Racereport 8/7 2000

Going for the double!
Crew: Clapton, MrBeam, Biggles, Desmo & Reodor.
New stuff: New spoiler and fibreglass&lexan reaf door.
Reodor brought a champagne bottle to use as pit signal for 
"No one can catch us now"....

REODOR started. It was Reodors turn to take two hours, and he was 
slowest the last time.  As always he took it slow and lost som 30 
secs on the class rivals on the first 10 mins. Then he held pace, 
and then it started to rain. We didn't know how she were in the wet, 
so he sort of held pace through the first 10 mins of rain and the it dried. 
The Audi and the Volvo had problems in the wet, and so had the old team 
Matex that had turned up for the first time this year with a Corsa with 
an 8 valve Ascona engine. It dried up and we were equal with the fastest 
in our class and then it started raining hard. We have built a boat! 
Reodor took 10 seconds per lap or more on the Golf and the Audi.  
We changed driver just before the first hour and was some 20 seconds 
down on the Audi on paper. In fact we were leading. His fastest lap now 
in the wet was 3 seconds faster  than his fastest last time in the dry.

DESMO took the second hour and was a little faster than the rest if the 
class competition. He was racing against another Corsa in class 5 (2500 cc 
of same brand, no turbo, all else free, think they have a V6) and beating it, 
while using his normal wave behind from left to right to confuse the cast 
making it difficult to overtake. This time he fooled just 2 to overbrake or 
spin. (There is an untranslatable swedish word for overbraking, litterally 
"To break your pants" instead if wetting them).
That  Corsa had as much problems in the wet as it had uniballs in the 
rear axle.
We were leading by a little more than a lap in spite of making the tankstop 
during that hour.

MR BEAM went out and showed that his fastest lap last time was no 
once-in-a-lifetime.  He did it again. We were leading by 2 and a half 
lap at the parc ferme.

BIGGLES went out for the fourth hour, and made a pirouette in the slow 
corner before the pits. He lost some ten seconds, but two laps after he 
did it again, almost corrected and went out in the grass and left the 
underplate of the new spoiler there. He cam in shortly after, very sad, 
to the tankstop and we sent him out again, but his spirit was sort of gone. 
He was going a little bit faster than Reodors slow pace last time, 
and he had lost 1,5 laps on an hour so we let him continue, go get over 
the mishap mentally as well. We were still competing for the class victory, 
and we had our normally fastest driver Clapton, and the awakened Reodor to go. 
The race was still hours. But, we did a lousy tankstop due to a faulty punp, 
we found out later. 
 
CLAPTON went out in his normal pace and took a lap on the now leading Audi 
again, and we had the Golf some 3 laps behind. Suddently he came in and said 
the she spluttered on high revs. We opened the hood and the tensioner for the 
alternator was broken, and she had thrown the belt. What happens next is why 
we love this racing series. The now leading Audi crew came running to assist 
with tools and parts to make the fix fast. We sent him out with 6 laps down 
on the Audi and we didn't know about the Golf. And we had 25 minutes for him 
and one hour for Reodor. Chances looked slim, but if it started to rain, maybe. 
We talked about making a rain-dance in the pits, but the Audi crew threatened 
to make a sun-dance to nullify it so we dropped it. 

REODOR went out without knowing the position and we filled up directly with 
30 litres of petrol to last the distance by a little margin. He went out just 
before the Golf, the engine again misfiring on high revs and he decided to 
stay out if he could keep pace with it until he got a "2" or a "3" from the 
pits saying if we were second of third. The Golf passed us but he kept on, 
not knowing the position, but it didn't get more than 500 meters in front, 
then we were gaining and were 200 meters down when Reodor got the 3 for 
third place, so he HAD to pass. Then the engine started to misfire again, 
more violently, and we were losing ground.  
In the pits we found a leaking coolant hose, and filled up water.  
After that he held position and we got another third place. She went 
perfectly after the last stop. So, just one of the two problems had given 
us second, none had given us a win, and one problem more had given third to 
an old rwd rally Escort that had been just going all the time, mostly sideways 
in the wet. 
We'll be back!