March 7th through the 9th NASA / CRA
March 12, 2008
This was the biggest grassroot event for Club Racing Arizona and NASA Arizona.
It all started Friday with the NASA Comp School and a Test and Tune on Friday. Terry and Ryan Denton, of TeamSRD, were in Comp School so they could start racing their cars in the NASA Pro Series.Â
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I ran the Test and Tune A and B group to get used to using my new Hans device. I was starting to feel comfortable after the second session, which was a good thing, because Ryan broke his short shifter in the first set of drills in the afternoon. In order for Ryan to finish school I loaned him my car to complete the day. God owns all of my possesions, I am just the steward of them on this earth, so I decided to let Ryan enjoy my car. Chet worked on getting Ryan a new short shifter, so we could install it first thing Saturday morning before practice started. In the final drills, which were mock starts and a race, Ryan spun the car and came inches from hitting the wall, Praise God for allowing us to still have the car after the incident. I checked the car over when Ryan came into the hot pits and sent him back out to finish the drills. Overall, the day was crazy, but successful.
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Saturday was awesome, we had Josh and Matt from Rebel with us and Gary Young brought a couple of his Men’s group to the race. Jared from ASU Campus Ministries also came out for a short while. It was awesome praying huddle style in front of the car before the practice sessions and before the race together, the power of prayer is incredible. Steve Lisa was also in the Big Bore run group running his new Panoz, it is so great to see him in the car, he definitely can drive the snot out of anything he climbs in.  Due to his aggressive nature in the car, Steve spun his car in turn 8 during the NASA Big Bore race and went parallel to the wall at 100mph backwards, he was praising Jesus for the little damage he came out with. After the inspection of the car, he had only ruined two BBS wheels, but had not damaged any body work and he wasn’t injured at all, God was so faithful. Rewind,  Saturday actually started early with me under Ryan’s car changing his short shifter, with the help of Chet and Joe, we knocked it out in less than an hour. We had a mixed day of practice, after my second practice run, I noticed I had braking issues and a major vibration in the wheel. When we went to bleed the brakes, Jeremy noticed my passenger front wheel bearing was shot. We found a wheel bearing at Avondale Nissan so Chet and Joe went and picked it up during qualifying. I ran four laps with the bad wheel bearing and had one of the scariest rides of my life, but we qualified 11th instead of dead last (38 cars). After qualifying we got the wheel bearing and Matt Peters from Rebel started putting it on. I had to go to the driver’s meeting, and to my surprise, the car was still on jack stands when I got back to the garage. Matt was having problems getting the caliper back on. Jeremy suggested WD-40 and it worked like a charm. We got the car ready just in time to pray and get to grid. The race was awesome, I was hard charging the entire time, I passed 5 cars during the duration of the race and finished 4th in PTB and 6th overall. I was pleased with the effort considering how the day went. Ryan Denton was also in my race, but had problems early and had to pull out and due to the nature of his problems, they would not let him back out on the track. Terry ran his Corvette in the Big Bore Race for the first time and did awesome, he had a clean race and seemed very comfortable with all of the cars out there. If you check out the photo section, you can view all of the pictures for the weekend.
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We had the 2007 awards that evening and I received 2nd place overall in 2007 in PTB. Praise God for the great finishes we had early in the Fall season. It was a great placing considering we only ran half of the season.
Sunday morning we got there early to rotate the tires and clean up the car. I still had braking problems, so we were prepared to bleed the brakes. When we took the wheels off to rotate the tires, I noticed why we were having braking issues, the rear driver outside brake pad had been improperly installed and was laying against the center hub – not good! Praise God nothing had happen catastophic, we had been running that way since the January 26th event! Miraculously, the pad had even wear and the rotor didn’t seem to be damaged. Joe took off the caliper and reinstalled the brake pad. I wore the pad in with the e-brake and the car seemed to be near perfect again, no vibration and GREAT braking power! We only had one practice session and I worked on my new, deeper, braking points. I knew we were going to be fast, but we had some serious competition in town and my work would be cut out for me. I qualified 3rd and the race was a slug fest. I ran with the leaders for the first four laps, but I overdrove the car and my tires got greasy. I eventually got passed by Paul Bloomberg and Phil Eglin, so I finished 5th overall and 4th in PTB. Almost the exact placing as Saturday, but the two days of racing were so different.
TeamSRD had a great weekend and I want to thank Chet Mann for all of the support he gave me at the track and I want to also thank Joe Baugh for doing a awesome job as crew chief and spotting me during all of the practice sessions, qualifying runs and races. We won’t be at the April 5th race, but we will back out in May. Until then, pray hard and be bold in Jesus!
Above – Steve Lisa in his new Panoz sporting the NBoundZ logo near the front wheel well.
