Like usual, Chumpcar had some pretty sweet trophies, but these were like none before. The first place trophy is huge, and some of the others are just awesome! I wish we could have won the Hellboy one.
We finished prepping the car in the garage, making some changes during the Friday test and tune to see if we should run the rear sway bar or not.
The race had plenty of rain, which made some interesting trips through the infield, but it was fun getting in some drifting practice.
Things started to dry out around mid-afternoon. So the pace through the infield began to speed up. Below are some of our favorite teams, Eggboy in the SHO, the Chevette team and BAR (the later winners), and one of the coolest cars of the weekend, a 510 Datsun wagon.
Also running were the Holy Rollers (the other Simpson's themed team), Team Shake'n'Bake in the Wonderbread MR2 (I keep hoping they'll step up the theme and put the Fig Newton sticker on their windshield), and of course the perenial fave, Tow Mater.
With the course drying out, they finally let us up onto the oval. I missed out on this, as my stint was just before it dried out, but Soren and Jeff got to have some fast fun on the oval!
And then the end of our race. We lost the passenger front wheel bearing, and the wobble of the brake rotor ended up causing significant damage to our lower control arm and ball joint, our caliper, and even some to the wheel and rotor. Needless to say we couldn't find all the parts we needed in the middle of Iowa on a Saturday night. So after just a "short" 10 hours, our race was done. But it was still a blast, and everyone got in 1 stint at least.
And a big thanks goes out to everyone who helped out this year. Like our cheerleaders at Iowa below (my mom, my girlfriend Amanda, and Soren's wife Tanya), (not pictured but at Iowa was Erik's wife Steff), and my dad (who couldn't make it to Iowa after having his knee re-replaced the Monday before).
I'd also like to thank everyone at Falken Tire for helping supply our tires. Running the Azenis RT-615K this year made a big improvement in our car's handling. And a big thanks to Brian for helping get out the last two tires for me, that we shipped to Iowa at the last minute. And also Bruce who helped make it happen, and Mark, for all his advice around picking tires and helping with race setup.
Lastly, I'd like to thank my team, Jeremy, Jeff (my brother), Soren, and Erik, without whom this year (or last year) never would have happened. And also Pon, our guest driver for BIR who is moving to NYC now. Hopefully we can continue to make improvements and someday catch a podium. After being happy to just place in the middle of the pack last year, to move and podium twice, 2nd place at Road America, and 3rd place at BIR, was just awesome.
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