n.
A stupid or foolish person; a dolt.
We entered the ChumpCar race at Pueblo Motorsports Park and were hit with quite a surprise during tech, being told we were being penalized 20 laps for our suspension. The big doofus tech guy from Portland and the shrimpy guy seemed convinced we had a Spec Miata suspension on the car, which is complete and utter bullshit. The coilovers came from a circle track swapmeet and were adapted to fit the shocks, while the swaybars were from a stock Miata, with two on the front welded together. A junkyard suspension if there ever was one, and barely worth more than the cost if we sold it for scrap metal. No one but a numbskull or ignorant sucker would place any true "value" on these parts, so what does that say about the ChumpCar officials?
After spending time pleading our case to the only official who wasn't a complete dolt, Lloyd, we managed to get the penalty dropped to 10 laps. That's about 20 minutes at Pueblo, and over the course of a 7 hour enduro that's huge. What made it worse was that we didn't account for the bonus laps that other teams received for the themes, with the result that we were actually starting the race with a 14 lap deficit versus the other fast team. If they wanted to ensure that we'd drive 10/10ths for the entire race, they managed to do so. We're real racers, not just a bunch of clowns out to party, and we were determined to win.
On the first race on Saturday we took off like a bat out of hell and drove that way for the entire day. Our car was well prepared, but hardly the fastest or lightest in the field. We did have the best drivers out there, with many hundreds or even thousands of hours logged at the Pueblo track between us. As stated earlier, we're real racers, and when racing in SCCA or NASA we have to race all out if we want to get anywhere near the front of the pack. We picked off the other cars one by one, passing them everywhere on the track, but we passed them cleanly.
Some of the competition could out-drag us on the straights, they didn't have a chance in the corners, brake zones, or race-craft. Many of them are nice enough folks, but the reality is that they should attend a driver school or two before they try to race, and from the looks of things very few of them knew anything about racing lines, apexes, braking zones, etc. Put any of our drivers in their cars and in 5 laps or less we could beat their best lap times, guaranteed. We not only beat them on the track but also in the pits, where we seemed to be the only team who could complete a pit stop under the 5 minute minimum time.
The result was that we handily won on Saturday, coming out 15 laps ahead of second place. Many other teams came up to congratulate us, and many corner workers expressed admiration for our driving. Great, right? Wrong, apparently being having a well-built, well-prepped car and having good drivers just makes the ChumpCar organizers angry, and they began to plot how they would screw us over.
On Sunday we began the race at the end of the line (inverted grid) with a 12 lap deficit to the fastest car and a 14 lap deficit to the next fastest car. No problem, we started out driving like maniacs to make up for the penalty laps. Later in the morning we learned from Lloyd that the ChumpCar officials had decided to "claim" our car, which basically means they think that you are cheating or driving badly and want to screw you. They give you $1500 for the car "as is" after the race and then start the auction at $1750. The team can bid on it, as can others, but apparently they can arbitrarily raise the price to whatever they see fit. That's absurd, and we had already decided as a team that we would not let them take the car. During the noon break we took the trucks, trailer, and racecar outside of the track to load it and go.
Who are the biggest chumps, our team for participating in this circus or the ChumpCar organizers for running us out like that? They've made some enemies in Colorado, and we'll make sure that all serious racers, tracks, and other organizations know that they should be avoided at all costs. Clowns, drunks, and monkeys might enjoy this "series" but anyone who wants to really race should explore the other, better options.
