RJRacing

Fontana, CA – The highs and lows of racing struck the #23 Weekend-Racer.com Mazda Miata again at their first event of the 2009 season. The high: winning the Performance Touring “E” race on Sunday by a healthy margin. The low: not being able to race on Saturday due to a hood pin failure that caused serious damage to the front and rear windscreens as well as the hood.

The weekend started in normal fashion with the team setting up their garage space for a weekend of back-to-back on track activities including participation in both the Performance Touring “E” (“PTE”) and Spec Miata (“SM”) classes.

During the first session on Saturday the off-season improvements were immediately noticeable with laps times several seconds faster than last year. In the afternoon, Rob qualified second for the PTE race, less than a second per lap behind the pole winner while John qualified fourth in the ultra-competitive Spec Miata race.

The team felt confident as the pair of afternoon races approached. In the PTE race, Rob got a great start but not as good as the #77 of Sammy Valafar who burst out to a quick lead. Rob tucked in behind him down the long straight at Auto Club Speedway and made his move to take the lead. As soon as Rob pulled out of the draft to make his move around the #77 car, a hood pin failed, and the 130mph wind slammed the hood back, severely cracking the front windshield and then wrapping over the roof shattering the rear windshield. The left hinge sheared off and the hood flailed about, damaging the right door and fender. The twisted and mangled hood finally speared through the front windshield. Rob took evasive action to quickly slow down and move off track. Rob found a safe place to park the car and notified the team that he was unharmed.[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6260358563583111644[/googlevideo]

Hood pin failure

Knowing Rob was okay the team leapt into action. With no front windshield and a hood that resembled modern art, the team was not going to take the green flag for the Spec Miata race in an hour, but they knew they’d have a shot at racing Sunday. Tim, Norm and the rest of the crew worked tirelessly over the next several hours–locating a new windshield, removing the hard top and other parts to properly clean out all the broken glass, and checking the rest of the car for hidden damage. Within a few hours the Weekend-Racer.com #23 had a new windshield, the rear window was removed completely, and the car was free from broken glass, needing only a new hood to be ready to take the track. As part of its vast compliment of spares, the team had a spare hood at home base that only needed to be prepped and installed. The team was the last to leave the track (as usual) knowing they would have the car back on track at 8 o’clock the next morning.

The team arrived to a dark track early Sunday to install the spare hood and triple check that everything was in order. The first session was confidence inspiring – not only was the car working well, the new windscreen was holding up and John’s top speed down the straight was actually faster than the day before!

Times during the morning warmups continued to improve giving the team a shot in the arm. Rob qualified 10th for the SM qualifying race (the qualifying race results would set the grid for the feature race at the end of the day) while John qualified 2nd in the PTE race, only 3/10ths of a second behind the pole winner.

In the SM qualifying race, Rob had many close battles, working his way up from 10th to 6th into the last lap. In the last few corners, Rob gained huge margins on the lead pack, and made a run for the checkered. Going three wide down the front straight, a drag race to the end, Rob took 5th place by a margin of only .003 seconds. An exciting finish, even though the team voluntarily withdrew itself from qualifying afterward knowing that the car was running slight out of spec because of the missing rear window. Rules are rules. [googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6951055083320791253[/googlevideo]

Photo Finish

In the PTE race, John got a great jump on the start but was forced to the high side of the track without any drafting partners. He dropped down to third by the first braking zone. Three corners later he took back 2nd place with a brilliant out-braking maneuver into the dreaded buttonhook turn. Half a lap later he was back on the bumper of the leader only to see that the leader had been black flagged for passing outside the bounds of the race track. John had a great run and could have easily made a pass for the lead but since the leader would have to take a trip through the pits, effectively ending his race, John decided to not risk any more damage on the car. Sure enough, the leader pulled off and John had the lead to himself. John increased his lead lap after lap. The team’s earlier bad luck was replaced by some good luck – the car was experiencing a fuel pick-up problem several laps from the end but the car held out through the checkered flag only to lose the fire on the cool down lap.

The team quickly rectified the fuel problem and prepared the car for the last race. Rob took the track from the back of the SM grid. With 25 cars in the field, Rob had his work cut out for him. On the start, Rob got a great jump, passing four rows of cars before the hard braking zone into the infield road course. Rob passed many more cars, sometimes 2 at a time, sometimes on the outside, and all perfectly clean. Ultimately Rob earned a place in the top-10 – from dead last. [googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4075936852526972902&hl=en[/googlevideo]

Starting From the Back

There will always be problems in racing. Some are minor, and some are severe. This weekend was the latter. Most teams would have packed up and gone home after having such a violent and catastrophic failure. But to win is to overcome, and RJ Racing overcame this weekend, not only winning the PTE race but doing so in dominant fashion.

The next race is the opening round of the Western Endurance Racing Championship at Buttonwillow Raceway Park on April 25-26 where the team seeks to defend their championship. This race last year RJ Racing scored its maiden endurance win, and the team will be looking to repeat.

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