Saturday May 7th....

Saturday Morning:
Adjusted the clutch cable.  Jim drove the car around the paddock without the body work so we could adjust the the clutch cable.  Perfect! Except with no bodywork, the car became filled with little stones....

Practice:
For practice and qualifying the organziers combined the FVs and the FLs into one group.  Lots of cars on the track!
Jim went out for one lap, then into pits so I could check for fluid leaks--fine.
First lap back out and the univeral black flag was waved for the entire field to come into the pits.  Some Hero had stuffed his car into the wall between corners 9 & 10 on his out lap....Nose, both front corners and the left rear corner were gone.  Horrible way to start the first weekend of the season!  The clean up time used up the 10 minutes allotted for the practice session, so Jim could not go out again....

Qualifying:  HUGE field! 15 Fvs.  Between 25-30 cars on the track.  Jim could not get a clean lap and about 4 laps into the session, another universal black flag.  The clean up used up the alloted time.  Jim did not break 1:30--not enough time to get some heat into the tires, nor get a clear lap...Qualified 7th overall.  Managed 1st in class because Mike & Richard were having problems of their own.

Race 1:
Started 1st in class, 7th overall.
Rocket start up the inside of the front straight to get by Caitlyin Johnson in her Formula Fit and tuck in behind the two Formula Mazdas (FM).  Passed the first FM in turn 9 (barely...). On the front straight, pulled out to take the next FM when the shifter cable broke....Car was stuck in 4th gear.  After that, Jim just cruised around for the rest of the race.  Due to attrition, he managed a 2nd in class, and an 8th overall.

Once back in the pits, we worked for a few hours trying to figure something out.  No spare shifter cable.  Called a couple of truck parts places looking for a push-pull cable to use--no luck.  Ended up using a spare throttle cable, some clamps, tape, and other supplies to "jerry-rig" the shifter cable back together.  Hopefully it would hold together the next day....


BEMC STR 2011 Mosport F4 Race 1 from Devin Hanes on Vimeo.