Friday, December 5, 2003 - 8:00 AMThe TE5A Civic received one last inspection. Each driver did fifteen or twenty minute sessions on the track. After each session, the tire air pressures and temperatures were recorded. Inspection of the tire data revealed that the car had too much static negative camber in the left front tire. Excessive negative camber tends to wear out the inside edge of the tire. The negative camber was adjusted.
Friday, 5:30 PM: Race QualifyingQualifying for the enduro was a thirty-minute session that was used to determine the grid positions for the race. Andy Hope was chosen to qualify our car. Our Civic was noticeably down on power compared with some of the other cars in our class. The BMW 328s, which are also in our class, were reportedly putting out over 250 hp to the wheels, while our Civic puts out only about 170 hp. That aside, we still managed to post a very good time of 2:08.9 to qualify third in the class.
Saturday, 11:00 AMJust before the race started, 30-mph wind gusts and moderate rain began to dampen the track. Higashi started the race for the TE5A team.The Civic was slotted in about 23rd place overall and fourth in the class. Higashi stayed in the car for over 3-1/2 hours without incident and then Okihisa replaced him as the driver. He made contact with a lapped car, which caused minor front-end damage. Ellsworth replaced Okihisa on the next pit, while duct tape was applied to the front-end damage. We were told to bring the car into the pits to serve a five-minute time penalty because while fueling up some gas overflowed onto the ground. At this point, we were falling back on our laps. Soon after the gas incident, Ellsworth radioed in that the headlights weren't working. He brought the Civic into the pits where it was determined that the alternator belt was missing. At the next pit stop, I replaced Ellsworth in the driver's seat. We were still fourth in the class when I took over.
Saturday, 7:30 pmI was in the car for 45 minutes when disaster struck. I was on the inside dry line, passing some slower cars that were on the outside going into turn ten. Suddenly, one of the fast and impatient Porsche GT3 drivers rear-ended me so hard that my car was launched into an unsuspecting Integra. The Civic seemed fine at first, but within two laps my transmission wouldn't shift into any gear but third or fifth and I started to smell exhaust fumes. Since there was a full course yellow flag at this time, I couldn't enter the pits for repairs without receiving a time penalty. I radioed my pits and informed them that I had a bad headache and was becoming very lightheaded. A pit official determined we had a medical emergency. We were allowed to break the rules and pass all the cars including the pace car so that I could get out of the car before losing consciousness.
Saturday, 8:45 pmAndy Hope was next in the car. He immediately radioed in that the transmission only had third and fifth gears. We looked on the real time AMB race report and noticed that he was running fast and consistent 2:25 lap times. After about thirty minutes in the car, Hope reported that the transmission was making loud metal-to-metal noises and within fifteen minutes the tranny locked up. Our race was finished, or so we thought. Someone on our pit crew said, "Hey, let's remove the trans and see if someone else in the pits would sell us theirs." As it turns out, there was a team with an Integra GS-R transmission that we could use, unfortunately, the team that owned it wouldn't sell it to us. After thirty minutes of searching throughout the paddock, Hope ran into an old friend in the pits that knew someone in San Francisco that had an Integra Type-R tranny. Andy didn't think twice and drove 190 miles to San Fran to pick it up. Our crew guys swapped out the expired transmission with the newly-acquired unit. The new trans worked fine and Hope was back on the track. We lost a total of six hours with the transmission exchange, but it was worth it since we had our hearts set on finishing this race.