor (BSF) equal to one BSF per ten dollars above the limit. The entry will be docked one lap for each BSF assigned. (Ten dollars = one BSF = one lap.) Entrants are encouraged to bring all supporting evidence and make up plausible-sounding stories in advance. Appeal of BSF Panel Decisions: Get real. There’s no appealing this decision. You’re boned.

We did get a couple of questions regarding the cost of the car, especially since we had a new radiator and muffler (the lack of receipts and a bill of sale didn’t help either), but in the end they had to accept that an E30 BMW isn’t worth more than $500 no matter how many new parts you throw on it.

Once we were through tech we went through our final prep and double checked things like the lap transponder, fuel, chasecam setup, DL1, etc… At about 2pm, Jay Lamm (the organizer) called everyone over to the budget truck that served as his office and conducted a drivers meeting over a megaphone. After telling us several times to not to hit each other, he turned it over to the track marshal to explain the flagging situation. Unlike SCCA racing which have some 10 different kinds of flags, Lemons has just 3 flags:

Green: Race is on
Yellow: Full course yellow – slow down, no passing allowed.
Black: You’ve been a bad boy – come into the pits and roll the wheel of misfortune.

There are no debris flags or stationary yellows to warn of obstructions – racers will have figure out the best way around anything on the track. Additionally cars stalled on track will not be towed immediately, instead the marshals will wait until there is a car in an unsafe position on track before throwing a yellow flag and towing out a bunch of cars at the same time.

Once all the drivers meeting was done all the teams were sent back to the pits and told to line up to enter the track – the 24 Hours of Lemons “ARSE-FREEZE-APALOOZA” was about to begin.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, prep, preparation, race, racetrack
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons | 2 Comments »

Got Video?

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007

Question: Which Lemons team was using the same technology as Formula 1 teams?
Answer: Team SFF1 was using the same ChaseCam setup used by Formula 1 teams like Renault and Red Bull.

As I’ve said before, the ChaseCam PDR100 Racer Kit is my dream in-car video setup – a solid state video recorder with a lightweight, shockproof, weatherproof camera. When we decided to run the 24 Hours of Lemons I approached ChaseCam to see if they might be interested in lending us a video setup to record the race. I am glad to report that they were very interested in the race and sent us a two full recording setups (PDR 100, bulletcam and camera mount) so that we’d be able to record both forward and backward views.

We mounted the cameras to the rollcage and velcroed the PDR units to the area where the back seats used to be. To avoid having to change batteries every stint, we directly hard wired the units to a 12V line from the dashboard. Once the cameras were aimed all we had to do was pop in a couple of 8GB video cards and we were ready to go. We are still sifting through the recorded video but here is a quick teaser from our rear facing camera. Jyri was driving the car when he gets hit while going through the esses. He recovers well from the hit but a few seconds later he gets hit again while going through the right handed sweeper and goes into the tirewall. Incidentally the blue CRX that passes us in the beginning of the video is Team Blue Goose, a team of EliseTalkers from Texas who finished 8th.

Ouch from rnair on Vimeo.

At its highest quality setting, the PDR100 records MPEG-2 at the rate of 4GB an hour. This meant that at every pitstop we had to switch CF cards and download the card data onto a laptop. The only issue we ran into was that the maximum file size on the PDR is 4GB (irrespective of card size) which means that in high quality mode you can only record 1 hour of video. If you are going to be recording video of greater length I suggest you reduce the quality to “normal”. Now if you’ll excuse me I have some 50 GB of super high quality video to sift through.

P.S.: I am in the process of writing up our entry for the December race so it will probably be a week or so before I recap the race and post the video online.

Update from Randy Chase: “The largest single file size is 4gigs but it can record continuously using consecutive 4gig files. For example, a 16gig card will record 4 hours of the highest quality video, but in 4 files. A 32gig card will record 8 hours. The gap between files is less than 1/2 second.” The PDR100 is now officially perfect.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, chasecam, video
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The race is over

Monday, October 22nd, 2007

We finished 44th out of 85 cars (full results). Our pace was really good but we lost a lot of time (3+ hours) due to some mechanical issues. I’ll be writing up more detail of how the race went and our band-aid mechanical fixes over the next few days. In the meantime here is some video of the race start.

Race start from rnair on Vimeo.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, race, racetrack, video
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, videos | No Comments »

Test day

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Yesterday we had a pretty good test day at Altamont. All of us did a few laps behind the wheel to get a feel for the car and the track. The car ran very fast and we all did 54 sec laps with Jyri doing a best of 52. We did have some tire wear issues with our right front tire due to the long banked turns – we will be doing some emergency camber adjustments to the front to fix that.

Here is a photo of me passing someone on the outside of the banking and a video of Jyri doing some quick laps under lights.

Hot laps from rnair on Vimeo.

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, practice, prep, preparation, test, testing, video
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, videos | 1 Comment »

We’re in!

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

I am a huge fan of the 24 Hours of Lemons and am glad to announce that Team SFF1 has officially been accepted into the Arse-Freeze-Apalooza race to be held in Alatamont on 20-21 October. My co-drivers will be Guy Argo, Rob Dietsch, Gabriel Matus and Jyri Virkki. Since we are going to be racing an 1986 MW 325E we decided to go for a BMW F1 based team concept. Check out our accepted team concept and application:

Team Name
SFF1 BMW Sauber

Vechicle Make & model:
2008 BMW Sauber F1.08 aka renovated 1986 BMW 325 E with a broken timing belt and bent valves

Team Concept
After a fast, though unreliable, start to the 2007 Formula 1 championship, the BMW Sauber F1 team has decided that they need additional preseason testing to properly prepare the 2008 F1 car. After developing the initial chassis in secret, the SFF1 test team has been entrusted with performing much needed endurace testing by entering the car in the prestigious 24 hours of Lemons race. With a team of internationally reknowned drivers and backed by a full works pitcrew, the SFF1 team is expected to both compete successfully and gain valuable data to help the car compete for the 2008 F1 season.

Team Drivers
Guy Argo

In Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart, Scotland has produced two of the greatest drivers to ever race in Formula 1. However after the heady days of the sixties and seventies there haven’t been any true scottish champions – Guy Argo should change all that. He started autocrossing two months after getting his license and one month after taking delivery of his ’92 special edition Mazda Miata. Two months later he won his first autocross. He started indoor go-karting in 2000 and became part of the famous trio (Guy Argo, David Canavan, Paul Smyth) that dominated F1Boston’s indoor racing scene. In 2002 he transitioned to outdoor karts with a sponsored ride for All Kart. He took a brief hiatus after moving to the Bay Area. But as soon as gokartracer.com opened up, he was already making his mark on the Pro League with several podiums and an outright season win. Currently you can find him testing his mettle against all comers atthe Sunday Night Leagues LeManKarting.com in Fremont alongside his protege, Jay Gopal. Reknowned for his patience, cunning and spectacular passing, what he lacks in speed he makes up for in consistency and determination. We await his return to outdoor racing with bated breath.

Robert Dietsch

Robert Dietsch
Rob Dietsch has been involved in motorsport since the late 80′s doing a variety of AutoX and HPDE before graduating to club racing. After winning the SCCA SFR GT4 championship in his rookie year (2003) he progessed to Toyota Atlantic and had a fairly good season before taking a sabbatical from racing. Currently tracking his Lotus Elise and Porsche Cayman at NorCal HPDE, he has been tempted back to the world of competitve motorsport by the chance to go after the ultimate prize – the 24 hours of Lemons.

Gabriel Matus

Gabriel Matus
With the exit of Juan Pablo Montoya, F1 needs another Latin heathrob to bring F1 to Latin America. With his playboy looks and fierce racing determination, Gabriel has all the ingredients needed to become the next Latino Superstar of Formula 1. One of the main organizers behind the SFF1 group, his endurance driving experience includes commuting from San Francisco to Sunnyvale everyday.

Rahul Nair

1 billion people and the best India can come up with Narain Kartikeyan??? Rahul Nair expects to redress that balance by merging raw speed with tactical brilliance to become the first Indian to win in F1. This speed freak can spends as much of his life behind the wheel as he can. He has 2 years of HPDE and Autocross experience in his Lotus and is a regular fixture in the bay area go-kart tracks.

Jyri Virkki

Jyri Virkki
Where would any F1 team be without a “Flying Finn”? Jyri brings with him the same ice-cool personality that saw Keke Rosberg, Mika Hakkinen and Kimi Raikkonen win dozens of F1 races and 3 world championships. A Miata addict, he has been running track events since the mid-90s and instructing for about 9 years (currently instructing with Miata clubs, Thunderhill Street School and BMWCCA).

Car Chassis

Before

before
After

after
Pit Crew

Crew chief: Mario Theissen

Mario Theissen
Jack Man: Ron Dennis

Ron Dennis

Communications: Jean Todt

Jean Todt

Tags: 24 Hours of Lemons, Altamont, Altamont Motorsports Park, entry form
Posted in 24 Hours of Lemons, cars, motorsport | 2 Comments »

24 Hours of Lemons

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

I’ve been very interested in the 24 Hours of Lemons since I first heard about it last year and when I found out that the first race of the year was this past weekend I just had to go check it out. The Altamont Motorsports Park in Tracy, CA is the home of the race and features two ovals which are interconnected to create a road-course for the Lemons race. The cars all had to be bought and race prepped for under $500 (excluding safety gear) with a team of 4-6 drivers. Despite the name the actual racing would only go on for about 14 hours with a 10 hour break at night to let people recuperate as well as repair their cars.

I got there just as the drivers meeting got underway and found that it was pretty well organized. The organizers were very strict about a no bumping/no blocking rule and had come up with a set of humourous punishments for the drivers that broke the rules. The competitors would spin the “Wheel of Misfortune” and have to serve whatever penalty that came up. Some of the penalties included:

The Al Gore Carbon Replacement penalty: The competitor would have to wear a tie-die shirt and then plant a rather large sapling in the ground before they could continue.
The Colonel Sanders where the participant would be doused in soapy water and then feathered using large pillows.
The Legion of Odour involved hanging a half pound of smelly blue cheese around the drivers neck as well as placing another pound of it on the hot intake manifold – should make for a truly odourous experience.
The Egg Man winner (or loser) would have an open bucket of eggs welded to the hood of their cars – the idea being that as they drove the eggs would fall out of the bucket and smear the car.
My favourite was the Highway 17 penalty where the driver would have to follow a VW microbus around the track for 10 laps.
Anyone who bumped other cars on the track would initially have a set of training wheels welded to the sides of their cars
Repeat “bumpers” would get the Sword of Damocles penalty where a plate with sharpened spikes would be welded to their radiator with the spikes pointing inwards. At this point they were let out on track knowing that their next bump would be their last.

The organizers required that the drivers have some sort of competition license and the racetrack was more than happy to sell you a NASCAR license at the gate for just $75 dollars. The fact that people could buy licenses at the door was the main factor that dissuaded me from running the Lemons race last year – after all who want to be side by side with a novice driver in a $500 car. However it looked like the penalties did a good job of keeping the track action pretty clean – the serious racer didn’t want to lose the time while the joyriders didn’t want the embarrassment. The speeds are low as well which keeps the event pretty safe. One of the teams was racing an 80′s Golf which went into the tirewall and flipped onto its roof. The track was immediately red flagged and the safety vehicles were at the car in under 5 minutes. The driver was completely unhurt and with the help of the marshal he roled the car back onto its wheels before continuing with the race .

All in all it was a great event and I am seriously trying to get an official SFF1 entry together for the October race (UPDATE: We just got accepted into the October event) – wish me luck. In the meantime you can look at a video I shot as well as some photos of my favourite cars. I have posted the full collection of photos on Flickr though you will probably be better off looking at the excellent photoset that Nithya just posted.

Video of the first few laps of the race:

Shagpile is an excellent aero-aid: