Short Day at the Track

I was back at Sebring yesterday for a racer testing session with Chin Motorsports. Even as daylight broke, the skies were threatening rain, and it had rained hard on us Saturday evening on the way down to Sebring from Tampa. Still, I went out for the first session of the morning and put in a bunch of laps. The car felt good, although the track was very green and I felt like the car was sliding around a lot. Finally, about 30 minutes into my session, just as I was reaching my heat/exertion limit, I went a little too hot into turn 1 and looped it just after the 85mph apex. I spun 180, quickly got both feet in, then spun 180 back the way I came, ending up sliding sideways off the track and just into the dirt pointed in the right direction. A Radical that was following quite closely took evasive action and managed not to hit me. I put it in gear and drove slowly back to the paddock.

Even before I got out of the car I knew the results of my long, lurid slide. Both of the Hoosier R3S04's on the right side were flat-spotted down to the cords. Not having any spares, I packed it up and we went home just ahead of some very heavy rainclouds, so I probably didn't miss much track time after all.

Dead Cat

Just a data point - the Jackson Racing catalytic converter on the supercharged '94 died a couple weeks ago. It's been on the car for 8 years and around 90,000 miles so I certainly can't complain. The failure mode was one of the elements inside the can broke loose and turned sideways. The car lost power big time and sounded terrible. I ordered up a replacement from RSpeed which ended up being a Magnaflow unit. The new unit looks identical to the JR unit, with the exception of the JR tag welded to the old one. I installed it late last week and all is good with the world once again.