Review of the race……it was rough on us. We started out the race not having 4th gear! Not sure what happened there but….so down the main straight we would run the car up to 6~6800 rpms and skip-shift up to 5th gear. The back straight we had little choice but to wind out 3rd gear as well. Certainly this hurt us. The Golf is a torque car, not a high revving horsepower car. Although that being said, we were all amazed and how much power this car has to give. There weren’t too many cars that we couldn’t out pull down the straight.
Saturday had rain most of morning into early afternoon. Dave L. got black flagged for passing under yellow. Dave H. went 4 wheels off at the end of the main straight. Front wheel drive, no ABS, rain, and racing…apparently he wasn’t used to that mix. Barry got Black flagged for improper pit entrance, and for passing under yellow. At which time we were told to park the car and sit out for the remainder of the race, almost 3.5 hours! Saturday closed w/ TSB in 67th place!
Sunday I went out, exchanged paint w/ an Integra that wouldn’t let him by after 3 laps of sticking my nose on the inside and outside of turns and then immediately getting turned in on. Not a big deal, they got some yellow paint on their pass. rear bumper. Both of us continued. Later on during my 2.5 hour stint going three cars wide into turn 9 a Fiero went wide and hit us on the passenger side shoving the Golf two wheels off in the dirt. All three cars continued. The car appears to only have tire marks on both the front & rear passenger doors. Later I also got black flagged for passing under yellow.
Dave L. went out next and got to dice it up w/ Randy Pobst! For those of you who aren’t familiar w/ him….he is a “professional racer”, practically a celebrity amongst us amateur race car drivers. Mr. Pobst writes a column in the SCCA magazine. He was on the team w/ a cheater ex-cop car that didn’t lean on turns, accelerated like mad, oh and it stank real bad! Did I forget to mention that the Pobst team received 500 penalty laps ? Despite having a stripper pole on the roof of the car, complete w/ three dancers? Later on Aaron learned that he too diced it up Randy, except he was driving a Volvo wagon w/ a Chevy 350 swap at the time. Sweet! Randy gave praise to our humble golf and said he wanted to drive it, as he started out racing a mkII golf back 1985.
Speaking of flags….somehow TSB has done BIR w/ Chump, & IAS w/ Chump, and MAM w/ Lemons, and have received only one penalty. Somehow we received 3 black flags in the first 4 fours of the race at Autobahn! Several teams have expressed disgust w/ the flagging at this race. We FINALLY discovered where we went wrong……Lemons uses a line of sight application of the yellow (no-passing) flag were as every other racing org. I know of goes w/ the no passing zone is at and after the flag station, not before like Lemons. I will post a graphic later that shows the difference.
RESULTS: Racing with 86 other cars on a 1.46mile track wasn’t quite as bad as we thought, yes it was nuts, crazy even. Never once did I get a clean lap, always being passed or passing. TSB had the 15th fastest lap time! Dave L. turned in a blistering 1min22sec. lap. The fastest car of the day was a low 1min19sec lap time. Considering we racked up four black flags and had to sit out 3.5hrs of the race we still placed 41st out of 87. Not bad. Best of all the Golf survived w/ only flesh wound and a need for a transmission revisit.
