Another season starting and another last minute motor swap. At least my excuse for this one seems a little more valid (?) because I was working out of state for 2 months straight in the off season. Lauren was kind enough to pick up a new(ish) motor for us to install in the Mini that I found on Facebook Marketplace. We felt like experts completing the swap in two days and doing it with way more confidence (like we had been there before). We also took the time to make some other upgrades to the Mini for some more reliability and driver comfort/endurance. We reinstalled the power steering system into the car. As part of the initial build we had removed the pump and put a bypass in the system because the power steering pumps on this particular Mini generation were known for going bad. We also took the time to install an additional standalone thermometer to give us an earlier warning on the cars heat situation (to hopefully prevent us from warping another head) and we installed a tire monitoring system so we could see temperatures and pressures. All of this would give us more information as we were racing and allow us to be more prepared for if the car needed some emergency repairs mid race. Almost forgot to mention we added a skid plate under the Mini too, which helped protect all the sensitive bits up front from road debris.
For the travel down to Sonoma we also learned a lot from the previous year in the way of self care. We had a bigger truck with more towing capacity allowing us to travel much smoother and we also chose to drive down early on Thursday so we could sleep in a hotel near the track that night and be fully rested before showing up Friday. This was a great way to make sure we were starting the weekend off on the right foot. After setting up our paddock/ obstacle course, tech inspection through us a bit of a curveball as we got dinged for a couple of less than ideal problems. One was a loose battery so we had to add an extra tie down bracket to prevent movement. Our race seat had also gotten loose from all the hard racing it had seen so we tightened that back down too. We got dinged for our steering wheel locking when the power was off but that was something we had to figure out later.
As the race started we ran extremely smooth through the first stint. We came in for the refuel and driver swap and like the previous race we were filled in record time. Only issues was the car was not restarting. We quickly got towed of the pits to our paddock and right after we got the car in the air we tried starting it again and it fired right up. Instead of debating what could be wrong with it we took the win and sent the car back out. At the end of the second stint Lauren hopped in the car and it fired up after refill but then stalled out on the pit road. We had lost comms with the car so it took a little longer to get it back but it fired right up again once we had it at the paddock. Saturday night we tried fixing the comms, and we figured out what was causing the intermittent starting issues - the kill switch connections were slightly broken, so we thankfully had a spare kill switch and swapped it in. The rest of the night we enjoyed the paddock parties going on.
Sunday we used our backup comms (being Motorola walkie talkies) and sent our driver out with no issues (minus one black flag for a spin). Overall Sunday was a much smoother day grinding out laps and maximizing our stint lengths. The car didn’t have overheating issues and seemed to be running and starting without issues. I’m glad our Facebook Marketplace motor survived. I was personally struggling with some lower back pains the whole weekend which turned out to be me passing a kidney stone (yikes!). Overall we didn’t get quite as many laps as the previous year, finishing with 244 laps, 19th (out of 67) in class and 42nd (out of 139) overall. We could take some wins out of the race though knowing our preparation worked, making the car more consistent, and we also improved our best lap times again. Now it was time to make the long drive home and prepare for the next race at Pacific. Hope to see you there!
