Passing on the inside

By Erik Dolson

Over the July 4th weekend, my qualifying run on Friday morning at the Pacific Northwest Historics in Seattle felt pretty good. I was glad I’d practiced the day before, and had done a few sessions the month before in karts. Maybe I hadn’t lost it.

Okay, so I was on old tires, and not as smooth as I could be, and hadn’t quite figured out the new exit at Turn 3B. They’d repaved half the track, and some parts felt different. Different grip, different line. But overall, it felt pretty good.

Until the time sheets came out: I’d qualified 9th.

9th.

Two seconds behind cars I’d been several seconds faster than for years. Read more…

Big Bore Bad Boys

Facts are sometimes lost around a race track. Maybe often around a race track. There were four cars involved, not three. It happened in less than two seconds. And nobody was at fault.

But those are facts, and probably don’t matter. Disagreements have a way of becoming facts and the fact is, most of the Big Bore Bad Boys won’t be racing at the Portland Historics this July.

I wasn’t racing when it happened, or probably would have been right in the middle of it. I took last season off to go sailing. I loved sailing but missed the racing, more than I expected. Irish has asked if I want to be buried in the race car and I said “yes, but not with my helmet on.” The helmet would just be weird. Read more…

Winding it up

Whew! The new / old Jessica book is finished!

It’s new because it went from 50,000 words to 80,000 words, which is insane for the genre. Which genre is a key question. The book may fall flat because it breaks all sorts of rules and bends into different genres, and readers really like to know what they’re getting after they’ve judged a book by its cover. Read more…

PNW racers doing well at Indy

Racers from the Pacific Northwest are doing well at the 2016 Brickyard Vintage Racing Invitational, weathering a storm that threatened to blow them away when they arrived.

As of early Friday, David Kuniki, driving an A-Production Corvette with a 427 cubic inch motor, was running first or second in the event against cars owned by professional race shops.

Curt Kallberg, also driving a 427 Vette, is in the top middle of the pack, according to Kuniki. Jeff Taylor of Sisters Oregon was racing his 1964 Studebaker in A Sedan. Taylor could not be reached. Norm Daniels is driving a Camaro Trans-Am car.

Matt Parent was first in his class in his Cup Car (a stock car), and was doing quite well driving his small block Corvette in B-Production with a 350 cubic inch motor, according to engine builder Craig Blood of Blood Enterprises.

“He’s 4th in B Production and 13th overall,” Blood said.

Jeff Mincheff and Jackie Mincheff, experienced drivers from the Portland area but new to Corvettes, are doing well, according to their mechanic Jon Bibler, who also wrenches for Kallberg and Erik Dolson.

“Jackie is doing pretty good. Jeff’s car ( a recent acquisition) is a neat piece, everything on it is as it was raced in 1972. But there’s some work to do (to make it competitive),” Bibler said.

Kuniki said the track reminded him of Portland International Raceway.

“There are two fast chutes. After one, there is a hard right and left, like the chicane in Portland. The back section is technical, you can overdrive it and lose time.  Curt (Kallberg) and I both think it’s similar to Portland.”

Kuniki qualified 1st on Thursday, “on new tires with a 1:38:8. This morning I qualified second with a 1:39:3. I had the older tires on, maybe I was too nervous. This afternoon I’ll have fresh rubber and put it on ‘kill.’ ”

He added, “Along the straight you are three feet off the wall, and the sound from our big blocks is pretty cool.”

Kuniki is dueling with an “incredibly prepared” Corvette driven by Edward Sevadjian, president of  Duntov Motor Company, and Peter Klutt, owner of Legendary Motorcar Company. 

“They made Klutt put a small block in his car to run A production (small blocks normally run B-production), and he still qualified behind me with a small block on old tires,” Kuniki said. “Curt Kallberg is in the upper middle of the pack, even though he’s running with the wrong gears and the wrong carb setting.”

When the racers set up on Wednesday, a thunderstorm blew through the area that threatened to take them out. Bibler said it was like a tornado almost touched down. Kuniki said that he and mechanic Freddie Jonsson had all they could do to save the tents and awning.

“It came on in about a minute. Freddie and I were both holding on to the awning on the trailer and it was picking us up like Mary Poppins. We managed to save the awning but then had to grab the tent and hold on to it for about an hour.  Nobody could help anybody else, everyone had their own problems.”

Tom Cantrell said the weather was fierce.

“The first day the weather was bad, storms came though and were just ripping us. We got about 5 inches of rain in two hours, canopies were blowing away.”

Since then, though, weather has been good, if a little humid.

“We’re having fun,” Cantrell said. “So far the track has been good. We’re getting to know the Can-Am car, making little changes here and there, but it’s doing really well. The cup car is just excellent. We cut four and a half seconds off the last time we were here. We let Brent Glassetner (a builder of Nascar race cars in North Carolina ) have it in the off season, that was a good decision.

“Norm Daniels is doing good, Kallberg seems pretty problem free. All the guys from the Pacific Northwest are doing well,” said Cantrell.

A Fast New Season

The Jaguar went sideways just after the hump of Turn 1, hit the bank, went airborne, came down on its nose, flipped end for end, then rolled. That’s what a driver saw from another Jaguar close behind.

In just a few seconds, a newly-built race car, driven by a novice in his first race, became a pile of barely usable parts wrapped in mangled aluminum, its driver sent to the hospital.

Bad stuff happens at over 150 mph, and some of us are hitting the mid-160s.

Canuck has seen worse. Hell, Canuck has been through a few off-roads himself in Seattle. But a few years ago “Alice,” Canuck’s new Corvette, suffered the same fate as the Jaguar, and at the very same place on the track. Its then-owner was the fastest and probably the best driver in our little group, like Canuck is now. He was hospitalized and hasn’t raced since.

The driver of the Jaguar, rumored to be unconscious when workers got to him, just suffered a couple of broken ribs according to word passed around in the pits.

Canuck was spooked. He and I agreed that having a qualifying session as the first session on the track is a really bad idea.That’s when the former owner of Alice got hurt, too. Qualifying is even worse after a winter layoff; Drivers are out of shape, cars may not have everything tightened down after working on them over the winter. Jumping in and trying to qualify near the front is a bad way to start a new season.

But nobody asked Canuck or me what we thought of the schedule, so we run when they tell us to run. Irish and I had been driving all over the Pacific Northwest to wrap up other commitments: close to nine hours on Thursday, then left Portland late on Friday and didn’t get in to our hotel until 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning. It was a slog to get everything put together by the time that 9:30 session came around.

I didn’t see the wreck. I’d come in early to find out what was wrong with my motor, which had a bad stutter and no water temperature showing on the gauge.

The wreck shook Canuck up, so he said, and he sat out the first race on Saturday, just to gather himself together. That’s the only reason I won, and if the drag boat motor in Excalibur’s black Stingray hadn’t blown up as he was trying to catch up, I might not have.

A lot of motors blew over the weekend. There were long streaks of oil in several places at different times where one car after punched a piston down throughout the bottom of an oil pan, or a rod out the side of the block.

Hey, the cars we’re racing are 50 years old. Swede did a great job building up Alice for Canuck. Just like Mule did a tremendous job putting Yellow Jacket back together after I blew the rear end last season, and broke trailing arms the year before. But there’s only so much that can be done with 50-year-old technology that was current when family telephones had no screen and sat on a table in the hallway.

Or drivers who grew up waiting a turn to use them. We are getting older, health issues dog us now, eyes and ears and immune systems failing faster than some of us get around the track.

Starting near last, Canuck worked his way up from the back of the pack on Saturday afternoon, and was posting the best lap times. With entries down, they put four-cylinder cars into our group, or us into theirs, which made for challenging racing. Still having trouble with my air-fuel mixture, I was rusty as a shipwreck on the beach. Still, it was a win. Canuck ended up third.

There was a new car, actually one built a few years back but just returned to the paddock. Quicksilver is a mid-year Corvette boasting another 427. Piloted by an experienced driver, formerly of a Mustang, he was damn fast for his first time out in this car.

Sunday belonged to Canuck, though I did give him a challenge in the last race of the day. He was way out in front when a yellow flag came out, then the pace car so they could bunch up the racers as they hauled in another of the four-bangers that blew up.

My engine was finally running well, thanks to Mule, who noticed the rear float bowl on my carburetor was over-full. Merlin came over and adjusted it. Finally, she was running clean.

I was right behind Canuck as we waited for the disabled car to be hauled to safety. As we came to Turn Nine, I saw that the yellow flags weren’t out. It was a race! But Canuck didn’t register that fact until I hit the throttle and flew by him.

He went after me. I wasn’t going to shake him, so I did everything I could to stay right where he would need to be to get by me. Cowboy is the master at making his car 15 feet wide, but I kept it up for the next several laps. Then I lost concentration coming in to Turn Eight on the final lap. Canuck got to the inside, and I decided not to chop him off or send him into the dirt, so it was a drag race to the flag.

I hit the gas too hard. The magic motor Merlin built responded in an instant. I actually needed less to do more, and spun the tires for just a moment too long. Canuck beat me by one-third of a second to the checkered flag.

It was disappointing, but a better race than it would have been if Canuck hadn’t fallen asleep. Irish said it was exciting. Mule thought I’d let him by on purpose, but that isn’t so. I apologized to my crew chief Jakester, but he said, as he usually does, that we did good for the weekend. Smartest 15-year-old I know.

Walking back from the timekeepers tent, with proof in hand that I hadn’t done my best, Irish said something about the friendship and mutual respect she’d seen over the weekend.

“This is my tribe,” I said. “Even though I only see them five or six times a year, I’m more comfortable with these people than with anyone else.”

The first race of the season is a time to shake off the cobwebs, rediscover the limits of what we can do. Or, in the case of the Jaguar, find out what we can’t. Merlin asked if I would consider spending a little time and money for a minor change that might make just a little bit more of what we all want. As if I didn’t have trouble already getting power down without spinning the tires.

Then today I get a call from someone who knew someone who might want to buy my race car, something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. Maybe I should accept that I’ve had a pretty good run. Better to go out near the top, rather than stay too long, right?

I asked Irish what she thought. As she saw last weekend with the Jaguar, and other cars  towed in on the hook, this is not a hobby without risks.

“I’ve only just met these people, but I’m not ready not to see them again,” she said, but carefully letting me know that it was my decision. Did I expect anything else?

By the next race, Excalibur will have a new motor, Quicksilver will have even more time under his belt, Alice will be better sorted. Those guys have got some serious juice. Cowboy will be back with everything he can bring, Captain America has a new engine, too. There were photos shown of Ceegar coming through Turn Five with two wheels off the ground. He was missed, but he’ll be back.

“A bit more?” Merlin asked, without using exactly those words. Even though I had too much “more” already, last weekend, for my skill level? Order the parts, Merlin, and I’ll order some new tires, and brake pads, too.

Of course I want more. It’s never enough.

Kia needs to fix these cars

Foxy takes her daughter to school every morning in a 2013 Kia Optima. She has to stop, then turn left across one lane of traffic diving downhill around a blind curve, into a stream accelerating uphill from the right, cars coming fast in each direction.

It wasn’t working too well.

“When I step on the gas, the car starts to go, but then just stops! I took it back to the dealer, but the guy in the service department said it was part of the traction control, and I was just pushing the gas too hard.”

I took the wheel for a few days. It didn’t seem that bad. I could make it happen, but not without being pretty aggressive. So the service guy was probably right, it was just traction control.

Then it rained.

We were in a busy intersection with about five lanes in each direction, counting turn lanes. I was first in line at the red light, on a slight uphill grade. Green. Step on gas. Car goes… maybe two feet. Suddenly stops. Another few feet. Stops. By now, I’m well into the intersection starting and stopping my way on through.

“That’s really ugly,” were the first words out of my mouth. I hope. Followed by, “That’s not right.”

“See?!” said Foxy.

“It acts like it’s driving only one wheel, and when that one slips, the traction control hits the brakes,” I say. From then on, I turn the traction control off so I can at least predict what’s going to happen, and wonder if Kia will then say it’s my fault if there’s an accident.

The Optima is a front wheel drive car. When a front wheel drive car accelerates, weight shifts to the back wheels, reducing front wheel traction. Okay. The tires aren’t new, but they’re not bald. Okay. That’s the end of excuses, as far as I am concerned. I’ve driven front wheel drive cars before. This is wrong.

Next stop, Internet. Turns out, a number of people have complained about this, including reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. I take notes.

Coincidentally, a few days later, Foxy gets a call from the dealership, asking how she likes her car. She mentions the problem, and sales guy points out that even though she bought it used, the car is still under warranty. That’s all I need.

I drop Foxy off at work and head down to the dealership, wait for the manager on duty to get off the phone.

“I’ve never heard of this,” he says.

“I’m surprised. There have been a number of complaints, they’re easy to find online, and some reports to the NHTSA. Here’s  where you find them, and here’s the part number needed to fix it. Would you like to write it down?”

I may not be much of a wrench, but I can go online.

Sales manager says he has to talk to service manager.

“Would you like me to come along?” I ask.

“No, let me see what he’s doing, first,” sales manager says.

Ten minutes later, he takes me back to the service manager. We all sit down.

“Not really heard of this being a problem” says service manager, who seems like a very nice guy.

“Well, here’s a couple of places you can find records of complaints,” I say. “And here’s the part number that solves the problem.” That part number had been posted by a guy in Louisianna, who I now want to buy a bowl of jambalaya: 1 58920 − 2T550, Hydraulic Unit Assembly, or an HECU, which I’m told stands for hydraulic electronic control unit.

Somewhere in that conversation, the term, “one wheel peel” comes up. Exactly what I felt at the rainy intersection.

“I’m willing to be flexible,” I say to the two managers. “She can give you this car back, and we’ll look for a car someplace else, or you can put her in a different car, or you can fix it. But we can’t let her take her daughter to school in a car that isn’t safe. We just can’t do that,” I say, making sure that all three of us understand this isn’t just my problem, and especially not hers.

The sales manager leaves the room at that point. Service manager says he has to make a phone call. When he comes back, he says there is a part that might make a difference, he can’t guarantee it. But he has authorization to install it under warranty. He’ll keep the Optima, and gives me a loaner.

Foxy picks her car up a week later.

“It doesn’t spin and stop! It drives like a normal car!”

Cool. I get to be a hero for… a few minutes. That’s good enough. I appreciate the dealership stepping up and taking care of this, finally, once confronted by hard evidence. They were polite, friendly, professional, and surprisingly, I liked the drivable little box they gave us as a loaner car. It’s got soul.

But how many Kia’s were sold with this problem? Just the 2013 models? Just the Optimas? How many women, and men, who don’t have decades of experience with all sorts of drivetrains at all sorts of speeds in all sorts of conditions, were told, “You’re giving it too much gas. That’s a safety feature.” What will these cars do in the snow? How many of these cars will go out of warranty, and how many customers will be stuck with what could be a $1,500 bill?

Or get hit by a truck in the middle of an intersection because a car they could not afford to fix just wouldn’t GO!

Kia, the company, should do more. It should not be left to owners to individually resolve this problem. Kia needs to recall any car with this issue, and Kia knows what cars are affected and who owns them. Vehicles with this design flaw should be repaired and drivers should not be charged. Kia the company should accept this responsibility.

Alice

I may have won a couple of races, but Swede was champion of the Columbia River Classic in Portland, and it wasn’t even close.

Swede doesn’t drive, either.

And his car never turned a lap.

Jakester and Jakester’s Dad had me set up on Friday while I was trying to get back to the track from visiting a childhood friend and his folks south of Portland. Traffic in that city gets worse by the week, and an accident at the Terwilliger curves plugs it like bad plumbing.

Tireman and Son helped. They had brought both their Studebaker and their Camaro. Tireman hasn’t raced in two years, but the two of them played evenly every time they were on the track. How cool that a father and son get to race against each other. It’s even cooler that Tireman appreciates it so much.

On Saturday, we all had gremlins. Excalibur came in after only a few minutes in the morning, his steering wheel shaking so badly that he didn’t know if something had come loose. Ceegar was playing catch up with two cars, and the Mustang was acting like a bronc. Cowboy didn’t know it yet, but his brake pads were worn down to the steel.

And I was still chasing, after three races, an electrical issue that seemed to be moving from part to part around the engine compartment just fast enough to stay out of site. Replaced the starter after the spring race. The battery after the first July race. A connector ate the last race in Portland. As I sat on the grid for the first race on Saturday, I saw my battery wasn’t being charged. Again, or still? Too late to do anything except hope I had enough juice in the new battery for a 20 minute run.

Cowboy was on the pole, and I was to his left. Excalibur was right behind Cowboy,  and Nice Guy’s Camaro sat right behind our three, big-engined, tuned, loud Corvettes. But not too loud — they made us tone it down after we lit up the meter during qualifying.

When the green flag fell, Cowboy and I had a drag race going to the first turn.

We both had the same idea. Go deep, start in front. I couldn’t believe how deep Cowboy was going, but I was going to take him as far as I could before I hit the brakes. Finally, I hit my binders as hard as I dared, trying keep a balance between stopping and spinning. I didn’t know if I was going to make the turn into the chicane.

I looked to my right to see if I was going to turn in front of  Cowboy or into him, and just in time: he comes whistling past me and doesn’t even try to make the turn. Remember those brake pads? He just used up about the last of them. He has to stop at the stop sign in the center of the turn but off the track and let the field go by.

I pushed hard, trying to build a lead on Excaliber, but I don’t see him in my mirrors. I see Nice Guy’s Camaro falling back (his engine is two-thirds the size of mine), but that’s all.

Mule, who wrenches for both Cowboy and me, comes over after helping Cowboy complete the sale of his new Garcia Corvette to Polished. Actually, it went to Ms. Polished. They drive matching Lotuses, but were now stepping into our rude class of ground-pounders. The Garcia car was supposed to be for him, but he didn’t fit. Ms. Polished fit though, and so the car was hers.

And she did a damn good job driving it, only a few seconds behind those of us who have been muscling these machines for decades. And that’s one concession that will be made: power steering.

“My shoulders!” she said after coming in off the track. Imagine wrestling a car like that at speed, working at it so hard your shoulders were talking back to you. Hat’s off to her.

Mule finds, for the fourth time, the source of my electrical problem. It’s in the start switch. I wiggle it while Mule looks at the volt meter, and the problem jumps up, tries to hide, then I wiggle it again. It jumps up, then tries to hide, again. Mule sends me over to Armadillo for a new switch.

I started in back in the afternoon, to play with Excalibur and Ceegar. I cut my up through the pack, but it started to rain, and everybody but me was smart enough to call it a day. Jakester and his dad wipe the car down.

We were all disappointed that Canuck didn’t show with his new car, Alice. He was supposed to, but it’s a lot of work building a new car.

It wasn’t supposed to rain all day on Sunday. Twenty percent chance, according to my weather app. Yeah, I know that doesn’t mean it will rain 20 percent of the time. But still, you would think we’d get a break, right?

Nope. It was pouring at dawn, it would let up, then rain hard again. Most of us don’t race in the rain. I was told long ago, you pucker so hard when racing a Corvette in the rain, you can’t sit down for a week.

Banker asked me to convince Ms. Polished it would be a real bad idea to go out. What she was driving now was no Lotus. A cough can put you into the wall. I told her what I was told long ago. Not very classy of me, but had to get the point across.

But the winner of the weekend showed up. Canuck arrived with Alice, a car driven by, and wrecked by, some of the fastest drivers we’ve known. Alice was a complete rebuild. And that’s why Swede was champion of the Columbia River Classic.

We all do a pretty good job on our cars. Some are better than others, but each shows time spent, and attention to detail.

Alice was unbelievable. Not a dime was spared on pieces, and hour upon hour was lavished on detail. No trailer queen, she’ll be raced as hard, or harder than, all of the others.

But there were no short cuts taken in her build. Holes were precisely drilled in places no one would ever see to manage weight (or air flow), Heim  joint bearings replaced rubber bushings anywhere precision might be lost, her black paint was so black you could walk through it into another dimension; the names of all previous drivers were written respectfully on the top.

The guys standing around her know cars. They know what goes into a job like this. There was nothing to say, but to praise to Swede, and what he’d put together for Canuck. Alice has arrived.

But we were rained out, first the morning race, then the afternoon. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Which leaves only one more weekend this year, the Finale in Seattle at the end of the month.

It’s been a strange season, and feels incomplete, for some reason. Maybe it’s because we didn’t get out on the track on Sunday, maybe it’s because I didn’t get to race against Alice. I guess we’ll see. Maybe it’s just never enough.

 

 

 

 

Little Things

Jakester and I had high expectations after Seattle, where we’d set three personal best times and a new lap record for our group, according to some who’ve been around. We were headed to Portland, after all, and Portland is “home.” I’ve been running cars at Portland since the 1980’s.

The Portland race was being run by a new promoter. SVRA knows what they’re doing, and has the resources to do it. Still, there will be “discussions” when a new way of doing things governs a herd of “Triple Type A” personalities.

Canuck stacked up the Camaro, “Roxanne” in Seattle, and his new Corvette isn’t finished. But most of the rest of the “Bad Boys” showed up, and there were some folks we hadn’t seen before from out of state, and the TransAm grid, mostly from California. And Fireball, driving the gold Mitchell Mustang from even farther out in the weeds than me and Cowboy.

The Mitchell boys are still pretty fired up about the Ford vs. Chevy rivalry from the 1960s. They make it a little like Hatfields and McCoys, in that some things are hard to let go. They always accuse me of running a huge motor when I beat them, and I didn’t appreciate it much when they sprayed oil all over the track in front of my car, and on the faceshield of my helmet, a couple of years back.

Last time we were together, with Looser the owner as driver, not Fireball, the Mustang  got tangled up with Excalibur and Ceegar, doing some damage. The year before, Fireball contacted Canuck. Stuff happens, right? But stuff seemed to follow that car around.

Last week in Seattle, Yellow Jacket was hard to start once. Merlin was standing right there, flipped off the fuel pump, which left enough juice to spin the motor to a start.

“We’d better put another starter in the trailer, just in case,” he said.

Normally less than six hours from Seattle, it took more than 8 hours to get home. Two days later, Mule, my mechanic, came up to my place to put in the new starter. We didn’t want to take the chance it would strand me on the starting line.

I said maybe we should put the old one in the trailer as a spare.

“You could, or get a new one for the trailer. Do you want to take a chance that your replacement is no good?” asked Mule.

Good point.

Two days after that, we were in Portland. Montana Mustang and Montana Mom saved us a spot next to them, so Jakester and his dad and me set up and changed the oil and were ready to follow the SVRA type of schedule.

Instead of three days of racing, we practiced twice on Friday, qualified on Saturday morning, had a race Saturday afternoon and another on Sunday morning.

Montana Mustang was not happy with the new schedule.

“I came to race, not drive around,” he said.

I could see his point. It’a a long way from Montana. It bugged him all weekend. He was still fighting some brake issues, too.

Montana Mom aksed if Jakester and his dad and me would be around later for sandwiches. Like she had in Seattle, she fed us lunch all weekend, and would only let us contribute fresh fruit to the feed.

“Somebody has to make sure you boys have something to eat besides cookies and burgers,” she said. Thanks, Mom.

Family guy was pitted right next to us. Maybe because he owns a tire store, he noticed that one of the tires on my trailer had started to split because of age and time in the sun. He could see the steel belts. Jakester and I got out the spare, and made ready to change it. I’d lost a tire on that trailer on my way back from Seattle in the spring, probably due to the same thing. This would be the year I bought six new trailer tires.

It’s the little things.

After the driver’s meeting before the event, I watched a guy from Seattle angrily harangue the race promoter about one of the tech inspectors, who had required the electrical cut-off switch on his car to cut off power to the fuel pump (for emergency crews in case of accident).

He seemed to be arguing that a fuel pump pumping high octane gas into a potentially explosive situation wasn’t a bad thing. But then it became clear it was the way the inspector said this would not be allowed, apparently.

Culture clash. Or maybe just communication difficulties. I try to steer clear of that kind of thing.

Ceegar, who has what we think is a legal TransAm car, has been “disinvited” to play with that TransAm group. Like a number of the “Bad Boys” from the Pacific Northwest, he doesn’t necessarily think winners should be decided in private before the race begins. We don’t show up to drive in a parade.

OCD is Ceegar’s crew chief, and just about as tenacious as his name implies. He talked to folks running the weekend. They didn’t object to Ceegar going out with the Transam boys during practice, but said it was up to the TransAm folks. OCD went to talk with them. They said it was up to the TransAm “boss.” He wasn’t around. So, nobody said, “no.”

Ceegar waited in the pits when the TranAm group went out onto the track, then went to the startling line and was waved onto the course, with “permission.”

He cut through the field like he usually does, eventually catching the lead car.

“They didn’t like that so much,” he said with a smile after the race.

He basically stood on the toes of the race official who Ceegar thought took too much delight in delivering the reprimand, and confided that smirking would not be conducive for employment in Ceegar’s company.

Or something like that.

For a half-hour.

Later, when Ceegar’s Crew Chief “OCD” went to talk things over, the official said he never intended to speak with Ceegar again, not in this lifetime.

Culture clash.

Fireball came over after qualifying to say I had the car to beat.  He was gracious, and I tried to be the same. I’ve had a heart to heart talk with him in the past, and it’s hard not to like the guy.

But Yellow Jacket didn’t really feel settled during practice, nor qualifying. I thought it was me, or the track was greasy, maybe I had asked too much of the tires or was trying to get too many races out of them. But that’s what I had, so that’s what I’d use.

I don’t remember when things began to get worse. Maybe halfway through the race Saturday afternoon. Whenever I stepped on the brakes, the car would veer left. Not a lot, and she straightened right out again. But it was a little unnerving, and caused me to tip-toe around the course.

There was a half lap to go when there was a “clunk” when I turned the wheel from left to right, or right to left.  We spun out diving deep past Fireball in the Mitchell Mustang in Turn 7. And then Yellow Jacket wouldn’t start.

We got towed back to the pits.

Mule came right over from where he was helping out on Cowboy’s car.

“I don’t know how you drove this thing,” he said when he crawled out from under. The trailing arm on the passenger side that helps hold the right rear wheel in place had broken.

So we started to thrash. We put the battery on a charger. Jakester and his dad rode bicycles around the track, looking for a missing part that holds the trailing arm connection together and could not be purchased at local hardware stores. I went to everyone with a Corvette. No luck.

Finally, Mule gave me a list and sent me to Lowes’s, where I went that evening and again when Lowe’s opened at 7 a.m.  Sunday morning.

Mule pulled it off. “This will hold for a half-hour,” he said. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. We put the battery back in. We tested the alternator. Everything was ready to go.

I’d start from the back, but that’s a favorite of mine. I just love to chase. And Cowboy said we were supposed to start where we had qualified on Saturday morning.

On my way to pre grid just before the main race, Yellow Jacket felt so good, I wondered how long that trailing arm had been “not quite right.” I was distracted. The clutch is very firm. I stalled the motor.

She would not start.

I waved some men over, they pushed her, I popped the clutch, she started and I took the qualifying place (the wrong place, by the way) amid some confusion in the starting grid.

But even though I kept her running, eventually, there just wasn’t enough juice left, and the engine died. One of the cells in a fairly new battery had failed. That’s what had been going wrong since Seattle: not the starter, not the alternator.

I was stuck in the starting grid, watching all the other cars go out to race. On “my” track. In the biggest race in Portland this year. After Mule had slaved to get the trailing arm fixed. After we’d charged the battery, replaced the starter, and checked the alternator.

It’s the little things.

Fireball won that race. At first I was tempted to say that would not have happened if we’d been out there, but that’s racing. Even though Ceegar was in front of him, Ceegar ran out of gas on the last lap.

It’s the little things.

Fireball won the race in the Mitchell Mustang because he drove well, as he always does, and because they were ahead on all the little things.

It didn’t take long to get the trailer packed up. I was almost done when over the loudspeaker, I heard them give Fireball the first place accolades and the medal. As I drove past where a large group of them were all celebrating, I gave them a thumbs up. I don’ t know if any of them saw it, but I meant it. They deserved it.

After 13 years of racing, there’s bound to be parts on the car that are tired, and ready to let go. We replace things that have gone wrong, like a broken transmission; things that might go wrong, like a starter; things we know will probably go wrong, like wheels with thousands of laps on them.

We should have replaced old and tired trailing arm bolts, but sometimes we miss some things, especially things like a year-old battery.

Keeping ahead of all the little things that could go wrong takes a lot of effort and, at times, it seems like it’s never enough.

Hot enough, for ya?

Ceegar was fighting brake fluid gremlins. Kanuck decided at the very last minute to show up and only after Excalibur beat on him a little. The motor in Cowboy’s new, spectacular-almost-a-Corvette was flatter than cola left out in the sun for the day.

Speaking of that sun? Seattle isn’t supposed to be this hot, so close to the ocean. It isn’t just the air temperature, either. Asphalt absorbs, then reradiates the heat. Montana Mustang measured temperatures of the pavement at 140 degrees, I was told.

The only shade was beneath trees near the restrooms, where it was at least 20 degrees cooler than in the paddock where years ago they cut down all the majestic and shading firs. They did it so we’d have more room for the race cars, they say, and not for the value of the timber.

As usual, when I get to the track, fewer than half the folks coming up want to say “Hi,” and more than half ask “Where’s Jakester?” Some ask in a voice that demands an answer, as if Jakester not being there is my fault. It’s a good thing my 14-year-old Crew Chief is coming up on Friday with his dad.

Kanuck decided to bring his red Camaro, “Roxanne,” because his Corvette wasn’t finished. I understood the disappointment when he said he wasn’t going to come, but after Excalibur got done with him, he showed up. Excalibur can be pretty persistent. Still, it takes more than three days to prepare a race car, even one as well prepared as Roxanne.

Stays Late, Excalibur’s mechanic, walked up and handed me four disks he’d made in his shop for my car to protect aluminum wheel spacers from steel wheels I now use because I liked them on Excalibur’s car. Stays Late had experience I didn’t have: “If the steel bites deep enough into aluminum, the lug nuts can come loose. Not a good thing,” he said.

Despite the competition, we take care of each other out there. Thank you.

Excalibur was ready. I was ready. We’d raced against each other at the Spring Sprints, where he spanked me bad. He turned in times in the ’29s’, consistently. That’s one minute, 29 plus seconds. Less than a 1:30. I’d done that once, years ago. He did it every race.

Yellow Jacket had resisted being pushed hard in the spring, and it’s a good thing. There were things wrong that could have been catastrophic if they’d let go at 150 miles an hour.

Since then, I’d had a little help from my friends, especially Merlin and Mule. Merlin conjured a new heart for my machine. I looked at the power curves, and decided how I needed to drive her. I came up a couple of days early to practice, and asked the local track guru for some advice.

Hey, if you’re going to do this, you might as well commit, right?

Cowboy told me on Wednesday he wasn’t coming. His mom had fallen and broken some bones that might not heal. He was staying close to home for the phone call. But then on Thursday, he said to maybe save him a place to park. His son, and then his sister, pointed out that Seattle wasn’t much farther away from mom than home in Middleofnowhere, Oregon.

So, with family blessing and support, he came up. His son, who isn’t so interested in these machines, even came up with him, along with his right hand, Cowgirl. Family, ya know?

After qualifying, I was third. Kanuck was first, Excaliber second. Falcon was right beside me. Ceegar had brake problems, and did not get a time. Cowboy was in the middle of the pack. There was a Porsche in there somewhere.

Smallblock, who  kicked butt in Indianapolis last month, was solid right behind the leaders. He gives up a lot of cubic inches and runs an iron motor instead of the aluminum mill others of us have. His builder Kiwi is quick to share that information. Smallblock has also gotten into NASCAR style cars, and he’s become quite a driver, regardless of what he drives.

I was lined up behind leader Kanuck for the two-by-two start, and when the green flag fell, I tried to squeeze so close to him that Excaliber couldn’t get to the line. But Excaliber came down on me anyway and squeezed me back.

The rules are a little gray there. Does he have right of way because he’s ahead and wants his line, or do I have right of way because I’m already there where he wants to be?

I didn’t feel like having that discussion, or speaking through fenders of fiberglass. For the time being, I figured if I could stay close enough, Kanuck and Excaliber might push each other out. I stuck my nose in a couple of times, but backed out again before it got bloodied.

Then the Porsche dropped either his engine or exhaust on the track, the pace car came out, and we followed its yellow lights around and around, five hundred horsepower of grumbling. Around and around.

They didn’t just push the Porsche back behind the barrier, and a tow strap wouldn’t suffice. They had to bring out a wrecker.

Around and around. In the heat. I started to sweat, which got into my eyes. Around and around. The two one-gallon bags of ice I put into my driving suit were mostly liquid by now.

Around and around.

Finally we came around and I saw the Porsche was gone. Workers at the kink right in front of us had the yellow flags up, but the tower right behind did not. I figured we were about to go racing.

Kanuck later said he’d thought the race was over. Excaliber doesn’t say much in these kinds of situations, but he was either sleeping or pinned behind Kanuck for just long enough after the starter raised his arm and I saw green. My foot was already halfway to the floor. I went by both in full song, grabbed another gear, went through the right hand Turn 1, the left hand sweeper Turn 2, down the hill into the sharp right and left turns 3A and 3B.

They weren’t gaining on me.

I let Merlin’s magic do its work under the hood, while I tried to concentrate on my job: smooth line, smooth throttle, firm braking, fast exit. Over and over, for about 24 more turns.

I just had to avoid being stupid, not always easy for me.

Sometimes, just not being stupid is good enough. Leading the parade lap was sweet.

So were the kids I got to put in the driver’s seat after we got back to the paddock. After a race, there are often a lot of kids coming by. Their eyes get big when I ask if they’d like to sit in the car, their folks always have a camera. Making memories, a friend used to say.

Hey, that’s how I met Jakester and his dad at the big race in Portland, so it’s a safe bet I get more out all that than I put in. Five minutes from me and they have something else to talk about when they get home and look at the pictures. Easy trade-off.

It was a nice start to the weekend, but Kanuck made it clear before he left the track that race was only the first race, and that there were four more to come.

“I would have caught you if I’d had ten laps,” he said.

“Maybe,” I replied. He’s a better driver, we all know that, and maybe Excaliber is better than me now, too. But not this afternoon, at least not for as long as it took me to jam the throttle to the floor.

Excalibur didn’t say much of anything at all, except to point out in a discussion we had before the races, he’d said  I’d be first or second. That was all. He’s like that at the track. He prefers to let his black car do the talking.

I wandered around our paddock for a little while, my hand out. Roxie Hearts, one of the key volunteers, she lines us up at the beginning of the races, is walking 12 miles next weekend for a cancer fundraiser. She’s a three-time survivor herself, we were told. I figured we “big bore boys” would all like to pitch in, and everybody was willing. More than willing.

One of the other volunteers, not a regular on the track but one in an orange shirt keeping spectators safe as we drove around them in race cars, heard my pitch.

“Would this help?” he asked, and gave me two quarters.

“You bet,” I said.

That smallest donation was my favorite. When I stuffed the wad of cash and two quarters through the fence to her station, I made sure Roxie Hearts knew where it came from. Like putting kids in race cars and one becomes Jakester, or finding one loose bolt that could put us into the wall at 160 mph, or one extra stroke honing an intake runner that wins the race, we never know which quarters will make the difference. Right?

Saturday, the heat didn’t let up. When the green flag came up, my foot went down. I got to Turn 2 first, and didn’t look back. At some point, Kanuck dropped out, his engine sputtering. Excalibur got smaller in my mirror. Yellow Jacket turned a lap of 1:28:906, a best ever for us.

The same thing happened in the afternoon. While Kanuck was fighting up through the pack because of his DNF (Did Not Finish) in the morning, and Falcon was trying to dice it up with Ceegar, Excalibur couldn’t quite catch me. Toward the end we backed off, but not before Yellow Jacket turned another lap just a hair under 1:29. Another 1:28.

Two personal bests on a hot day, with lousy traction. That felt pretty damn good. The bags of ice JD (Jakester’s Dad) made up for me to jam into my driving suit were bags of cool water. Excalibur had called me a machine, and it was a compliment.

But what was nicest was when fans came up to say we made it look effortless.

Effortless. They don’t see Merlin sweating the tiniest details of air flow, invisible to most people, even to most engine builders. That’s why what he does is magic. They don’t see Mule under the car, discovering small cracks, or polishing the inside of fenders where tires once rubbed, deciding to open the rear end to discover loose bolts, stubbornly squeezing out every flaw. They don’t see me researching the length of drive shaft yokes for four hours, or sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed in the hotel room at night, my feet stabbing an invisible clutch and accelerator, hands moving an invisible shifter and turning an invisible wheel, practicing each turn in my mind’s eye.

Like a lot of things, the more effort you put in, the more effortless it looks.

On Sunday morning, Excalibur jumps the start, it isn’t even close. He’s six cars in front of me before the green flag. I point at him as we approach the starter station, but they wave the green flag anyway. Later they say that waving off a start is to invite a wreck. It’s happened, but I think not enforcing that a race starts when the green flag flies also encourages wrecks.

Whatever. Excalibur gets loose in Turn 3b, I stick my nose in but he hooks it up and gets away from me. He gets loose again in Turn 6. This time I catch him as we come up the hill, through Turn 7, and I’m by him at Turn 8.

We only run a couple of laps before double yellow flags flower all over the course. I’m in the lead, and nobody can pass me, and I throttle down to a crawl. Safety crews don’t like to be out there when we’re doing a hundred. On the back side of the track, Kanuck’s Roxanne is sitting backwards, front end mashed, in the blackberries. But he’s okay, I see him standing outside his car.

Sometimes, squeezing out just a little more is just a little bit too much.

The pace car comes out and I wave him past so he can lead us around. They won’t get this one cleaned up in time and this race is over. So is the weekend. It’s a long drive from Seattle back to Middleofnowhere, Oregon through the traffic of a July 4th weekend. It will be good to hit the road early.

As I’m walking into the trailer to get get changed, Jakester, still 14-years-old and Crew Chief, hands me a time sheet, grinning. Somewhere in those first laps, we turned a 1:28:49 something. I have Excalibur to thank for that. I’m always best when running someone down.

“You know what’s next, right?” he asks.

“What’s that?”

“A 1:27.”

“You think that was easy out there?” I ask, incredulous, drenched in sweat, still vibrating from speed, from hanging it out on the edge of traction with tires shuddering, feeling Yellow Jacket’s insane urgency as she leaps to redline again and again.

“Just sayin’…” he tosses back, turning around to put the time sheet on our clip board. It’s Jakester, after all. He’s got high expectations.

I grumble something back, but he’s already got me thinking about a couple of turns where I can maybe carry a little more speed, an angle of exit that might add a mile per hour, a place where I just might pick up a half second in a lap more than two minutes long.

It’s never enough.