I’ve been recuperating and thinking about what I’d post on our blog in retrospect of the event.  There’s so much to cover I’m not sure where to start.

Here’s a quick recap of Day #2…we started on thin ice.  Due to our penalties on Saturday, Jay Lamm (the organizer, judge and jury for all infractions) told us that he could sit us down for the rest of the event since we had 4 strikes against us.  Thankfully, he chose to give us 1 more chance – we could run on Sunday if we had no more incidents.  As a team, we talked about it and agreed that we’d approach Sunday with a focus to stay out of trouble.  Steve started the day on Sunday with a very quick, efficient, and clean session.  Vincent backed up Steve with an aggressive session, but still very clean.  Bernie continued the pattern. Walter and I were a little off the pace of the first 3 drivers, but we kept our noses clean and defended our position in the standings.  Kendt finished out the event in strong fashion.  We finished 27th out of 78 cars, and that includes a 10 lap penalty and about 2 hours of time served for infractions.  I believe that if we had kept our noses clean on Saturday, we had a legitimate chance at a top 10 finish.  Dieter was one of the quicker cars on track, and certainly provided us with a good platform. You know what they say about hindsight…

The goal from the beginning was to build a car that would actually finish the event, and we proudly succeeded.  If you asked me on Friday if we would finish, I would have told you it would be very unlikely, so I’m thrilled we did as well as we did.  We learned a ton, met some great people, and had a blast.  It was one of those “time of your life” events, no question.

Since Dieter made it through the event quite well, it’s likely that he’ll see another LeMons event in ‘09.  I know Walter and Bernie are 100% committed to getting the car to another event.   There has been tons of talk on several car forums I frequent about the event, and I guarantee there will be quite a few more teams vying for a spot at a CMP LeMons event in 2009.  I hope to be back in Dieter 2.0 myself.

You know…life sometimes gets in the way of this whole racing thing.  Team member Mark Cooper and I had a conversation on 7/1, and Mark has decided to give up his spot as a DoriftoDog driver.  Mark’s business (Performance Chassis, Tires and Wheels) has him busier than a 1-legged man in a butt kicking contest.  Mark has stayed on as a team sponsor, and will be helping us with tires, and donating a much needed alignment to Dieter.  Team DoriftoDogs is bummed to lose a team member, but we’re glad to retain a sponsor.

Fortunately for us, we have a new team member who’s been looking for team to join.  We welcome Bernie Baake (that’s pronounced “Bah kah” for those at home) to the team.

Bernie is our elder statesman and we’re happy to have him on board.  Bernie retired after spending 33 years as a Marine Corps civilian advisor on aircraft weapons systems.  He’s always owned sports cars-  MGs, Triumphs, a Sunbeam tiger, and a few American muscle cars.  He started driving in autocross and HPDE in 2004, when he was diagnosed with stage 3c colon cancer with lymphatic involvement.  Bernie is a survivor.

Bernie has done about 24 HPDE’s and a bunch of autocrossing in the past four years.  He currently owns a 2004 Corvette that’s louder than Walters Camaro (no small feat), a 1986 C4 Corvette track car, a 1990 Miata, a 2005 Mini and a small fleet of other tow and utility vehicles.

Bernie also brings a new sponsor to the team – Pets Companion Inn – a business that he runs with his wife Gwen (also an avid autocrosser in the family MINI).  Pets Companion Inn, just north of Durham, NC provides high quality pet boarding.  Check out their website or give them a call at 919-477-0618.

Glad to have you aboard!

With the great progress we made the other weekend, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel – we’re almost ready for the event.  Kendt has been trying like mad to get a status on our “you-weld-it” cage, as that’s our last major hurdle.   He finally got a status today that the cage it ready and will be shipped ASAP.  Whew.

I know a few of the guys will be working  on the car this upcoming weekend, as well as the weekend of July 4th.   We hope to have all the mechanical stuff and 99% of the cosmetic stuff taken care of before our public debut of the car at the 7/19 Tarheel Sports Car Club Autocross at the old Sanford Airport.  We’ll be begging for more sponsorship and seeing how well the car runs that weekend.  It should be a decent test, but no where near the beating the car will take a CMP a week later.

Last weekend, Tarheel ran an event at CMP, and the feedback on the changes and improvements to the track is very encouraging.  There seems to be a common theme that the track now has more of a flow to it, but it’s just as hard on brakes as before, if not harder.  Since we’ll be running a subset of the course, I know our speeds will be way down, and hopefully that will be to our advantage.

Stick with us readers.  It’s going to be interesting.

The deadline for all the LeMons fees is this upcoming Friday (6/6), but I sent it in a couple of days early just to make sure that the PayPal transaction had no issues. With 6 drivers and 1 crewmember, LeMons isn’t exactly cheap, but when you back away and look at it, you do get a lot of value. Our event at CMP will be roughly 14 hours of racing, with 7 on Saturday and 7 more on Sunday. Assuming that our car survives to the end, that’s still a lot of seat time for each driver.

There is also the intangible value of doing something this novel. When I explain the premise to folks who aren’t familiar with it, you get 2 basic reactions – “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of” or “That is SOOOOO cool. I wish I could do that.” The LeMons events get a lot of press, as people just love to watch a trainwreck. I’m sure we’ll see a motley assortment of automotive chaos, lots of rattle can paint jobs, and just general silliness at every corner. Being that part of our dog gimmick will require me to wear a dog collar around my neck when not in the car, I’ll be doing my part.
As of 6/4, we added a new sponsor to team Doriftodogs – KNS Brakes. Ken at KNS is supplying Hawk HT-10 pads, new rotors, and ATE fluid for our car. CMP is a notorious brake killer, so we asked James Clay at Bimmerworld for a suggestion of what we’d need to make it through the weekend. We’re doubling up on front rotors and pads per his recommendation.

We have a LeMons car!!! I drove the car 20 miles back to the office and it’s astounding how good this POS drives. It sounds good, the steering is still pretty tight, it has a flat torque band for sure. It cruises at 75 happily.  The temp gauge reads a little high, but still in the normal range. I figure a coolant flush would take care of that.

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