Second Part...

First Part of the Run

Here is the first part. Second part will be up later tonight. more camera angles to come...

Quick Update

Ok, the race is over and I am finally back home. I have some great footage from the 0-60 Magazine boys but they have not sent it over yet. I will post my in car shortly. The short version: Ran it in 12:27 which is good for Second in class! What's more I was awarded with the Rookie of the Year honor!! A fantastic result!!! Not all good news, some friends of mine that I met there ended up crashing and breaking their backs, Nathan and Brandye Conley of Colorado Springs. From what I can find out they are recovering and moving extremities which is great news. They went off very early on in the run and hit a tree. The Conleys were very helpful. I should also thank Salta Motrosports, Doug and Angelica, and all of the Panamerica guys!

Day 2 Practice

Its a bit late as i have to be up at 3 am so all I will do is post the first run vid of this mornings practice section. By the end of the practice I was over 30 secs quicker than this run, but this gives you a good idea of the top section looks like. It had rained the night before and the terrain was very muddy and slippery. by the end of the test there were large ruts on the road that made the course quite bumpy. My muffler has sustained a bit of damage today and sounds like there is a metal piece vibrating within. I might go muffler less. There goes my theory that quite is the new loud..

Day 1 Practice

Day started at 0215. got the car and me ready and followed Doug and Angelica to the bottom of the mountain by 0330. As would be expected, without Mark I did not know where I was supposed to be on the mountain which meant that I had to pull over and flag people down to ask . they were actually quite helpful and all I had to do was follow another competitor up the hill to where I was supposed to be....which was the section of the mountain with the biggest drop offs. I did 5 or 6 runs progressively getting more comfortable with the the track, I also got some video...oh wait, I didn't apparently without mark I cannot figure out the video camera either. I did well, I kept it on the asphalt and felt fairly comfortable with road and car. Tomorrow will be a bit different as it is my first day on dirt and I will be at the top of the hill. We'll see how well the car tracks on dirt. on the plus side there are a lot of rally drivers here and they are pretty willing to give you tips on what one must do to drive correctly, which is nice. Tomorrow will be a very slow day for me. just going to get used to driving in the dirt and find out if I can drive sideways or not...I have to be up in 4 hours so I will try to continue tomorrow.

We then had the rookie drivers meeting followed by the drivers meeting. Here I was told that although my car had passed tech, I had not. Apparently I was supposed to have done a physical before this thing and sent it in to them, obviously they do not know that I am kind of a big deal, which meant ... I got a little action this trip:(

Tuesday was tech inspection. Not much to do there, pull the car out, grab the gear and go over to get teched. passed with flying colors...or at least the car did, more on that later. After, tech I hitched a ride with Doug and Angelica to go recce the mountain. They were getting their pace notes in order and I wanted to go with them to check out the mountain as well as learn from the masters! To get ready for this thing I had played a lot of the video game "Dirt". I thought it might help me with learning the course. Starting up the hill I recognized the turns. So far so good. there was a bit more dirt road on the bottom section than I thought, worries me because I do not have any special tires for this. I am using Kumho race tires that have a very low tread wear, which is good, but not too much of a groove, which is bad for dirt. They are also very large tires. This might not be a problem if I groove them tomorrow after practice. But I digress, so we are heading up the hill, no problem. We get to the tree line, this is where things begin to get a bit more "hairy". The middle section is paved, but there are no guardrails. this means that we are on switchbacks going up the side of the mountain with quite a drop off the side. Then, at about 11,000 ft it turns to all dirt. This is a new experience for me, I have never had the pleasure of racing on the dirt. I know the general philosophy of drifting, I have drifted in snow and dirt before, but I have never had the experience above 10,000 ft on a road that is much thinner than what it looks like in the video game. Anyway, we drive all the way up and back, the whole time we are telling ourselves to not look over the edge....

Just updating you all on how I am doing on this adventure. I left LA in the afternoon last sunday to go to Colorado Springs for the 84th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. It took me two days to get out here. The A team Van performed admirably. First night I stayed in St. George. Not much of note happened on the way over here. I did stop for dinner at Copper Mountain in Co. Beautiful place. there was a Specialized dealer show going on which allowed me to walk in posing as a dealer and check out all of the new product. I also got a free dinner out of it. Security was not very tight. Anyway, pulled in late monday. First person I saw was Angelica Fuentes standing outside. We chatted a bit and I checked in and joined her in the bar with Doug Mokett, Chip, and Chris. All La Carrera Panamericana Racers. We sat and had a beer catching up and then went to bed.

As you can see the car is on the lift and the radiator and inter cooler are off getting cleaned. Funny story about that. The shop took off the parts and set them aside for the night. They were going to take them to get Sonic Cleaned the next day. When they came into the shop the next morning they noticed a large line of ants through the office and into the shop area. Apparently the ants had found the radiator and inter cooler and were feasting on all of the dead bugs stuck in the foils. They said that was a first! Right now the car is waiting for its bits and pieces back. There were a couple of surprises when they put it on the lift. turns out the radiator was rubbing on the frame. We will have to notch out some sections so that this will not continue to happen. Again, this radiator will not be staying around so we are doing quick fixes until the new parts make it onto the car. We also found that a coupler under the car is too close to the headers and is blistering. Luckily we found this as it was about to blow and that would not have been something that I could have fixed very easily at Pikes. We are going to make some changes to the way this system flows so that this will not happen again. That is about all that is happening with the car.

Pikes Peak 1 month away!

Pikes peak is about a month away. I am officially starting to gear up for it. The car is at the "shop" getting tended to. I am not going to be performing many mods for this race over what i did for the last one. The car needs a few replacement parts and some cleaning. The radiator and inter cooler are coming off for some sonic cleaning. This will be the last race for these bits. I plan on doing some upgrading for parts that are lighter as well as flow better. this will keep the car cooler and should let it spool up faster. of course this is a good thing. I am adding a few bits to the roll cage to allow it to comply with Pikes Peak rules and make it a bit safer. Other than that not much happening. Replacing the battery with a light weight model. The rear window gets a lexan treatment. Fairly simple stuff. I spoke with Hankook regarding some sort of tire package, but I never heard back. not too surprised really. I already have my tires from BFG so not really stressed about them at the moment. If they are interested in future events I will chat with them while in Colorado as they are one of the sponsors. The Time Attack class looks to be very competitive. I am excited to see how we do. I will continue with updates and pics as they come along.
kj