Spec E30 Planet

I started in 5th position and was running with the top pack until getting punted in Turn 1, spun and then hit from behind. I went to 17th position and worked my way up to finish 7th dragging my bumper trim like a tail!

Cast: Scott Neville

Well here is the BIG Announcement, which probably isn’t that big unless you are Craig or I, or apparently Evan who won a used clutch for being able to use Google. Without prolonging the suspense here it is –

DTOM Racing is building a car for the 2011 Continental Tire Challenge Series in the ST class.

There it is. Take a second to absorb it, let it marinate. There will be an entire FAQ devoted to various aspects of the plan, the people involved, to come shortly with the redesign of the site.

This little post will do nothing more than give the background to that bold statement.

Roughly towards the end of last year as I changed brake pads on my car for roughly the 4000th time, I started to get sick of E30’s. Since I’m not 17 and I’m not fascinated with smoked taillights (sorry Jason) the BMW was more of a means to an end (racing), than a real love affair with the car anyway. Around this same period of time Craig had toyed with a notion of selling his car and buying a 911 to club race. We’d talk back and forth about what to do ‘next’ and never come up with good solutions.

Roundel, which is the BMW Car Clubs monthly magazine generally sucks, but there is one dude that is pretty sharp (Sam Smith) and about the only thing worth reading in that rag. He wrote an article on the lifecycle of club racers. I think his conclusion was that the life expectancy was around 3 years. I started doing Driver Schools back in 2005 (maybe 04?), I’ve gone through my motivations before; however I like to make progress and feel like I’m learning something. Not that I am, by any stretch, an E30, SE30, Racing, or BMW expert but you get to the point where there are diminishing returns. His premise was basically this ‘hobby’ requires so much commitment in time and money that people get burnt out. There is also very little future in it so unless your are independently wealthy the chances of you moving up the ladder to any significant ‘pro’ series is between slim and none. Since most people involved in racing are competitive by nature this lack of forward progression will burn you out if the cost and time thing don’t do it first.

I recognized this as I started to get within striking distance of Clay’s, Seth’s, and etc lap times. The Traqmate that had served me so well in getting to this point was not showing the easy “1 second here” gains. So I ‘invested” in a fancier data rig hoping that additional sensors and doodads would further illuminate those little differences I needed to work on. Well it certainly did, unfortunately I didn’t like the answer. There are no more easy gains. It is a .1 of second here, or .05 in this corner. , as anyone that has met me for more than 10 min. can attest I’m hopelessly impatient. The thought of grinding out lap after lap trying to whittle away at .1 is depressing. Consider how miniscule .05 of a second is. The thought of whittling away for years while continuing to work on a 20 year old car started to feel more like a job than fun.

That realization, combined with Dave White going off to pro race land really started to depress me. (Not because Dave isn’t qualified just because he was my enduro partner last year.) I had witnessed the BeerTech team disappear as JP sold his car, Brian Jones fell ‘in love’, and Scott McMinime worked more and more. Rev. Al was also a less frequent character in the DTOM stories, Sasha had brain damage from the fun run, and Travis also had a baby and sold his car. In short I felt like the kid in highschool that is a junior and all his senior friends are going off to college and he is left behind. I had usually crutched on Club Racing to provide entertainment when the SE30 stuff was thin on the ground but now with Brendan’s car in various pieces this was less of an option. So what to do, what to do?

For some reason one day I read the Grand Am rules and it slowly dawned on me. This wasn’t a World Challenge $500million car with bespoke invented pieces from the Space Shuttle parts bin that needed a Doctorate in engineering to understand. This was more like Spec E30 writ large. In the meantime Craig had settled on the 911 path, he was looking at cars and close to buying one. I pitched him my idea of building a ST car. He wasn’t particularly interested. BMW’s as race cars just aren’t as sexy as 911’s that is pretty much a fact. I told him to mull it over, and I continued to do my due diligence. I pitched my idea to Clay. This was the watershed moment. I’ve pitched hundreds of ideas to Clay of various levels of absurdity; most of them have him investing a certain amount of time or money into my racing career. To date he has politely declined these awesome opportunities with a terse “not interested”. This time he said “Might Work”. Those words were like the red cape to the bull.

Suffice to say here are a few DTOM guiding principles that make this possible:

1) Lots of sympathy and guidance from Clay and BimmerWorld

2) Free help from awesome mechanics Brendan, Jason and Ted.

3) If we don’t make the field some of this is about the journey not the destination. We’re pretty optimistic but sometimes a change of scenery is just as important. And besides train wrecks are interesting too. An add on to this is our competitive desires. We don’t really plan for this car to run up front at least initially and with Craig or me driving. We’re sort of doing this for fun?

4) Provide lots of DTOM fodder for public consumption, different then the typical SE30 race reports and blogs that now seem to be all the rage. Hopefully everyone will enjoy following along with our trials and tribulations regardless.

Actually accomplishing this was going to be a lot lower percentage without Craig. Having a partner makes my economic hardship much less, he has a pretty sweet garage which isn’t a race shop but can play one on TV if needed. Unfortunately he still wasn’t convinced. That was until he mentioned it to his wife, and although I have no proof of this, she must have found out that Patrick Dempsey is involved in Grand Am at some point. The rest, as they say, is history. With his family support secured all of a sudden being a ‘pro racer’ looked a lot more appealing then just another 911 douche bag club guy. My family discussion went like this:
Me: “Hey I think I’m going to go pro racing.”
Wife: “What is that going to cost?”
Me: “About the same? (voice cracking)”
Once lighting didn’t strike me dead, I quickly added “Dave White races in this series”. That drew a blank stare, so I tried again, “Patrick Dempsey races in this series.” Done and done.

So stay tuned. Since we’re going to make this a little more pro-fess-ional, we’ll get better about pictures and videos, etc instead of just my fancy written BS. Strap in and come along for the ride, even if we put it in the wall I can promise it will be fun and worth the time.

If you’re reading this I also assume that you have some interest in racing so if you have questions hit us up at dtomracing at gmail.com . We don’t have lots of answers but we do have lots of opinions!

Donor car arrives in Atlanta on Tuesday, probably picked up Friday. Giddy up!

Next Episode – working title “So You Say You Boys Want to Buy a Racecar”

Okay the final hint is here. Stay tuned we'll make the announcement within the next 5 days.

This one isn't very funny but it will give the answer definitively if you're smart enough with google and can put it all together.

1. Founded in 1871
2. They were the German Kings of Great Britian
3. Seinfeld's Neumann

Good Luck! So far only Evan Levine has won something out of the junk pile. Of course no one is really trying either...

Started Last (16th) in our Sunday qualifying race due to an inverted grid from Saturday's race results where I had the great fortune of winning the first race of the year which also happened to be my first Spec E30 win.

Cast: Scott Clough

Started 6th in Sunday's race after starting last (16th) in the qualifying race due to an inverted field after winning Saturday's race. I could not catch the front three and I was lucky to finish 4th. great and fun race.

Cast: Scott Clough

If you've attended a NASA Mid Atlantic race week end over the past few years you will be very familiar with this yellow Ferrari, it's the one generally lapping the whole field. What you may not necessarily know is that its owner, Skip Bennett, then jumps into a Spec E30 for some real racing along with the likes of Chris Cobetto and Mike Skeen (not to mention the Axis Spec e30 squadron, Pete

If anyone is still paying attention here is the second hint and really just an excuse to post a great movie clip.

BTW check out our fan page on Facebook, we're up to 16 fans and counting!



We put liquid paper on a bee.

Bit of a different crowd this weekend with BMWCCA at Road Atlanta. About a six hour drive to get there (not including the 40 minute traffic jam at the SC/GA state line), arrived in time to get set up in the paddock and meet a few people. Both days began with an early practice session, qualifying around lunchtime, then an afternoon race. Being my first time at this track I had hoped to get a ride-along with someone to learn the track but there wasn’t time, fortunately I had watched enough video to get a sense of things. Unfortunately it did not prepare me adequately – this is a scary track. Turn 1 is a fast disconcerting sweeper, turn 3 is blind until you’re right on top of it, turn 5 requires braking/turning/shifting all at once, turn 10 is at the end of a long straight ending in a downhill braking segment, and the infamous turn 12 is blind, narrow, fast, and has little room for error.

My first time out on Saturday I was just trying to learn the track and ran a 1:54, later in qualifying I lowered that to 1:50 which was good for third place out of five. Chuck Taylor and Eric Palacio were both much faster than me, qualifying in the 1:46 range. The race was uneventful, I trailed a E30 M3 for a few laps before he pulled away and I soloed the rest, finishing with a best lap of 1:49.2. That night Eric and I reviewed video and traqmate data, I clearly saw where I was falling behind and hoped to make up at least some of that the following day.

spec e30 road atlanta feb 2010 sat race from jason tower on Vimeo.

Sunday I experimented a bit during practice, found that leaving the car in fourth gear for turn 3 didn’t seem to hurt lap times much so that eliminated two shifts. I also wasn’t totally nailing turn 12 so my straightaway speed was down a bit enabling me to eliminate fifth gear on the front straight, I’d hit the limiter if i didn’t lift slightly but an upshift probably didn’t help enough to matter until I learn to carry more speed through 12. Still, turn 1 had me flummoxed and I never did get comfortable with it all weekend. In fact I went four off in turn 1 during qualifying, fortunately I kept it straight and drove back on without incident. Qualified third again with a 1:49.1, Eric’s dad Julio was driving today and he beat me buy a few tenths. The Sunday race was a bit more interesting, I followed Julio for a number of laps to see how he drove, put the pressure on a couple of times but he didn’t slip up or give me an easy pass. Eventually I combined a good run through 12 with a faster car passing us from behind and slipped by him in turn 1, from then on I drove clean and held on for second place with a best lap of 1:48.9, still far behind Chuck Taylor who finished first again by turning 1:46s. Hopefully I can find another 2-3 seconds so I’ll at least be in the hunt when NASA-SE runs here in three weeks.

spec e30 road atlanta feb 2010 sun race from jason tower on Vimeo.

While packing up I noticed that my front 888s showed significant groove of death wear, I highly doubt I’ll be able to run them much more before they become unsafe although moving them to the rear might help a little. Annoyed that I won’t get my money’s worth out of them, but at least I have a fresh set of RA1s sitting in the garage. Long drive home (fortunately no traffic problems) but judicious use of the load pedal and drafting semis yielded over 17 mpg, and I was able to fill up twice in SC where diesel is $0.30/gal cheaper. Plus my fantastically awesome wife Valerie had dinner waiting for me when I got home

Pics from Amber Eller Wooten (Shaun’s wife), thanks!

This has been pretty lame lately I'll admit, but that doesn't mean that DTOM is resting on its many many laurels. Quite the contrary, wheels within wheels so to speak..

Expect big things from DTOM in hopefully less than a month. To sustain the limited interest this may generate I'll drop a hint every couple of days (ie when I can think of one).

The first is "USF1" - and no I'm not going bankrupt (cymbal crash).

Please comment with any guesses - anyone that comes close or makes me laugh will win something. I'm leaning towards a pick from the garage sale inventory (plug), or maybe a BW t-shirt, hat, swag since DTOM is light on the promotional material.

PS Congrats to Steve DeVinney on his first SE30 victory? In Craig Geegar-esque fashion using a combination of people having to start in the back, jumping a restart and nearly an entire race under FCY and SHAZAM victory is his!!! Good work Steve! Believe in miracles.

Whew, what a weekend! NASA-SE held their first event of the year, the Winter Meltdown at CMP. For me it included comp school on Friday followed by a full weekend of racing on Saturday and Sunday.

Comp school started Friday morning with a quick on track session just to shake the rust off and get reacquainted with the track, fortunately I’m reasonably comfortable with CMP so it went smoothly. We then alternated classroom sessions and track time for the next several hours, similar to the BMWCCA comp school I did in 2009 but more brief. We had a good group of about ten people and everyone drove well, no incidents of any significance. School ended with a short mock race that was gridded randomly, I was the lead Spec E30 car (my buddies Evan and Colin were also participating) and we all finished without incident. Once that was complete we were effectively issued provisional or rookie licenses and allowed to race that weekend. The three hour enduro started early afternoon, it started snowing towards the end but we figured it wouldn’t accumulate much if at all.

We went to dinner in Camden with several of our fellow Spec E30 drivers (Travis Wilson, Brian Jones, Steven Canterbury) and watched it snow. And snow. And snow. By the time we finished dinner there were several inches on the ground and it was coming down heavier than ever. Someone (probably Travis) suggested we go find a bar and no one objected, meanwhile the snow continued to pile up. The group consensus was that Saturday was almost certainly going to be a bust so we might as well keep drinking. Evan and I in particular were dismayed at the weather, we had been looking forward to racing for nearly a year and the thought of it being canceled was almost more than we could bear. His girl Christina arrived in town and joined everyone at the bar, meanwhile I called it quits and retired to the hotel.

The following morning the sky was clear but everything was blanketed by 4-6 inches of powder, virtually unheard of in South Carolina. Two weekends get canceled at VIR and now this! Evan/Christina/Colin were sleeping off the previous evening’s activities so I rode in with my roommate, we got to the track around 0800. Despite the conditions NASA-SE director Jim Pantas was confident that we’d still run that day, albeit with a delay. He announced that anyone with a truck or street car should get on track and slowly circulate to break up the snow so the sunshine could melt it. I ended up riding around with my pal Nash in his F150 and I’ll be damned if it didn’t work, pretty soon the track was wet but nearly ice free and Jim said it would go hot at 10:50. I called Evan to make sure they were en route since qualifying was at 11:10. They arrived just in time, we suited up and went out. I snagged fifth, and Evan managed to get third. Didn’t really matter though since rookies start their first race at the back no matter what. Still, we were really amped up and ready to race.

That afternoon we gridded at the back of the pack (I ended up being dead last, Evan and Colin were in front of me) and rolled out of the grid. Suddenly Evan pulls out of line and stops in the hot pits. Oh no! Our first race and he’s out before it even started! Turns out all six of his left halfshaft bolts loosened up and it literally fell out of the diff leaving him with no drivetrain. Fortunately it was an easy fix and though he was heartbroken we got it patched up and ready for Sunday.

The Spec Miatas started first and had a car spin off in turn 1 (unfortunately it was Nash who got knocked out by another car) which led to four laps under yellow. Finally we restarted single file but being last I was left for dead when the field strung out, the leaders got green before I even rounded turn 14 leading to the front straight. Due to the delay the race lasted less than 15 min but I managed to pick up several positions and finished ninth. I also set a personal best lap of 1:54.2, beating my previous time by 1.5 seconds.

spec e30 cmp feb 2010 sat race from jason tower on Vimeo.

Sunday’s first session was a qualifying race, meaning that it didn’t count but the results would determine starting positions for the “real” race that afternoon. I started ninth with Evan directly behind me, we got off clean and he passed me in turn 14 and started dicing with Brian Jones, eventually getting past him too. A yellow in turn 8 caused him to slow and Brian and I re-passed him, I was glued to Brian’s bumper for the next two laps before executing a spectacular 360 degree spin in the kink. Despite losing several positions I managed to keep all four wheels on the tarmac and kept going, but the entire race was red flagged less than a lap later due to another crash in 8. I finished tenth but lowered my personal best to 1:53.3. The top five cars were all in the 1:52s so I still need to find some time! Unfortunately I discovered afterwards that my camera power supply wasn’t working and it stopped recording halfway through, which meant I wouldn’t get any footage of the afternoon race either.

spec e30 cmp feb 2010 sun qualifying race from jason tower on Vimeo.

That afternoon I started in tenth as expected, this time we were in front of the Miatas and got a clear start. After a few position changes things settled down and I found myself dicing with Steven Canterbury for the majority of the race. We had what felt like an epic battle, four position swaps and just a little bit of paint trading. I made one last pass on the final lap and held Steven off for eighth place. We gave each other a big thumbs up on the cool down lap but were later called in to explain our contact which happened between turns 2 and 3 in plain sight of the NASA officials. It was ruled a racing incident and no penalties were assessed which was the correct call. My biggest disappointment was not getting the race on video, it would have been excellent footage.

The car performed flawlessly all weekend and everyone finished with big smiles and no serious problems. Colin had to leave on Saturday but Evan kicked ass, finishing fourth in the final race. Safe to say he was on cloud nine for the next several days, and I wasn’t far behind. Next week I’m headed to Road Atlanta for my first race with BMWCCA, it will be my first time at that track so it should be interesting.

A short clip of the start of Saturday's Lightning race group. Robert Patton on pole, Eric Palacio in P2, Laura Patton in P3, yours truly in P4, Travis Wilson P5.

Cast: Steve DeVinney

Picked up vinyl for a last minute sponsor (thanks Celito) along with a fresh set of tires from fellow E30 pilot Mark Cooper at Performance Chassis. First race is this weekend, I haven’t been on track for almost three months so hopefully I can shake off the rust quickly.