From Bad... To Worse!

I promised myself I WOULD not make this a blog about racing... only because it's my escape from racing AND because I only assume that stuff would bore my readers (except of course for when I'm dishing on some stupid people I encounter, we all love to backstab and gossip even when it's about total strangers, because it makes us feel all superior and shit, and because it's funny!)

But last night... oh what a night.

We qualified poorly, started in the back of our heat race and could not earn a finishing position with an instant transfer to the A Main. More preliminary racing... But watching our car in that heat, we knew something was wrong.

Back in the pits, I look into the cockpit, there is oil everywhere. It's a big ugly oily mess, and no BP was NOT involved this time! I tell Booby (oops, he doesn't want to be called Booby at the races, not professional). So I tell the crew chief about the situation. He figures it's the power steering pump, and starts working on changing it as I move onto my normal in-between prelim events maintenance, work and inspections.

As he removes the pump he realizes that oil is oozing out of the motor, not the steering gear. I find out how much time we've got. They tell us 18 minutes. We can soooo pull a motor change in 18 minutes, NO PROBLEMO! Isn't that cool?

I jump on it right away. Start taking stuff off, unplugging shit, removing nuts and bolts when they come to us and tell us change of plans, we only have 5 minutes! Boob-- oops, the crew chief yells at the officials calling them "Fucking idiots" for the misinformation as I rush to replug those wires, rebolting those nuts as I let those guys yell at each other. (Note to self: never-ever call a race official a fucking idiot.) That half motor change done and undone, we're ready to race our B main, hoping it'll secure us a position in the A main.

We finish second. Thank god, I couldn't bare standing there holding my breath all that time. I beat the car back to the pit area and run like a headless chicken getting all my ducks lined up for the motor change (who ever thought so much poultry was involved in motor changes!) First thing goes right of the night. the motor is changed and ready to growl and purr in less time it takes me to poop in the morning (that's what motors do, growl and purr from monster to kitten and yes faster than my morning bowel activities, motor change = 10 minutes; bowels = 15 minutes).

I even have time to proceed to all my regular maintenance and inspection (since I'd already ordered our driver to pour fuel in the car as I'm bolting the headers back on, love ordering the superstar, also love how he obediently obeys me and jumps to the task, heh heh heh).

We roll out on track well ahead of time for the A main. Get our spot to watch and the finger crossing begins praying all will go well. Well, it doesn't.

We got stuck between a douche bag who lost control and flipped into another car (just I was wishing a crew member form that very other team we flipped into good luck, swell, very swell).

New rule: we have a right to work on the car but with a  2-minute time limit, thank you very much for those crew challenges seeing how much time it takes to fix things! The entire front end had to be changed (that's the front axle, it was broken, so off with the front wheels, more nuts and bolts and shit to remove, pull out the broken front end insert the new front end bolt it in, put on new wheels, breath and freak out and off we go).

We finished, slightly poorly, but finished still. Oh, and all this crap happened in less than 2 hours! I am wore the fuck out. At the end of the night the top gun official came and apologized to Boo (oops I did it again) to the crew chief for fucking US over with the time thing. I took advantage of their admitting to screwing up to sneak up to the fucking idiot of an official, and say "See y'a tomorrow ya fucking idiot!" He loves me. We laughed. It's all good.