Henry had the idea of bleeding the clutch hydraulics to try to force any air or junk out of the system. We borrowed tools from four or five fellow racers, including a neat hand-pumped clutch pressure bleeder. (After seeing this thing in action, the old way of having one guy sit in the car pumping the clutch while another turns the bleed screw seems downright silly.)

Just have to pause here to thank our fellow racers. Any request for a tool was universally met with “Sure, take whatever you need!” Cool people. Thanks, and I’ll strive to return the favor wherever possible.

The clutch felt better, maybe 70%, and with some judicious clutch-pumping, Henry was able to put down a decent qualifying time — about a second slower than mine. Another car beat my own time, so we got bumped back to 7th. I could be wrong, but I think Henry and I both tend to have a little better “racecraft” than our lap times indicate, and we generally keep our noses clean. So with a little luck, I was looking forward to making some passes and possibly earning a podium position to start the season off well.

The car felt okay, according to Henry, just a little balky shifting, and brakes felt soft. Henry checked the brakes and found them worn down to the backing plates. I swear Henry knows everybody at the track, and this comes in handy — he disappeared for half an hour and came back with a set of used Hawks. Perfect.

We bled the clutch a second time, just to be sure, and Henry installed the pads real quick. Just needed a little gas and we were ready to race.

I drove over to the little gas station again and splashed in a few more gallons. Stopped the car at the gate to show my credential, and I couldn’t get the car back in gear. Uh oh. I limped it back to the paddock, maybe 10% clutch was left — and that was with me pumping the clutch. The grid was already lining up, so there wasn’t time to pull any clutch rabbits out of hats.

I’ll admit I panicked a bit, and pretty much threw in the towel then and there. I could barely putter around the paddock without a clutch; no way could we race the thing. No way, no how. Henry’s alternative to simply dropping out of the race was to start in the back of the pack, take the green flag where we wouldn’t be in the way, and drop out of the race if things got too bad. I was still skeptical about this, but the five minute whistle blew… now or never… okay, I hopped into the car and limped to the grid.

Pulling into the grid… I dunno… My qualifying spot looked so empty…, and Wanda (most awesomest grid worker EVAR) was waving so eagerly trying to get me in position… my little brain decided, “Hey, let’s just pull into our regular starting slot and see what happens.” I had a heck of time even grinding the car to my spot, but I limped into position and shut the car off.

Usually, after the five minute warning whistle blows, or shortly thereafter, you to crank up the engine to get the car warmed up a little. With no clutch, you can’t shift into first with the engine running. You have to engage first, and THEN start the car, which will then lurch forward, already in gear, and hopefully keep running. So I had to wait until the cars actually pulled off to start the car. Fortunately, this worked fine, and I headed onto the track to take the pace laps along with the rest of the field.

Two pace laps to figure out how to race a car with no clutch. Like many people, I’ve shifted clutchlessly on the street before – mostly just for grins, and once when the clutch master cylinder failed in my street car – but it was never a skill I particularly cultivated. The trick, of course, is to match the engine revs to what they should be for the target gear at the given road speed BEFORE pushing it into gear. About half the time, on the street, I’d match the revs correctly and find the gear; about half the time I was treated to a lovely grinding noise and no gear. That would be bad news during a race – if I went from accelerating hard in second gear, for example, to coasting, there’s a decent chance that any car on my tail would accelerate right into me. I had two pace laps to try to improve dramatically or pull out of the race.

And, you know, it wasn’t bad, at least just loafing around the track on the pace laps. First to second, second to third, third to fourth went pretty well. Even downshifting was okay – just blip the throttle to the right rpms, and snick it goes right in gear. Oh. Wait. Once the race started, I was going to have to do this *while* braking, and braking hard. I’ll admit right here that I’m not particularly good at heel-toe downshifting while threshold braking; this was going to be heel-toe downshifting while threshold braking without a clutch. Lord.

The field formed up for the start, and the green flag dropped. I got a pretty good start and pulled a position or two. Then all hell broke loose — but in a good way.

–Jerry

As some of you may know, Henry’s enclosed trailer had a hard autumn. I crunched it into a guardrail returning from Virginia International Raceway, the last event of the 2007 season. Then, as it was awaiting repairs at the shop, it was burglarized, and they stole EVERYTHING – from all his hand tools and spare parts right down to partially used paper towels and a half-empty quart of oil. Consequently, this race would be run with minimal tech support. No worries – Miatas don’t break, right?

Henry’s been pretty slammed at his day job, which is a good thing for makin’ that money, but he hadn’t had time to repair the enclosed trailer. We were going to share my race car for the race, so at least we only needed to transport one car there. Actually, the car is licensed and insured for street use, so, worst case, I could just drive it to the track. What could possibly go wrong? Fortunately, Henry had borrowed an open trailer from a friend and had it waiting for me. Henry was at a business meeting in Charleston, so he would just meet me at the track – besides, he’d loaded the trailer many times on his own in the past, so it’s about time I stepped up. By the time I got the race car (and a scant selection of tools) loaded and arrived at the track, it was late, so we left most of the stuff with the relative security of the race track – racers don’t steal from racers (because other racers would crack them with tire irons & torque wrenches). Exhausted from a long day, we retired to the hotel.

The next morning, the race car (my car, #25) sailed through tech/safety inspection without incident, which was good, because our race group was to be first on the track. Interestingly, there were to be two qualifying sessions for this race. That’s a good thing, because it had been a year since either Henry or I had run there. Also, the track layout had changed over the winter, so we’d both need the sessions to feel out the changes and adjust our lines and braking points. I mentally flipped a coin, and decided to qualify first.

The new track layout is pretty straightforward. Here’s a track map. There are some new strips of asphalt in turn 3, the carousel, and turn 11. They didn’t mess with “The Kink” (turn 10), thank goodness, as that’s my favorite part of the track. The new section puts a mild, increasing radius corner in place of the formerly tight turn 12 and the following turn 13. I actually prefer the old layout here, because in a Spec Miata, once you get the car turned for the new turn 12, you just stand on the gas until braking for turn 14 – they’ve eliminated the passing zone of the old turn 13.

Speaking of turn 14, the new turn 14, leading onto the front straight, hasn’t gotten a lot of discussion, but it’s has been repaved and widened considerably. The extreme bumpiness is gone, and the corner is more gentle. As a result, you can carry a lot more speed onto the straight. I can only think that’s good for us non-torque-having 1.6L guys.

My best lap in qualifying was a mid-1:54. With the new layout, the time didn’t mean a lot to me, but upon posting the times I saw I was running 6^th out of 13 cars in our class. I was happy enough with a mid-pack qualifying position. Just as importantly, the car felt great, and I was starting to regain a feel for the track.

After my qualifying session, we needed some more gas for Henry’s session, which was to be a couple hours later. There’s a little Ma & Pa gas station near the racetrack, where fuel is about half the price as it is at the track – that’s that opportunity cost, doncha know, like paying $8 for a beer at the ballpark vs. $1 at the grocery store. I drove the race car over to the gas station, license plate attached, of course, to splash in a few gallons for the race. When I pulled up to the pump, the car lurched and died, as if I’d forgotten to push the clutch in. Strange… 

I pumped in a few gallons, procured some munchies, and headed back to the track. The clutch felt worse and worse as I drove back, and by the time I got to our paddock spot, it was down to about 30% functionality. That’s not good. And I knew for a fact that we didn’t have a spare master or slave cylinder with us. That’s really not good.

–Jerry

Results posted here: http://www.carolinacupracing.com/ccps07results.htm