The Colt takes the checkered flag!

What a great weekend!  While the Colt didn't win the race, she ran the entire race only off track for driver changes and fueling.  How far did 68HP get us?  13th place in our class (the "bad" class) and I believe 30th overall.  She completed 497 laps with a fastest time of 1:05.6, courtesy of Quinn.  That's only 3 seconds off the fastest lap time of the entire race!  The car suffered heavy body damage, but no mechanical problems.  She handles better than before and held her own out there.  All in all we had a blast!

Once I get back into the flow of regular life I'll get all the video uploaded and post some here.  I got some great video from the front and rear bumper cams!

Thanks to everybody on the team for all the hard work and a special thank you to Andrea for putting up with all of this madness.  Let's do it again!

End of day 1, and we rock!

What a day!!  The colt is nothing like her former self.  We've completed 274 laps and are running in 15th out of 107.  Campare that to last spring when we didn't hardly run at all on day 1.  She's not the fastest car out there by a long shot, but with no mechanical failures and no penalties we held our own.  But it's war out there.  There were quite a few cars that were out for blood and our car looks like it's been on the front lines.  We were sandwiched a few times, rear ended a few times and T-boned twice.  Just check out some of the carnage.

There were some driver issues as well.  Your's truly here managed to spin the car out in turn one late in the afternoon.  Black flag for me, but apparently the judges were in a good mood because they said I must have been tired and just had us change drivers and get back out on the track.  Perfect!  Each of us ran about 80 minutes per session.  That may not seem like a lot, but with that many cars rubbing you turn after turn, and the high heat and sun today, that's about all you can handle.

Right now while I kick back in the recliner and write this, the other guys are hammering out the fenders (they were rubbing on the rear tires) and changing the spark plugs.  Brakes are good and so is most of the rest of the car.  We're all well fed and hydrated.  I deep fried some chicken wings and the guys are putting back some beers.  There's a band playing right now and as soon as the car gets finished up I'm sure everyone's going to relax for the night.

We're shooting for the top ten tomorrow!

We're racing, and crashing!

The race is on and we're doing great!  After Chris's stint we're running 6 laps off the leader and the car is great.  Quinn just got in for his stint and almost immediately he got T-boned in turn one.  Major damage but it doesn't affect our driving.  Better yet, no penalty!

It's hot but things are going well.  Stay tuned for updates.  Also if you'd like to watch things live, there is a webcast located here.

We are through inspections, but not without a little work

Well now comes the part where we just sit and wait for race time.  We went through tech this morning, but had a little issue.  It seems they didn't like our exhaust.  No big deal.  Chris and Phil ran to NAPA and got some junk to make us "legal".  Now that our car was legal for racing, we moved on to BS inspections.  No trouble here.  As a matter of fact, they almost didn't even want to look at us.  I guess a Colt isn't that threatening of a race car?

Well I have all sorts of pictures to share of today's activities, but it seems that everybody is trying to use the same WiFi access point right now.  You'll have to wait.  But, suffice it to say, things are busy and fun.  We fried a turkey this morning and we are currently smoking some pork for tonight.  Chris managed to officially enter his prized moonshine into the contest with the judges and there are plenty of cars that are getting some serious heat in the BS area.  Cheaters.

More to come, stay tuned!

And here we are again

It's Thursday night, 8:30pm, and Chris, Phil and I are here at CMP with camp all set up and ready.  Go figure, we wound up in the exact same spot as we had last year.  And as a bonus, the Tunachunkers just got here and set up right next to us again.  So we're just hanging out snacking and listening to the radio.  Jeff is on his way and Quinn should be here tomorrow night.  For those of you who were here in the spring, you know how to find us.  For you new Lab Rats fans here's a map of how to find us.  Park where the blue "X's" are and we're at the red dot.  Just head for the Timing & Scoring tower.

 

Stay tuned for updates as we go through tech and BS inspections.  And if you're coming down, we'll save some BBQ for you!

CMP here we come!

It took a while, and there were times when things didn't look that good, but now we're ready!  Saturday we all got together and completed our final tasks.  The Colt got the finishing touches put on her including the camera mounts.  More importantly, she drove around quite a bit.  Everyone agrees, she feels great!  No more stumbling, hesitation and stalling.  Hit the gas and she goes.  The Colt E is ready.

Most of our work revolved around stripping the parts car down.  You see, it just so happens that we found an identical twin to the Colt E just a few minutes north of Charlotte.  That car, having long given up being a useful automobile, has decided to live on as an organ donor to our beloved Colt E.  It took us a couple of hours to remove all the critical parts that we might need in case of a major accident.  My hope is that we will never need any of it, but we're prepared for the worst.




So now what?  The car is ready.  Phil has this week off on vacation so he is going to load the car on the trailer and pack the truck with our supplies.  Chris, Jeff and I are going to try and make it through 3 days of work without going crazy with anticipation.  The plan is to head down to Kershaw Thursday afternoon so that we are there at 5pm when the gates open.  Remember, first come first served when it come to pit locations!  Just like last time, I'll post a map to our exact location in the pits on this blog.  We look forward to seeing all of you at the race, but if you can't make it just check in here to see how we're doing.  I'll be posting race updates often throughout the weekend.  See ya!

NEWSFLASH!!!

I have just received word that the Colt E is alive!  Chris and Phil worked furiously into the night and managed to get her up and running strong.  Due to the late hour however, they were unable to take her for a spin, but that will more than likely happen tonight.  This puts us on schedule for a full shakedown this weekend.  If you'll recall from last spring, this was the element of our plan that was missing.  Had we actually tested the car BEFORE the race, we might have discovered our fuel issues.  This time around the Colt E will have a solid 30 minutes or more of shakedown time underneath her, so we can be confident she'll be ready for the track.  Stay tuned for video of her first drive since April!  CMP in 10 days!