Beaverun PCA race 26 July 2003

This was the first PCA race run at Beaverun, a new track/motorsports club near Pittsburgh. It was run by the Allegheny region in addition to many of the National club racing staff. This was about the best run club race I have ever been to, which is amazing for their first race. Communication was excellent as was the publicity for the sponsors.

There was plenty of track time due to only 3 medium size run groups and the weather was quite fine though a bit warm, mostly upper 80s I think (cool to many of you in the South I bet!)

After several years of emails I finally met Walter Fricke - he actually exists in the physical world and is not just some A.I. program cooked up by John fro, RENNLIST on the internet. I was having high temperature problems with my 911 all weekend and of course bent Walt's ear for advice, along with Dan Jacobs (who won G class in his SC) and several others, including a phone call back home to Chris Musante who built my engine. We never quite figured out the problem, but using race gas, an oil change, and shortshifting kept the temperature below the melting point of magnesium (!). I am wondering if others with the old 915 gearing had similar problems with oil temps- I never had problems at other tracks including Lime Rock when temps were near 100. I later found out that my ignition box was sick, it would not even start the car the following weekend.

We won't be getting the normally excellent E class reports from Barry Lenoble (absent, may be selling his car) or Cris Brady (blew a rear wheel bearing on Saturday, could not find a replacement, sorry Cris!!!) and I don't have much time for a writeup due to a heavy race and work schedule.

But my weekend in a nutshell went from bad to good, after a terrible trip to Pittsburgh from CT (9.5 hours!) and overheating on Saturday, I managed to qualify 2nd overall in the C D E F group, 1st in E. My best lap time was a 1:05:7 which I guess is the E class record! Then I hung on to 3rd overall and 1st in E in the race by shortshifting when nobody was close enough to make me nervous, my best lap time was about a second off my qualifying time, and occurred on the 24th lap of a 25 lap race. I guess someone was getting close... Also learned a better line in turns 2 and 3 during the race! (Don't drift so wide after turn 2!). But still hard to get turn 7 right more than twice in a row...A long mid race caution period helped bring the temps down but negated the nice lead to the 2nd place E car that I had built up :-(

Here is a shot of the start of our race, with a 993 RS C car on the pole, followed by my E car and two D cars (C2/RS Americas) just behind::

After the three main races there was one more race open to anyone who stuck around. It looked like about 20 - 25 cars started and I watched before leaving - it was a very interesting race!!! Bill Walczak in the C class 993 CS, who qualified ahead of me and came in 2nd in our race, had a great battle with a GT class car and the D class rocket 930 turbo of Bert Cossaboon. But I had a long trip home (all in the rain!!!) so I took off after several laps, leaving my car behind for the SCCA race the following weekend.

Thanks to everyone for a great weekend, may return next year. But I won't be trailering my car that far again, it's too much pain... will look for a spot in a transporter.

Here is a race report from TEAM 928 RACING.

Return to Analog Man Racing home page