Wednesday
The news on race #2 at Eagles Canyon Raceway (ECR) actually started on Wednesday when a huge snowstorm moved across the southern tier of states, dropping four inches or more on Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The storm eased up a bit when it hit Tennessee and continued to move east.
My concern over the snow was two-fold. First, with so much snow hitting the Dallas area (Eagles Canyon is in Decatur, not too far from Dallas), I was concerned that the race would be cancelled. Even if the race proceeded as planned, my second concern was that roads would not be cleared and I wouldn’t be able to get to Texas.
A quick check of the weather in Texas showed that temperatures were expected to increase into the high 30′s or low 40′s on Thursday, and then go all the way up into the 60′s by the weekend. So it looked like the snow would be gone by race time.
But what about the roads. Warmer weather was predicted for the entire region between my home in Tennessee and the track in Texas. Although things looked bad on Wednesday, it looked like the weather would cooperate for the trip to Texas and the race.
Thursday
I had initially planned on heading to Texas on Thursday so I could test the car during an open test session on Friday. One of the big reasons I wanted to do the test session was to learn the track. I’ve never been to ECR, and from the track layout and videos I watched, it didn’t look like a very easy track to learn.
A week or so before I planned to leave for Texas, my daughter was scheduled for a medical procedure on Thursday. The procedure was routine, but I still wanted to be with her. I ended up backing out of the test day and decided to leave first thing Friday morning. Thankfully, everything went well with my daughter and my plans for the weekend proceeded.
Friday
I was on the road at 7:15 AM and my GPS said I should be at the track at 6:34 PM that evening. The trip through west Tennessee was uneventful. The roads were in good shape and traffic was relatively light. Even going through Nashville during rush hour wasn’t too bad. Of course it helped that schools were closed, so there were not as many cars and buses on the road as usual.
Things started to change once I crossed the Mississippi River in entered Arkansas. The roads were in pretty good shape in most places, but out of the blue there would be a stretch of road that had ice on it. Because of this, traffic was going slower than usual.
I was surprised at the number of accidents I saw. Cars and semi-trucks were off in the medium or in the ditch on the side of the road. A few of the trucks were flipped over on their sides. Thankfully, most of the carnage was in the east-bound lanes, but that didn’t stop the west-bound drivers from slowing down to have a look.
As we got closer to Little Rock, the road became worse and the number of accidents in the west-bound lanes increased. At one point, I was stuck in barely crawling traffic for two hours. The cause was a three vehicle accident that included two semi-trucks. One of the trucks was a FedEx truck that had the side of the trailer ripped off and packages were spread around on the ground. The accident was off on the side of the road, but it still backed up traffic for a couple of hours.
Traffic moved fairly well after we cleared the accident and then I was in Little Rock. During my trip through Arkansas, I didn’t see one plow or salt truck. Maybe they don’t have them. I’m not sure. What they do have are dump trucks that drive down the shoulder of the road, kicking snow and ice out into the lanes where the sun can melt it. I kid you not. They were purposely kicking snow and ice out into the lanes of traffic.
As I was going around Little Rock on the by-pass (I-430) I hit a mound of snow that immediately slowed me down from 65 mph to 45 mph. The impact threw my truck to the right and I ended up straddling two lanes. Thankfully, no one was to my right when I hit the snow. As I drove up the road, I saw a dump truck moving snow off the left shoulder out into the lanes of traffic. I still can’t believe they would do something so dumb.
There’s not much else to report about my trip once I cleared Little Rock. The roads were generally clear and the traffic fairly light for the remainder of my trip all the way into Decatur, TX. That’s when the fun began.
Because I got to Decatur about two hours later than I had planned, I decided to go to the hotel to check in before meeting my teammates for dinner. I’ve never been to a place that is so confusing to drive around. I drove past the hotel four or five times before I finally figured out how to get into the parking lot.
In Decatur (and other areas of Texas), there are driveways and businesses on the off-ramps as soon as you exit the highway. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. The only way to get into the hotel parking lot was to exit the highway and immediately turn into the hotel driveway. If you missed it (which I did a few times) you had to go back out onto the highway, make a u-turn to head back to the hotel, drive past the hotel (you could only get to it on one side of the highway), make another u-turn, and then get off at the ramp, being careful to turn immediately into the hotel parking lot as soon as you exited the highway. It was maddening. I called Sheila (the voice on my GPS) several names I am not proud of.
Then, when I left the hotel to go to the restaurant to meet my teammates, I got lost again. The restaurant was only a mile or two from the hotel, but again, you could only reach it from one side of the highway. In fact, the driveway to the restaurant was directly off the highway. You didn’t even have to take an exit to get to it. I’ve never seen that on a divided, limited access highway before.
At dinner, I met Ben (the car owner) and Rick (one of the other drivers). They were both really good guys and we hit it off immediately. As it turned out, we were having dinner with a large group that included all of the ChumpCar race officials. It was good to see some familar faces (Mike Chisek, Kathy McCause, John Condren, Dave Marsden) as well as meet some of the new race officials from the Central Region, including Central Region Race Director Joey Todd.
Mercifully, I found my way back to the hotel after dinner without too much trouble. I was beat, and I actually got a good night’s sleep. That was surprising, but greatly appreciated.
Saturday
I was up early and went off to the local Walmart to get provisions for the weekend (water, Diet Coke, Peanut M&Ms, etc). I then punched the address for the track into the GPS and I was off to enjoy a day of racing. Unfortunately, Sheila had other ideas.
As I as drove along FM-51, I monitored the miles until I reached the track. As I got close, Shiela said, “Now arriving at 7629 North FM-51.” The only problem was, there was no race track where Sheila said there should be a race track. In fact, there was nothing there but cow pasture after cow pasture. I drove up the road a little ways further, but still no race track. I backtracked to see if I had somehow missed it, but no luck. I then headed back toward town. As I was driving, I wondered if I had maybe entered the wrong address into the GPS. I tried it again and followed Shiela’s directions. I ended up in front of the same cow pasture I had seen earlier. I decided to go back to the hotel and get directions from the desk clerk.
As I was heading back into town, I decided to call my wife to see if she could find directions on the Internet. She searched the ECR website and found directions from the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, but not from Decatur. However, with a little deciphering, we figured out what we thought might be the right directions. I followed the directions she provided and ended up at the same cow pasture I had been to earlier. However, Kim’s directions didn’t end there. She instructed me to continue on FM-51 past the cow pasture almost all the way to Texas Highway 455. So I kept driving and about six miles later, I found ECR.
By this time, I was frazzled and worried that I had missed the start of the race. Because I had gotten in late the night before, I had not been able to get my safety gear checked. That meant i had to do that first thing in the morning at the track, but I was worried that I had missed the opportunity. I didn’t need to worry. It took less that a minute for my gear to get teched and as soon as that was done, the drivers meeting started.
After the drivers meeting, I met our other driver. James (Ben’s son) flew in from California to race with his Dad. In fact, James moved out to California with his mom after Ben and James’ mom were divirced several years earlier. Ben didn’t get to see James very often. The reason Ben built the race car was so he and James could spend time together.
James drove the first stint and immediately had a problem. I was on the pit radio and heard James say, “We’ve got a fire. The engine is on fire.” I told him to pull over at a corner station and get out of the car. He did as instructed and the fire went out almost immediately. James was towed in and we found that a screw had backed out of the distributor, allowing a little oil to leak out onto the header. The screw was replaced and James was back out on track.
After that initial incident, James radioed in several times to say how awesome the car was. He said it was running strong and “was on rails,” meaning it was handling like a dream. The one downside to James’ stint (other than the engine fire) was that the car was running hot. When he brought it in after an hour and forty minutes on track, the engine was overheating pretty badly and we had to add quite a bit of water. Ben blamed the problem on the thermostat and whle I strapped in for my stint, the rest of the team removed the thermostat.
The first problem I encountered was that the drivers seat didn’t move. The steering wheel was almost in my gut. That just added to my concerns about learning the car and learning the track. However, I’m happy to report that the position of the steering wheel left my mind almost as soon as I hit the track. It never was a problem.
I must have looked like a fool during my first few laps on the track. I couldn’t seem to remember which turn came after which turn, and I felt lost. There were a couple of times I thought about pulling over at a corner station and asking for directions.
Thankfully, I started to learn the track after a few laps. I started to get into a rhythm and my lap times started to come down. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes into my stint, the car started to overheat again. The gauge indicated that the water temp was fluctuationg between 230 and 260 degrees (way too hot). Ben and I talked on the radio and Ben decided that the gauge was probably wrong since the trouble light, which is designed to come on at 230 degrees, hadn’t come on. He told me to stay out on track and keep racing.
Unfortunately, about 45 minutes into my stint, the trouble light came on. I brought the car into the pits and the crew had to add a lot of water. I’m not sure how long I was in the pits, but we were losing a lot of time.
With a radiator full of water, I went back out onto the track and really fell into a terrific rhythm. I was running my best times of the day (That’s just a guess. I’m not sure what my times were) and instead of pointing other cars by, I was passing car after car. For 15-20 minutes, the water temp stayed in an acceptable range and I was having a blast. The Toyota R22 was fast and the car handled great. It was very forgiving and would do everything I asked of it. It was great fun. But then the water temp started creeping up again. We kept an eye on it for several laps and I backed off a bit on how hard I was pushing the car, but the temps stayed high. Finally, with my stint just about over anyway, Ben instructed me to come in to get some water. On the way in, the trouble light came on again.
After we filled the car with fuel and water, I handed the car over to Rick. Again, the water temp started creeping up after just a short time on the track. About an hour into his stint, Rick brought the car into the pits. When he slowed down to enter the pits, the engine died. We had to push him down into the paddock where we found out that we had blown a head gasket.
I assumed our weekend was over. I didn’t expect the crew to tear down the engine to replace the head gasket, but that’s exactly what they did. Rick and James started tearing down the engine while Ben went into town to track down a head gasket kit. I mostly stood around and felt worthless.
While this work was going on, the race continued (we found out later we finished in 15th position, despite losing about two hours of track time.). When the race ended, we (read: James and Rick) had the engine almost completely ready for the new head gasket. Rather than sitting around waiting for Ben to return, James, Rick, and I went up to the Bar-B-Q dinner that ChumpCar had organized. Man, there was a lot of food. The Texas Rib Rangers had prepared ribs, chicken, and pulled pork, along with beans, cole slaw, potato salad, and a couple of 55 gallon jugs of Bar-B-Q sauce. It was good stuff, although I was surprised there was no brisket. I thought Texas Bar-B-Q was all about the brisket. Oh well..
As we were eating, Ben returned. He had found the head gasket kit. We pushed the car into the trailer, hooked up some lights, and the boys got to work. I left about 7:30 (feeling worthless) while the crew continued to slave away on the engine. I’m not sure what time I fell asleep, but at 3:28 AM, I got a text from Ben saying that the engine block was cracked and we were done for the weekend. The boys had made a valiant effort, but there was no way to fix the engine.
Initially, I was a little confused about the cracked block. I assumed that it had cracked because we had overheated it. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Instead, it appears that the block was already cracked before the race. That’s why we kept losing water and overheating the engine. The head gasket blew because of the overheating, but the overheating was caused by the cracked block, not the other way around.
Sunday
With no car to race, I headed home around 8:00 AM Sunday morning. I was disappointed in the amount of racing time I got, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault. That’s racing. These things happen. Ben, James, and Rick did everything they could do to get the car fixed for Sunday. It just wasn’t meant to be.
For some reason, I was incredibly hungry the entire way home. About two hours after getting breakfast at McDonalds, I stopped to get a famous Whataburger. Whataburger is iconic in Texas, so I thought I should have one before I left the state. It was okay. I’m glad I got one, but I don’t see the need to get another one anytime soon.
The trip home was uneventful. The roads were in good shape (even through Arkansas) and traffic was relatively light. I got home in time to have dinner with my family.
Overall, it was a good weekend. I drove a great car on a great race course (I really came to like ECR), and I got to team up with some great guys. True, having the car crap out on us stunk, but that the way things go sometimes.
Now I need to decide where I’ll race next. There are two possibilities for March. There’s a race at Rockingham on March 12-13, and then on March 26-27, ChumpCar goes to Road America. I have a special kinship with Road America and would really like to make that race. We’ll see.