The buzz leading up to the weekend was the weather — rain was forecast for Saturday. This is news because here in sunny California, we pretty much never see rain during the racing season. And that means that most of us don’t bother buying and carrying around rain tires that we’ll never use. And that means that when it rains, we feel like we’re basically going to have a bad weekend.
But the forecast for Sunday was fine, and 2 of the 3 races were going to be on Sunday, so at least there’s that!
Got down to the track before 7am on Friday. Plenty of time to get unloaded, paddock area set up, registered and car prepped before my 10:30 practice session.
I believe I was fastest overall in the practice session but the lap times weren’t anything to write home about. The track felt slick and the car was understeering even more than normal. But partway through the session we had a “black-flag-all” situation, which means that the session was temporarily stopped while the fantastic SFR safety crew cleaned up some issues (in this case, cars stuck in the gravel traps that line Laguna Seca these days.)So, I pulled into the pits. Just after I came to a stop, one of the pit workers jogged towards my car with a fire extinguisher. I assumed he was just getting into position (after all, they always have a fire extinguisher at their side), but I saw him looking at my left front wheel, and it was only then that I noticed smoke coming from it! He told me that the brake caliper itself was smoking. That’s not normal! But the brakes had felt totally fine, so when the session resumed, I just headed back out.
There was a very quick turnaround for our qualifying session at 1:00, and not only did I have to figure out what was up with the brakes, but we had to eat lunch! Fortunately Rod & Sterling McLane were there with me and got me motivated. We had a quick lunch while everything cooled down, at least a little bit, and got to work on the car.
No doubt that the front brake pads were getting towards the end of their life, but they weren’t gone yet. Still, I decided to switch back to some used Hawk pads that I have, assuming that these Performance Friction pads that I’d been using just get really hot when they get worn down, and that was the cause of the smoking. We changed the brakes on the (still quite hot) right front, then moved over to the left front, which had been smoking in the pits. Well, it turns out that there was some tire rubber that had gotten wedged into the caliper and was basically melting on the piston. I’m sure that was the source of the smoke, nothing to worry about.
It was quickly time for qualifying. I headed out there and turned a couple of fast laps early, despite having a bunch of slower cars in front of me. But I stayed out for the entire session, feeling confident that a bunch of people would stop early, and I’d get some clear track. Although I had one decent lap early, my last two laps were the fastest, the last of which was good for a new qualifying record. It wasn’t all good news though. Halfway through the session, I was trying to pass a couple of slower cars. One of them, an ITB Fiero, spun going through the corkscrew. The car behind him, an ITA Miata, got hard on the brakes to avoid hitting the Fiero. Just then I came over the crest to find the Miata with the brakes on, where no brakes should be, and the Fiero sideways right in front of him. I had too much momentum and ended up hitting the Miata square, nose to tail.
But fortunately, there was absolutely no damage to either car, although it felt like a pretty hard hit.
Also during that qualifying session, my rival for most of this season, Doug Makishima, had an incident with a slower Miata as they approached the corkscrew. The stewards had a hard time figuring out who was at fault, so both drivers had their qualifying times thrown out … which meant that they had to start at the back of the pack. Assuming the race was dry, it looked like Doug wasn’t going to be a factor — or a source of fun.)
Friday night was supposed to be windy and wet … so instead of the usual overnight paddock behavior (I cover the car and lower the canopy over it), I tucked everything back into the trailer, and headed home for the night.
I pulled into the paddock at about 8:15 Saturday morning. It was lightly raining for most of the trip down and the roads were wet, but the forecast was looking decent for my 11:50am race. But it had definitely rained, a lot, overnight. The paddock had some puddles — see the photo!
Fortunately, we were paddocked on higher ground. The pavement was wet but no standing water around us. Phew.
Rod’s race was the first session of the day, at 8:30. So, I got myself situated in the T4 grandstands and was ready to watch. It was not raining but it was plenty wet.
As the cars came around on the pace lap, I saw Rod. Then as the cars came down the hill to prepare for the start, the track announcer said that they were going to have an additional pace lap, because the safety crew needed to rescue a car stuck in T6. Okay, those Miatas are nuts, someone went off the track on the warm-up lap! So they came around again behind the pace car, and … no Rod. I waited for the start, thinking I just must have missed one red Miata in a sea of Miatas, but, nope, he wasn’t there. Guess it was Rod that had been stuck in T6! So, I headed back to the paddock, and he and Sterling were there. Apparently the differential blew up. And the spare was back in Livermore.
So, Sterling headed back home to pick up the spare diff while Rod and I got to work removing the old one. It’s quite a bit easier in a Miata than it is in a Z3, it was out in about 15 minutes or less, and we didn’t even know what we were doing.
Finally it was time for my race. The weather had been a big concern and it had been on-and-off light showers all morning, with the sun poking through 2 or 3 times, and that looked to continue through our session. But at the time that we got onto grid before the race, it was not raining and the racing line on the track was basically dry. Phew! Good thing, because I didn’t have rain tires.
I was on the overall pole. On the outside of me was Eric Knudstrup in his 2nd-generation RX-7 in ITS. Behind me on the inside of the 2nd row was James Heth, 2nd place in ITR in his Honda S2000. Outside of him, returning to the local ITS competition was Larry Cooper in a “brand new” Datsun 240Z that he had built over the last 3 years after his old car got wrecked.
Eric and James drive relatively torqueless cars compared to the inline-6s of Larry and me. Based on the last race at Infineon, I knew that with a nice slow start, about 5000rpm in 2nd gear (I think that’s about 45 mph), I could easily blow those guys away when the flag dropped. So, I maintained that nice slow pace as we pulled out of T11 towards the start-finish line. But Eric, to my right, just kept on creeping faster and faster, until he was about 2 car lengths ahead of me. Since I’m on the pole, I get to control the pace, and that’s not allowed. I knew that they would wave off the start, and sure enough, they did. The next time around Eric was where he was supposed to be and we got the green.
I got a good start and stayed in the lead. But in my mirror, wow, Larry’s 240Z just blew everyone else away. Eric fell back to 4th, with Larry and James in 2nd and 3rd respectively. Larry pressured me for a couple of laps, until I slowly worked out a gap. 
Eric Knudstrup’s Mazda was too loud (Laguna Seca has some strict noise restrictions) and he was black flagged … and because he’d already been warned once over the weekend, that meant that his weekend was over, right then and there. So then there were 3. James maintained pressure on Larry and got around him on lap 4 … and then he came for me! James’ best track is definitely Laguna Seca. I was driving my car for everything those tires and brakes had left in them. I kept a small gap to James (maybe 2-5 car lengths) for most of the race … fortunately. He was unable to get right up to my bumper, which meant that he was unable to make a pass. And that’s how we finished, with the ITR cars finishing 1-2, the way it’s supposed to be! It was a great race and it was a great way to finish. The winning margin was less than 2 seconds, but for most of the race, it was a lot closer than that.
A few times during the race there were some very light rain showers … enough to get me to turn the wipers onto “intermittent” but not enough to really wet down the track.
After the race, Rod and I had lunch, and just as we ate, Sterling returned with Rod’s spare differential. So after lunch we got right down to business and got that installed into Rod’s car so that he could make it out for his qualifying session at the end of the day.
Then it was time for my qualifying session. This qualifying would determine the starting order for both of Sunday’s races, so it was fairly important. But it was fairly uneventful. I was able to run one fast lap in the 1:43s early, but generally never got a clean lap. But like Friday’s qualifying, I stayed out until the very end, and ran two quick laps right at the end … once again, setting a new qualifying record (1:43.303). And this time, it was good for an overall track record, although only a few hundredths of a second faster than the old record, which I set earlier this year in a race.
Sunday morning came. I arrived at the track at about 7:30 to get prepped and to watch Rod’s 8:30 race. This time, I watched from on top of the new victory podium that the track has set up for the upcoming Rolex races, along the front straight. It was a fairly uneventful race for Rod, except for a spin in the corkscrew.
Time for the first race. Based on how Saturday’s race went, I decided to face my video camera backwards. I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, but I hope that was a good decision! The starting order was me on the pole, with Steve Borlik alongside in the same car that Eric Knudstrup was disqualified in. Steve and I had some great races in the last couple of years. But also in the top 5 were Doug and Larry, and those three were all in the same class (ITS) and have a lot more history than I have, so they were really looking forward to racing with each other again, I’m sure. James started outside the 2nd row in 4th.
Once again, I did the same slow start, and not surprisingly, Doug and Larry got a good head of steam on Steve and James. In fact, Steve got shuffled from 2nd back to 5th on the start, but managed to pass Larry and move up to 4th on the first lap. But there was a lot of pressure within the pack behind me on that first lap, so I was able to open up a decent and comfortable gap quickly.
But then on lap 3, Doug’s right front suspension broke in turn 5, and he ended up stuck in the gravel trap on the outside of that turn, with a broken strut and a broken brake line, and that would end his weekend. We had two laps of full-course yellow while they cleaned that up, and thus, I lost the big margin I’d built up. James was now in 2nd place and now he got to restart right behind me. But I continued to use the same restart strategy, and it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, we only got one green flag lap before we had another full-course yellow … it’s times like these that make me hate Laguna Seca, they really messed it up for cars when they made it safer for motorcycles back in 2005, because when cars go off now, they just get stuck in the gravel traps, requiring tow trucks to pull them out.
It wasn’t until after the race that I learned what really happened to Doug. He really needed points from this race, so he tried to make arrangements to be the third driver in the Knudstrup/Borlik RX-7 of the weekend. Unfortunately, because he’d already done the first race under that particular sanction, it somehow wasn’t allowed for him to switch cars for the 2nd Sunday race, even though it was in the same class. So, he packed up and left.
Anyway, we restarted again, pretty much the same as the first one, we ran a few more laps, I widened the gap just a bit, and I finished the race in 1st place, almost 3 seconds in front of James.
I then had a long break until my 3rd race of the weekend. One of the ways I passed the time was to get on the radio with Mike Monegan for the group 3 race. He has two crew radios, so his friend Frank and I could both talk to him. I went up to the timing & scoring tower, and Frank watched from the ALMS winners podium that’s set up along the front straight in preparation for their big race coming up in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, something happened with the radio wiring inside Mike’s car, so Frank and I were just talking with each other … but not with Mike. Just in case he could hear us but we couldn’t hear him, we pretended like we were talking to him, but in reality, it didn’t work. Oh well. Mike’s race wasn’t very exciting for him, but there was an epic battle between a couple of Porsches so I was happy to be able to watch it.
Finally, late in the day, time for race 3. The starting order was, of course, the same as race 2, except that Doug wasn’t in there. 
Mike Monegan graciously volunteered to be on the radio with me during the race, thanks Mike, I enjoyed it! At the start, once again, Larry’s 240Z showed huge power at the slow pace and he rocketed into 2nd place, and I think if he’d really threatened for it, he could possibly have gotten inside me going into turn 2, but fortunately, he didn’t try. Steve was in 3rd and I watched the two of them exchange positions a couple of times, and their battle allowed me to get away. About mid-race though, Steve finally got himself clear of Larry and he really turned up the flame, slowly closing the gap. I was nervous! But then, a Miata spun into the wall on the exit of turn 4 on the inside … which isn’t all that uncommon. That brought out a full-course yellow and closed up the field again.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be good for me. But that also allowed Larry to catch up to Steve. And with Larry’s huge restart power, that meant that Steve had to worry more about Larry passing him than about me … so he basically conceded the race to me, left a big gap behind me, and tried to control the restart with Larry. I guess it worked because Steve managed to stay in front on the restart and for the rest of the race, but he never managed to catch up to me. So after 3 final laps under green, I won my 3rd race of the weekend!
It was a great weekend, with 3 wins in 3 races. Unfortunately it never had the kind of close bumper-to-bumper battling that I’ve had the last couple of trips to Infineon, but I’ll take them!
So, with only the double-points season finale left, I find myself in 2nd place in the points, due to the fact that I skipped two double weekends earlier this summer. By just finishing all three races this weekend, James clinched the 2009 ITR championship. Congratulations!
Watch for the in-car videos (facing forward in the first race, backwards in the next two races) to be posted soon!
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