| A
quick business trip to San Antonio Texas was the plan prior to Memorial
Day weekend. I called my uncle Tito Guizar
to let him know I would be in town. To my surprise, he said "lets
go racing!" I packed my suit and tie along with my helmet and
driving suit. Let's kill three birds with one
stone invited my wife Sue and have a mini
vacation. (click
here to read about the vacation)
After a long business meetings, we finally made our
way to College Station near Houston. This is where Texas
World Speedway resides.
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The
road to the track busy with small towns as there are no
interstates that get you there. Tito's friend Fred Beezer who is
part of his crew knew all the cool places to eat. We had some of
the best bbq brisket. |
Here, the Texas Region of SCCA
sets camp on the infield of a 2 mile high banked oval which was used for
NASCAR events prior to the opening of Texas Motor Speedway.
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The two mile high banked
oval became known as "The Worlds Fastest Speedway"
when Mario Andretti set a world closed course speed record of
214.158 mph on October 6, 1973 while qualifying for an Indy car
race. That record stood in the Guinness Book of World Records
for twelve years. Since then many Indy cars have tested at
unofficial speeds of 238 mph. Over the years, TWS has been the
site of numerous Indy car, stock car, motorcycle, truck, and
sports car races including the TEXAS 500, LONE STAR 500,
BUDWEISER/NASCAR 400, TEXAS GRAND PRIX, TEXAS RACE OF CHAMPIONS,
TEXAS 200, ARCA/WINSTON WEST 500, the TEXAS WORLD GRAND PRIX,
EXXON SUPERFLO 500, and other events sanctioned by United States
Auto Club, NASCAR, ARCA, Sports Car Club of America, the
American Motorcycle Association, WERA, IMSA, and other racing
organizations. |
Prior to the weekend, Tito sits in 3rd place in the
regional points in the ITA class. He needs to place well in the race in
order to keep that 3rd position. Although his Mazda RX7 is not highly
modified as others, good driving and reliability will do the job.
Given the fact that I was visiting and having a
permanent itch to race, Tito was generous and offered his car for me to
drive in the Spec RX7 class. I jumped in the car to get a feel for it.
To my surprise I learned that race cars are like shoes, they are only
comfortable to the owner.
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 My
head with a helmet on would have been great had we been able to
run with the sun roof open. The seat is welded in place and it
was too tight for me to drive....oh well.
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My job description changed from driver to crew, which
turned out to be lots of fun. We got a chance to play with tire
temperatures and other small changes that made a big difference.
"But how do we make it even faster" Tito said, "heavy
right (gas) light left (brake)" I replied!
Tito qualified well but needed a little more top end
speed, also noticed the car was a bit squirrelly. We noticed the tires
were not quite getting up to temperature so increased 2psi and the
carburetor could use more air. We quickly removed the air tube used for
the driver and placed it in the carburetor housing as if it was a ram
air (but not really one). We were ready to race.
After watching some good muscle car racing (Mustangs,
Vettes, Camaros, etc) (click here to read about
this race). It was time for Tito to go out. He
started from the back of the field so he had his work cut out. Tito has
a lot of racing experience and as any great driver loves to jump the
green. Well, sure thing the green drops and jumps 5 cars before diving
into turn 1.
Tito kept his RX7 wide on the track in an effort to
defend his position as the car was faster and handled a bit better.
Towards the last 3/4 of the race, the car started to stumble on the
front straight. All the hard work keeping all the cars behind...oh no!
With three laps to go he was forced to bring the car
in as it would not turn more than 4500 rpm, race over for us. After a
long teardown at impound from the SCCA officials, we went back to the
garage to try and figure out what had happened. My theory is that the
extra air into the carburetor made it more efficient made the car run
lean as the race progressed and the engine got warmer. Larger jets would
have done the trick.
We'll prep for the next race, see y'all there!
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