Published March 17th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Hobby Habit Racing - Round 3
Once again, I spent race night trying to learn “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” the hard way. When I first ran the car it handled ok, but my tyres were badly grooved on the inside. This is usually caused by running a lot of camber, which I’d planned to address in a car rebuild this week. However one of the other guys insisted on putting my car on an alignment board there and then, which lead to a whole new batch of problems. After playing with springs a bit, I concluded the car had way too much toe out, and changed that to a slight toe in. Then changed springs until the back end stuck again. As always seems to be the way, I ended up with a spring setup very much like what I originally started with, but the car was a little more stable and still turned well.
I ran out of time during practice to figure all of this out, and used the first two qualifiers as test sessions, where I’d do a few laps to warm up the tyres, asses the handling, pull in for a quick spring change, and try afor a couple more laps before the 5 minutes was up. At some stage though I tore one of the end plates completely off of my wing, so between qualifiers two and three I pulled the wing off of my old Honda shell and put it onto the new shell. In the process I lost track of the races and completely missed the start of qualifier three.
With no decent qualifying time, and enough people for three heats it looked sure that I’d be starting from the back of the grid in the “C” grade. I tested the car again during the half time break and nailed down the setup. I was ready to teach the “C” graders a lesson in driving cars, and wouldn’t be happy with anything other than a win. When the grid was posted, there’d been a few retirements, and Hellfire was to be run in two heats with 10 cars in each. Starting from the 10th spot on the “B” grade grid I wasn’t hopeful of a result, but I was determined to climb through the pack as far as I could.
Race 1 was a good fight, working my way seadily though the pack up to a respectable 5th outright. Bryan took the win with Scott in second. There were a couple of retirements, leaving a couple of empty spots on the grid for race 2. Starting off the back of the grid I worked my way through the pack again, and had a good battle with Andrew before eventually passing him in a great move on turn 4 and pulling clear. I placed third in race 2, with Scott second and Bryan taking another win. Scott and Bryan had now sewn up the first and second spots, but my third in race 2 blew third overall wide open.
More retirements after race 2 meant that only 5 cars lined up for the final race of the night. Despite this, I still started from th 10th spot, giving Scott and Bryan a full straight head start. Off the start and there were the usual first lap dramas. I picked up two spots, and lost one again very quickly, and from lap two forced myself to settle down and drive. This paid off and I started to close in on then pass the guy in third after anoher lap or two. If I could hold this spot for another few minutes I’d pick up third overall! Bryan soon started to drop back very quickly (and eventually went a lap down) due to battery problems, pushing me up to second. Scott then slowed up a bit to allow me to catch up, and we had a real fight over the last 5 or 6 laps. It was nose to tail racing most of the time, and any minor mistake was taken advantage of. I dived through the inside coming off of the straight, then lost the lead a couple of corners later. The lead changed hands a couple of times, but when the race was over Scott took the win, by a couple of metres.
Second in race three gave me a third outright, and Scott’s win sealed his second overall. Despite a disappointing last race Bryan’s two wins guarenteed him a B grade win, and one of the most exciting nights of racing I’ve ever had. I’m hoping that I can turn my good form into a solid performance next time around. So far this season I either qualify well, or race well, but I can’t seem to put the two together into a good night.