Day 2 of Gingerman

This is how saturday ended....lots of spills...apparently the corner workers couldn't even see the cars!

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/04/detroit-lemons-day-one-over-snow-madness-neon-leading/

Sunday....turns out that South Haven has quiet time on sunday...no race cars before noon. We were told to not start our engines until noon, then line up and head out on track, the first 10 cars will be gridded in order....so we pulled up at 12:00:45 to find cars already doing a pace lap! The officials would not let us get into our spot, so Lafavor was in the middle of the pack, not the front.

The people's curse....the team had to climb on the car, shouting "SHAME on us", and drive around the paddock at 5mph behind Judge on his scooter, after the word shame was spray painted on the car.

Two hours left of the race......

Here is the final results...we got third!!...18 seconds behind the 2nd place car! 

2nd Place was Skid Marks Racing, the team is semi-pro...they make us look like a bunch of hacks...they have more $ into their data-aquisition & in car camera than we have into our entire setup.  A DOHC Neon weighs about the same as our Golf w/ 150hp stock compared to our 115hp, plus it has better aero.  First place was the MR2 that was a team of Toyota engineers!  MR2's are mid-engined and rear wheel drive, meaning they handle a ton better.

All in all a good race, we are content with were we ended up.   Now for the "What-ifs?"...

What if Barry & I didn't get black flagged?

What if we were gridded properly on Sunday?
What if we didn't have to replace a cam seal friday night and we got a few laps of practice time in?

TSB does Gingerman w. 24 Hours of Lemons!

We got to the track w/ litte issues, the door that holds trailer ramps in, came unsecured, nothing a zip tie can't fix for now.  During tech. inspection we found an oil leak, which turned out to be a cam seal.  We replaced that but, we were unable to get any practice laps in.

"Dive Bomb" Barry came off of the track after 2.5hrs, he got nailed for passing under yellow.  Until the black flag, he got us into 1st place!

I went out 2nd, and after 2hours 20 minutes I slide off of turn 3, and went four wheels off, and got a black flag for it; next time I will attempt to save it.

Dave Hildebrant went out for three hours, he got us up to 3rd place.

End of Day one, the race was cut short by about 1/2 an hour because the corner workers can't see the cars!  The snow is blinding.  The black spray paint is from me, it is susposed to be flames, it was my penality for going off the track.