,
Ever the optimist, I choose to limp it back to the pits, but she'll only make about 30 mph and halfway back I start getting really worried I'll be in the way of the thundering herd when they come back around. How stupid would that be? Fingers crossed through the last tight section before that super-tight Long Beach hairpin and into pit lane, crawling. Smoke starts emanating from the hood vents. What's left of the clutch is probably on fire by now. I nurse it as far as I can, but the crew has to come push the poor S60 the last fifty yards. It's hot enough now that something's on fire, just a small fire, probably the slave cylinder and fluid. Friction plus slip equal heat, hot heat.
Photo courtesy Michael Wong
No miracle cures, which I pretty much realized immediately after committing to pulling back out on track from the runoff area. I'm done, and get out to comfort my K-PAX team and cheer for Alex, who is leading. Again. He's led almost all the laps thus far this season, but his one win came by way of the tech shed, when the Entrust Porsche of Ryan Dalziel (say D-L) failed with a funky splitter. That Truspeed team has apparently taken their ball and gone home in protest, a shame, because they were a real player in the series, having won the champ in 2011 with Pat Long in the 911.
Photo courtesy Michael Wong
Late in the race, Alex is looking strong, slow-starting Sofronas is not yet back in it, and the O'Connell Cadillac is pressuring from second. It's looking pretty good for K-PAX to score the win when Figge suddenly appears in the turn one brake zone backwards! Slewing around he dings the wall a couple times before coming to rest in the runoff I'd escaped through earlier. A brake rotor has exploded, always catastrophic at high speed, but something that has never happened to K-PAX before. Like the clutch. Never lost one, 'til now. Hard to keep these thoroughbreds running, sometimes. The team is crestfallen. Oh-for-two today, both due to first-ever failures. Looks like Johnny O' will cruise to the win under yellow.
Photo courtesy Michael Wong
Hold on, he's smoking! That Caddy is not happy. Under yellow? What tha hey? Turns out a sizeable chunk of that brake rotor has gone straight through the Caddy's radiator, the protective screening not designed for three-pound iron projectiles at a hundred-fifty mph. Good thing it wasn’t the windshield. He's on the last lap, nursing, praying, willing it around, but we can smell the sour stench of burned bearing oil as he goes by. Last lap, full-course yellow, 45 mph, smoke starts billowing about turn seven, and the CTS-V breathes its last. Just half a lap to go. More agony of defeat, so close and so innocent. The Audi R8 of Sofronas inherits the lead and scores its second consecutive win, under the yellow flag! Wow. Gotta finish to win, even a fifty-minute Pirelli World Challenge sprint.
Photo courtesy Michael Wong
For K-PAX, load ?em up for a long ride back to Denver, and get the World's Fastest Volvo S60s ready for the F1 Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, in just a few weeks. We're gonna pound that track into submission.
