Spring Mountain, Round 7 RTA

It was 9pm Friday, the night we set sail to Pahrump, Nevada. My car loaded up on the trailer and ready to do it's job 300 miles away in the middle of b.f.nowhere. Sean's car, still in a world of mysterious noise making. We made our way to Charlie's shop to put forth our best efforts to remedy the Honda motor. After about 4 hours, the head was taken apart and put back together. When everything was seemingly ready, we fired it up. Four hours of work, for nothing. The noise was still there. Sean threw in the towel.

With Sean out of commission, his spot on the trailer was given to my friend Chris Chen driving a 09 Hyundai Genesis Coupe. With his car on the trailer, We finally made our way towards our destination. We drove aimlessly for 3 hours until we got to the 127. This route is almost 100 miles of open nothingness. The previous 3 hours of channel surfing on XM radio had to stop, so we stumbled on something just epic. Hauling ass with this Chevy Silverado pulling 2 cars while over the mountains only gave a hint of daylight, the theme music for Superman 2 comes on. I felt like a super hero who just got an emergency call. Nothing beats "Cinemagic" on XM.

After all the super hero business was taken care of, we made it to Spring Mountain just in time to begin registration. I was disappointed that I wasnt given my #151 and instead was handed #295. I thought we were assigned numbers for a reason. Another lame thing is they put me in the beginner run group for it being my first time at Spring Mountain. We set our pit area next to fellow trackhq members Hido, Frank, and Charles. It's always great to have such good friends at the track! Later, I spotted Manly Kao filling up his Lotus with fuel so I went to say hi. His car looked more amazing than ever. He told me about 70 lbs he was able to get rid of in his car. Soft top instead of hardtop, cut gaping hole in his trunk and rear clam, removed numerous other things. The one thing that amazed me most was his idea of a passenger seat. He replaced the stock seat with a super light weight go-kart seat. Hella sneaky bending the rules.

I went out on my first practice session with the beginner group. This track is a labyrinth! Because this track has so many options and configurations available, there were certain road markers and berms that are quite misleading. I recall one of the turns having a blind 4-way intersection. Yep, I drove straight past the turn. The first session alone there were about 3 black flags. They should work on putting just a sectioned yellow flag rather than closing the whole track simply because a car spun off track.

Temperatures at the track exceeded 100f. This played key to traction and engine health. Using Castrol Syntec 0w30, the oil temperature went up to 250f. At that temperature, oil becomes dangerously ineffective on its lubricity. As temperature of the oil rises, oil pressure also drops a fair amount. It's a good thing I installed the gauges to mind me when to heed caution.

c_reber

I should tell you about the Spring Mountain complex. This place is more of a resort than anything I can compare it to. The newly built club house features ammenities found at most major country clubs. Spa, swimming pool, gym, you name it. The luxuries ooze out even to the public restrooms. In which, you will find gold trimmed high quality tiles lacing the walls. Atop of that is a shower that has hot water. With this place in existance, hotels become unnecessary on your next trip to Spring Mountain.

Towards the end of the day, I was given the opportunity to drive Frank's Hyundai Accent. The $9000 fwd bugulgi-mobile is nothing to laugh about. In fact, the only person who should be laughing is the person driving it. Frank's stock class econobox was the most fun I had on the track all weekend. You can throw it into corners and floor it and it responds with such nonchalance, you can't help but laugh at the top of your lungs. It brings so much joy!

As the sun began to set, we packed our equipment and headed to the Best Western to check in. The lobby smelled of horrid yesterday. Cristina noticed the free cookies that looked like they were sitting for over a week. During check-in, I asked the cashier if they offered a student discount. They were able to give us a AAA discount. Just a word of advice, always ask for a student discount. I jumped in the shower as soon as I got to our room. I took a quick nap when Charles called. "Hey Kenny, come to the track! We're having a couple of drinks and hanging out with Manly". Why the hell not? I grabbed my bottle of freshly chilled Johnny Walker Black Label and we headed out.

On the road to the track, Cristina and I noticed the billboards for the gentlemans clubs along the side. We joked of there being race cars at the brothels and as we passed by one, we saw a couple of RTA cars there. We lol'd. The first thing I noticed when we got to the track was Manly smoking a cigar while drinking wine. What a classy man he is. I counted heads and noticed Frank was missing. Turns out Frank was KO'd in his passenger seat. According to Hido, he was drunk before they went to buy drinks :p The guys tried waking up Frank by poking him, but all he did was leaned forward and fell right back on the seat. This part of the night was a blur to me after about 5 shots of Black Label. But miraculously I somehow ended up back at the hotel. Thanks for driving for me babe!

5:45am. The alarm goes off, waking us from our refreshing long nap. My body rejuvenated, but my mind forgets there is a race. I've never had two days of racing before. MY mind still in state of oblivion, I got dressed slapped myself back to reality. Our hotel offered us free breakfast. Typical american stuff like bacon, eggs, and sausage. Cristina and I had our favorite, Waffles! Fresh from the waffle maker!

A brand new day at the track, a different mentality. This was the day I would make it or break it. Everything had to be be on script. The first practice session was called out for Street Class at 9am. This session is used for qualifying, a way to find out where you are to grid. My mind was already in race mode and diving for the top. But just 2 laps into it, the track went into a full black flag situation. A car had dropped oil all the way through turn 2 and 4 which calls for immediate cleanup. The mess caused by the oil spill closed the track for over an hour. Disappointment spread like SARS through the paddock. As soon as the track was clean, Street Class was called out again for practice. Little did we know, it was our second session they were announcing. I chose to sit out for the practice. While Cristina and I were sitting underneath our tent, a dark shadow cast over us. Wind began to gust as if we were in the middle of a tornado. Cristina hung to our canopy for dear life as I did the same to make sure she did not fly away. We realized after the dust settled that it was the media helicopter flying less than 30 feet above our tents. Aside from shaking everything in our pit, there was no damage done to us.

I recalled the oil temperature from the day before and decided it would be best to change it out. Without a drain bucket, I began to crank out some ideas MacGyver would be proud of. I used some trash bags to line a spare wheel we had and used that to catch the oil. As I mentioned earlier, Spring Mountain has EVERYTHING... Including a 200+ gallon oil dump. World class this place is.

So lunch time was called. Cristina, Charles, Frank, and I walked over to "Big T's BBQ" tent for some good eatings. Charles and Frank ordered a bratswurst and a hotlink. Originally Cristina was going to get a hot dog but saw that there were other things, but not sure what they were, for the same price. She says, "hotlink? whats that? I wanna see what it is before I order it". As Charles and Frank got their order, Cristina looks to Charles and says, "Charles! let me see your hotlink!". I couldn't help but to laugh at at what she'd just said. Baby, it's ok... you're awesome :) Any way, the food was great! Four dollars for a bratswurst, chips, and a drink. Can't beat that deal!

With our stomaches full good old fashioned tailgating, we crawled back into our drivers seat and proceeded for the first time attack session. Street Class always seemingly the biggest group of cars, namely because most of the competitors drive their every day cars to compete. I was positioned behind a brand new Lancer Ralliart to my disappointment. I chose to run the warm up lap extremely slow in order to not run into the back of this vehicle. By the green flag, I was roughly 10 seconds behind him. The first lap was not as clean as I had hoped for so I went around to run the second lap. The Lancer in front of me became closer and closer to the sight. It was clear that I was faster. I pushed hard to catch up to him by the back straight, a clean open space for overtaking. Coming to the hairpin by the back straight, My focus leaned towards overtaking, rather than braking. Coming into the turn way too hot, I ran off course, completely throwing away a perfect lap for me.

After the first time attack session, I decided to let my car rest for a couple hours. There's just no need to beat on the car in a practice session risking it all for nothing. Cristina, Charles and I walked over to the Buddy Club tent to hang out with Manly. Manly pulled off a 2:34 in the first attack session, more than 10 seconds ahead of me, which puts him at pole position. I had to worry about the Dsport s2000, Tim Kuo's s2000, and DDM's 370z. At the Buddy Club tent, we just talked a bunch of smack and nonsense. Manly had a lot of helpful tips I was able to use to improve my time. One of the Buddy Club guys started to talk about late night television out of nowhere. Somewhere in there, he started talking about an infomercial about a Vietnamese guy who came from nothing and made it big selling real estate. This guy, Tom Vu, was depicted as a play boy big spender who made it to the top starting from nothing and "you can too if you just come to my seminar". I had to get on youtube to find this video to see for myself what he was talking about.


When I got back to our pits, I noticed Charles' Civic being towed in. His car died on the track and would not turn over. A spark plug wire had fallen out of the distributor but when it was plugged back in, the engine still didn't fire up. Eric Emerson, a Stock Class driver, took the distributor out of his Integra to test, and the Civic fired right up. Just knowing where the problem is, a solution must be found in order to get moving again.

It was about 3pm when the second session began. I was gridded right behind Hido in his S2000. Hido ran a 2:44 in the first session. He's very fast driving his mostly stock s2000. I took some pointers from Hido on the line and where to hit the apexes. With his helpful advice, I went and gave it my best to heed to his words. Both Hido and I had to call it "good enough" after the 2nd lap and pulled into the pits. We got together to collect data. Hido said his best that session was in the 2:46's and that I was closing the gap by at least 3 seconds each lap. All I could do was wait for the results to be posted. In the end, I ended up with a 1:43.086 at the second lap.




With Charles' car still out of commission, we had to sacrifice Chris' spot on the trailer to tow him back. We used my MR-S to pull the civic onto the trailer. Who woulda known a race car could be used this way. After we got the cars all loaded on and ready to go, we headed to the Chevron station nearby to fill up. There, a old man walks towards our trailer and examines our cars. He seemed fascinated by the work we had done to them. As I was ready to leave, he began talking to me.

"What kind of cars are those? Is it them Hondas?"

I told him that one of them was a Honda and the other a Toyota. This guy was just weird. He started talking about other things.

"Have you ever raced them VEE DUBS? Them four cylinder diesels sure are quick. They go faster zero to sixty than them new fangled electric cars. I've got a VEE DUB diesel. I be overtaking going 110 in no time."

Creepy ass motherfucker.

So we all left and got a quick bite at Sonic's. The eight of us (Chris, Amy, Hido, Dave, Charles, Frank, Cristina, and myself) had a great time going over the events of the last two days. As we discussed the line we took on the track, Hido describes his jumping of berms so colorfully by adding DOOSH sound effects. One could not have put it any better than that. Half way into our meal, Charles notices the guy with the VW across from us scratching a coin on the floor like some crazy person. Eventually we just pretended he wasn't there. A few times, we waved down our server for extra condiments and became familiar with them. Hido asked the server girl for refill on his drink and when he got it, he told her "you're my favorite Sonic's girl, ever!". It was his first time at Sonic's :p.

It was about 9pm when we saddled up. Our caravan of 4 was lead by me driving the Silverado towing my MR-S and Charles' Civic. I downed a bottle of 5 Hour Energy. Sean says this stuff works wonders so I gave it a try. Approximately 100 miles on the side route through highway 127. Numerous times I was highbeamed by oncoming vehicles. I still don't know why. One instance, I was going uphill as a semi truck was coming down over the crest. He was about 400 feet away when he started highbeaming me. I responded by highbeaming him back. When he got about 100 feet from me, he flashed me about 20 times in less than 5 seconds, and I gave him the same treatment. I now realized the headlights on our truck were aimed way high. About 30 minutes into the drive, I began to feel fatigue. Several times I tracked the trailer off the asphault and blew up a bunch of dust onto Hido's car. Sorry Hido if I dirtied your car :p

When we got to Baker, we stopped at a gas station to stretch out a little bit. Hido jacked his car up to inspect a noise coming from the rear that he feels may be a wheel bearing. With some jiggling and wiggling, nothing seemed to be wrong. After this quick stop, we set off again but Chris and Hido quickly went off on their own pace. Now the caravan only consisted of The Silverado carrying myself and Cristina and the Hyundai with Frank and Charles. Another hour passes by and I begin to really feel the lack of rest. Breathing became tough and my eyes dimmed down a few times. I had no choice but the pull off as soon as I could.

We stopped in Barstow at a Vons parking lot to take a few breaths. Frank and Charles suggested I should take a quick nap as they went to the nearest convenience store to fetch me another 5 Hour Energy. They came back in 15 minutes with a different flavor of the drink that claims to be more powerful than the ones I had before. Popped that baby in and got back on the 15.

This one seemed to do the trick pretty good. Don't mess with the red bottle EVER. That shits weak!

As we were coming down through Victorville, Manly came flying by with his Frontier towing his Elise at an amazing speed. I couldn't help but text message him, "Time attack on the 15?". Fast on the track, fast everywhere. This man is amazing! Shortly after, a quick detour to drop Cristina off at home and we were on our way to Charlie's shop to meet up with Sean. Here we were able to take Charles' distributor apart and replace the ignition coil and fire his car up. What a life saver! It was almost 3am when everything was taken care of. Charles and Frank treked home to the OC and they both lived happily ever after.

This weekend had been one of the most epic for me in a long time. From the drama of Sean's car, to helicopter almost lifting my girlfriend up and away, to Tom Vu, to the creepy VW guy, every little bit of it is something I can keep with me and remember for a long time. With the help of every single person that made this memorable weekend possible, I can't thank you all enough. Until the next round, the season finale at Auto Club Speedway, Cheers!

Goodnight.



extra video




http://urbanracer.com/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=3991&z=1
http://octanereport.com/news/384/53/Redline-Time-Attack-Spring-Mt.html
http://gambleitfilms.blogspot.com/
www.kinod.net
www.trackhq.com
http://jsgraphicsusa.com/