[thstone]

Its been a busy week at work so I am just getting around to posting the results from last weekends racing at Buttonwillow.

Race 1: Started 5th of 10, finished 10th.
Race 2: Started 6th of 9, finished 5th.

Running CCW was a new configuration for me so I attended the Friday practice day and did five 30-min sessions to learn the track and get up to racing speeds. In qualifying for Race 1, the top three cars were 1-2 sec's ahead of 4th-6th so there was a fairly big gap.

The start was crazy with one car being pushed off track into the dirt as the field went 4 wide into Turn 1 which is really only two cars wide. Shortly thereafter, one of the cars in the top 3 went off and I moved up to 4th.

I was running well and making gains until I carried just a little too much speed over Phil Hill which is a combination hill and turn. As I crested the peak, the rear end got loose and I spun into the dirt. Speaking of which, Buttonwillow is in the middle of California Central Valley farmland so the dirt isn't really dirt; its more like silt and when someone goes off, it creates a YUUUGE cloud and the silt goes everywhere. I mean everywhere. It took several moments after I came to a stop for the cloud inside the car to clear and then I had slit in my eyes and mouth for the rest of the race. The car was covered and I spent 30 mins cleaning it as best I could after the race. The video should be fairly exciting to watch!

The second race went much smoother; everyone was more cautious at the start and the pace quickly got into a rhythm. Unfortunately, I accidentally turned my video camera off (I'll blame it on my gloved hands) when I was resetting my lap timer, so there isn't any video of this race.

At the end of the first race, I heard the distinct growling sound of a dry wheel bearing at every left hand turn during the cool down lap. On the advice of Brad Roberts, I went ahead and raced the second race but by then it sounded much worse so I decided not to press my luck and headed home on Saturday night rather than take the chance of a wheel bearing failure and having to ride home in a tow truck on Sunday.

I went ahead and installed new brakes this weekend and the car goes to Tyson Schmidt at Pro Motorsports in Burbank tomorrow for a new wheel bearing and some other work.

Overall, I had a good pair of races and am looking forward to the next round at Willow Springs in early December.

Pics and video to come soon....