Year End...

Well the last race of the season for me was a BMW Car Club of America club race (BMWCCA) in Savanna, GA. I was planning on driving my friend Craigs M3 in IP (I Prepared) and Robs 325i in ITR (Improved Touring "R"). Friday was a sprint race, Sat was the Endurance race and andother sprint on sunday. I am a co-driver in the endurance races and I was to start in the M3 and finish in the 325i. Thursday testing went well and both cars were very competitive on old tires posting some pretty fast laps so we were happy going into friday. Craig had a decent qualifying effort for the sprint and started 2nd in class and Rob due to some other factors entered the car in IP (there were no other entrants in ITR and it is no fun racing yourself). For what it was he did great! With 3 laps to go a Spec E36 car being lapped by Craig in the epic battle for 1st spun in front of him in a 100+MPH corner. There was not much for Craig to do but hit the brakes to minimize damage. They hit and Craig continued on with lots of damage. The car was not leaking anything and the temps remained good so he finished out the race holding on to 2nd place. Rob finished safely in 7th in class posting some respectable times. We worked until 2AM saturday then right up to Enduro qualifying to get the car straight. Its amazing what you can do with chains, trees and F250's. Got the car ready just in time for a rainy qualifyer. I love the rain and tend to be real fast but the car kept popping out of 4th...a very important gear! we ended up 9th on the grid and 4th in class. We quickly tore into the car looking for something and found 2 destroyed transmission mounts. We barely had enough time to swap them in and put dry tires on (it stopped raining) and tweak the setup (never got all the adjustments done for the dry). I got the start and it was evident that the transmission may not survive this one! I got it to work pretty good and worked my way up to 2nd catching the leader pretty easily (man I wish that transmission worked!) and pitted in 2nd overall. Craig got in and held on as long as he could but the trans kept getting worse. He limped home in 3rd in class and 6th overall...not bad for a car that had been rebuilt at the track with beer duct tape and zip ties! Anyways I got into Robs car and his clutch was starting to slip. It wasnt too bad but it will need to be fixed before the next one. I only did about 3 laps and the checkers fell. Long and eventful weekend! Thanks to all the guys from BMWCCA and VDCA (Vintage club) that came over and helped pound the car back into shape!

See 'yall next year!
evan