Sat night it rained hard and it was raining in the morning. Matt drove first and took it easy in the rain with 150+ cars on the track. When the rain finally let up he picked up the pace and we were in pretty good position. Ned Bacon was next in the car and turned in some good times and moved us up more, the car was running good and the new motor helped get us past a few more cars on the straight a ways. Then about 2:30, on the straight right in front of the grandstands, the motor blew up. Ned had to get pushed all around the track to get back to the pits, and we saw a hole in the side of the block. Bummer, because after 4 hours of racing we were running about 40th out of 180 cars and gradually moving up.
We had time on Sat, and wanted to race on Sunday, so Dave Cole called around and found a wrecking yard with a bunch of XJ's, so he and Richard from Seattle and I left to go pull a motor. Ned and Matt stayed to pull the bad motor. We picked a motor to pull and barely got it out in time before they closed at 6:00, working in the rain, and got back to the track around 7:00. We had the motors swapped and the XJ running by 10:30, with a big thanks to the Rock Donkey Racing team for coming over and giving us a big hand getting the motor in. We had time to drink beer and visit and get to bed by midnight.
Sunday was a good day of racing. Dave Cole got in the car first, got used to the track, and was running some good lap times and moving us up. I got in next and ran a good two hours until the car sputtered from low fuel, and also ran some respectable times. One highlight was having one of the faster BMW's, a car that was running in the top five, right behind me for 2.5 laps before he could make a pass. It's fun to have fast cars not be able to pass our little Jeep.
Ned Bacon got in next and turned in our fastest times of the day, and ran right with the leaders for much of his stint. He's familiar with this course because he races his vintage Porsche here. More fun showing how fast this XJ can run. Matt got in next and ran well until the steering got a little loose and the tires and brakes were going away, 2nd race on these brakes and 4th race on the tires, but he finished the race. It was pretty satisfying to be able to run hard all day on Sunday after what happened on Sat. Cheers to the XJ, which works amazingly well on a road course. Gives new meaning to the term multi-purpose sport utility vehicle.
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