Hello everybody...
We ran the Team Mini Mania / MINCOMP MINI COOPER at Thunderhill for a SCCA Double Nation over the March 18th weekend. There were three minis entered in this event Doug Peterson was guest driving
Ward Barbour's mini (this is the sister car to the Fortech Mini), Jon Becker had his mini out and running and of course I brought the MINCOMP MINI up for this event.
Well let me tell you although I personally had a great time (to read: E-ticket ride) with these two races the 3 days were full of frustration as for the six sessions we had on track, 2 were dry and 4 were wet sessions as it rained off and on the whole weekend.
For Saturdays race #1 I qualified on the pole for GTLite (formerly GT5) on a rainy wet track! For this race because of the light rain that was falling but more importantly the black cloud that was coming over the mountain onto the track I chose full F1 style rain tires, Doug chose intermediate rains (because that was what they had) and I believe that Becker was on full knobby rains. Well as soon as we pulled away from Pre-Grid it stopped raining
oh-oh!!! Well for the first 6-7 laps of the race I was pulling away pretty steadily from Doug and then I started smelling the burning rubber of rain tires on a dry track, oh well! lets see how this situation affects Doug I said to my self, It didn't affect Doug nearly as much as it did me, he caught me, passed me and won the race with me in 2nd and Jon finishing 3rd.
For race #2 on a wettish/cold track Doug qualified on the pole with me 2nd and Jon 3rd. At the start of the race I was trailing Doug and was able to maintain a pretty steady gap between us but on lap 5 I noticed my oil pressure was a really low at 20-25 psi and the oil temp was pretty high at 275 degrees and climbing, Oh sh#t!!! We forgot to untape the oil cooler after the wet/cold qualifying. I had to back off to let things stabilize and just watched Doug drive away from me. I finished 2nd and Becker was a DNF with a failed CV joint/axel issue I believe.
But...as I said I had fun regardless.
The next outing for the MINCOMP MINI is another Double National at Buttonwillow April 23-24, and that should be the last of my races until the SCCA National Runoffs in September as after these 2 coming races I will have run a total of 8 races for my season this year.
Until my next report, cheers...
bill gilcrease
