Das Race: My '97 M3/4/5

[Jake]

July 2018 - NASA Great Lakes at Pitt Race
It was announced back in the start of 2018 that we'd have a joint event with NASA Great Lakes at the recently-revised (and apparently, much improved) Pitt Race, about an hour westish of Pittsburgh. I was super pumped for a new track, and thankfully the racecar got put back together in time. A huge thanks to Fairfax Collision Center and GTPeace for their hard work and reasonable pricing to get me back out on track.

On Friday, I grabbed the car from GTPeace and met Ryan and Tom in Chantilly:



We headed out through Leesburg and hit Route 15, which connected to I-70 and then the Pennsylvania Turnpike (side note: it bothers me that the signs all say "Penna Turnpike"... the fuck is a penna). The turnpike is super tight in spots and towing the enclosed was mildly uncomfortable, but the truck handled it well. Glad I got it as the Range Rover would have been a nightmare with the winds going through the mountains.

Unloaded - check out the awesome body work FCC did:



We went to dinner in downtown Pittsburgh on Friday night, at a place that used to be a church but is now a brewery and restaurant. Pretty neat:



Driver's meeting on Saturday morning - apparently "drivers-meeting-itis" is a thing that never escapes you, no matter how old. Meeting was informative but they do like to talk in Great Lakes and all of our meetings ended up a bit rambly.





The track was very fun - I hadn't really prepared much as I've just been too busy. So, I was going off of one page of race notes from a known hot shoe GTS2 racer in the region, and a couple of videos. It helped, but given the crash at VIR recently, I was super nervous about pushing very hard. I did pick up some time (about 6 seconds) throughout the weekend, but wasn't aggressive enough on the starts to stick my nose in there and fight. Need to get that mojo back for VIR in August.

That said, the car held up well. Saturday's race was cut short, my friend/fellow GTS2 competitor Scott ended up with nowhere to go as a C5 Corvette spun on the first green lap. Scott punted the Corvette and both Scott's E36 and the C5 are wrecked pretty bad. Drivers are okay although not sure about full details on the C5 racer yet. We ended up completing three laps and two of them were under caution. Not much of a race.

I pulled a Maeng on Saturday in qualifying:



Scott's crash:









Sunday had two races on the schedule - a points race in the morning and a fun race in the afternoon. I enjoyed both, although I took a Mustang to the rear at T1 in the morning race. He pushed the bumper shocks in and re-jacked-up the trunk lid a little bit. Whatever, it closes/latches and the car doesn't look fucked beyond some white paint transfer. We got no warmup/qualifying on Sunday morning, so I think the Mustang just came in on the first green lap with cold brakes and had less stopping power than anticipated. I've had that happen before, and almost taken people out because of it, so I can't be too upset. Both cars are fine and this is why we have bumpers.

I'm starting to get a little thump-thump-thump noise from the car, made worse when turning left. Thought it was a tire rolling over but I'm also wondering about a wheel bearing. May have to get the car over to Uncle Deren for diagnostics and general inspection before VIR.

Overall, was a super fun event with only small nits to pick. NASA GL does not "do" announcements, which was supremely annoying as we had some delays due to... only having one Advanced Life Support ambulance on-site. The minimum requirement is to have one ALS and one BLS (basic life support), but if ALS has to transport someone, the event stops until they can hand off the driver or return to the track. After Scott's crash, ALS was occupied and the track was cold for a while. Mid-Atlantic pays extra for another ALS ambulance (so we have two) and that keeps things running on the infrequent chance that we have to use them. Awards were given out kinda on the fly, Chris does a better job of commanding attention and presenting things with our awards party.

More photos and video to come as I have time to put it all together. The facility was great and definitely glad I went! Super, super fun track. Hopefully we can do more of these joint events as I'd like to get back there next year.