Saturday and Sunday, I was instructing my friend Eric Keller, of Enthusiast Auto. He and his brother had brought down a pair of E36 M3’s, Eric’s having a Vortec supercharger on it. Nice car, but it only lasted 1 session before the head gasket let go. He drove his customer’s E46 M3, which had about $30k worth of performance-enhancing work done to it. This car was nasty in the best way possible. The owner, Kirk, had me take him out for a session in it. It was fast, but very well balanced and very easy to drive quickly. We had a blast, but the video camera he was running didn’t take… Aw, nuts. He made me do it again on Sunday ; ) That time I took Eric’s brother Evan for a ride. At the end of the day on Saturday, Eric took my friend Scott’s truck and trailer back down to his shop and exchanged his M3 for an S54 2001 Z3 M Coupe, which he would use on Sunday. Its really tough instructing students with such crappy cars ; )
Video of my session in Kirk’s M3.
I ended up switching co-drives for the enduro from my former nemesis / current friend, John Negus’s K-Prepared E30 (the class I used to race), to my friend Mario Meise’s I-Prepared E36 M3. Mario had never been to Mid-Ohio before and there were more cars in class, so it stood to reason that there was more benefit to both of us for me to run with him. I took out his car in the instructor session on Saturday so I could get a feel for it. Traffic was heavy and my closing speeds on other cars were often scary. Despite that, I ran a 1:40.6, whereas the fastest I’d run in my car was a 1:44.5. Nice = )
Video of my practice session in Mario's IP M3.
Saturday night was a hoot, as a bunch of the racers and some others went out for dinner, then hit up the go-karts at Bucks. We paid off the kids working there to just let us run as we wished, and they even joined in at times. They showed us how to reach back and pull the governor to increase our speed, and I have many bruises on my arm from doing that! There were about 15 of us and 2 12 year old girls out there, and were generally drove like we wanted to kill each other. Spinning each other out whenever possible, etc. The highlight, though, was when John Negus was spun around and proceeded to drive FULL SPEED IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION! The look on the kid’s face who was running it was priceless! We all survived to race another day, though…
On Sunday, Mario qualified the car and started the race. We weighed the car before qualifying and found that, with me in the car, we would be about 60 lbs under weight (there’s 75 lbs between Mario and I!). So, we ensured that we would run with a full tank of gas and threw a spare tire in the trunk.
Mario ran the first half of the race, hanging with Jeff Negus’ pace (John’s son, who races IP), 10 seconds behind him on the track. My friend Scott and I awaited Mario to come in for the mandatory 5-minute pit stop. I started the stopwatch on my wrist watch, thinking that it was only as a back-up. Well, it turned out that it was our only source of timing. I looked at my watch and noticed that my minute hand had not started on 0, and I didn’t know how many minutes we were into the stop. I tried to count the minutes, but was off, because I went out on the 4-minute mark instead of the 5-minute mark. D’oh!
I launched out of the pits, thinking I was in hot pursuit of Jeff Negus (when I was actually a minute ahead of him on the track by mistake). It was a major mental load to go from chilling out in the pits to immediately driving flat out with no warm up. I ran the remaining 30 minutes and caught and passed 2 I-Prepared cars in the process. Mario’s car was lots of fun and much less frustrating than my car, as it has about 50% more power. During the race, I had pulled off a 1:39.14, which was the second fastest of the ~10 in class. The fastest guy has a big-money build, though, and is, himself, going Grand Am Cup racing this month. I didn’t feel too bad about that at all for my first time in the car = ) A huge thanks to Mario for giving me the opportunity. I can’t wait to do it again, next time with more than 30 minutes of preparation!
The remainder of the Duct Tape Motorsports folks rolled in on Sunday. I instructed our friend Dan, in a very pretty white 911. We had a great time and I got to drive a plethora of fun stuff. I took out Scott’s ’84 911 and had fun tossing that car around, took a few laps in Dan’s car, took Scott’s student out in his own brand new E92 M3 (and scared him), and took another guy, John, out in his S50-powered E30 (that’s a 3.0L E36 M3 motor in an E30).
Scott Barton's '84 911
Dan Schultz' '93 911
James' E92 M3
John's S50-powered E30
Toyota friends Tom Duesing (Cayman S) and Chase Nelson (G35 Coupe) showed up for Monday and we had a good time tearing it up. Tom brought his father with him, driving a 350Z.Tom and I had a great battle in our last session. With our cars similarly prepared (he on Nitto NT-01-R’s and me on 5-yr old RA-1s, both with Hawk HP+ pads), Tom was already on track with his father riding shotgun. In an effort to reduce any differences, I grabbed my student, Dan, to ride with me and we waited in the pits until Tom came around before heading out after him. I basically held my distance, as we had a car between us, but then a car slowed him down, bringing us together. I had already told Dan, “Make no mistake, we ARE racing right now!” We went nose-to-tail, with me literally a foot off his bumper at 100+mph. I could see him overdriving the car on corner entries and I got a run on him coming onto the front straight. He gave me a point-by, but I waved it off. It was too much fun! We went another 2 laps with the draft keeping me right on his bumper down the back straight, while I was lifting in other sections to keep my position behind him. I finally got such a strong run onto the front straight that I had to go by. I just wish the memory card on the camera hadn’t filled only a lap into it! Tom was a good sport to accept some of the smack-talking in return, but I have to say that having been driving the track for the previous two days certainly helped to warm me up. I’m sure there will be a rematch in the future ; )
A couple minutes of video
The weather prediction for Tuesday was bleak. It suggested rain all day. The track was, in fact, wet in the first 2 sessions, but it dried up and the sun even peeked out from time to time! It was perfect! The benefit to us was that many people didn’t return for Tuesday, and the event was lightly attended to begin with, so there was TONS of open track on Tuesday!
I rode with Chase, Scott, and Ed at other points and I’m simply amazed at how fast all the DTM’ers have gotten! By the end of the event, Scott, Than, Ed, Mike, and myself were all running very close with each other, making for some great times!
I had given John a ride in my race car at this event last year and apparently made enough of an impression that he sold his Mini and went out and bought himself an E30! The fixed-position seat was too far back for me, so I put my racing suit behind me to get pushed forward. That kindof worked, but I lost the lateral support of the seats. It wasn’t easy to drive that way. In any case, we went out to run some hot laps. His big Wilwood brake kit felt great the first time we hit them at the end of the back straight. The second time though, though, they began to smell like they were overheating. I proceeded to ask him what pads they were and he confirmed that they were a race compound… Weird. So, I continued around the next lap and hit them at exactly the same spot as before. Only 100 feet into the braking zone, I knew we weren’t going to be slowed down in time and I told John that we were going off. He responded with a chuckle… I repeated, “No, REALLY, we’re going off.” He replied that it was ok, he had gone off here yesterday. As I questioned why he hadn’t mentioned that to me before, I was trying to pull the car around the turn and had to give up about ¾ of the way through to ensure that I drove straight off and didn’t slide off sideways, which could easily result in rolling the car there. We and the car were fine and we drove back onto the track. I told John that it felt like there was a lot of air in the lines, as the pressure was there (I even tapped the brake on the straight to make sure before I hit them), but the car just wouldn’t slow. Inspection of the brakes revealed heavy scoring of the rotors, pointing to the same thing. John later bled the brakes and confirmed my suspicion. We live and learn, I guess. We’re lucky nothing worse happened and I will definitely be asking more questions about the critical things like tires and brakes before I take someone’s car out again.
John's E30, with Scott in the background
All-in-all, it was a great way to spend 4 days. I wish Katy could have joined us! But, work schedule wouldn’t allow = ( I hope her and all of the DTM’ers who didn’t make it will realize what a great event this is and be sure to join next year!
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