Today Hez and I took out Bumblestook for the first time this season. We had tons of OPR (other people's rubber) from Nationals all over the tires, the front brakes were brand new and needed to be bed in and I wanted to see how the new seat rails would hold up. This was effectively a good shake down event for her in preparation for the DC ProSolo in a month.
NNJR PCA - 4/17/2016 Photo Credit: Perry Aidelbaum (autox4u.com)
Getting back in the driver seat of Bumblestook was like putting on your favorite jeans. Everything just fits and works just right. On my first run, I went hard on the brakes everywhere both to get the brakes sorted and to help scrub off the OPR. That was a bit too effective as I got back to grid with some smoke coming off the front brakes. I presume this is just the residual oil burning off. After that run they were fine and biting extremely hard. I had almost forgotten how incredible she is to drive. She just works and does everything right! Her ability to change directions so quickly is kind of mind boggling after having not driven since the end of last year.
Hez putting on the freshly cleaned wheels and competition rubber 4/17/2016
By the end of our morning runs, all the OPR had been scrubbed off. She was feeling absolutely perfect and in the afternoon we were going to lay down our real times. I was trailing Hez by a second but on my first afternoon run I was able to find some time and close the gap a little, Hez responded by dropping his times as well and we kept doing this, pushing each other to drive harder, with every run. On my last run I was sitting about half a second from Hez time when he pulled flier and masterfully strung the corners together just right to find another 0.7 seconds to kill my time by a hefty 1.2 seconds and be the only car to break in the 49s. The official results have both of our fastest runs marked with a cone but we watched each others runs and saw no cones hit or workers running so I think that's a mistake. Either way, even our second fastest times were good enough to secure the top 2 raw times overall so the results don't change.
Getting ready to run - 4/17/2016
The seats now feel absolutely solid and despite having some doubts about having the seat fully upright bringing us closer to the wheel, both Hez and I felt that it actually gave us better control over the steering so we'll probably leave it like this for now. I had initially thought about reclining it a tad but this may be the faster setting. Overall this was a very successful event and most importantly we had loads of fun on the most perfect Spring day to be racing. All systems are go on Bumblestook and she's ready for battle. It feels so good to be back driving her. I know she's been anxious to show her why she's the #1 car in the team and boy did she deliver in spades today.
