build diary

August 24, 2008: There's an old saying in racing: "To finish first, you must first finish".
Brandon would like to amend that somewhat, to "To finish first, you must make it to the start line". Right after our battle at the Open House, he started having some problems with the carburetors on his car. He spent most of the week trying to chase down the cause but wasn't able to get it running in time. A frustrated guy. So our epic battle for the lap record is going to have to wait for a while.

However, Bill was only a hair over 0.1 seconds behind and was also gunning for the record. He spent part of the week fitting a front sway bar to the Westfield and fixing a bushing problem that had one front wheel moving back and forth by about an inch (yikes!). So he was primed for battle. Me? I left the Seven in the trailer after the Open House. It's not that I'm cocky, I just didn't have anything I could do other than replay the track in my mind.

The weather was hot with a high of 96. That's not good for lap times, and the turbocharged Westfield was down on power. I attacked the track, looking for little hidden pockets of time and found a couple of unexpected spots. On my second session, I did manage to knock a tenth of a second off my previous time, dropping the record to 1:01.893. I'm not even sure what lap it was, honestly, as I didn't think I had any clean ones in that session. I'd been fighting a wayward tail on the car. Later in the day, I was driving more cleanly and taking advantage of my newfound little secrets in the track, but the high track temp prevented the times from dropping any further. Bill turned a 1:02.187 - not exactly slow, but not quite as quick as he had been last week.

So that's a successful day. Everyone else went slower than they had the week before, in some cases by a fairly significant amount. That one quick lap helped me knock a little more time off the record and keeps me safe for a while longer. Whew! Now it's time to park the Seven for a while, as I'm leaving for the Targa Newfoundland in two weeks.

entry 1429 of 1439
<< | random | >>
back to entry listing