Short Report from Buttonwillow

Originally from December 6, 2010

Here's my short version of the weekend:

• We finished!
• We finished 58th out of 174, exactly at the 1/3 mark
• We finished 3rd in class, the slow class.
• We got one of the two Grassroots Motorsports "Most from the Least" Awards.
• We got a "Most Beautiful Car in the Race Award" from a woman who was going around the paddock with here boyfriend finding cars she liked to give awards to. Really sweet.
• We broke the exhaust Saturday morning but Clint fixed it for us. I owe you dinner Clint.
• The carburetion sucked all Saturday but we got it working much better that night.
• The tranny got stuck in 3rd gear and Geoff had to finish out the Saturday for us using only 3rd gear. We swapped in our spare that night.
• Nothing broke or went wrong on Sunday.
• No penalties, not mistakes. Good clean, if slow, driving. But then slow is relative. There were 116 cars slower than us, or broken, or too many penalties.

And here's a heroic-looking photo of us on track.

Photo by racinricpix.

My helmet kept hitting the roll bar over the door, especially when cornering in the parts where the track was rougher, like Cotton Corners. It got a bit irritating after a while but I learned to accept it. At least it was reducing the work my neck had to do to keep my head on and upright.

Once while driving I checked the clearance with the roof by putting fitting my fingers between the helmet and roof and I had very little room for my fingers there. It must have been worse for Zep.

Stats
First, the stats, us, the leaders, and the two Evil Genius cars.

• #760, POS Racing (the F'edUp car), 1st place, 312 laps, 2:14.4 fastest lap
• #111, Eyesore Racing, 2nd place (40 seconds behind the leader), 312 laps, 2:12.7 fastest lap
• #95, Model T GT, 9th place, 295 laps, 2:10.9 fastest lap
• #8, Team Tinyvette, 58th place, 222 laps, 2:33.9 fastest lap
• #34, California Mille (Red-white-green Alfa, Brian's nemesis, see the Germany vs Italy video on Vimeo), 69th place, 216 laps, 2:16.5 fastest lap
• #94, Communism R Us, 90th place, 179 laps, 2:27.8 fastest lap
• #745, The Color of Money (EGR Volvo), 93rd place, 178 laps, 2:21.2 fastest lap

Last stat - we finished third in class, the slow class, but still, third is pretty good, right?

Some photos:

Wiper damage.

Dirty, dirty car.

Dirty, dirty girls. Photo source

Rolling Chicane Limo Service (photo credit?)

Photo by racinricpix.

Photo by racinricpix.