Well, its dumping rain and I can't work when it dumps rain. What the hell, they do it on CNN.

In no particular order...

Karl got it back and lost it again. The mystery of the year.
He and Renee won a bunch of races while he had it though. Its hard to argue with "undefeated."

I didn't race much. All I really cared about was the ARRC. I got to the ARRC, took the car to the front, then promptly beached it in a gravel trap.
I typically don't brain fart like that, but that was a big one.

Oh yeah, Karl crashed into the RE. Its still funny, and always will be.

Karl's helmet was skanked up so bad by the time we got to Road Atlanta in July that the tech inspector almost failed him and made him buy a new one. Only the promise of NEVER bringing that thing to tech again got him passed.
More Rice helmet stuff...
Its so bad it once stank up his entire Excursion when he left it out of its cage (bag).
He can't donate it to the local autoX club. Thats a crime against humanity.
He tried to remove the Isaac cleats and got so disgusted that he decided to just buy new ones.

My team was winning the 13 hour by about 6 laps with 30 minutes to go when the car broke a hub and lost a wheel in Oak Tree. We fixed it fast enough to take the checkered and still finish 2nd.

Started a $2006 Challenge car. This is very hard, but alot of fun.
It also takes time. We started in May and it still has no suspension in it and hasn't cranked yet (but its close).

Alex "Punky" Muresan finally proved once and for all that he is, in fact, the real sKiLLz mAstA. He has now stood on every step of the ARRC podium, and I'm not sure he's completely finished puberty.
Congrats to Alex

We finally retired the Neon from motorsports duty. Say what you want about Neons, but this poor thing has had the hell beat out of it for 7 years and 140K miles with nothing but oil changes and basic maintenance. Now its daily driven by a 17 year old girl, which is actually probably its toughest challenge to date.

Chris Brinson became the most pheared man in NASA.
Its understandable, just look at the guy. He's quite an imposing figure.

Greg Amy finally proved that he's completely insane. Incredibly skilled, but insane nevertheless.

Blake "The Stig" Meredith became the first ITC car to ever go under 1:50 at Road Atlanta. He did it while heat cycling tires, on his 3rd lap, after not driving the car for 2 years. He's also 6'5 and doesn't fit in the car very well.
There is a legitimate reason we call him The Stig. He just might be the best driver nobody has ever heard of.

Finally... Wrecks:
Bowie's Punkin' - Fixed, but very costly and time consuming.
Kirk's Fridge - Rolled and totalled.
Ol' Number 22 - Very very done. Concrete walls own j00.

None of these drivers were injured, all were wearing the Isaac device and had very stout custom cages. You do the math.
Get a H/N restraint for Christmas.

 

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In no particular order...
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First race of the season...car was perfect....ly supported on jackstands. Maybe just a bit of understeer - kinda hard to tell you know.

Second race of the season...ran same setup as last race....car is really consistent all weekend.

Third race of the season...tried removing jackstands...took it to the track...had a good time.

ITR Expo...trailered car halfway across the country...some damn thing broke just as I was really starting to have a good time...put it back on jackstands for psychological reasons.

Mid-Season...careful tuning of the jackstands has kept me within budget...car is Definitely Understeering - Nothing happens when I turn the wheel.

Last race of season...was kinda sloppy when I took the car off the jackstands to go racing...lost track of which jackstand goes on which corner - I really should mark them!....car works pretty good, really enjoy driving it too - Really gotta do this more often!

Scott, who is trying to be postitive when he says "Me? Burnout from Racing? You kidding?"

 

One positive thing about the jack stand approach to racing is that it significantly lowers the chances of the car hitting a concrete wall at 80 mph.

I have a little more appreciation for that now. But just a little.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Chris Brinson became the most pheared man in NASA.
Its understandable, just look at the guy. He's quite an imposing figure.
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LOL. Best part of the thread.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
Chris Brinson became the most pheared man in NASA.
Its understandable, just look at the guy. He's quite an imposing figure.
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Avatar = Bulldog. Well, there ya go.

You left out the ITR in ITS classification...and the multi-page thread that followed. A 2005 highlight for sure . (Ok, perhaps only for me...due to vested interest )

 

2005 recap for the frog (it is after all a rather froggy weather out there)

- NASA VIR event to sort out the car: after an entire weekend at VIR the car runs and handles fine. woohoo. 2 years of work and web surfing pays off.
- SCCA Summit school saw a busted brake line resulting in an underwear soiling off in turn 1, and an otherwise busy *** weekend. Thanks J&S automotive and Gregg Ginsberg for the crew
- SCCA Nelson Ledges. Went by myself (crewless) and spent a miserable weekend in the freezing rain, snow and sleet. The car was fine, Dirt Stockers Rule, Nelson is a fun track, just don't even thing of dreaming of considering putting a wheel off. Thou have been warned.
- First actual race: 2 hour enduro at CMP (in the rain). Third new track in 4 outings for the year, after a 2 year hiatus. won my class, kept the car on track, despite the handling judgement by uncle catch: "The car handles like ***. Fix it." Thanks for the co-drive catchy-poo.
- 2 MARRS races at Summit. Fixed one handling problem: the front radius rod arm spherical bushings improperly installed. DOH. qualified and raced towards the end of mid pack. Played with ITB cars. No on track incident.
- 1 NASA weekend. Realize the rear wheels de-camber in a big way in the corners. Forget to tighten rear lug nuts and lose a wheel. 4th and 3rd place. F-u-n racing with Ian C. and James.
- 1 MARRS season finale at Summit. the car's handling is sorted out, now need to work on the driver (suck *** in turn 3). One awesome race for 3rd place with John in an old RX3. I finished 4th but learned more in one sprint than I had all season about racecraft - nuthin' like racing against an old dawg in a worn out car to realize how little you know and start sponging up knowledge.
- wife gets pregnant and 2006 season is in question. As in, can I get at least 2 races in for 2006 to keep the license? Time will tell.

It was fun, it was expensive, and it leaves me wanting for more. There are a few items to be worked on over the winter:
- install fire system
- replace windshield
- go over the whole car
- get car dyno-tuned.
- re-do brake ducts

then, there's driver development. I need to find about 2 or 3 seconds to get to the front of the pack. Some of that is in the tires, some of that may be in the fact that the engine is not tune to peak potential, but most of it is in the driver. I need to schedule some track time with some hot shoe to figure out where/how I am slow.

At least, the car is in one piece, and I didn't crash anybody. I feel that I have met my goals in that respect. I would have hated to get out on track and be a menace to others. While I have made some mistakes, I don't feel that I have endangered anyone - so for me!

 

I did my SCCA double school at one of my favorite tracks, CMP. Had a bit of a run-in with one of the typical self-important SCCA official types - from there it was more or less smooth sailing. I will say it was really cold.

February saw me at Road Atlanta for the first time. What a track. This particular weekend I did the test day, got up to speed, and that was it. Renee and I won, I believe we were a lap up, and our pit stops were somewhat less than ideal as I recall. Think I ran 1:53s consistently.

March we were at VIR, my "home track." I took this opportunity to crash right into the side of our region's Regional Executive (R.E.) on my out lap. I then decided to see this and raised it a leave the oil cap off the car. Still we won, driving a car that looked and handled like a parallelogram. The car had oil everywhere, but surprisingly we only lost about half a quart. A number of times during that weekend I remember feeling sick to my stomach.

May (?) saw me at CMP. In the rain on dirt stockers, where I have to say, I did pretty good, putting us a tenth of a second off class pole and well into P2. I like me some rain racing, it suits my driving quite well. Then the rain stopped, but there was still standing water on the track. I went out on dries. As people started dragging wet red South Carolina clay onto every apex, I spun once and offed twice. But I survived, and the tire gamble paid off - no more rain. We win again.

And well that was pretty much the last of that winning thing. July had me back at Road Atlanta, running lap times 7 seconds off my previous pace and well out of contention. I was also a little shell shocked by the notion of sharing a 2.35 mile track with 70 other cars.

Hoping for a revival, I returned to Road Atlanta in November. I happily buy a new helmet (finally!) and return to...drive slowly again. I'm not sure what's going on - not sure if it's lack of practice, or being intimidated by the now NINETY (!!) cars on the track with me, or what. I was so tense, I ended up sore the next day in my glutes and my forearms. On my first session I practically hyperventilated.

Sensing impending doom, I sell my seat in the ARRC to The Stig. We have an unplanned pit stop, and then Renee got crashed out of the race, totalling what I'm pretty sure was the fastest, most highly developed ITC car in the country.

--Karl, who says, looking back on it, "some of that was actually fun, but not all of it."

 

The whole 2005 season was focused on running the Hankook Quebec Touring series. This contributed to making the season less fun than it could have been due to the stress of always having the car ready for the next event.

Race 1:
St-Eustache. After qualifying 13th, I managed to hold onto that position, after running in 12th for a long time. Unfortunately, a driver error on the 19th lap allowed a Tiburon to get by and take the position. We were still happy with the overall result and saw that the field was deeper than ever.

Race 1.5
For kicks, me and Carl head over to Mosport for the 3-hour Sundown GP with Stephane Trahan, owner of Trac Racing (my #1 sponsor) as a 3rd driver. We showed up with our K104 street tires and were getting owned all over the track. Still, we had fun, the car ran fine, and I was slower than both my co-drivers on lap times in my own car. I need more practice and cahunas at Mosport.

Race 2:
Sanair. We were seriously outgunned here in the engine department and it showed, as we were almost 3 seconds per lap slower than the leaders. We only managed to qualify 18th, but a couple of DNF's and coming out on top of a race-long battle with Carrier's Jetta allowed us to take 15th position, which was not so bad considering how slow our car was down Sanair's long straight.

Race 3
The third event did not go so well as an alternator failure forced us to retire after only 12 laps. Officially, we finished 25th with this result. I drove home 350 miles with no alternator on 6 batteries.

Between race 3 and 4, I spun a rod bearing and swapped blocks. Then, with the new block, the alternator belt got thrown into the timing belt and it skipped 6-7 notches, bending all the valves. These were changed but we didn't know what kind of stress this had put on the con-rods.

Race 4
Trois-Rivieres GP street circuit. After a decent qualifying session, the motor let go during Carl's GTU race. The gamble of running the engine as-is bit us in the ***. When all seemed lost, Rob Guerra offered to lend us his Integra for the race so we went to Montreal to get it. With virtually no practice in the car, we still managed a 14th place finish after starting from the back of the grid. All in all, it was an unforgetable weekend with the best atmosphere of any race I've attended.

Between race 4 and 5, I rebuilt my GSR block from earlier in the season. The crank was balanced but not dipped for lack of time. It was near the service limit and the builder recommended I only run one weekend on it.

Race 5
Return to Sanair. Despite a small incident in practice followed by an alternator and axle failure in qualifying, we were sitting 16th on the grid for the race, behind our rookie rivals Bastien, Carrier and Babu. We managed to finish ahead of all three of them after an intense batlle with Carrier on the last lap to achieve our best result ever: 10th place and top rookie, as well as the hole-shot award.

Races 6 and 7
Tremblant. We blew the engine on the practice day and did not have a spare. We therefore missed both races which seriously hurt our championship. We slipped 5 spots in the overall standings and one spot in the rookie standings. Again we took a risk with the engine, again we lost.

At the end of the season, we ended up in 15th position out of 45 drivers and 3rd out of 13 rookies. We can't really complain, because we had fun and still scored some decent results considering our tiny budget and the fact that we actually drove the car to every event (although we sometimes went home on a flat-bed!).

We did however eat up the 2006 budget in the process with our engine failures. The car is fixed and now sports a low-mileage B18c5 block, which will be run stock. Finances will force me to take 2006 off and the car will hopefully be rented for the 2006 Touring season.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Catch 22 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
I didn't race much.
....
I typically don't brain fart like that, but that was a big one.
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related?
gotta keep the brain sharp

 

Blowing up first engine at year's first event due to overeager ECU programming: many dollars.

Blowing up second engine at second event two months later due to being stupid and putting same programming in: even more dollars.

Making good on my start-of-the-year braggadocio while surprising a bunch of Honda drivers in only the third event of the year for the car: priceless.

Thanks, MasterCard!



<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Greg Amy finally proved that he's completely insane...</TD></TR></TABLE>

My favorite line from one of my favorite movies: "I wouldn't dig in if I were you, I have no idea where the next one is going..."

 

Nicely put Greg, but
<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Greg Amy &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Making good on my start-of-the-year braggadocio while surprising a bunch of Honda drivers in only the third event of the year for the car: priceless.
</TD></TR></TABLE>
now all eyes are on you, and watching!

As for us, we're definitely happy with the year. Exactly two years ago, it was also a time when we were happy because we were able to play and hang with the big boys at the last two ARRCs in the crx we had then. That was a good, super reliable car and I liked it a lot. It's what I took at the driver's school, it's the car that took us around all the tracks for the first time and we've gone through some memorable moments with it. Slowly we improved on it, as it also improved us a bunch with track time and experience. At the end of '03 we had pretty much three choice on the table, a) sink a good amount of money in it to take it to the next level, b) keep it as is - where it was capable of winning pretty much any race except one and instead spend the budget solely on racing in '04, or c) sell it, build a new car as good as we could from the start with one goal in mind. We put it all on the line and went with c. It was a significant effort and hard work to say the least and it also meant running only a couple of races and some test days in '04 and a limited schedule in '05. We were on pace in '04 at the big race, but ran into a couple of problems in the race. The problems were fixed/improved and the car received a couple of goodies over the winter. With a good amount of suspension and setup work throughout ‘05, the car became faster than ever. The predicament (aka gamble) of the last two years was now that after all this effort, there was only one thing that could justify all of it. I would not recommend to anyone to turn significant portions of the racing budget into car budget, but we willingly did it to ourselves in the hope of possibly being able to accomplish what we couldn't with our old car. And even though we didn't race much this year since we were focused on only one thing, '05 has definitely ended up being the best "season" to date. Can't wait for '06 to begin! Who's next.