Tunachuckers Can-O'-Blog

Continuing the update of the race weekend, March 3-4, 2012, at Carolina Motorsports Park...

Sunday morning started out much better than Saturday morning.  The skies were clearing, the track was, for the most part, dry, and the car was running better, thanks to some late night carburetor fiddling tuning and a paddock cruise that set a new record of 51 people on the LTD.

You see, once you set a precedent, these things have a tendency of taking on a life of their own...

It being sometime around 11 o'clock at night, the photographic evidence is a little blurry and camera-phone esque.  Of course, this justs adds to the authenticity of it.  Here's my personal favorite picture, illustating the effects of piling 8,000 pounds worth of people onto a 1975 Ford:

Yes, these late night cruises wreak havok on the exhaust system.  But a few pieces of spare pipe and a couple of new clamps and she was ready to go again on Sunday morning!  Here's the only video I could find yet of Saturday night's record.  It's not Youtube, so I couldn't quite figure out how to embed it; just click the link:

http://s40.photobucket.com/albums/e247/jordidunn/?action=view&current=VIDEO0026.mp4

For some reason, the LTD Landau always seems faster after the great human anthill events.  Such was the case after the first GHA at Charlotte, and Sunday morning at CMP this March was much the same.  I was the first driver out on Sunday morning, and I was doing a pretty fair job of mixing it up with the smaller, nimbler (and, in the straightways, slower) cars.  I managed to hold my co-workers' Subaru wagon at bay for 5 or 6 laps, and was successfully pacing a Toyota Celica for several more laps.

Then, about 40 minutes into my stint, I was coming off the carousel portion and got wedged to the outside.  A BMW (powered by a Mopar Slant Six) got inside of me and I tried to give room.  Unfortunately, the LTD is wide (understatement) and I didn't quite have enough room to give.  The left two wheels of the Landau took an off-pavement route, causing the back end to begin fishtailing.  At about 80 miles per hour, things start happening really quickly.  Luckily I managed to avoid contact with any of the cars around me (and they managed to avoid hitting me) and with as much grace as possible I steered the land barge off the race track onto the shoulder.  The engine had stalled, and would not restart (we'd had battery issues all weekend) so there was nothing to do but wait for the tow truck.

10 minutes on the side of the track waiting for a wrecker feels like an eternity.  But, eventually the truck came around and got me and the car back to the pits safely.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to find any in-car footage from one of the drivers who would have been directly behind and witnessed the spin (which, let's be honest, must have been spectacular!), but about 2 minutes into this video, you can see the flatbed and the LTD on the right side of the track:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA8JxVY629A

Here's a screenshot of that segment:

It's hard to hurt a malaise-era Ford, and a little rally-cross action certainly didn't.  Back at the pits, we swapped drivers, laughed at the mud and grass now attached to the car, and resumed our dominance of the course's straightways!