BARC - Feb 27th & 28th, 2010
(Story and photography - Scott Miller)
Ice Race Journal Index
BARC -
Feb 27th & 28th, 2010
(Story and photography - Scott Miller)
Ice Race Journal Index
Read the disclaimer if you are prone to believing everything you read.
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This was the last weekend of racing for 2010 and at times I felt melancholy. It's just that every once in a while you realize there will be no more ice racing 'till next year. Anyhow, thanks to BARC for hosting a somewhat trying weekend I'm sure, there seemed like there was a car that needed to be extricated from deep in a bank after almost every race.
A lot of people to thank for a very
successful year. First off all my sponsors:
The Minden House Bed & Breakfast,
Brooklin Concrete Products,
University Werks Landscape Construction,
Tom Prentice did an excellent job of "rescuing" the track from the shape it was in last weekend. Basically the banks on the inside of a corner were pushed outwards to cover the exposed soils where the cars had completely worn away the ice. The result however was that it created an exaggerated curvature to the corners, so much so that you couldn't see the next corner until you got around the one you were in. The result was a lot of cars in the banks. On Saturday we ran counterclockwise and as you exited the now very sharply curved kink you were suddenly faced with, and I mean directly in front of you, "The Wall Of Death" - a huge bank of snow - which would prove fatal to at least one car almost every race.
I drove up around noon Friday in a snow storm the aftermath of which looked like about 10” of fresh heavy wet snow by the time I got to Minden. As I drove north, the temperature climbed from -6C at Port Perry (25 minutes north of Oshawa) at around 12 o’clock, to +2C in Minden at 1 PM with light rain. I got out the snow blower and
cleared wet heavy snow that
would have been almost too heavy to shovel from around my pits and those
down by me. It took about 1 ½ hours and I needed a shower
when I was done. Tom Prentice was just getting to our end with the big
articulated loader with a plow on it.
I was thinking it would be wise to install a windshield washer pump, bottle and lines. So I headed over over to automotive to see what I could find to rig up for the mud races. I picked up a 12 volt washer pump at Carquest, found some lines in the trailer, SACtaped in an entire bottle of washer fluid as I had no reservoir bottle and ran the pickup line directly into the bottle, wired up a light switch and screwed it to the dash and voila! - worked great! Saturday I checked the tranni in the MR2 and added more fluid having decided to replace the axle seal once the season was over.
The weather was wet and humid with rain turning to wet snow late in the day and mild with temps up to +4C. The result was that the track was very soft with lots of slush, pretty good grip on the cleaner parts in Street Studs, visibility poor as the day wore on and more slush, water and dirt. On Sunday much the same but more so with temps up to +6C and more mud and deeper slush, very hard to drive well.
Racing:
The racing was very entertaining for the spectators this weekend but some of the most challenging for driving due to the narrowness of the racing line and the amount of slush/ dirt thrown up on the windshield. Very narrow line, foot of slush in some spots, down to dirt, banks pushed way in at kink and way out at quanset house and east end, the result: “Wall Of Death” takes out 1 to 3 cars almost every race . Saturday Class SS1 (Street Studs): Did really well in the qualifier, got an excellent start and went from 15th on the grid to 1st in class (2nd overall finishing behind Kiyo Tabuchi in his AWD). Made contact with Keith Lobban early in quali as he attempted to squeeze by but I didn’t give in and it loosened his
right front fender. I almost clipped Ahmad Khodkar after he stuffed it in "The Wall Of Death" and I still can’t figure how I did not clip his right rear with my left rear as I was sure we would just make contact – must have missed by ½” then a second later I narrowly miss a 4x4 lodged in the inside bank just out of site around the next corner! Very tired after 1st SS1 race
(finished 1st), a lot of work, stress, difficult, not very good grip,
hydro (slush) planning - ¾ way down straight well before braking point,
wild out of control slides into 1st corner, slush spraying up into the
car through 2" drain hole in driver's side floor pan and through a 4"
crack in passenger's side floor pan which nailed me in the face a couple
times. Keith Lobban in the red MR2 and his brother Graham behind him
into the first corner and was like that for a couple laps but Graham
passed Keith and eventually caught up with me as I began to encounter
lap traffic on the second last lap. Was hard to make a pass anywhere
unless the car in front screwed up in a corner. On the last lap as I
came out of the kink the car lost grip and drifted towards the bank,
clipping the bank and rotating my around so I was facing the inside of
the corner. Graham pitched his car sideways so that he slid up alongside
me and not T-boning me. It could have been disastrous but thanks to his
skilled driving we both got underway again (watch short clip - choose
720p quality:
HD VIDEO
Saturday Class S1 (Menard Studs): There was full practice, qualifying and race laps this weekend for studs being it's the last weekend for the track. Can't remember where I started for the quali but it was like 14th and I finished 1st in class, 5th overall. I couldn't see the start flag for quali and didn’t go until I saw Richard Walker in front of me launch. Got a good start and passed both the other RWD cars by the 1st corner and then decided to relax, hold back a bit and let the FWD and AWD do their thing and sort themselves and make it past The Wall Of Death. Problem is they kept opening the door for me and/or going off line into the weeds so I started picking them off one by one and eventually passed all the FWD rather easily and finished 1st in class. At one point I passed 2 FWD down the straight.
In the first race I was doing well but then about 3 laps from the end I went to downshift into the first corner and the clutch felt really light, pulled it out of third and couldn't go into second so figured clutch gone, matched revs and got it into second and completed the race with it stuck in second finishing 1st in class. When I got back to the pits Steve Drysdale found the problem: a blown, rusted clutch hydraulic bleed line. He took the short bleed line off and crimped over the end several times and put it back on but it took a lot longer to bleed the clutch through the threads of the fitting so I missed the second street stud race by like a minute but did make it to the second stud race which I won. Thanks much to both Steve Drysdale and Ian MacIntyre for doing that repair and for being such a great help with tire changes all weekend.
In the last race it was very
sloppy, hard to see in spots cause of slush thrown up. Finished 3rd
overall behind Lee Watterworth and 1st in class. Sunday Class SS1: Started 17th at the back oft the pack because of Saturday's DNS and finished 3rd behind Tony McGrath with Graham Lobban winning. The track was covered in slush and water, mud coming through in a lot of places (including inside my car) except the kink and the east end. Visibility was nil at times the wipers just couldn't keep up. Sunday Class S1: More of the same as in SS1, watch the race videos below the messiest one is video #10 - the 2nd S1 race on Sunday - lots of mud and slush, Andrew Majik is behind me just before 1st corner and runs into me square on my back bumper - no harm - he couldn't see anything, I could barely see him! Finished well in the overall but was by myself in class for the last race as Richard Walker was out and so was Jimmy Feeney. See you at the Awards Banquet and if you haven't already, get your tickets !!! Results: MR2, Street Stud (class SS1): qualified 1st (from 17th) , 1st, DNS (no clutch), 3rd, 2nd
Complete results (usually posted within a few days
of the event) ... Pics:
Videos: To take full advantage of this follow these 2 steps ... 
Note: if your playback is halting hit the pause button, and wait for the entire file to load.
These and all other ice race videos for car #24 are posted in HD (720p) on my Youtube Channel at ... http://www.youtube.com/user/angusmacsac
Richard Piper's in-car video:
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