Along Came the Rain (10/27/2018) - 7 hours - Portland International Raceway:
Nathan Feigion moved down to California, so we were now a father and son team. Being an October race in Oregon, this means one thing. We are going to get sopping wet. We had put on some Dunlop Direzza ZIII tires, as we have had good luck with the ZI and ZII in the rain.
Dave starts the race, and while there was some morning moisture on the ground, it's actually fairly dry. Dave starts in 4th place, but there are a pile of quick cars out there that he's in the thick of. He drops back to 6th, as the #94 PROMotion BMW is screaming from 14th all the way up to 1st place. Unfortunately as soon as they hit 1st place, they also hit a wall. Speculation around the pits is that a suspension arm broke on the front straight at 120+ mph, pitching the car sideways and into a cement barrier. Luckily the driver is OK, but the car is absolutely toast.
Here if you look down the wall you can see the kink where the car knocked the cement barriers back, and the smashed car in the distance.
This is what was towed back to the pits:
A sobering reminder of how quickly racing can all go wrong! After about an hour of cleanup and fixing the wall, Dave hit the track again now in 5th. Dave is starting to find a groove and starts putting pressure on the Son of Andre #16 Mustang, our old rivals that we managed to squeak past for our very first win. Dave pits on lap 49 after running a fastest lap of 1:31.2.
I hop in the car and after our pit stop we are down to 14th place. With cool weather and an overcast track, I start pushing the car. I have to fight my way around Son of Andre again, and while they have significantly more straightline speed, now with our aero I'm able to drive around them in the corners, and eventually make enough gap that they can't pass me back on the straight. Eventually I make it up to the Race Invaders #13 Miata (with aero and Ecotec) but I am a lap down. Our cars are extremely similar speeds, but they have just a tiny edge in straightline speed over us. If I can stick in their draft I'm able to stay with them on the straight. I finally make it by them, only to be hung up by another car a few corners later and they sneak through again. I chase them down again, get my lap back, and keep pushing. Towards the end of my stint, it starts raining. Portland gets extremely slick in the rain due to the amount of rubber worn into the normal racing line. This means you have to try to stay off the line, then prepare to cross it with as little lateral G's as you can manage, then cross again dancing back and forth. While you are on the line it's like being on ice. On lap 112 I pull in the pits, having ran a 1:29.7 while it was still dry out. By the time I pulled in, I was running 1:54-1:58s.
Dave gets in the car for the third stint, and the car won't start. It seems the battery just doesn't have enough juice to do it. We are running a very old Odyssey battery, and apparently we've been leaking out some electrons onto the track. Our fuel man Kyle and I give him a push start, and he's off again. Dave has struggled in the past racing in the rain. While in the dry he is able to get within a couple seconds of our lap times, in the wet he's definitely a bit off pace. And it is now getting properly soaking wet out there. Dave pulls a short stint, turning the car over to me on lap 134 in 2nd place behind Race Invaders.
Race Invaders has a couple laps advantage over us, but we also have a couple laps over 3rd and 4th place. I preserve our placing during my stint while slip sliding around and we finish the race in 2nd place! Towards the end of my stint I had radioed back to the pits asking for more air pressure, hoping to reduce the amount of hydroplaning I was having to deal with for the sprint race.
Video Overview: