Spec E30 Planet

nasa-ma race (sweaty summer slam) on vir full course, july 2010. temps in the 100s again. had a decent qualifying lap and started 8th. the race got a lot more interesting when my left contact lens popped out on the first lap (you can see me holding it up to the camera), after that i was mister no depth perception. i hung with evan for a while but eventually bobbled in hogpen and went off.

Cast: jason tower

nasa-ma race (sweaty summer slam) on vir full course, july 2010. temps in the 100s, and although it's my home track i'd never raced there before. wasn't able to get a clean qualifying lap so i started 14th, but had a good race and finished 8th. some slower traffic on the last lap helped me edge out travis wilson at the line to win $50 plus a love tap on the cool down lap :)

Cast: jason tower

This will be mostly a visual essay. Saturday proved to be a busy day at DTOM Racing world headquarters, we recently concluded a sale of the running gear from the wrecked e46 car, and struck a deal around the tub too.

So we dedicated the day to finally moving things “out” of Craig’s garage, much to his delight. Unfortunately most car parts don’t lend themselves to easy shipping being awkwardly shaped and heavy, or small and delicate. If you find yourself needing to ship a differential – that is basically a heavy lump of metal – The “tough box” was designed by the Steve Jobs of storage. It is made from super heavy plastic (rated at 400lbs), and it has pre-drilled holes for zip ties to secure the top. In short pure genius!

So now you’re saying “Wow is this what DTOM has come to? Stories about boxing sh!t up to mail. Very sad.”

How cynical you’ve all become, clearly you didn’t notice the quotes around “special” in the title. No, no, no – it certainly got more interesting. The 2nd part of our day involved putting the wrecked chassis sans wheels onto my trailer. As with most of our dicey propositions (or any involving potential heavy lifting) we made sure that reinforcements were present, so we waited for Ted and Brendan to arrive. Ted’s common sense observation that we really needed a winch or come-along to do this properly was duly noted, but we had to make lemonade with the cards that were dealt. This meant rigging up my shim shammy trailer to stand on its own, while I drug the car forcefully onto it. What could go wrong?

What could go wrong? This looks completely safe, but why the jack stands?

Here is why, the trailer jack that was going to support all the weight is only ’sort of’ welded together..

Surprisingly this all worked like a champ and we began our trip up to the car’s new home John Eversley’s shop, where we’d work out the next engineering problem for the day – How to get it off the trailer.

Step 1 – hook up to crazy electric pit buggy tug.

Step 2 – use landscape timber to lift while tug pulls it onto the trailer. Nothing to it.

Step 3 – enjoy crazy weird stuff at John’s farm / shop. Like ….

Smallest Horse in Georgia.

One of the three remaining cars used for Gone in 60 Seconds.

Did you know Vespa (the scooter people) made a car? Neither did we. You don’t buy parts for this, you make them.

In case you haven’t noticed its pretty hard to have a niche racing blog when you’re not really racing.

I get two questions so this is probably the shortest FAQ ever.

1. What is going on with the car?

I got an email from Clay the other night that read “You guys still building that CTC car?” This was concerning on a number of levels, not the least of which is the car is supposed to be at their shop. At last check the status I got was “it’s in the old shop”, that is akin to you putting something in your attic. How often do you go up in your attic? Exactly. So the truthful answer to this question is “Not much.” My personal gut feel for us making Daytona 2011 is at 50/50.

A) However, we’re not at a complete standstill. A Grand-Am Spec E90 Limited Slip Differential is en route from Diffsonline in MA. This is sort of like buying curtains before the house has a roof, but any forward progress at this point is good. Dan at Diffsonline or Diffy Dan as I call him can amaze you with some esoteric knowledge about things like ring and pinion, machining the carrier, and a bunch of other mumbo jumbo. Bottom line is he knows his shit about diffs and I expect this to be worth easily 10 seconds a lap. He said if you don’t see a 10 second a lap improvement with one of their diffs its probably driver error.

If you’re one of our 2 or 3 ‘non’ racing fans a good explanation of a limited slip differential can be found here.

If you know all about diffs check out Dan’s site at www.diffsonline.com or order through Clay and BW.

B) We’ve also made contact with an electronics guru. I have a rubbermaid container of wires, gizmos, and doo-dads that theoretically can make a car start and run. At least they made the wrecked E46 car start and run. So the trick is finding out a) if everything is there and b) how to plug it all together. We’re meeting with Eric at ElectronSpeed in the next week or so to keep this ball rolling.

C) More good news in that we managed to maybe sell some of the E46 parts, which should help fund A&B.

2. Whats the car going to look like? / What colors are you using on the car?

Great question. You’d think this was easy. Ever since DTOM started I’ve been abusing every designer I know for free work. I think everyone of them did a great job but nothing seemed to fit. I blame myself 100%, giving creative feedback is difficult and there is some code that designers speak that I don’t get. Certainly being a straight man doesn’t help the communication. Anyway Craig took the keys to the car on this one and told me to sit in the backseat and shut up. He worked with a Spec E30 buddy of ours Scott McMiniMe and came up with the little gem below. Its mostly just a logo right now. The car design is a WIP, its difficult to get a drawing of the E90 to work off of, Craig thought he found one on some weird European site for $25, but he probably just gave his credit card to identity thieves since the promised download never arrived.

Anyway without further adieu. We may do a t-shirt if anyone has clever slogans they’d like to submit (PG-13 please).

The colors will be black / silver (gray) / yellow, sort of like Clay’s GearWrench car from last year minus the cheesy ‘extreme’ skull and p!ss poor vinyl wrap application.

Cole Trickle: (v.) To avoid a crash by the narrowest of margins. Example: "In today's video, Axis Pete takes his chances and successully Cole Trickles his way through the nastiest club racing crash we've seen in a long time."Bonus Entry:Pete Trickle: (n.) Mysterious, pot-bellied, little-known cousin of Cole who drives for Axis of Oversteer. Thought to be intimately familiar with Dick Trickle.So

Unedited from Sunday's spec e30 race. Qualified 8th and finished 6th.

Cast: Scott Clough

Unedited race from Saturday June 26th at Sears Point. Qualified 11th due to a blistered tire in qualifying. Started 11th and finished 5th.

Cast: Scott Clough

My performance sustaining cocktail did the trick. Steve D. did manage to find a race he can beat me in though. But like Kenny Powers I play real sports. Not trying to be the best at exercising.

The second one-day event at Charlotte Motor Speedway, picture perfect weather and a good turnout (12 cars in qualifying). Having repaired the damage from last month’s accident at CMP, the car seemed to be in good health and was running well, at least when it wasn’t too hot. I hooked up with my pal Evan in qualifying and was able to get a 1:28.0 which put me solidly in second place. Woohoo, I’m on the first row! Which meant that I and pole sitter Eric Palacio were responsible for pacing the group before the green flag was thrown. New experience for me and a fun one, but after that it was sheer terror. I’d never been at the sharp end of the field before and was more nervous than I had been for any previous race. Evan and Brian Jones (who qualified 3rd and 4th) made sure to let me know that they’d be gunning for me and I took it a little too much to heart.

In the first race Eric got in front of me as expected and I did my best to keep him in sight while fighting off hard charges from Jones and Evan from behind. They kept the pressure on and eventually got by when i overbraked for turn 1. Then thunder roadsters came zooming around like mad hornets, with my relative lack of traffic management skills it was difficult to keep the front runners within reach. With their light weight and sticky Hoosier tires they tended to be quicker on the infield but topped out slower than the Spec E30s on the oval. At one point they were three wide in front of me and I had to lift, throwing up my hands in frustration. That allowed Robert Patton to get behind me and make a…um…creative pass to get by in turn 3. I stayed behind him hoping to get the position back but wasn’t able to before the race ended with me in fifth.

2010 firecracker run – spec e30 from jason tower on Vimeo.

In race #2 I got the jump on Eric who mistakenly was in third gear instead of second. For about ten seconds I was leading the race! That didn’t last long as Eric got beside me and we were two-wide for most of the infield and entering the oval. In a trick apparently learned from Johan he pinned me on the apron while three cars queued up behind him and the entire group bump drafted their way past. Evan snuck in at the last minute too, suddenly I’m in sixth place! I was *pissed*, but in a way slightly relived as I’m more comfortable following a fast car than trying to keep one behind me. Several laps later Jones spun in turn 1 which opened up a few gaps. I was chasing Evan and he was chasing David Walsh, at one point I got past Evan on the oval then immediately braked too late for turn 1 and he took the position back. A few laps later, a swarm of thunder roadsters descended upon us and David and Evan tangled in turn 2, putting them both in the wall and out of the race, allowing me to cruise in for third place and my first podium finish.

2010 firecracker run – spec e30 from jason tower on Vimeo.

All in all a great day of racing, I learned several important lessons that will hopefully enable me to continue my development as a driver. Congratulations to Eric for winning both races! Coming up next is lots of VIR stuff – instructing with Chin Motorsports this week, Ferrari club the following week, and what is shaping up to be a huge race at with NASA-MA in late July!

Suck it England! Getting ready for my annual run at the Peachtree 10k. In other words this may be my last post ever since the odds of me dying increase with this bad life choice every year. Started training on Monday. Hoping that rage, expired asthma medication combined with red bull and sudafed can give me the super human strength I need. Fingers crossed.

You happen to live under a rock I’ll continue the tradition of posting stuff that everyone else has already put up. Mainly as a service to my non-facebook using audience (aka Brendan). Here is the full version of the commerical from BMW.

Not sure if anyone else noticed they spend a lot of time talking to Turner but when they need a podium shot its BW and Seth…. Anyway lots of friends in this so pretty cool. En’joy’.

Just because I've been on vacation it does not mean the rest of the Axis has been sleeping: check out the Freep's heroic climb from 17th on the grid to 5th place at the 2010 NASA Hyperfest SpecE30 races a held at Summit Point in West Virginia last week. Check out the near misses, notice how "the Freep don't lift" and don't miss the Felipe Massa style opportunistic pass towards the end of the