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Porsche Club of America
The Northeast Region

Pit Pass

By Bill Chadwick
NOR'EASTER Online - June 2006
Northeast Region Logo

Hello race fans!! There is nothing like three days of bright sunshine and some fast laps to help get the old keyboard fired up. That’s right, as unbelievable as it sounds PCA Club Racers actually had three strait days of gloriously sunny weather at Lime Rock. 
   
Unfortunately the last several years of wet weather, sound restrictions and to a lesser extent track degradation has taken a toll on CVR’s attendance figures. A total of eighty-two racers took the green flag in the three sprint races. CVR is now running an advanced DE group to fill out the day’s track time! It looked for a while like a badly run sound meter was going to cause this year’s event another major headache. During the Thursday DE day the first sound readings were taken from the start/finish flag stand with the meter being set on the wooden rail. Between two more courses of steel guard rail that have been added to the outside wall plus the meter being set on the hard surface and the wall of the flag stand acting as an amplifier most cars (running the same mufflers as prior years) were reading four to six decibels louder. Luckily commonsense prevailed and the meter was used at other locations later in the day and low and behold sound was no longer an issue for properly equipped cars. That is not before there was a major run on the local auto parts stores for ninety degree elbows and other stop-gap measures. 
   
There was a lot of good racing over the course of the weekend and several North East Region members did well. Jim Colligan did an outstanding job taking H-stock in both the sprint and enduro. Peter Dikeman had a strong showing in the tough F class bring home forth in both races. Jim Hamblin brought home 1st overall with his GT5S in the enduro and 2nd overall and 1st in class in his sprint. In the Orange sprint Bob Scotto edged Jeffery Burger in a tight race with several lead changes in GTC1 in the same race Russ Castagna edged Cliff Sander for the GTC2 win. Chris Castagna took over for the old man driving the entire enduro; bringing home the class win and edging all the air cooled cups in GTC1 & 2. Peter Donohoe in his first club race weekend brought home a 2nd place sprint race finnsh in C-stock, Unfortunately he had some contact in the enduro and ran afoul of the when in doubt give them both a 13 penalty mind set. He will have to be a little extra careful for the next year! Another new NE Region racer Lance Willsey made did a nice job in his new 997 Cup, he finished 10th overall in both races. He kept whittling his times down all weekend with a best of 56.6 in lap 33 of the enduro. Judging by his steady improvement I’d say he will definitely be a factor the rest of the season.   My sprint was a little interesting as Farnbacher-Loles teammates C. Loles and Spencer Cox did a fancy job of boxing me at the start. It made a fun challenge and fortunately I was able to take the lead on lap eight two laps before the double yellow came out. In the enduro we lead the first twenty two laps with Wal Jarvis in his newly re-powered GTP1 right on my heels. On lap 22 we started to smoke so we pitted for our planned stop but a steady oil leak dictated we withdraw. I think this would have been great battle all the way through, but the first rule of racing is to win first you have to finish; Wal went on to take a well deserved victory. I’m sure I’m missing someone from our region if so please drop me a note after your next race so I can be sure to get you in next time!
   
In past article I’ve talked abut situational awareness and coexistence on the race track. Unfortunately we had one driver who was a glaring example of not being up to speed on these subjects. I later found out that before I tangled with this guy in the second session of the first DE day he had run one driver off the road and caused a former Chief Instructor enough grief that he had complained to the stewards. My story begins with me having just run a 55.8 halfway through the second session. I was really enthused as I was running my medium HP map. As I brushed the brakes with me left foot to turn into Big Bend I saw two cars going side by side up ahead as they tracked out from the apex. No problem I thought my scan went to the apex and then back up the track. All of a sudden I realize these two guys are having trouble and they are both on the brakes and on line. “Ye-Gads!!” No I did not think that but this is a family show. These guys are now slowed way down and are now Right There in front of me. There is now way to breath the throttle and try to get inside of them. If I had tried braking in a strait line I would have hit a forty to fifty MPH car at well over one-hundred MPH. Well you know what they say about Porsches “don’t lift”, I didn’t as I did a pop out move and drove outside onto the twelve foot wide grass berm between the guard rail and the outside edge of the track. I sure hope I scared hell out of the guy because I sure was not having any fun at this point! I lost control in the grass but managed to get the car spinning down the track. This was a huge off and it is just by the grace of god it did not turn into a major wreck. After finishing the lap and pitting in I had the satisfaction of seeing The Steward having a prolonged conversation with this guy. Come to find out he had tried to pit in from the racing line with someone on his inside. Gee I guess signaling coming down the hill and staying to the inside would have been too easy? Instead these two cars scared each other and then tried to out polite each other, you know, after you sir, oh no after you etc. all the time they are slowing down ON LINE!
  
As I drove back to the trailer I knew we had a problem as the steering wheel was now longer strait. It only got worse as we looked the car over and spotted oil draining out of my right front strut. To make a long story short, Bill Pfister drove back to Framingham and did his magic act on a badly damaged strut. He was back at the track at 6 AM Friday morning and after some more hard work and fine tuning we had a car that could run competitive times. To close this story out I should mention that this same driver had another accident (his 4th in 6 sessions) with Spencer Cox GT1R Friday morning and was thrown out. Luckily Spencer only suffered cosmetic damage. This driver really shows that one person who is out to lunch as far as situational awareness goes can cause a lot of carnage.
   
While I’m on the subject there is another type of awareness all DE drivers and club racers need to exercise. That is carefully checking your car’s condition for wear and fatigued parts. We put a lot of stress on our vehicle’s many of which have seen years or even decades of service. Before every event your car should go up on a lift for a good unobstructed view with good lighting. While up in the air all nuts and bolts should be checked for tightness, suspension components and pickup points should be carefully looked at for cracks or other signs of metal fatigue and all lines and hoses should be checked for chafing. This is particularly important as cars age, drivers get faster with experience and start adding wider and stickier tires. During our race weekend there were three 911 tie rod failures. Two of these failures resulted in accidents. One was relatively minor but did cause our sprint race to end under yellow. The other accident was major with a car going strait off at West Bend. The strait in frontal impact was severe with the headlight bucket being pushed back to the strut tower! The tub of this car was obviously a total write off and I’m sure many other components suffered shock damage. Don’t let this happen to you, make sure you car is carefully inspected on a regular basis.
  
It is interesting to see how fast the Porsche World has embraced the Cayman. There was a very pretty yellow one running well in D stock. Further Farnbacher Loles is now marketing a tuner version with a 3.8 liter motor at your choice of 375 or 405 horsepower! Wow I don’t think I have even seen one on the road around home yet and they are already tearing up the track.
   
As I pen this I’m in the middle of final preparations for the Mid-Ohio race weekend. I’m looking forward to the challenge these races will present. I have a very limited number of laps at this track and we will be up several racers with a lot more experience at this track.  I’m going to really have to work on figuring this place out to get a good result. I’ll let you know how we made out next month.  
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