The time has come to test our mettle. We took the majority of 2024 working on the Mini and it was now time to take it to the track for our first race at Pacific Raceways in Auburn. One thing we still needed to get was a trailer to tow it there though. Based on only having a bill of sale (written on a not so fancy scrap piece of paper) there was no way we were going to risk trying to drive it on the street and get impound. At this point I did have a nice RAM 1500 truck to tow so we called up U-Haul and got us a trailer to put the car on.
Fun thing about the U-Haul trailers; I found out between towing the race Mini and the spare parts Mini. There was not enough clearance for the front bumper so we had to remove it or have it get ripped off every time we unload the car. As soon as we arrived at the track on Friday morning I was pretty anxious about passing tech inspection after all the work we put into the car. Thankfully all the hard work paid off and the only issue we needed to address to pass tech was to install the safety pins into our seatbelts to prevent them from inadvertently getting unclipped. Thankfully Nachofriends group came prepared with extra safety pins so we procured the items from them with a fancy bride of a couple of beers. Turns out this is the normal transactions you see at a Lemons race.
After passing tech and getting our race packet I felt much better about taking the mini out onto the track and getting our first laps around a road course in it. I was still paranoid about breaking the car before we took the green flag the next day, but all of us took a few laps around the track with no incidents. Each driver getting a chance to shake down the car before race day gave me more confidence going into Saturday morning, too bad that it didn’t translate to the car.
Saturday was another anxiety inducing day getting out on track for the first time with a whole other field of people around me. The first lap went okay but the second was not as smooth. As I was exiting turn 3B at the bottom of the hill the car initially popped out of gear the would not get out of neutral leaving me stranded on the side of the track. After messing around with the shifter I eventually got it into third but the car was a sitting duck and by the time the tow truck got there I needed to get it unstuck from third and back into neutral so they could pull me back to the paddock. Right before they started pulling I got it into neutral and they safely towed me all the way back up the hill to the paddock entrance.
Once in the paddock we pushed the car back to our garage setup (a 10x20 pop up tent) and immediately threw the car in the air on jack stands. Weird part about the car though was that once we had it in the air we had no shifting issues. We tried looking around to figure out what it was, checking connection of the shift cables, inspecting the shifter box, and testing it around the paddock with no further issues. So with no answer and no mechanical problem at that moment, we sent the car back out on track. To minimize further chances of the mysterious shifting issue from reoccurring, we decided to minimize shifting (keeping the car in 3rd and 4th gear) for the rest of the race. This greatly impacted our lap times since we had no power leaving the slow corners but it did give us more time on track and more opportunities to practices race craft around others. Saturday got cut a little short with a torrential downpour but it gave us a chance to hang out and meet some of the other drivers.
Another issue we had at our first race had to do with the pit stops. We were extremely slow at getting gas in the car and unpracticed at swapping drivers. We got some coaching from the lemons safety staff and it helped with us learning but we were still limited with the equipment we were using. Our classic red fuel jugs were just not meant for adding the fuel to the car with speed in mind. Sunday was a fairly smooth day of driving and by the end of it we were letting the car rip. Our last lap (#246) ended up being our best lap at 1:52.75. Coming across the finish line with the checkered flag waving felt amazing. Even though we finished 9th (out of 16) in class and 28th (out of 51) overall, it felt like we had podiumed and could be lifting a trophy when we wrapped up the weekend. I was just happy that we started the race so to make it all the way to the end, no matter how slow it was, felt like a huge win. Now it was time to pack up the paddock, unintentionally rip the front bumper off the Mini on the U-Haul trailer again, and take all those lessons learned to improve on our skills for the next race. Hope to see you there!
