T minus 18 days...

That’s right, in less than three weeks we’ll be running around Carolina Motorsports Park. We’ve made arrangements for one of the covered garage spaces for the event. If it’s sunny, we’ll have shade. If it’s raining, we’ll be dry. If it’s neither of these, it will be a bloody miracle. The car is receiving final preparations. Everyone has gotten a little seat time at our private test track, Paulding International Raceway, also known as a temporarily abandoned sub-division around the corner from The Wrench’s house. It’s big enough to shake out the bugs, or at least that’s what we’re counting on. No major surprises so far. The car runs well, better than we expected back in January. We did find a small problem with fuel delivery, but a $5 restriction valve in the return line boosted the fuel pressure to the carbs to give us consistent performance. We’ll be installing our own version of a driver cooling system this week (a little back yard engineering utilizing a cooler, bilge pump, and some tubing). It’s not fancy, but it was cheap enough and it’ll be better than nothing. This system combined with camel packs and short driving stints should get us through. As we get close to the actual event, we pause to review our objectives. 1) Build a car and get accepted – DONE. 2) Have the car last long enough for everyone to get the opportunity to drive. 3) Not lose any fingers or toes (notice the priorities here – hair and skin have already been sacrificed to the garage gods, but that is another story, or two) 4) Avoid any photographic or videographic evidence of embarrassing or incriminating behavior. 5) Have enough stories (embellished or not) to share with our friends, families, acquaintances, and slow-moving strangers until their ears bleed. It's a challenging set of goals. Most teams have one goal - win. We have 5!! This means we're 5 times as ambitious as they are. And we may just be crazy enough to pull it off!