It has been a really long time since I’ve posted anything.

Through much of March, the race car was home in the garage, with me doing pre-season prep work. All new brakes, change fluids, etc. First weekend of April was the season opener, a double regional at Thunderhill.

I left home Thursday night. About 15 miles from home, in Fremont, the oil pressure gauge on the Suburban dropped down to 0, although I got no warning lights or other indication that anything was wrong. I pulled over and checked the oil. Just slightly low, but not outrageous. Topped it off, started it, oil pressure was fine. That didn’t make much sense but I continued on my way.

15 miles later I was up and over the hill in Pleasanton, when the gauge started dropping again. Within the next 10 minutes it had crept all the way down to 0 again. Again, no idiot lights, no weird sounds, nothing out of the ordinary, but I got off the freeway in Pleasanton and called AAA. It was now about 9:00 at night and I was still in civilization. An hour later it would be in the middle of absolutely nowhere and it would be even later. This seemed smarter.

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The 2010 SCCA San Francisco Region race schedule has been released.  It starts with the annual free test day around New Years, which will be a good opportunity for me to test out the engine and see if I’ve finally moved beyond the cooling issues.

The first regional race weekend isn’t until April.  That’s a long time from now!  And, unlike past years, it’s at Thunderhill instead of my favorite track, Infineon.  In fact, we only have one weekend listed at Infineon, and it’s not until August!  That sucks.  Maybe that’s a good reason to do a couple of NASA races this year too.  I’ll have to think about it.  The good news?  All the weekends are doubles.  Same number of races, but fewer weekends.

Readers will remember that with 2 laps to go at the last race weekend, I blew up the engine in the race car.  What a bummer.  But I’d been sitting on a spare engine that I got from a theft-recovery 328i for a year or so.  The intent for that motor was to build it up into a killer race motor, but prices were high and it was very hard to justify spending the money with the small ITR turnouts that we’ve been having.  So it sat on an engine stand in my storage unit for a long time.  Vic Sias helped me diagnose the motor with the help of my compression tester and his leakdown tester, and we determined that the #6 cylinder had no compression and it was leaking past the piston.  So, with only three weeks until the next race weekend, I decided to just put the spare engine in the car.

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The next race is coming up next weekend, Father’s Day weekend, at Laguna Seca.  I still think the spare junkyard engine will be up and running in the car by then, although it isn’t quite there yet.  Let’s hope.

In the meantime, the entry list is looking much better than the April Laguna race.  In that one 10 days out, there were only 189 entries on the entry list and I posted that it looked like the economy was taking its toll.  This time, summer, a double, we’re at 280 entries as of yesterday.  Sounds much healthier!

Not only that, but group 5, the IT group, is right now the largest group at 59 entries.  The Spec Miata group is 2nd at 58.  Specifically ITA is the largest class at this point, even larger than SMT (San Francisco Region’s flavor of Spec Miata).  Here’s hoping the new (used) engine helps me stay in front of all of that mess!

The entry list was updated, up to 234 entries overall.  Still all alone in ITR, although with 7 ITS entries there could be some good speed at the front of the group 5 grid.  I am actually going to do only the first race of the weekend on Saturday and then head home, due to work pressures … flying off to the UK on Tuesday and there’s just too much to do between now and then.

The next SCCA race weekend is coming up on Memorial Day weekend. It’s a double at Thunderhill. 214 entries on the entry list, 10 days before the event.  Next update will be next week, hope we can get that closer to 250.

Unfortunately Mike U.’s ITR Prelude isn’t ready yet, in fact, he’s discovered that he doesn’t fit all that well in it … so I’m all alone in ITR again.  Hope he can fix that soon.  So even though Doug will say I have an advantage at Thunderhill due to the long straights, I’m hoping we have a pair of great battles.

As I posted last week, the turnout for the race this weekend was a little bit light, especially for Laguna Seca (many people’s favorite track).  The paddock had plenty of space, which certainly isn’t common.  I count only 193 starters shown in the results.

For me, well, I was the only car in ITR.  How’s that Prelude coming Mike?  I also have heard that the club’s new classification of the 5.0L Mustang GTs and the 305ci Camaros & Firebirds into ITR is causing at least one local competitor to do a used car search.  So I’m hoping for some more entries soon.  Rod even put a GDGR sticker on his Spec Miata and was overheard actively discussing ITR prospects and prices.  Here’s hoping.

But, just like in most recent races, Doug Makishima is very fast in his ITS E30 BMW, and even though we’re not in the same class, we’re really evenly matched.  We also both seem to turn up the flame just a little bit when we’re near each other on the track.  In Saturday’s practice session, our fastest laps were both 2+ seconds off of our normal pace, but only 0.144 seconds apart.  The track just seemed slick.  Laguna Seca for being finicky about weather, so that was probably part of it.  It was fairly chilly (well, chilly for northern California) and windy.

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First, the good news.  I saw the doctor yesterday and it looks like the eye issue has cleared itself up, except for some minor scarring.  In any case, I’m cleared to race!

But now the bad news.

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The preliminary entry list is out for the San Francisco Regional season opener at the end of the month, and doesn’t look like the economy has been TOO hard on the program.  193 entries on the list for the opener isn’t too bad at all.

Some bad news though:

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Towards the latter half of last season, I noticed in the San Francisco Region’s Board of Directors meeting minutes that there was a lot of conversation about adding a Spec Boxster class to race group 3 (often called “big bore”) which has had dwindling participation over the last couple of years.

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