ChumpCar @ Autobahn Country Club (Joliet IL.) 6/3 & 6/4

Autobahn Country Club is a very nice facility.  It is three tracks in one (plus karting and an auto-x area), it has a north track which is 1.5 miles (9 turns), a south track at 2.1 miles (15 turns), and they can be combined for a total of 3.1 miles long (19 turns).

This race was unique, Saturday's 12 hour race was held on the "south track" for the first eight hours, then at 5pm, the pace car went out and collected the field while track staff moved barriers around to reconfigure the track to be the full course.  Checker flag was at 9pm.  Sunday's race was on the north track.  That is three tracks one weekend!  Sweet!

Twenty 27 teams showed up for this ChumpCar race.  We arranged our pitstop (fuel fill & driver changes) around the 5:00 track change over.  We knew there would be many laps of full course yellow.  I went in for my 2nd stint at 5:00, at this moment, IIRC, we were first in the "A group (the 1.9l and under class) and 13th over all.  Green flag restart on the full track, and about 30 minutes in I get black flagged for a smoking car.  Turns out the rear differential got so hot that it was cooking out the gear lube!  We swapped the smoldering hot differential in about 1.5hrs, much of that time was due to having to pull the stub axle cups out and put in the spare, and waiting for them to cool down to less than scalding temperature.  Got the car back on track with about an hour left.  We took 15th over all, 3rd in class, IIRC.

Sunday the first driver goes out, and in about an hour the transmission is stuck in gear!  It comes in on the tow strap, after looking at it; we decided to pack it up and head home early.

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My 1st race stint in the 50 Shades of Blue Miata w/ ChumpCar World Series & Pure Speed Drag Racing Experience 6/3/17 at Autobahn Country Club South course. From the video I spend from minute 27 to minute 43 attempting to get around the same E30, be the judge is this guy being a complete @sshat, really strange defensive lines, or just clueless on a line. My own critiques are not being aggressive enough with passing and the car, my line needs tweaking, and carrying more speed through most of the turns. On the flip side 1.5 hours of the car never leaving the tarmac! :) Thanks Ross Luken for the drive.