OLoA Update - Tuesday May 4th

LONG night

We left Tulsa last night after a frustrating evening on the drag strip at Tulsa Raceway Park.  The OPTIMA Batteries OneLapCamaro was having idle issues most of the day yesterday and the bit us - hard - in the evening.

The drag strip portion of ther race was divided in two parts - a low ET challenge and a bracket race.  James was driving both and had a tough pass when he was running for low ET.  First and foremost we wanted to be easy on the car and not stress the drivertrain any more than necessary.  When James left the line on his first pass the OLC bogged - to the point of stalling - before making a tire smoking run of 16 (!) seconds - not good.  This threw away the power advantage that the car had left us with no idea what to dial for the first run of the bracket event.  I'll spare you the details but James made it three round with a best ET of 12.3 hazing the tires through third.  We left the event at 8:30ish - maintaining our 1st in class position - and that is where the good news ends.

We got about three blocks from the track when the car backfired and shuddered as we came to a stop before entering the highway.  No immediate issues were apparent and we tried to move on - caravaning with the Ferrari, Corvette, and Charger of Mr. Angry's crew.  We got about 3 miles before it came apparent that we had a charging system problem.  A problem that forced us off the road just outside Tulsa.
We pulled off and found an O'Reilys auto parts and tried to swap out alternators which didn't resolve our problem.  As night took over we wound up in the driveway of the O'Reilly's manager where we continued to work on the charging issue.  Finally - at around 1:30 - we thought we had everything sorted out and hit the road.  To no avail.  As soon as we got down the street the problem was back...  Turn around and stop at a well lit gas station on the edge of town...  After a half hour of poking a prodding we found the issue and were ready to head out... On a 400 mile trek to St. Louis. 

Which we made!  We rolled in to the track at 830 am - just in time for the day to start.

James ran the Roval - a half oval half half road course - this morning and finished 1st in class but lower overall than he had hoped.  This keeps us in 1st place in Vintage American with a scant 10 point lead.  We're back on the track in an hour and then off to the Mid Ohio Sports Car Course...