Chumpcar - Autoclub Speedway 2014

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ShobThaBob

ShobThaBob

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So yeah. I race. After I race I make threads about said races. You may have noticed many moons ago when I wrote about Road Atlanta. I was supposed to go to Buttonwillow. I did go to Buttonwillow. The car I'm going to be talking about today also went to Buttonwillow to be raced. But alas, it died an hour into the race. Something about eating valves and vomiting pistons. It wasn't pretty to see or hear.
So they fixed this car, a 1987 Porsche 924 S. It's the platform that was enlarged to make the 944. The 924 had a dinky **** VW engine with 90hp. It was later turbocharged, but was unreliable as hell, so Porsche decided to throw their 2.5 I4 in it. 150hp in a car that small made it lively and fun back then. It is still lively and fun even today.
The course that I ran was this configuration.
cal_speedway_infield_800.gif

It's flat as ****. No elevation changes. It heavily favors momentum cars are there are several tight turns and very few sweepers. There's a good balance of straightline acceleration zones and technical areas to balance out high horsepower muscle and low horsepower handlers. On plenty of tracks throughout the country, there are ROval configurations which use the infield road course and the NASCAR oval. Texas World and Texas Motor speedway make excellent use of the these configurations. Due to the location of Autoclub being in LA, that meant that there were lots of events going on in addition to chumpcar. Saturday had a ridealong Nascar event where you would be taken out in a car with an instructor and then could drive yourself. There was also a Mario Andretti experience where a driver would take you out in a 2seat Indy car and zoom around the oval. There were also several carting events and a herp derp drive a ferrari or lambo around some cones or in a straight line in a parking lot event. The reaction of people driving up in their Land Rover for the Mario Andretti event when they saw me in shorts looking desheveled and smelling like a foot heading to the showers was priceless. Turnout for the race wasn't very impressive. There were only 26 cars in the field.

Turn 1 is a hard braking zone which, combined with the approach to turn 15 led to MANY squared off tires, and a couple flats which ended up burning straight through the cords. This track was brutal on tires. A quick right left after the heavy braking zone led to a short acceleration to the top of 3rd to a light braking zone to a very tight left right. It was very easy to lift off the brakes into a dab of oversteer to point the nose of the 924 into the turn and then stay on the gas through the 2 sweepers leading up to 9.
9 and 10 were very awkward corners over uneven pavement and tarmac which didn't transition well. It was jarring and led to several incidents and spinouts. It was also a good way to goad some of the heavy HP cars into going off if they felt like they needed to be carrying more speed to keep me off their ass, but had to take an off or brake when they found out they couldn't turn that much. The exact same can be said for 11. 12 and 13 were flat out with 13 and 14 being heavy braking zones at the top of 3rd gear. It was very hard to brake consistently, as the tarmac didn't seem grippy, and it's an off camber turn which wants to throw you off the track. 15 is the only place I dipped down into 2nd. Then onto the main straight and over again. Lap times were around 1:30, with my best being a 1:27.6, and the car owner putting down a 1:27.3.
 
So, most of my actual racing (not track days) experience is in slow cars. 4AGE MR2, 82 Nissan Pulsar, 78 Porsche 924. I raced a 94 Thunderbird, but that was an automatic and my first time doing wheel to wheel endurance racing. It also handled like boat because it was, indeed, a boat. This 924S, however, was a very different experience for me. It was light, it had good acceleration, it had responsive handling, and it communicated tire adhesion throughout the corner. In this type of racing, and indeed cars in general, that characteristic is rare and coveted. With the other cars, that communication simply didn't matter because they had at or less than 100 horsepower.
Being able to use that to stick on someone's tail through several corners to pressure them into over driving their cars was a wonderful feeling, and it happened time after time after time. In my other threads, I usually gave a breakdown of how the race went and the drama that ensued with the battle of keeping the car alive on track shenanigans. Simply put, there wasn't much of a battle at all. The tires stayed healthy. Fluid levels and temperatures were great the entire time. Nobody flat spotted the tires. There wasn't major contact. Everyone was putting down good times. The only major revelation and change in what we did was using 2nd gear at turn 14/15 on day 2. We were a bit more conservative on day 1 and thought we could carry enough momentum through the carousel, but our laptimes proved otherwise.




The car. Not the prettiest thing on track, but certainly not ugly. 2.5L I4 and about 150 horsepower. Light. Good times. After grenading itself at Buttonwillow back in June, the owner and another driver, Andy, went through 3 other engine rebuilds until they got to this one. Their last test was at an autocross 2 weekends ago when the owner, Keither, forgot a bolt for the head. So this engine was completely untested except for idling in a driveway. She was magnificent.


One of the Miatas. Very pretty and well put together. Had some small mechanical issues each day. I'm not sure if they're a newer team or just a group of people that do this fun. I'm gonna lean towards the former, though, because of how slow they were. Miatas are no joke, but the guys that I was on track with were not particularly fast, nor did they ever seem like they were pushing the car. There were a few instances where I felt like they were kinda all over the place, taking odd lines and such.



Beautiful 240. It's been at Buttonwillow each time I've been there. It was a perfectly average car that looks really cool but wasn't terribly competitive.






This car was stupid fast. The drivers were absurdly aggressive and absolute jerkoffs. They were very skilled and the car had a trick suspension and some internal engine mods. No major power adders, but walked away from everything on the grid, including a SHO swapped RX7. They had 5 or 6 contact incidents with other cars and spent the entire first day crying to officials about cars not getting out of the way or taking a consistent racing line. What started out as a very clean highly modded Miata turned into a beat up and battered Miata by the end of the first day.
45 Minutes into day 2 there was another on track incident where they failed to properly pass and slammed into the side of a E30 325i. The 325 had to pit and was raging furious. The Miata driver stayed out and ignored several black flags ordering him to come in. When he did, his gloves and helmet were already off (a big nono. You don't take your gear off while you're in the car on an active track. Just as stupid as getting out of your car and onto the track) and claiming he was ready to fight the Bimmer driver. Race officials were sitting in there with them and told them they were done for the weekend. Helmets went flying and they were cursing up a storm and getting in the officials faces spewing off this and that about being real racers and that people need to get out of their way. The officials calmly stood there and said that their car is not going back on track. It was wonderfully entertaining.
The rest are just assorted pics of the other cars. There was an 80s camaro wtih stubborn drivers which was pretty quick. Asexy 65 mustang that looked like an absolute blast. The drivers were good and it was plainly obvious where it's strengths and weaknesses were. There were a couple times where we were trading spots. I'd pass him in the corners and he'd get me on the front straight. Back and forth for a couple laps was great until I was eating his rear through 9 and he overshot the braking zone and spun out. The feeling of goading someone into overdriving their car is indescribable.
The fastest car there, outside of the Miata which got the boot, was a 2nd gen RX7 with a 3.0 from a Ford Taurus SHO swapped in. That thing was always fast, always driven well, and never ****ing broke until near the end of day 2. It's been at each Buttonwillow race I was at as well. It looks like a hoot to drive. The engineering on it is neat as well. Lots of handmade ducts and a redneck scrap metal wing which gives legit downforce, but very little penalty value added to car since anyone can do something similar. Those are the little things you can do in this series to make your car more competitive without getting penalties. Get coilovers? That stuff's expensive. Take come ****ing metal and weld it on there right so it's smooth and purposeful? Just penalizes you the cost of materials. Next to nothing. Vented and slotted rotors? Expensive. Cut holes through your front fascia and run ducts to cool that crap. Costs almost nothing. Every little bit helps.
Anyway, our car ended up braking down after 5 and a half hours into the race on the second day. The last driver forgot to turn on the fans when he jumped into the car. Engine ended up bending rods and murdering itself out of anguish.
It was a great time. I wish I could afford to do this **** more often or find a team nearby so I didn't have to go to california, but oh well.












































 
Oh yeah. It sounds like one hell of a time. Neat cars too, I'm incredsibly curious of that SHO-powered RX7.

Nice Mach 1, too.
 
That Mach 1 has been my dream car since I was 16, in precisely that color combo and option package. Gorgeous.

And yeah, the RX7 is a different kind of beast. The owners are very handy and good at fabricating different parts. It's been at all 3 of the chump races I've done out there. I've got another enduro coming up in a couple weeks in Dallas. It's been a couple years since I've done a race out here in Texas. Racing an 89 Rx7. Hopefully the car doesn't break down.
 
Looks like fun. ACS is closest to my house, but I still haven't been able to track the car there yet. Maybe by the end of the year I will.
 
ShobThaBob
And yeah, the RX7 is a different kind of beast. The owners are very handy and good at fabricating different parts. It's been at all 3 of the chump races I've done out there. I've got another enduro coming up in a couple weeks in Dallas. It's been a couple years since I've done a race out here in Texas. Racing an 89 Rx7. Hopefully the car doesn't break down.
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