< Back to News Home 25 hours and 25 minutes in a $500 Car - Part 2 - The Race

Posted (10/26/2011) -

Sounds kind of crazy,,,

 

 

Buy a $500 car, add Safety Equipment, make minimal modifications, then poof you have a race car that should be able to run 25 hours and 25 minutes

 

 

But this is exactly the concept thought up by the organizers of the Chump Car series when they put the Nelson Ledges event on their 2011 Calendar.

 

 

And for Will Nonnamaker, this was just the challenge he couldn’t refuse.

 

 

Here is Part 2 in the series of his and his fellow Chump Car racers thoughts on the adventure:

 

2 weeks before the big race, the RX-7 was far enough complete to make the journey out of Jacob’s barn, and over to the Team Sahlen shop.  Here the last finishing touches were put on the car so it would be ready to go.  Since it seemed like a smart idea to pre test the car,,,,and also get rookie driver Jacob some seat time, the car was taken up to a “Fun Day” event at Nelson the Friday before the race.  Far from a “Fun Day”, the day was cold, blistery, with rain coming in sideways.  Not the kind of weather you would desire to give a trial run to an “old” new race car.  The good news of the test was first and foremost that Jacob received about 2 hours of seat time behind the wheel, no matter how wicked the conditions.  The next piece of good news was learning about all the things that needed fixed on the 25 year old car. 

 

 

As I drove the Mazda, even in the rain, I could sense there were some weird things happening with the car.  1st the brakes grabbed really bad, with right front lock up.  It was so bad, I spun going into the high speed turn 12.  Then under the exit of any of the turns, the car just started to rotate around.  Additionally, there was this clunking sound, even going 5 miles an hour in the paddock.

 


When the Mazda arrived back in the shop, the mystery of the handling difficulties started to reveal themselves. 1st the right front upright was bent, thus causing the caliper to rub on the rotor (i.e. the reason for the locking up brakes).  The right rear shock had broken off its perch (i.e. the reason for the car coming around in turns).  Then it was discovered, almost at the very last minute on Wednesday that the bushing holding in the rear end was busted (i.e the reason for clunking). All was fixed, headlights attached and wired, both kill switches connected, and seat realigned (forgot to mention that the seat was sitting so high originally, that the driver had to angle his head to the right).  Thus at 5 pm Thursday, it was loaded and ready to go.

 


Come Friday morning, the rig was on its way to the track.  I had never driven the Team Sahlen Toterhome, so just maneuvering this vehicle was a new experience.  Upon arrival at the track, it was found that the whole Nelson Ledges paddock must have experienced extreme rain during the week.  Thus finding a paddock space that the rig wouldn’t sink 5 feet was vital.  This sounds kind of funny, but at the end of the weekend, there were several rigs and motorhomes that had to be pulled out by tractors.

 


The crew for this race was a makeup of weekend warrior volunteers.  All assortments of crew, some with mechanical knowledge, and some there just to help, like my 8 year old son Ian.

 

 

Beyond Jacob and myself as drivers for the race, additional Mazda rotary racers were recruited for the task at hand.  Allen Malarsic is a long time Mazda racer, having driven RX-7s in SCCA ITS at Nelson.  Most recently he has stepped up to race a RX-8 in the Grand American Continental Tire ST class.  When Allen stepped up to the Continental Series, he sold his ITS class RX-7 to Mike Chisek.  Thus Mike seemed like a logical choice for the 4th seat slot.  For the 5th and final seat on the team, I was able to recruit my Dad Joe to join this crazy adventure. This twice around the clock event at Nelson was a bit of a sentimental journey for him.

 

 

“I actually ran the very 1st Longest Day of Nelson Ledges that was held in 1980.  I finished 1st in SSC and 4th Overall.  And my car of choice was a VW Rabbit, not unlike many of the race cars that were most likely entered in this year’s Chump Car event.  When I ran the race, it was just me and one other driver.  So getting this time around, I might get a little bit more sleep.” – shared Joe Nonnamaker 

 

 

On Friday practice day, there were 3 items to accomplish, 1st – get through the Chump Car tech inspection, and 2nd – get everyone on the team track time around Nelson Ledges Road Course, and 3rd – to ensure all the bugs were worked out of the car.

 

We went out and practiced in the morning.  Funny thing was that we got black flagged for smoking.  I thought this was rather ironic, blackflagging a rotary for smoking.  Little did I know of what was to come.

 

 

So item number 1 was accomplished at lunch time as the Tech inspectors approved our car, except for the fact that our radiator had antifreeze in it.  Come to find out, when Jacob had taken the car to get the radiator flushed, the shop that he took it to not only found a leak and plugged it,,,which was good,,,but they also refilled it with antifreeze,,,which was bad.  So there we were draining and refilling the whole car with straight water.  Messy, but relatively simple.  That is until we went to restart it.  On the 1st try the car restarted.  Then we shut it off to put more water in.  On the next try, nothing,

 

 

10 minutes later, nothing

 

 

20 minutes later, nothing

 

 

OK, so now we are starting to get worried, and we feel our worst fears of this adventure coming true: A tired old 25 year old car having a gremlin that can never be found.

 

 

We diagnosed and diagnosed,,,,and finally came to the conclusion that our Main Coil Pack wasn’t working.  In fact, after inspecting the spark plugs, that looked absolutely brand new,,it appeared that it had never worked since the car was in our possession.  The only thing that had been starting and running the rotary motor was the secondary coil pack, which is an amazing feat.  To explain, the secondary coil pack on a rotary only acts as an “after boost”, really doing nothing to fire the motor forward.  This totally explained why the car was blowing tons of black smoke, since we were hardly igniting the gas in the rotary combustion cycle.  And the only way we found this out was when we accidentally half flooded the motor during the radiator flushing.

 

 

Now here is where the amazing set of circumstances comes into play.  Mike has a spare RX-7 parts car at home.  And his mechanic Zach was coming to the race that night.   So Zach was able to go pull the Primary Coil Pack off the parts car and bring it to the track.  Zach gets to Nelson at 8 pm on Friday night.  The crew quickly installs the Coil Pack, and poof we are back in business.  I jump into the car to get out for night practice, make sure it runs and aim the headlights.  After doing 10 minutes, I quickly hand the car over to Jacob, so he get his 1st real taste of night driving.  Then Jacob jumps out and Mike gets in for a) his 1st laps in the car b) his 1st laps of night driving, c) and oh by the way, his 1st laps at Nelson.

 

 

We ended the night with a running car, and high hopes that the car might actually start the race.

 

 

The race was set to start at 10 am on Saturday, so everyone had to get up early to start setting up the pits and attend the 9 am driver’s meeting.  The Driver’s Meeting took something like 40 minutes.  So we only had 15 minutes to run back to the paddock and get the car out on the track.

 

 

Allen Malarsic would be starting the race.  Allen had never driven this particular Mazda, but he had lots of track time at Nelson, in his old ITS class RX-7.  Now the procedure for how they throw the green flag in Chump Car is rather unique, and one that I feel is rather smart.  Instead of having everyone line up from nose to tail for a normal start, they instead just send everybody out on the track to start driving around.  Then once they ensure that everyone’s transponder is working, they throw the green flag.  The throwing of the green flag is random.  This might seem a bit unfair to some, but the reality is that with 25 hours and 25 minutes, it will not make a difference in your finishing position.  And especially for this race, when you take into account that there were 79 starters on this 2 mile track.  That is right, I said 79 starters!!!

 

 

Well, our good fortune of having pieces of the puzzle come together just right throughout this event continued, as our #40 Go Grass or Pass Racing Mazda was the 1st to receive the Green Flag.  Additionally, Allen held onto that lead all the way around for that 1st lap, so we can now honestly say we led a Chump Car event, if albeit for a rather short time. Allen continued to drive clean laps, and handed the car over to Jacob in the 12th position.  Jacob got in for his 1st taste of race action.  During Jacob’s stint, we saw our one and ONLY contact of the whole race.  Jacob was on the front straightaway, passing a car on the left.  Then an even faster car tried passing Jacob on the left of him.   The two cars on either side of Jabob decided to put the squeeze play to the nose of our poor little RX-7. Fortunately, Jacob kept the wheel straight and the pedal down, and the two other cars went spinning in either direction.  And this all happened right in front of our pit stall.   

 

As Jacob’s stint ended, I got in for my stint.  Everything was going great for the 1st hour. Then all of a sudden in the very fast carousel, the whole rear end kicked out from under me.  Thankfully none of the other 78 competitors were near me at the time.  As I gathered the car up and tried to creep it back to the pits, it felt like a broken rear hub to me, and I half expected to see the left rear wheel, hub and all, detaching from the car somewhere down the back straightaway.  But it never did, and I choose to drive the Mazda straight back to the paddock.  I figured our race was totally over, and that my worst fears were coming true of trying to race a 25 year old car. 

 


Yet, in the moment of getting out of the car, I got right back into the train of thought of “How do we get back into this event”.  After jacking the car up and a quick look around, we realized that it was only a rear trailing arm bolt that had backed out.  Simple enough, just find a 1986 Mazda RX-7 rear trailing arm bolt on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of Ohio.  Well, as luck would have it, apparently not that hard.  Seems that 2 paddock spots over from us was another RX-7 team, and they had a complete spare rear end sitting there (albeit very rusted), and they just happened to be back in the paddock already, since their car was overheating.  So we ask them for a small favor; could we please have that small tiny bolt and nut there? Their response,,,”Sure, you can have it”, which to be honest totally surprised me.  So the crew did their best to dispatch the rusted bolt from the rear end without stripping it. Then installing it on our car.  Poof, soon enough, the car was back together, and we had only lost 25 minutes. 

 

 

Now you are probably expecting more stories like this, but except for the mandatory headlight check break at the 7th hour, we made no more emergency stops in our paddock the rest of the race. 

 

 

At the before mentioned 1 hour break, we went to work on a problem that had been occurring, which was a big fuel cut out in left hand turns after about 40 minutes of driving.  We replaced the fuel filter and hoped that would solve the situation.  The reality was that it didn’t solve the problem.  And we had to drive around it the rest of the race.  Of course pitting every 1 hour and 30 minutes instead of 2 hours is better than not running at all, even if every Fuel stop is a mandatory 5 minute stop.

 


As we restarted the event after the 1 hour mandatory break, we were in 40th something position.  It was Joe Nonnamaker turn to drive.  Joe had never driven this car, and he had not been on Nelson since 1997. But his stint would not be without adventure.  This is because we were heading into the dark.  Our headlights were working wonderfully, but our taillights were not.  We waited until they black flagged us. Then we came into to try and solve it.  At first we turn on our hazards, and those worked fine.  But after a few laps, the Chump Car officials waved us in again.  Seems the felt the hazards made us look like a safety vehicle.  By this time we were getting close to having to hot wire the light switch back to the rear taillights.  This wasn’t an ideal fix, both from a time standpoint, nor a safety standpoint.  Then we looked around and noticed that our Fuelers had these headlamps on. And if you pushed a button, the white light turned to red.  And we had 2 of them. How is this possible that we would be this lucky.  So we brought Mike in, and duct taped a headlamp each to the back of the roll cage.  And Chump Car never said another thing.  Thus, the car ran the rest of the night, without having to ever replace the batteries in those headlamps.

 


At this point, in was about 11pm, we had moved up to 25th position. And from this time until morning, we ran problem free, driver error free, wreck free and pit stop miscalculation free. We just kept taking turns driving and turning laps.  Lap after lap after lap. 

 


At the 7 am mark, the Chump Car officials stopped the race for a Mandatory Drivers meeting.  Seems that the driving on track was a bit more ruff than they normally tolerate.  Since this was our 1st race, we just thought this was their normal way of racing; reckless, crazy and stupid.  Apparently, it was not.  Everyone was duly warned on the spot, and we went back to racing.  When we got back started, we were in 17th spot, with 4 ½ hours to go.  This is still a long time to go for any normal race.  But we put our heads down and focused upon continuing to put in solid laps.  The field was now a lot thinner than before.  Maybe only 40 cars on track at this time.  Many of the cars in front of us started to drop off.  Entering the last hour, we had moved up to 12th spot, with 11th only 1 lap up.  We never imagined this, that we would be still running, and running so far up that the last hour really mattered, but it did.  And the car we were racing was the story of the race.  The car was a Honda painted to look like a John Deere.  And apparently this was a combine John Deere, as the drivers had been out plowing the fields at Nelson. The car had flipped twice and went off the track so many times that everyone lost track.  But the car was fast. Even near the end, in its state of disrepair, of no hood, bumper or front fenders, bashed in door and broken windshield, they were turning in times that were the fastest on track (and 5-6 seconds faster than our Mazda could go).  Their reckless driving caught up with them, and they were black flagged twice in the last 25 minutes.  This put us up a clear lap on them, and we stayed ahead of them for the rest of the race. I joked with them after the race that the John Deere car was trying to “mow” down the Grass car.  They didn’t seem to think my joke was too funny, although I quite chuckled on it.

 

 

From there we coasted to the finish.  Or a better way to say it is we “avoided” all the way to the finish.  This because all the remaining cars that had dropped out, decided to come out for the last 15 minutes for one great dash for the line.  You would have thought it was a 15 minute sprint race,  the way some were driving.  Drivers were putting all 4 tires in the inside of turns in the grass to pass.  Some were forcing 3 wide passes on the straightaways.  It seemed to me that these drivers were trying to prove to all of us who had survived that they could have easily beat us they stayed in the race.  Of course that type of driving is what put their cars most likely out of the race to begin with.


But in the end, we got the checkered flag, and the race was over,,,and our 25 year old, former drift car turned Chump Car had crossed the line.  Not only did it cross the line, but it did it in 11th place, beating 68 other crazies.  It was all very exhilarating.  I don’t know if I would replace Rolex racing for a season of this.  Yet one of these a year is certainly something I look forward to doing for a long time to come.  And after this 1st year of learning, I have a whole list of items I want to accomplish on our RX-7 before next year’s Longest Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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