July 28, 2008

We did pretty good at the race - at least I think we did. We had some issues keeping the car cool. I think the head gasket was bad before we went out there and the brutality of the event killed it. I do not know what state our car is in at this moment, but when it came off the track sunday afternoon, it died and failed to fire back up.

When the car was on the track it was incredible. I dont know if there was a car that we could not get around when we had our fast drivers in. One of our guys pulled a 1:06.728 lap time! We only racked up 286 laps - I wish we had been able to stay out on the track more, but with the cooling issues we just couldn’t. We did discover though that we could keep it out there longer by removing the hood.

We learned alot from this experience and we will be better prepared next year… thats right we are going to be running next year CMP!!!

- Captain Kudzu

The bad news: We were plagued with cooling system problems and overheating all weekend. The head gasket is toast.

The good news: Our car was amazing when it was moving. There were only 2-3 cars in the field which we couldn’t out accelerate, and none we couldn’t catch with the right drivers in our car.

- Taylor

A thrown fan belt and later a hard tap that made the motor smash the bottom radiator hose pissed off the head gasket. Later, two or three hoses, a water pump and a melted oil pressure switch took us out of contention on Saturday.

Sunday we decided all should drive one more time. We spent a fare amount of time and money to get there (we are not wealthy by any stretch of imagination) and each driver only had one turn on Saturday.

After each run we brought the car in, waited until we could get the cap off without boiling what was left, put in about 2 gallons of water and the next guy went out. The engine would get so hot on each run the head would start leaking oil on to the exhaust. Eyes would burn and the last driver almost threw up.

We ran that poor car with a blown head gasket for a day and a half. How’s that for German engineering?

GREAT FUN! WE WANT TO DO IT AGAIN! Winning is overrated.

- Ed