Road America - Oktober Festing

This was the first time we were able to race the Saab at one of America's great road courses. Mark Fitzpatrick from Duluth, who had been one of the drivers in Jasper's Mustang at BIR, was back for a shot at driving the Saab. We had a couple of newcomers to ChumpCar as drivers: John Stiller from the Detroit area is a friend of Mark's from the auto industry. And just a few weeks before the race Tim got an email from Travis McCormick from Waterloo, Iowa. John and Travis met the rest of the team for the first time at the track. The race weekend consisted of a pair of 7-hour races, one Saturday and one Sunday.

Tim started on Saturday and immediately had a problem with the #92 Vintage Ice And Gravel Rally Racing Association (VIAGRRA) Saab 900 stalling in right hand turns. When the engine fired up again it was with a loud BANG accompanied by several feet of flame out the tailpipe. After about four frustrating laps and an hour in the pits, we replaced the ignition coil and the car ran fine. Tim took a few quick laps and brought the car in so the pay-and-drive guys could get more track time. There were a few more issues during the day: losing lube from the gearbox and a loose exhaust, but overall the car ran good, albeit slow.
Prior to Day 2 we found and patched a leak via the "Shift Up" light switch which was broken off the gearbox. Some J-B Weld and a Leinenkugel's bottle cap cured that. Also switched to a heavier gearbox lube as we decided the Redline MTL was just too slippery for a gearbox with 200K on it. And we chained the exhaust to the body so it would not fall down again.


Fluids looked good most of Sunday, with the exception of the brake fluid level which kept dropping. That was causing occasional lack of clutch pedal (brake and clutch share the same reservoir). John managed to spin the car and biff the wall coming out of the Carousel and was worried that he had destroyed the front end. It took us several minutes to find the damage; a small dent in the left front corner of the hood and fender.
After Mark, John and Travis had finished their driving stints, Tim decided to let Peter Merkle (a.k.a. Stiggy) have a few laps since the old guy would be happy with an hour or so behind the wheel. Stiggy drove it so hard that the brakes finally gave out. The pads wore completely out and fluid was leaking past the caliper piston. When he handed the car over to Tim for the final 40 minutes, there was very little brake pedal feel and it went quickly to the floor. Wink went off a couple of times because there was no fluid left. He came in to have it topped off with about 20 minutes remaining, and ran the last portion of the race slowly, using the transmission to slow the car.

But we did see the checkered flag. We were classified in 48th place out of 60 on Saturday, and 35th out of 53 on Sunday. Not quite the weekend we had hoped for, but everyone got track time. There were two 1st time drivers and one 2nd time driver on the team and all had a good time despite the adversity.

The #92 Saab is for sale as Tim has a different race car project to work on. Lots of spares, pretty easy car to work on, room for lots more HP.