LeMans Karting Sponsors Andy Chittum and
his BMW in the US Touring
Car Championships at the inaugural San Jose Grand
Prix.
LeMans
Karting supports road racing as an extension of the indoor kart racing that
takes place at the LeMans track in Fremont.
LeMans was proud to sponsor Andy Chittum for the first ever San Jose Grand
Prix. Andy has been racing for years and
has competed as part of the Checkered Flag Racing Association. In addition, he has done kart racing and has
taken part in national-level autocross events, with this season as his first
year competing professionally in wheel-to-wheel racing. Andy plans to run a full west-coast season of
USTCC racing in 2006. A San Jose native, he states “I wanted to do
the SJGP because it was my downtown hometown race in the style of Monaco or another old world setting”. Here are the highlights of his exciting,
first-hand account of racing at the San Jose Grand Prix.
Qualifying: Friday
We were
scheduled to start our first practice session at 7:45, but after getting all the gear on
and checking radios, we were told our morning session was cancelled. Coming
on to the track this morning it looked like they'd washed it down, so I was
personally fine with not rushing right out on wet city pavement. Suddenly around noon, we got a 10 minute call to be on
the track.
We were
waved directly onto the track. And what a track it is. Imagine doing a relatively wide autocross
inside of K-wall with about 30 of your closest friends at once. Yikes.
The
course heads down Almaden Rd for about 100yds then does a tight
chicane at San Carlos. I think my closest competitors were flat-footing it
through this, but I was still lifting a little - note the course crosses the
light-rail tracks at this point as well, so not just a chicane but a nice
launch as well. A few more blocks down the other side of Almaden Rd brings you to the fastest section of
the course....and a tight second gear hairpin. When I say tight, I mean that in
my car which is decent at tight turns with a 4.44 rear end is still banging
into second down from fifth and nearly 95 mph. The faster cars were seeing way
upwards of 120mph at this point.
The 4-5-6
combo is just about a car and a half width, leading to the back straight,
followed by a tight section, to sweepy section (by the park), then long fast
section down Market Street. Awesome! You'd
think the early settlers of San Jose laid out the center of town
especially for sports car racing.
The last
two turns down the short tree-lined Balbach Street are relatively drama-free, except
that the turn back onto Almaden Rd. must be nearly 110 degrees.
The first
few laps of this creation rated high on the pucker-meter and my first
full-speed run into T3 found me sliding past the apex by about 40 feet. Oops!
Slightly more respect for the tight hairpin on cold tires and oil and dirt.
My Friday
evening qualifying session put me about 28th. Not bad considering it was my first time on
the track and the car had a lot less pony power than most of the other
competitors.
Friday Night: Making the car more
competitive...After a few beers….
Friday
night after qualifying, the team could see this ‘all power & brakes’ course
didn't suit the car. The conversation
started while sitting around the trailer...after the second beer run:
Me:
"Yeap, they're just getting away from me on those long straights."
Crew
Chief: (Finishes Beer) "What else can we take out?"
Crew
Member 1: "You still have the cat, right?"
Me:
"Uh, yeah."
Mechanic:
"I think the guys next to us have a cutter and welder..."
Crew
Member 2: "Your car is too quiet anyway!"
Me:
"uh..."
Crew
Chief: (Finishes Beer) "And, we don't need to be able to stand up to lay
under the car!"
Needless
to say I was able to institute a 'no working on the car after beer' rule,
however, by the time I was ready to race the next evening I had a box with the
following:
An M42 Air
Conditioner system
A 2.5l
windshield wiper fluid tank, rear wiper motor and wiper
A pile of
catalytic converter stuffing
An air
filter
There may
be other things missing, but they haven't admitted to anything yet. Don’t look under the race trailer…
Qualifying: Saturday
The
Saturday morning session I moved up a place - several cars were within a few
tenths of us at the rear of the field, moving ahead of the Bergman Companies'
Mini Cooper S. The start looked to be
pretty busy with the 1-2 bend. This
meant flat on the gas all the way down Almaden from Balblach, hitting 5th
gear just before the railroad tracks, and upwards of 105mph (130 for those with
power!) before the 30mph hairpin.
The
qualifying went smoothly until one big wreck in T3 at the end of Almaden Rd. A Civic lost his brakes on the
straightaway and T-boned an Integra that was making the turn, hitting hard
enough that his brake pedal was bent in half.
Both that corner and T8 collected their fair share of cars both days.
The Race: Saturday afternoon
The
flagger held the green in the air for about 5 seconds, dropped it, and we were
off!
I got a
great launch and immediately pulled ahead of the Mazda 6, and started to look
at passing an Integra right ahead of me. As I got closer to him, several things
happened at once. Immediately in front
of me cars started bunching up. There
was a ton of smoke and car parts and debris began flying in the air. The Mazda
6 came rocketing by, and just behind him a Focus piled into the outside of the
bend they call T2. We went to
full-course yellow pretty quickly - the Focus was dead on the front
straightaway.
For the
rolling restart we weren't allowed to pass until we'd passed the green
flag. I slowed the cars up behind me on Balblach Street then I punched it through T11 to
keep them off of me as much as possible. Within a lap, an Integra caught me toward the
end of the front straight, and divebombed past me going heavy on his brakes in
T3. "Man!" I thought to myself, "This guy just schooled me on
the brakes!"
However, it
was not over yet… he locked a few wheels up and slid wide on T3. I got back inside in the classic pass-re-pass
situation, but he recovered very quickly and it left both of us side by side in
second gear on the short section between T3 and T4. We were neck and neck as we accelerated out of
the turn, but once things picked up he
powered away and left me behind on the front straight. Damn, I could really use a few more horses.
This left
me with the Bergman Mini right behind me, obviously very eager to show me his
higher straightaway speeds as well. We battled for several laps; each of us
having advantages in different areas of the track, but I was able to keep him
back 5 - 10 lengths most of the time. If he'd been able to present the car and
make me compromise even a single apex, his better power would have me right
then and there.
Things
got more exciting when the leaders began lapping us, with temporary advantages
for the each of us as Dale in the MPACT 328 came bombing by as well as the
others.
A few
laps from the end, though, I checked my mirror between 4 and 5 to see the Mini
behind a sideways 325 - they fell behind after that and with no chance to catch
the people ahead, it was a few laps smooth sailing to the end.
We ended
up finishing 21st of 33 entrants, a great effort considering the 318
was no less that 45hp down on the nearest competitor, and the tight technical
track’s walls took out several cars that merely put a wheel out of place. We hope to race with USTCC again in October
at SearsPoint where the power advantage will be
minimized, and we have more power planned for next year. The light 318ti body with I6 BMW midrange
torque should be a great combination for the future, hopefully all the west
coast USTCC events in 2006, as well as trying out some BMWCCA Club Racing, GTS
Challenge, and, of course racing with my old friends at CFRA where I got it all
started.
Thanks
to:
Ralph S,
Jim K, Mickey H, Bruce S, and Eric S, as well as the crew of the Minituner.com,
5Zigen Mini that loaned us something that Ralph took under the car and made a
lot of sparks with.
Also, thanks to David K. for loaning us the trailer.
Also
donating stuff to the effort:
Lemans Karting in Fremont
Schieble-Rassieur SOX Automation
Omni Fab
of Santa
Clara
T&D
Performance in Campbell
Motorspeed
West in Santa Clara
Pizza My
Heart in San Jose
Yak
Graphics in San Jose
