Mid-Ohio - Memorial Day Weekend

Saturday and Sunday were host to a Northern Ohio Chapter BMWCCA Driving School and Club Race and Monday and Tuesday were a Chin Motorsports Driving School. I brought up my Z4 3.0si Coupe to use while instructing, but had also scored myself a co-drive for the club race enduro on Sunday.

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!

SpecE30 Race #2, Putnam Park

Coming off of a very positive start in my first SpecE30 race at Mid-Ohio, I was looking forward to having some good racing at Putnam Park. I arrived on Friday to claim paddock space, and fortunately, my Indiana-native friends Denny and Jason had already been there to cordon off some prime real estate. After unloading, I met up with SpecE30 racers Kyle Smith and Sean Louisin, as well as my friends Henry and Christian, for some dinner.

I had the car sitting on the old Toyo RA-1’s that had proven themselves as the tire to run at Mid-Ohio. I wanted to try running the higher pressure theory in the new R888’s, though, to see if I could get them to work and slow their wear rate. So, I ran the RA-1’s in practice, but ran qualifying on the R888’s, trying out the new pressures. The tires gripped better and the car turned much better than before, but they were very “skatey” and the car was oversteering more. Qualifying was short, though, as a car had hit a barrier and landed on its roof. I don’t think that anyone else got a decent flying lap in, as my qualifying time was over 2 seconds faster than the other SpecE30’s.

In the race, I was starting on pole for SpecE30, with 3 guys behind me, including reigning regional champion, Simon Hunter. The track was still damp in the beginning and as the green flag dropped, I put the gas down and had a full-on drift through Turn10, while Simon was waiting behind me to see if I’d spin. I drove out of it and continued down the straight, but traffic about came to a halt as a SpecMiata had spun in Turn1. Continuing past that, a Civic went spinning off before Turn4 and I almost had another SpecMiata fishtail into me through Turn5 as I passed him. From there, I kept working through traffic as the conditions began to dry until I couldn’t see any SpecE30’s behind me. From there I enjoyed racing with the PakistanExpress Civic and I’ve found that we’ve been closely matched in every race so far this year! I hung in there for the rest of the race and, on the last lap, though the last turn, an RX-7 and I raced hard to the finish line, side-by-side through Turn10, just for fun (for the record, I crossed the line first ; ).


So, I had finshed the race in 1st, with a healthy margin of space between Simon and I. Coming off the track, the SpecE30’s were impounded and checked for weight. We all must weigh over 2750 lbs, including ourselves, after the race. At Mid-Ohio, I had weighted 2753 when starting on a full tank of gas. I had started this race also with a full tank, but weighed in a 2744. That was 6 lbs under the mininmum weight, and so I was disqualified from that race, handing Simon the win. OUCH. That was a 9 lb difference from Mid-Ohio, which only accounts to about 1.5 gal of gas. I think that my average rpm was higher at Putnam, increasing my fuel consumption.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it, as Simon had handed me a win at Mid-Ohio since he had hit another car, so I felt like we were even. But I’ve more recently found out that I cannot “drop” a disqualification from my season points. See, we get to drop our 3 worst finishes (or no-show’s), but this will not be dropped. So, I will have to spend the rest of the season trying to make up the 100 points that Simon got for winning while I got a 0. Truly, my only chance of winning the championship is if he misses a race other than the weekend at Grattan that neither of us are attending. Oh, and I have to win every other race! Man, its so easy to screw up big.

My video camera was zoomed in on the windshield wiper (d’oh!), but here’s Simon’s in-car video. You only see me for the first few laps, but at least the first lap is pretty entertaining.

Simon's Race 1 Video.

On Sunday, I added a spare tire to my trunk so I would make weight and I ran qualifying on my RA-1’s. I ran a time of 1:22.3, which was almost a second faster than the SpecE30 track record held by Simon. In order for it to be official, though, it must be set during a race. I was starting on pole, with Simon in 3rd, since his tires had given out during qualifying and he hadn’t been able to set a great time.

The race was quite exciting. Once I cleared some traffic on the start, though, I realized I had forgotten to turn on my camera. D’oh! I continued on with Simon visible in my rear view mirror. I never gave him the chance to race me, but it wasn’t easy. As I approached traffic on different occasions, I more than once committed to passes that I wasn’t 100% sure I would come out of. 2 of which were, in fact, made with 2 tires in the grass. The most exciting one was passing 2 cars at the same time going into Turn 9 with only my left side tires on the pavement. I knew that I would need to be efficient through traffic so that I wasn’t slowed down, allowing Simon to close the gap and attempt a pass. Once I pulled out of the last large group of slower cars, I pulled away while Simon was still negotiating them.

Other than that, I was actually having some great racing with a Civic in the PTE class. I got by at one point, but he later got back by as I approached a corner worker who I was unclear as to whether he was displaying a yellow flag or not. I slowed in caution and the Civic did not. After that, though, I couldn’t keep up, as my left-front tire was toasted and began to cord by the end of the race.

Simon’s in-car video, which keeps me in view for a while and shows some of the passes:

Simon's Race 2 Video.

I won the race with room to spare, and had, in fact, beaten the standing lap record by a few tenths of a second. Simon, however, ripped off a lap that was .014 seconds faster than mine, resetting his own record!! That shows you just how close we are!


Eric Waddell on my tail with Simon Hunter close behind.

So, as for season standings, Simon and I are currently even on number of wins, but my DQ will be next to impossible to recover from. Our next race was supposed to be at the new Bluegrass track, 25 minutes from my door, but the track will not be ready in time, so our race was changed to Grattan, in Michigan, 6.5 hours from me. I won’t be attending that race, and it seems there will be only one SE30 in attendance. The next race will be Mid-Ohio in July. Stay tuned…

Here’s the OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE.


Left to Right, Dave Nalley, Henry Schmidt, Jason Kohler, Christian Schwier, myself, and Denny Barker.