Originally Posted by ajohnson

Well, I'm back in India now from what turned out to be quite a bad week at the runoffs. I have lots of video but haven't had time to compile it all, luckily the race was done on a new smarty cam and my buddy got it all done.
The video should be titled "101 things not to do in a race car" and this is not my best performance
https://youtu.be/i4fyD0m4DOo

Here is the break down of the week.
Wednesday morning 20th of september, we got on a plane at 3:00am bangalore time. Fantastic...then transferred through Frankfurt and Neward (where the wife and i got a $45 lunch consisting of 1 20oz coke and 2 BBQ sandwiches wtf). Then at 9:30 eastern time we landed in Indianapolis. Quick drive (45 min) to our house and got the motorhome set up.

I woke up early thursday, and got the car out of the trailer and started to try and diagnose the clutch problem. still there and so I pulled the gearbox to inspect everything. Got on the phone with SPEC and all seems good but we decide to remove .100" from the spacer. So i go over the mill and shave it off. Then get everything put back together and the car running again.

I'm not sure if i'm running on adrenaline or if i'm not tired at all, but we wake up friday morning and take the car over to Slow Motion in Columbus (almost 4 hr drive) to let Corey tune it since it hasn't been tuned since the stock 2 liter was put back in and the new header, etc. The results weren't positive but i guess not bad for a bone stock car with an intake and exhaust on it, 212hp at the wheel and 142 torques. Not bad i guess, but certainly not the race motor Get back to the house late on thursday, and decide it's time to do some shopping...so wal mart at 1am...always fun.

Wake up saturday morning, decide to head to the track...i can't remember what the delay was, but ended up not leaving until about 4:00pm. Got to the track registered and got to the paddock spot. Shockingly on saturday the place was already jammed! i was lucky with my spot and i was able to back the coach right up and unhook. Then took the coach over to the wilcox mobile home park. After this it's a joke i think. It's a 2 mile walk from my motorhome to my coach and no way to use the golf cart to get there as they won't let us park it anywhere except lot 7 which is a 2.5 mile walk from my motorhome! but that's ok, i can use the excercise.

Sunday morning i get up get tech done and then get ready to go out for session 1/2 of my $450 test day! We do two laps before session is BFA and over due to a bunch of contact and 2 disabled cars. What i do find in the 2 laps is that the clutch may not be fixed. Second session, i get 4 laps in before the clutch goes south again, but i identify the problem...the master cylinder isn't backing all the way off and the slave is slowly moving out until it disengages the clutch constantly. So i adjust the pedal and that fixes the problem. Phew...now for 4 days of qualifying

Monday qualifying, clutch feels good on the warm up lap, but turns to crap, this time the opposite problem, i can't get disengagement. I think maybe i didn't get the slave bled correctly, so we spend monday afternoon doing that. Not a great performance but i am into the 1:57's and mid pack

Tuesday qualifying, again the clutch starts out good then turns to crap again. same problem as monday, so i'm think bleeding is not the problem. I determine that the .100" i took off the spacer is allowing the slave to back off too far and now i'm having to pump the clutch to get disengagement...it's going to be a long week. I get down to a 1:56

Wednesday more of the same but tried some old tires. the car is diabolically loose on the new 235f 265R setup. So i soften the rear sway bar.

Thursday, felt good and dropped my time again but still in the 1:56's the session was a short 10 minutes so not really a way to tell.

Friday was an off day to think about everything.

Saturday morning for the race. All was well, the first start was aborted and the second start was a joke. We were nowhere near lined up. With the clutch still causing problems i was pumping it again trying to drive it. after about 5 laps the handling starting going back the wrong way. understeer to snap oversteer. I ended up spinning 3 times in the race, finished 24th and almost had a good time. Need to look at revalving the shocks, and upping the spring rates to correct the problem as well as work on the osgiken setup.

then was long trip back to bangalore to think about everything i did wrong for the week.