Well, the weekend is now but faint a memory and a bunch of credit card receipts, so it's time for me to catch up on letting you all know how it went since I never found the time during the weekend.
We finished the surfboard install on Thursday and had most everything ready to go once the A/C guy showed up on Friday to repair his botched work earlier in the week - of course he didn't show up until close to 2:00 pm. This put us at the track close to 4:00 pm, which meant we had about an hour to unload and go through the Tech and BS inspections. The inspectors were a little bit more picky about things, so we had a couple of items to improve before getting our approval to race. Saturday morning we breezed through the inspection so we did a little pre-race planning and got ready to race. I got to drive the first stint and after a couple of warm up laps, they gave me the green flag to start the race which meant we were in the lead for a handful of laps until the fast guys caught up and passed me. Our plan has always been to maintain a steady pace and stay out of trouble, so at the end of two hours, we were still in third place. Randy took over at that point and was running pretty well when he start losing brake pedal pressure - after a lap or two there was no pressure at all so he came in and we took a look at it. Apparently, one of the wheel cylinders started leaking and drained the system. Since we didn't have a spare, we clamped off the line, did a quick bleed and sent Randy back out. Unfortunately, the brake booster only lasted another 30 minutes or so, which brought Randy and the DSB back into the garage until we could find the parts we needed to continue. After searching a 50 mile radius for parts, we found what we needed, installed everything and got Owen on the track to finish out the day. Nearly 4 and half hours in the pits dropped us down to 58th position, but the DSB seemed just as strong as ever.
Sunday started out promising since the car looked in pretty good shape overall. We had a couple of new drivers join us, so we put Dave in the car for the first stint. Dave was doing pretty well until he got into a corner a little fast and ended up dropping two wheels off the track coming out of the corner - this earned him a little visit to the penalty box. Fortunately, the judges were kind to us and he spent about 10 minutes in the pits before being sent back out. Unfortunately, the crew had to serve his penalty which ended up being not very bad at all - we had to come up with 5 bags of ice for the Judges bucket of water/gatorade/beer/etc. Dave continued on for another 30 minutes or so when he had another slight off road excursion and returned to find out what penalty was in store for him this time. The judges decided they wanted one of the barnyard animals welded to the top of the car, and despite having some welder problems, the Arc Angel (get it?) welded a pig on top of the surfboard. This also cost us about 30 minutes and a driver change. Tillman was in the car next and maintained a steady and fairly uneventful pace, dicing with a couple of cars and enjoying his first time racing. After fueling, we put Owen back in the car for an hour and then Randy to finish out the day. Owen ended up with the fastest lap for the team during his stint although Randy was very close to that time. We ended the day running out of fuel on the last lap, but still finished 47th out of @ 85 cars that entered the race - not that bad considering we spent over 5 hours off the track.
So that's the story on the latest adventure of the Dirty Some Beaches
What's next? Who knows - the car is currently up for sale so we can throw a big party after our wedding later this year, but there is this other little Wag-O-Van that wouldn't take a whole lot to build for next season.
Stay tuned...