Sweetwater 180 Race Report

So Krawltex got the car on Wednesday at 5PM. I had to tow that car from south Austin during rush hour traffic in the rain. As soon as it was in the shop, it was a team effort to wipe all of the water off the bare chromoly chassis. The front end has received new lower arms, beam bushings, a new Kingpin style knuckle with King Kong bearings and rebuilt Wilwood calipers. All of this had been swapped over during the 6 months it has been down since the last race at Sweetwater, a few days before my last birthday. I say 6 months but in reality, the guys at Trick Racing that built the front end did not get us all the correct parts until 2 weeks ago. I'm still bitter in case you were wondering.

So the raw fiberglass panels come off. We did a preliminary once over on the car, noting hoses that need to be moved, bolts that need retorquing, steering arms that needed adjustment, and a whole bunch of other loose ends. Matt and Ted took care of wiring issues and gauges. I began the red and black base coats using only the best... Rustoleum 500 degree red engine paint and gloss black in cans. The next day, we topped off fluids. Matt taped the flames and I pin striped the lid. Ted built the Soltek HID mounts on the mirror brackets and added a new switch.

7AM came too early. We were suppose to leave by 6:30 but I slept through my alarm. After breakfast at the Country Kitchen in Lampassas, we headed to Bronte. We checked in, set up base camp and got the car teched... it was time for pre-running. As mentioned before, the entire front end is new on the car with zero break in miles. Dave and I did a few short 2 mile rips around the pit area. He had previously messed a rotator cup in his shoulder and got out after confirming the front suspension wasn't going to fail.

His brother Dwayne and I took it for a full loop of pre-running. I have driven that car and co-driven probably more than anyone on our team. After doing the entire 36 mile loop, I was really concerned the new bushings were too tight to let the front arms react quickly as they should and the suspension to dampen the way it should. There had never been a stretch of a course where I was physically sore in that car, but this was it. Previously, one person could pull up on the front nerf bar and nearly decompress the suspension by hand. At this point, it wouldn't budge. This made the geometry transfer every compression load to the rear and make the back end hit way harder than it should. At that rate driving at a race pace, I wouldn't be able to endure more than two laps, driving or co-driving.

We brought the car in and did some suspension tweaks. The panels came back on and the in cab fire extinguisher finally got moved in the right spot. We weren't sure what would happen, but decided to call it a night. We didn't want to break the car pre-running it in the dark only to fix it at the pit without an enclosed trailer this time. So we put all of our eggs in a basket and waited to see it through the race.

This morning, Charles co drove for Dwayne the first lap. There was a lot of traffic, including a herd of buffalo that were all over the race course. But Duane did his best to keep a level head and get a good feel for the course. At this point, the suspension was still very stiff and you couldn't break the rear end loose around turns. Lap 1 was 1 hour, 7 minutes. We topped it off with 111 leaded race fuel after the first lap. Ted would belt out navigation for the next two laps, passing many cars and closing the gap on our time. We got the radio to work again and his calling out race mile markers gave us a ton of info about pacing and tempo. Lap 3 was down to an hour and 2 minutes.

I hopped in to co-drive the last two laps after a 10 gallon fuel dump. After the first 2 miles I could tell the suspension had started to break in. The car isn't as plush as it formerly was, but when the two laps were done I could tell it was very close. I could certainly have sat in that car another 100 miles and been fine. In the middle of my first lap, a moose ran across our path. Another 4 yards and it would have messed the buggy up pretty badly. Duane was quite fatigued on lap 4. After talking about concentration and what our options were, such as a driver change... he rallied and got a second wind. We tidied up the few wild turns we had previously done and finished the final leg of the race at a whopping 58 minutes. To give you an idea, the $300K class 1 unlimited buggy's fastest lap was 53 minutes.

We couldn't be more happy with our successful finish. Another good weekend of driving and that front end will be completely broken in. The car should be way more responsive and "flickable" in the turns. So how did we do? We won first place out of the four class 5 vehicles. By almost 20 minutes. We finished 4th out of all the 4 cylinders, and 7th overall. Cheers to all of Krawltex and Bombshell Racing! Congrats to my friends with Hooters Desert Racing. They were a bit quicker than us in their 16-2 car finishing third out of the 4 cylinder division and first in their class.