Along with the hospitality, Team Cobalt California brought out their crew of spotters. Spotting is by far the toughest job of the event. A short tower on a hill offers a view of almost the entire course. But for Jeff Lepper, Carl Young and Jay Chapman, it provided zero protection from the night air, which was in the high 20s.
Finally, there were the drivers. These would normally be introduced first, but within PDQ we were more like the team lemmings. With every other aspect of the race ironed out and optimized, we were the only remaining variables that could screw things up. Still, we weren't exempt from the thoroughly structured game plan.
Before any of us got in the car, we convened to discuss our shift points on both the tach and the track. Through extensive testing, Quan and car builder/lead driver Roger Foo devised a plan on how we would drive. Things like fuel consumption, tire wear and drivetrain longevity were all considered. Shifting limits were designed to not only reduce wear, but also to keep anyone from driving too hard. Having a little extra traction when hitting mud or avoiding spinning cars is well worth a couple of seconds a lap. It would help preserve the car to the checkered flag, or until the call was made to drop the hammer. At that point, any of the team drivers were more than qualified to lay it down.
I've enjoyed competing against Foo and Tom Lepper in other events and was looking forward to co-driving with them. Just like Christian Miller, they all have experience in the World Challenge Touring Car and Grand Am Cup series. Jeff Kaiser and Mike Davirro were new faces for me, but the data downloads after practice showed them to be competent.
We took it pretty easy on the car during the practice session. Nobody wanted to break it before the start of the race and we generally wanted to keep everything as fresh as possible. Being the only driver who hadn't tested in the car yet, I took a few more laps than the others-maybe a dozen or so in total.
The car felt really similar to the Civic Si I campaigned in '06. It was an EX model the team raced the year before in the E2 class. In the off-season, they swapped in Si hardware, thereby qualifying for the faster E0 class. To avoid electrical gremlins, the wiring harness and even the gauge cluster were switched over. The Moton suspension was dialed in with a bit of understeer and the ABS remained enabled. On a clean track, these would slow you down, but it made sense for the onslaught of mud we were preparing to face.
The entire team assembled in the compound early on race day. We each put on our red crew shirt and made the long walk to our grid position on the front straight. In a display of unity, we lined up in rows next to the car as the national anthem played. It might sound silly and NASCAR-ish, but in the moments before the race, it felt good to stand there with my teammates.
Lepper took the green flag at 11 a.m. I hopped in for an uneventful daylight stint a few hours later. A couple of teams in our class were running slightly faster, but my crew looked confident. 'Let the race come to us' was the mantra.
A little after 8 p.m., I headed out into the dark. This was when I learned to appreciate having someone on the radio. A few years earlier, I had a traumatic experience on the same track, in that same blackness. The owner of the car I was driving reached behind my head and cranked up the volume on my radio just before I drove away.
It was eye-wateringly loud.
He then argued with the crew over what toppings to get on a pizza. Keep in mind that radio earphones are inserted deep inside the ear canal, then secured by spongy foam, a hood sock and a helmet. It took a few moments to realize that flailing at the wires behind my head would make the pain stop. I hadn't used radio communications since. I don't even have Bluetooth for my cell phone. But this was an entirely different experience.