It is very likely that the weather will be chilly to say the least.

We welcome a new driver to the Dogs as Tom has decided to act like a grown-up and buy a home.  Our congratulations to Tom and his lovely wife.  And we promise not to call him a wussie for skipping out on this race. I think he is just avoiding the cold weather, what a ……… whoops, never mind.

Our new driver and favorite Metro Jethro, Cline is ready to go and the team is in the process of repairing the failed head gasket that sank us in September.

Our intrepid Crew Chief Sean is poised to have Dieter in top form.  The car is headed to G-Vegas this weekend for repair at Walter’s house.

“You bought a Saturn” ….. sorry Les, it is still funny 6 months later.

Sean, with assisstance from all of us removed the head from Dieter and I went searching the pits for a head gasket.  Found Bob Sheilds who said he would bring us one in the morning.  We were on our way.

Well thanks to Mrs. Robinson and the lovely night air, we didn’t get to the track until about 8:30 AM and no one seemed to have as much fire for the rebuild as they’d exhibited the night before.

We, and i use that term lightly, worked to revive Dieter.  I think by the time we got the car running again, Kendt was spitting blood.  It’s good to have an obsession, makes for good racing i believe.

Of course Kendt had the good sense to go to bed at a decent hour the night before. 

Finally with about 30 minutes left in the race Dieter fired up.  Quite rough but running.  Kendt jumped in and we managed to take the checkers in 90th place.

Since we haven’t updated the site in awhile i will take a crack at getting current.

The Fall 09 event at CMP saw the Dogs as a leaner, meaner group.  The roster is now Tom, Walter, Kendt and myself Steve.  we also welcomed Sean as our new Crew Cheif.

Dieter got a new Rustoleum paint job and molted into a Dalmation.  His spots being the infamous “Noch Einer Sheiss E30″ stencil so fluently applied by the High Court of BS Judges.

We really didn’t do much more than bleed the brakes and adjust the belts to get ready for the race.  In hindsight, maybe we should have done more.

BS Judging went suprisingly well with only a 5 lap penalty assigned to us.  I think Jay knew of what was to eventually transpire.

The race started well, with Kendt as the lead-off driver.  But then the Curse as we shall call it from here on out struck.  Race Control had determined our transponder was not working properly and we came in to attempt a fix.  After what seemed like an eternity we got back out on track some 30 laps down.  Kendt pushed on before yielding the seat to Tom at the 2 hour mark. 

Tom’s stint was a fast and uneventful 2 hours.  Walter prepared to jump in when Tom’s stint ended.  Back to the garages for driver change and Tom cuts the car off.  Well we got it started again 45 minutes later.  Yeah, The Curse again.  How else do you explain the Cam Position Sensor just dropping out of the transmission housing?

Walter went out and burned up the laps until the eventual race winner got a little close to Walter’s bumper and we got black-flagged.

Mandatory driver change means I’m up.  Get dressed and jump in the car.  There musta been some “Mist” on the track, because I sorta kinda hit a car in Turn 11. 

Black flag, spin The Wheel of Penalty, The Bob Ross Penalty is awarded.  So i don the afro wig and Tom, Kendt and I proceed to paint happy little trees on Dieter’s hood.

After the fun ends they cut us loose to return to the race.  Kendt jumps back in the car only to have the head gasket let go after 10 laps or so.  If you have been following along ……….. The Curse.

It is now about 5:30 and the plan is hatched.  Tear it down and install the head from the 300k mile back-up motor.  Sean dives into the motor, I dive in to the cooler for an adult beverage.

The changes:

The formation of team MagnumPU – http://www.magnumpu.com

Team member Vincent Keene and crew member Chris Brown branched off and formed a new team with long time Dorifto Dogs friends Ryan Holton and Stephen Westerfield.  They are currently prepping a new race car, and you can see the details of their handywork on their website.

Team Captain Bernie Baake is also forming his own new team.  I don’t know as much detail about Bernie’s new venture, but you can rest assured that the car will be very well prepared and the team ready to compete at a high level.

The Dorifto Dogs wish both new teams the best of luck, and we look forward to racing with you.

This takes our team down to the minimum – 4 members.  Walter Houston, Steve Remchak,  Kendt Eklund,  and myself (Tom Freeman).   Since I’m geographically seperated from the rest of the team and the car, that relegates me to more of the logistical and clerical work, so I’ve re-asssumed the Team Captain position so I can add the most value.

Our team focus for the fall race is a little different than the spring race.  While we weren’t expecting an overall win at the spring race, we were expecting a top 10 finish.  We had planned for long driver stints and had planned and practiced (somewhat) our refueling strategy.  The race was fun, but as the event ground down to the last few hours, it was a nail biting experience for all of us.   For the fall, we’re shooting for a respectable finish, but focusing more on fun, clean racing and plenty of seat time for all members.  I’m sure we’ll get some kind of ceremonial lap penalty simply because we won the spring event, but that’s fine with me.  We’re going to have more fun at this race.

We’re fortunate that the car is pretty sound after 2 races, but as with any race car, it always requires a little maintenance to stay in top form.  I’ll be sending the “appraisal” request to the race organizers very soon to see if we can get a little operating budget to fix the small, pending issues.

Yes, we won.  We’re downright blissful.  I’ll post some more meaningful content soon.

I’ve handed off the team captain duties to Bernie this year, as he’s storing and caring for the car these days.  We’ve strengthened the cage a bit, and Bernie and Vincent fabricated some strut tower/shock tower braces to stiffen the car up a bit.  Bernie even ran the car for a few laps at VIR to make sure that the ignition miss was fixed.

Our approach this year is quite a bit different.  We’re certainly in it to have fun, but we know we have a car that is capable of a high finish, and driving talent that can get us there.  LeMons isn’t about blazing speed.  It’s an enduro – an endurance race.  Quiet, consistently quick laps will put you in a strong position.

What we learned last year is that when we were on track, we were quick, and usually were faster than most of the other cars on track.  Our finishing position, while not terrible, did not really live up to how quick the car was.  In the context of last years’s LeMons South race, we had a car capable of a top 10 overall finish, but we finished in the high twenties.

What did we do wrong?

First, we did too many driver changes.  Our intention was to get seat time for all 6 team members each day.  Since each driver change took 5 minutes minimum, that added up to a lot of time off track.

Second, we had way too many penalties.  Spins, contact, etc put us on the sidelines for hours, serving out penalty time.  Some of them were unavoidable, but some were cause by poor judgement and inexperience.

I’ll talk about our new strategy in a later post.  Suffice it to say, we’re really looking forward to getting back out there and dicing it up with a bunch of other crummy cars.

Being one of the fortunate teams, our car was still in pretty darn good shape after the end of the July LeMons event at CMP.  We had a little bit of body damage, a slight miss, and an angry power steering pump.  In all, not bad considering the abuse ladled on the car.  Bernie has started assessing what we need to get the car race-ready again and will spearhead the effort for DoriftoDogs 2.0.

We’re hoping to make 2 LeMons events this year, and maybe more depending on the schedule and locations.  We’re a sure bet to make at least 1 event at CMP in 2009, and a second event if they decide to run it.

Also on the horizon may be a 2nd DoriftoDogs team.  There have been quite a few people that have expressed interest in a 2nd team, and a couple of potential cars have even been discussed.  We’ll see where all of this goes.

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.

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