The car ran great and the new motor from King Motorsports coupled with the cam I got from Blake was worth 2 seconds over my personal best. I was very surprised to find that I was the fastest GP car after practice. Unfortunately, practice doesn't count for anything.
Qualified 5th in G-prod behind the 3 VW's and a 510. I screwed up in the last qualifying session but at least I backed up my earlier practice time. Unfortunately I flat spotted a tire and visited the pea gravel. I didn't hurt anything, but the front rotors had lots of rocks imbedded in the vents and I was worried that they might have stress cracked the rotors so I put a fresh set in. My pads looked great (another big thumbs up for Raybestos pads from Porterfield.....makes my old Carbotechs feel like chalk dust in comparison) but I decided to flip them over to help even out the usual tapered wearing. More on that later.....
I did my usual pre-race brake prep (bleed and adjust) and was all set for the race. While I knew I wasn't going to catch the pole sitter, the rest of us were all within a second, so I was looking forward to a good, fun race.
We set out on our pace lap, and I proceed to follow my usual warm-up proceedure of accelerating and braking (as opposed to weaving back and forth which is dumb, unsafe, and doesn't do anything) and I notice my brake pedal is getting lower and lower.....oh crap! I find an open spot in traffic and test them, and they barely stop the car. I start thinking big picture (points wise) and decide that if they aren't up to snuff, I 'll back off and cruise around for a finish. All those years of racing Showroom Stock with OEM pads at Road America taught me how to drive without brakes, so I knew I could bring it home. I just couldn't play with anybody.
We get the green, and we funnel into turn one and I'm thinking..okay, so far so good. Then I get to the next braking area (turn 3) and I feel the brakes getting mushy again. No good. I decide to hold to my plan and keep it out of trouble. I back off early for the next few braking areas and let about 4 cars by. Then I get to the Kink and I see waving yelllow flags, but because the Kink is blind, I don't know what's ahead:
That's my white Civic in the middle just in front of the yellow Alfa Spyder. You can still see the tire smoke in the air from the wreck which happened about 2 seconds earlier. For those ofyou unfamiliar with the Kink at Road America, it is a flat out 110mph blind bend that is one of the greatest corners of any track in North America (Turn 11 at Road Atlanta used to have that honor till they changed the track ) It turns out, if I hadn't lost my brakes on the pace lap, I would have been right smack in the middle of all that crap. First time I've ever been happy about loosing my brakes. They red flag the race and I'm talking to my crew about my brakes. We can't work on the car during the red flag, and there isn't anything we can do if we could. I pump the pedal a few times and I notice they come back....sorta. Not enough to help but better than they were. I know there's no way I can catch the top three, but I can hold off the 5th place car and get 4th place points so we stay with our plan. We restart, and I play it cautious again on the first lap, letting a group of midpack E-prod & F-Prod cars by, since they were having a good race and I didn't want to screw up there race. I can keep up just fine, and after a while, the cars start getting a little nuts in front of me and I decide brakes or no brakes I'd rather be in front of this group than to follow and get caught up in their mistake. About the 4th or 5th lap, I discover that if I pump the brake pedal about a million times, the pedal pumps up to normal and the brakes work just fine. I start to feel them out and determine, yes I can start braking at my normal points and start to drop my lap times considerably. Then a few laps later, I can see the 3rd place car about 8 seconds in front of me. Holy Cow! I'm catching him! I dug down and really started to fly out there. About this time 1st Gen boy driving a 2nd gen CRX tube frame in GTL comes up behind and patiently waits till we get to the front staright before passing me, so as to not screw up my race. Thanks Bob! I start chipping away at the gap and knock about 2 seconds a lap off the gap. I start to climb the hill on the 10th lap (That may seem like a short time but remember...RA is a 4 mile long course) thinking "I got you now"......and then I see the Checker Flag Noooooooooo! I just need one more lap!!!! Turns out they had a bunch of cars off on that lap plus a bunch of oil laid down in turn 12 so the y checkered early. Crap. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. Turns out my last lap was my fastest and personal best, plus I was faster than the other GP excluding the winner. This includes the evil, vile wicked VW of a certain driver from down south....right Jay/Blake Okay I didnt beat him, but going faster has to count for something
We determine that the loss of pedal was caused by the pistons getting kicked back into the calipers. We suspect it was caused by my flipping the pads over and I guess the taper was worse than I suspected. I also should have shimmed up the pads to help reduce the caliper flex, which would have helped as well. Oh well.
Congrats to Dentici for winning GTL in a tube frame 2nd gen CRX and hats off to our own Bob Clark aka 1st gen boy for snagging 3rd and the final podium spot. This was Bob's first time out in the car! Other Honda's included another tube frame CRX in GTL that finished 2nd (All 3 GTL cars were King Motorsports cars BTW). Keith Gillespie ??sp?? was there from Arizona in his 1st gen CRX in FP and finished 6th. On to IRP in two weeks.
Edited by Greg Gauper, 27 June 2006 - 02:50 PM.