The Michigan Curse Continues

During my racing career, I've gone to Michigan tracks about 18 times. I've had good luck in Michigan three times, uneventful trips three other times... and dismal problems every other trip. Guess which one this trip was?

I was looking forward to going back to Grattan Raceway. It's my favorite track, with wild elevation changes, off-camber turns, and at least one spot where the car actually gets airborne. I declined the opportunity to run the first wheel-to-wheel race at the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL in order to race at Grattan. It meant passing up valuable points towards the MC championship, but this weekend was also the first in the East-West Challenge series, and I was looking forward to some different competition and seeing the SCCA bunch again.

My crew helper and I left for Michigan Thursday night in the hopes of avoiding most of the Chicago traffic (it worked), and we got to Grand Rapids around 1am. We checked into a much nicer hotel than I expected and tried to rest up for the Friday test day. That didn't work. I was exhausted when the alarm went off at 6am.

We got to the track early enough to claim a good paddock space and unload the car for the first track session. I got in, started it up, and tried to put it in first gear. But there was no first gear. No first gear?? Never mind, don't lose track time, just make do with second, third, and fourth... even though Grattan is a track that REALLY requires first gear for at least two or three very slow corners. I needed to practice the track, since I hadn't driven Grattan in a year.

After a disappointing first session, we immediately set about fixing the gearbox problem. As it turned out, I had made two boneheaded mistakes when I put the gears in the transmission. First, I had installed first gear backwards, so it could not engage. Second, when I put it together, I never checked that each gear could be engaged. Immeasurably stupid -- I wrote the directions on changing gears. The last three steps in the directions are all reminders to check everything, including checking that each gear can be engaged.

We fixed the gearbox, and we only lost one track session and a few ounces of blood. (I never realized the edge of the exhaust bracket was that sharp until I saw the blood dripping off my hand.) When I went out for the next session, my lap times didn't improve at all. That was really disgusting. There should have been some improvement, since I now had 4 gears instead of 3, but I guess I was just so tired I was not driving well at all. Oh well, get through the day, get some rest tonight, and be better prepared for Saturday, right?

It's funny how plans can change in seconds. The very last lap of the very last session, I went through corner 1 without much trouble, although the car didn't feel quite right. When I braked for corner 2, the right rear wheel locked up briefly -- very unusual, since it's not a heavy braking zone and I wasn't driving that hard. Corner 3, normally a tricky corner, was almost impossible -- the car was all over the road. As I went into corner 4, I looked back and saw my right rear wheel leaning over at a crazy angle. I slowed and heard the back end of the car dragging on the track.

As I limped the car into the paddock, I pondered what had happened. I knew without looking which part had broken*, and the reason was obvious. I was being greedy, trying to race every weekend. Car preparation suffered as a result, and the proof was a broken (expensive) part. In a way, I was relieved. After we shoveled the car onto the trailer, we headed back to the hotel, and I went right to bed. I think I slept about 15 hours that night.

When we got back, we unloaded the car and took it apart far enough to replace the broken part and check for any hidden collateral damage. Nothing else was hurt, but we now had easy access to several other highly-stressed parts. I took the opportunity to make amends for my transgression by replacing all of them as a matter of preventative maintenance.

Thanks to fellow Tiga owner Corky Jahn, the car was back on its wheels again with a loaner replacement part just in time for the next MC race at Blackhawk.

Next up: The Tiga goes on Atkins, apparently...

*As Carroll Smith points out, it is not fair to claim that race car parts "fail". We break them.