Daily Journal - Tuesday, May 9, 2000

Tuesday found us at Sebring Raceway (the smaller SCCA course), in Sebring, Florida. The track is *completely* different from a car when my only experience on the track was from 3 inches off the ground in a Skip Barber Formula Dodge car! I was very surprised to again grab 5th in two places on this track which seemed so small to me before from the Formula car. The morning sessions landed us 4th Overall in the morning, and 5th Overall in the afternoon. At least no one can say anything about our consistency.. :)

The morning session was a bit eventful as I came across the start/finish line on my last lap, got on the brakes, and as usual, they were completely faded. Pedal to the floor, I couldn't come to a slow enough speed to make the sharp right hander, so I maneuvered the car into the sand pit at the end of the "straight" (it's actually a bunch of small esses), just barely missed a cone (a 10 second penalty if hit!), and finally slowed down the car enough to get it back on track safely.

Although the Eclipse made it to Sebring after being inspected a bit at Carolina Rod Shop, it was soon discovered that the problem was worse than we expected, as the clutch was slipping all during J.M.'s recon lap in the morning. He wisely pulled the car in and we got on the phone trying to find a new clutch and assorted parts, but to no avail. Finally J.M. decided to drive the car to Carolina Rod Shop again, where a new RPS Turboclutch had been shipped the day before. On the way there the clutch again started slipping a lot, so much so that the car was undriveable on the highway. Finally the car was towed at about 4am to the Carolina Rod Shop for full disassembly and inspection.

I also got a chance to meet another fellow DSMer, Morgan, who helped us call a few shops in the area for the Eclipse. I also got a chance to see Nemo Foss, of CNNP Racing, a primary sponsor of the Neon I raced in the 1998 One Lap.

Fortunately I made arrangements for brake pads on Monday afternoon with Larry Narcus at Carbotech Engineering, and my good friend Jessica Hoyt happened to be in the Florida area visiting a friend for the week. Jessica agreed to drive down to Carbotech to pick up the brake pads for us and to drive them to the track. Thanks so much Jess, we really, really appreciate it! We also had a new set of rotors shipped to our hotel in Sebring, as the original set was badly warped from the severe heat treatments they had gone through the first few days of One Lap with the faded pads. We put on the new rotors and pads and made our way to VIR. Unfortunately, due to the brake swap and helping the Eclipse out on the side of the highway, we lost over 2 hours, and did not have time to get a hotel before VIR. Instead, Reg and I had breakfast at McDonald's and washed the car before the event.