In January at the Minnesota Autosports Club awards banquet I was fortunate enough to run into Brandon Ranvek and another buddy of ours as they were talking about getting a Chump car together to race at BIR this summer. As luck would have it they were looking for a fourth driver and after a little thinking I accepted. Over the next few months we got ahold of a car, a 1985 Toyota MR2, and got to work.
After gutting the car, removing all of the unnecessary pieces including the sun roof, we put on brand new brake calipers with EBC Red pads up front, had Jeff the Alignment Guy make sure it was straight, installed a roll cage and got to work on painting it. In the spirit of ChumpCar and the 24 Hours of LeMons your team and car should have a theme to it. Without much thought we settled on Ricky Bobby's Wonder Bread car from Talladega Nights. Thanks to Brandon's hidden artistic talent he went to work and freehanded every detail on the car with nothing more than a pencil, ruler and masking tape.
The race at BIR was this past weekend on June 5-6. We had to arrive on Friday for tech inspection and an instructional class.
Racing on Saturday began around 9am, scheduled to last 7 hours both Saturday and Sunday. We didn't know how long the car would last on a tank of fuel, if our tires would last or even how long we as drivers would last. Per the rules drivers can not spend more than 2 hours in the car at a time, and must rest for 30 minutes before getting back into the car. After some discussion we settled on just doing an hour a piece to start, I was to be the third driver.
Things were going well until I got into the car. We had been solidly in the top 4 for the entire race. The longer I was in the car the harder it was to shift. Eventually it got to the point where it was stuck in 3rd gear and wouldn't go into 1, 2 or 5, I was actually going down the track with the clutch out and shifting between 3 and 4 as if I had the clutch pressed in. I brought the car in and it was obvious there was something wrong with the gear selector. Brandon was up next, we were able to get the car out of gear so he got in and took off. He got it into 4th gear and just left it there, though between the high load and a small coolant leak it was soon overheating and he brought it in and we called it quits for Saturday.
We assessed our options and immediately got on the phone with a Toyota guru friend of ours that has been helping us along the way and secured a transmission in Lakeville. Another friend that we autocross with was able to pick up the transmission and bring it as far as St. Cloud, then our teammate's dad who was at the track with us drove to St. Cloud to bring the transmission home. Then came the problem of swapping transmissions. We did some talking to people and as luck would have it the owner of BIR was racing with us. He directed us to a building on the opposite side of the drag strip with a lift in it and said it was ours to use. We got to work and got the transmission out well before the new one arrived, then worked until just before midnight to get the new one in. Again, as luck would have it, as it was getting dark out a storm rolled through and dumped a lot of rain. Dragsters that were there for the bracket racing event began to come into the building for shelter and we made quite a few new friends who were as interested in our car and what we were doing as we were in their cars. Countless people offered us tools and a helping hand in case we needed it, people we had never met in our lives. It was a fantastic feeling, even shared a couple beers with them while we worked.
We removed a bunch of extra things under the car while we were there including the AC lines going to the front, some flimsy undertrays, and bypassed the heater lines to make bleeding the coolant system easier. We quick tested the transmission on the lift, bled the coolant and we were on our way, I hit the hay right around 12:30am and was up around 6:30am to get the car to the pits as racing was starting around 8:00am on Sunday.
On Sunday we decided to stretch our pit stops out to 1 hour 45 minutes which would leave the last driver with about 1 hour 30 minutes of driving to the end. Brandon went first as he has the least driving from the day before, then Dustin (first on Saturday), Doug (second on Saturday) and I was going to bring it home.
Again, as it was on Saturday, we were solidly in the top 4 again the entire race. Our stops were flawless and the car was running great. As the day went on the transmission seemed to not like its synchros and it was up to us to rev match to get it in gear.
Getting into the car for our final stint on Sunday, Dustin fueling
Strapping in with Doug, Brandon and Dustin taking a peak under the hood to make sure we weren't leaking anything as we had a coolant leak the day before that we fixed
Dustin, Brandon and Doug looking on as I drove past the pits
Thankfully I was last and know how to heel-toe downshift and rev match so that much wasn't a big deal, though as time went on the brakes began to go away. With about a half hour left I finally figured out that if I double pumped the brakes they worked great, though by then I was just taking it easy and trying to bring it home in one piece.
With 20 minutes left in the race and my stint the sky opened up and rain began pouring down. The track had standing water in a couple places, but thanks to RainX on the windshield and brand new silicon wiper blades I could see just fine. Unknown to me at the time we were in 3rd place because the car in 4th had just been black flagged for passing under yellow with an emergency vehicle nearby. Once the rain came I was still passing cars, but the cars that were catching me at the time were no longer catching me and we were even. I crossed the line to double checker flags, I looked over and everyone on the team was standing on the wall and cheering. One cool down lap, came into the pits and find out that we had finished in 3rd, about 30 seconds ahead of 4th place.
We got ourselves a cool trophy, a bottle of Chumpwine and a check for $250.
This is the most fun I have ever had in a car and it has been entirely worth all of the time and money spent. We have an awesome team, a pretty good car, and are fortunate enough to have something like ChumpCar to allow us to do wheel to wheel racing on an extreme budget. Now we look forward to racing at Iowa Speedway at the end of June.
Shake and bake!