Yuku free message boards

In the words of Jim Carey, "I'm Smoking!".

This trip started with the intention of combining pleasures, my wife's and my own. Laura and I headed down towards Savannah from Charlottesville, Virginia (10 hours of driving) on Wednesday and stopped in Hilton Head (at the Westin Beach Resort) where I planned to stay the rest of the race weekend. My wife would have a nice place to stay (she's not a real fan of the racetrack experience) and I would "suffer" the 1 hour commute to the track. The car was still in it's post Kershaw condition, meaning that it was running well but wasn't handling worth a damn when I put it in the trailer...maybe it had cured itself?

No such luck, the Friday morning practice day revealed a car that "pushed" quite badly (same as it was at Kershaw) and I wandered the pits asking advice from the "Handling Savants". Remarkably, no one DIDN'T have some suggestion. I tried a few changes (reduced the amount of wing, lowered tire pressures, lowered the front shock compression) which made some change to the low speed cornering but caused greater problems in the high speed corner (turn 9, very important corner for a fast lap time). I eventually put everything back (except for the shock settings) and changed tires to a new set of R-35's...surprise the handling was back. Pat Prince and Tom Robertson were a big help in my experiments and Pat showed me the best way to bleed my brakes. Being at the track solo can be difficult but someone can always be roped into helping. One difference between the Cheetah and Stohr experience and my new Radical is that body part removal on the previous chassis's was relatively easy for one person to do (with practice) but the bodywork on the Radicals is HEAVY.
So I've got the car handling OK in the last test session of Friday and I head back to Hilton Head, spot Bill and Sean Maisey on my way out. When I get up the next morning (Saturday, qualifying after lunch) I discover a check-out package at my front door...the Hotel thinks that I only have reservations through Friday...I disagree and look at my original confirmation, they may be right and they have no rooms for the next evening. Laura and I decide to move closer to the Track and she'll attend the qualifying session. I have no intention to go out in the morning practice and so we arrive at the track at 10 a.m. or so (I still have to do registration and tech). We wander the pits and meet old friends and make new acquaintances. Matt DiRenzo is there but has blown an engine and will be headed for home soon...the really bad news is that Matt has turned a 1:08 (and change) in the morning practice. That kind of time would, of course, be a new track record if recorded in a race but it's all for naught except to make me wonder if I can get under the 1:16 (and change) that I was turning during the test day...I'm pretty sure that I can with the way the car is feeling now but still 8 seconds, that's a lot.

We finally get the call to go to the false grid and I go through my usual nervous routine but I'm pretty familiar with this track and the number of cars on the track will be far less intimidating than the test day. I follow Bill out and I know that he's bedding in new brakes so I follow him around for the first three laps....picking up the pace in the third lap (though Bill is starting to draw away and I'm not quite ready to go real fast). I'm on the back section in third gear as the pit talk has been that it was better to just stay in third the whole back section and just use the full rpm range of third...I'm just coming out of corner 6 when the car lurches and the rear end makes a "WHUMP!" noise. Opps, I figure I've blown an engine (there's a little smoke in my mirrors) but as I try throttle I've still got forward power. Maybe I can make it back to the pits and get off the track and not disrupt the qualifying session. I'm on the straight approaching the high speed number 9 corner when my right arm gets very hot and smoke is billowing into the cockpit. Time to a. get off the track and b. BAIL OUT. I pull off and unbuckle and rocket out of the car. I pull the fire extinguisher T handle and am gratified that there is an immediate reduction of smoke. I step back and look at the car and see that the right side, slightly to the rear of the cockpit is really blazing away, plus I have grass all around the fire burning as well. I look to the nearest corner and see NO ACTIVITY, I make the gesture which would be universally understood to mean HELP, get your butts over here. I run around the car and unlatch the tail section and remove it...it's still on fire but off the car...the side pod (closest to the fuel fill location) is really going (particularly since I gave it more air). I run to the front and remove the front nose (which extends back and over the side pods). Great now the nose is off and the right side pod is really blazing. I look back at the corner workers and see one guy headed my way at a slow crawl. Two weird things occur to me at the same time: a. a guy named Randy Kent owned this car prior to me and it was identified as such with vinyl near the cockpit which I had removed earlier. With the fire and heat his name was back on the car where the old vinyl used to be. Sherlock Holmes would be proud of my discovering the secret code by applying heat to the letter. b. I'm reminded of Tim Conway's "old man" routine on the Caroll Burnett show where he's trying to walk fast but is doing it in such small steps that he's barely moving.

I debate waiting for the help to get to me or using the local earth to throw on the fire...I decide to run to the corner where I run into the corner worker who looked near death...he was white and sweaty and looked about ready to keel over, I may have snarled at him (if so I apologize as the guy was literally doing the best he could) and I took his fire bottle away and ran back to the car. I emptied that extinguisher on the car and the next, which I also took away from a new approaching corner worker (further away corner). Now, I had the advantage of adrenaline (and it is MY INVESTMENT) but the response time for help sure seemed less than ideal. Lessons, a. have your fire system in good shape, b. count on no one else.

I ran into Brian Little on the fence after all the excitement and he and his buddy had been listening to the radio chatter and the guy in charge of the fire bottle on "my" corner was described as "mobility challenged". I don't want to make a big deal of this but afterwards it struck me that our reliance on volunteer corner workers puts the club in a strange position...they have to use people however they can and sometimes the choices will be serious compromises.

That said let me also state upfront that if there was a problem with my car (and there certainly was) the final responsibility for that failure lies at my doorstep. It appears (at first inspection) that the fire started at or near my gas overflow vent tube and that there was sufficient fuel available to not only start but feed a good fire. I'll let you know more as I discover more. The bodywork is pretty heavily damaged as well as the bulkhead (protecting the fuel cell) and much of my wiring is gone.

So I come back to the pit area on the flat bed and I got a lot of help from my fellow competitors and the officials while well intentioned are a little nuts, "Go to see the EMT's" (a fairly wise suggestion), "No, go get your log book and bring it to the Chief Stewart", "Hey, where should I put this car?" The EMT's ask me if I have any complaints but when I get to President Bush's foreign policy they stop me and ask if I have any physical complaints.

The car is coated with fire extinguisher debris (which I have been given to understand is BAD) and I start to load the car up and take it to a local car wash when Travis Duder says it would be better to have volume and less pressure and that the pit has a wash area that I can use. Travis, my wife and myself wash the car down and push it back to the pits. My wet/dry vacuum cleaner is used extensively and the car gets pretty clean...so far no evidence of any engine problem. I load up and head for home...thanks to all for the help getting loaded and straightened out.

Oh yeah, NOMEX is a very good product, I'll either have to have this suit replaced (right shoulder and arm) or have it repaired (do they do that?).

Hasty Horn