Saturday was the first event of the season for the Midwestern Council Sports Car Club high speed Auto-x season. The first event took place on the North track at Autobahn Country Club.
On Friday the track had received a good amount of rain. As a result the paddock area was very wet and the track had areas of standing water when we arrived Sturday morning. It was a very overcast and humid start to the day.
The first practice session was slow due to a damp track.
In the second practice the Eclipse had to be towed in after an intercooler hose blew off. Not a good start so far to the day. By the time the third practice session came around the track was nearly completely dry and we were able to finally put down a couple good practice laps.
After lunch the timed runs began. The first timed run went fairly well and the Eclipse was in first place after the first round, despite the tires and brakes being completely cooled off from sitting for a couple hours. Normally the first run will often be the slowest one of the day due to everything having cooled off.
In the second timed run Jeff was on a very fast lap when he caught up to another car and was held up which would result in a re-run. While entering the last turn and then going down the front straight something went wrong with the car and it started to smoke horribly. Unfortunately fluid was put down on the track and resulted in a fairly lengthy clean up period for the corner workers.
It was not determined what had happened to the car while we were at the track, but it was noted that it was transmission fluid that was all over the underside of the car and the day was over with for the Eclipse.
Unfortunately the lap time put down in the first session did not hold and was beat by 2 seconds. Suprisingly the time from the first session was good enough to net a second place standing.
Today we unloaded the car from the trailer and looked it over in the garage. Evidently a hole was blown through the bottom of the tranny. Looks like racing the Eclipse at Blackhawk Farms on Memorial Day will not happen. There will not be enough time to get the tranny pulled and sent off for repair and then get installed back into the car. The plan as of now will be to run the EVO at an open track day at Blackhawk on Saturday. Not sure what we will do on Memorial Day.
Special thanks to my family members who drove out yesterday to help support me. Sorry the day had to end the way it did. Thankfully the car was not otherwise damaged.
No comments:
Post a Comment