The racing season began in late February with all the usual suspects from North Bay Bavarian starting where they left off in 2011. The February weekend had all cars participating at Infinion, but not all drivers. This week Greg Peterson’s number 76 was driven by Derick Welch. This first weekend had 45 BMW’s on the start grid, and the NBB cars finished well both days.

Bennett McMicking’s red and yellow #17 was 7th on Saturday and 13th on Sunday. The 76 car was 14th and a 6th place on Sunday. Ray Zanotto’s white #20 had a 19th finish Saturday and moved to 10th Sunday. Matthew Row’s #15  was steady at 22nd and Sunday’s 24th place, as was the black, and slightly bent #261 of Rick Row, 27th and 30th. Frank Bushman’s #263 missed the Saturday race, but showed well with a 8th place Sunday finish. Unfortunately, he was DQ’ed because of a fender-bender, and has since decided to retire from the SpecE30 class for the remainder of the year.

With the unseasonably dry weather of February gone, we move to a more rain threatening mid March. The Sonoma track was damp, but not enough to break out the treaded tires. Some changes since the last races had NASA pairing drivers into 2 man teams and combining their finishes to accumulate points. This will be known the “Norcal SpecE30 Pro-Am Championship”. Along with having a lengthy title,  the championship gives drivers a chance of winning $2000 for first place. If you care to see a complete description of the series, click here.

Closer to home, the biggest change is North Bay Bavarian’s reduction in participating race cars. As mentioned, #263 has departed for the year, and so has Rick Row’s #261. Ricks decision was not so much based on point standings, as it was on some issues as to how NASA runs its SpecE30 program. That said, Rick feels he’ll be content wrenching on Matthews car and helping his fellow drivers. We shall see.

Speaking of Matt’s car, the silver #15 has began a new life as a blue a #2 in a different stable. Ricks old #261 has had all the dents taken out, the engine rebuilt, a good sprucing-up and is now #15. As usual, there’s always a couple of growing pains with a new motor, like a mystery oil leak right before leaving for the track. That caused a little anxiety,but was taken care of accordingly.

Saturday’s race was made interesting by NASA announcing before hand that the first 15 finishers would be inverted for Sundays starting grid. With 32 cars lined up, some strategies were probably changed to try to qualify 15th, but it’s tough to try and pick your spot.

The finishing order for the NBB group had Bennett McMicking taking third place, Ray Zanotto in the 13th spot, Matthew Row just missing a pole position with a 16th finish, and Greg Peterson’s first race of the season, finishing in 19th place. With no qualifying, Sundays race was 50 minutes and by all accounts it was very clean racing, no dents. The results had Bennett again leading the North Bay Bavarian group with a 5th place finish. Ray staying close in the 11th spot. Matthew showing well at 17, and Greg in the 21st position.

The next racing moves to Thunderhill in April and May, so stay tuned for more action.

This past weekend there was a very nice car show at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. The Santa Rosa Custom Auto Show is a relic from the 1950′s that ran through the mid 90′s. The sponsors of this new show used their contacts to handpick all the cars appearing, making this an “invitation only” affair.  Since the only BMW in the show was a motorcycle with a sidecar, that will be our starting point, and we’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. We hope this becomes a yearly event once again.

 January of 2012 is already coming to a close, and Spec E30 racing won’t start for a couple more weeks. So to entertain you one or two blog readers out there, I thought we would go back to January of 2007, and see what was happening around the shop. We were just starting work on getting the Chevrolet built for the La Carrera. After finding our little peach, it was a matter of taking it down to its bare bones. Here’s a look back a 2007…

Thursday, January 4, 2007

“Pick Me, I’m Clean ” F.Z.

I knew I could mention my favorite, Frank Zappa if I tried. These pictures give us a look at my racing pardner Rick, working hard, doing a little pressure wash clean-up and getting the front end removed. All this is to get the car ready for the painter. Pretty basic stuff here, though I am dazed at the amount of nuts and bolts and pieces there are to take a fender off.
After the inside and outside are clean, the hood, fenders and front end removed, it’s off to Redwood Auto Body in Healdsburg, and our next big decision – what color?

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The Body Shop

So we are catching up to real time, this is now early January 2007, and the car is at Redwood Auto Body in Healdsburg, California. You might ask as I did, why paint the car before all the mechanicals are done to it. My more experienced pardners idea is to get it done ASAP so all you’s guys would take one look, say “WOW”, and open those checkbooks. You hoards of fans out there who have been reading these may have noticed that we are looking for sponsors, Redwood Auto Body has stepped up in a big, BIG way, like donating the body work and painting the old beast. Our Hero, Dennis Parrish, Redwood’s owner, is an old friend of North Bay Bavarian, but, so what, it’s a LOT of work.
OK, so, just sand down the rough spots and spray the thing!

Oh, no, no, no, this is going to be a real paint job, a nice paint job, make that, a proper paint job! All the side moulding holes, remember I told you about those, get plugged and sanded. The rust spots ( rust! what rust?) are repaired and filled, more sanding. The body is then “skimmed”, that’s where a coat of thin bondo or “icing” is applied, then sanded, to take out any deformity or imperfections in a 43 year old body. More sanding, primer coat, sanded again, and then painted. Something like that anyway. What do I know about all this, I read an article on body repair, now I’m an expert. One of the good things about this car was that the body seemed to be in pretty good shape, with no major dents.
It being the start of the rainy season, which means the busy season for a body shop, and us being on the dole for the work, things have chugged slowly along.
But I was there the other day and took some of these pictures, and I heard the car’s now primered, so we are coming to the finish at the body shop.

The boys did save one job for us, I’m told it’s the most fun of all, sanding the door jams, sweet!!

Dennis, Doug, Mike, everybody, I hope you’re not cringing reading all this because we so appreciate the effort you’ve put in. If it wasn’t for you guys, then it would be a “Miracle”.

Get it?!

NEXT TIME: The Paint Job

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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The Paint Job

OK, who said sanding door jams was lots of fun? Actually, it wasn’t that bad, especially when you get to use power tools! The boys at Redwood had put in a lot of time sanding the outside of the car, so it was our turn to get in there and do some damage.
Finally, we get to “The Paint Job“. It’s time to pick a color. Maybe in one of these blogs, I’ll show you all the paint schemes we tried out on paper. From black, or white, or to the Gulf GT-40 colors, and everything in between. Let me tell you, a four door Chevelle does not look that good in baby blue and orange. Being that we’re headed for Mexico, something red, white or green seemed appropriate.
An all white car, humm… I don’t think so, all green,… please….no. That leaves red…..ahhh red, rojo, the color of Ferrari – rosso corsa, the color of passion, romance, sex. Also the color of fire and blood, but we’re not going there. So much symbolism in red, I could go on and on, but let’s just say, we painted the door jams red.
Next the body, hood, and fenders were done, and voi la! All finished.

It sounds so simple, nothing to it, but just doing a bit of the sanding, I know it’s a ton of work. And here it is, truly, a gorgeous beauty!
I can’t thank all you guys at Redwood Auto Body enough for all the time and work put into our project.
Now the car is back in our hands, we can start collecting up parts and moving on to the next phase. And the next phase would be…. the whole enchilada.

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I thought while there was a lull in the race season, it might be interesting to take a look at the tracks where the races are held. The events are split between Infinion Raceway in Sonoma, CA. and Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, CA.

The Infinion track is the older of the two, built back in 1968 and was originally named Sears Point Raceway. The track is 2.52 miles in length with 12 turns as run in the NASA events. A slightly different configuration is used by NASCAR which has only 10 turns and is 1.99 miles long. A longer history of the track can be found here on Wikipedia.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infineon_Raceway

Of course what else is fun to show is some videos featuring the track and a look at it from the drivers seat. First, is one showing some history of its 40 years from 2008. http://youtu.be/DX8qTyeurdw

Here’s a fast lap or two around the track in a formula car from the Star Mazda series. Chile’s Pablo Donoso wins his first race in the United States. http://youtu.be/7RqW82HQEfQ

There are lots of videos from Infinion, here’s one more with Ric McCormack, driving a Spec Racer Ford. He is part of the North Bay Bavarian team, who sometimes drives Greg Peterson’s Spec E30 BMW. The sound is a little funky, but the footwork is very cool.    http://youtu.be/PHgsqV4kfHg

 The other race course is Thunderhill Raceway, newer in age, built in 1994 by the SCCA. Originally it was a 1.9 mile counterclockwise loop. In 1999 it was expanded to 3.0 miles with 15 turns. A unique feature of the track is that it can be run in either direction, clockwise the track is known as “Llihrednuht”, which you might have guessed is Thunderhill spelled backwards. It is the home for the longest endurance road race in the world, The 25 Hours of Thunderhill. If you would like to read a little more about the track, you can again look at Wikipedia.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderhill_Raceway_Park

 Let’s show a couple of videos from the drivers point of view at Thunderhill. The first one is a Spec E30 race from 2009, run in the counterclockwise direction.  http://vimeo.com/6337033

This video is a Miata driving the track in the clockwise direction. Nothing special here, but a good quality clip.  http://youtu.be/kTNmLv_iyBs

And one more time with Ric McCormick doing his thing in a Spec E30 car. Again, not great sound, but nice shoes. http://youtu.be/ajiigwE99Wg

And finally a video that has nothing to do with either of the featured tracks, but shows a pretty quick trip around the Nürburgring in a 2012 Camaro ZL1. This section is called the Nordschleife, is 12.93 miles and has 154 turns.

I think you’ll like this, he get this car going pretty good. http://youtu.be/yW9tZM3Ld84

But just so you know what’s really fast, here’s a Ferrari 599XX, the first production sports car to ever break the 7 minute mark. Amazing!    http://youtu.be/FJj8atDGBzk

We have come to the end of another year, and it’s time to review our unfinished business for the close of the 2011 race season. The last two races were at Infinion Raceway in Sonoma, the end of October and the first part of November. We first want to toast Greg Peterson and his wife Summer on the birth of their son, Jude. Many congratulations from everyone at North Bay Bavarian!

Because of Greg’s absence, due to his fatherly duties, the first weekend of racing in number 76 was done by NBB Team member Rick McCormick. He kept the North Bay Bavarian car in contention for winning the overall championship with a 4th place finish on Saturday and a 3rd on Sunday. Because McCormick’s driving style is a bit more punishing than Greg’s, the Row boys had a transmission change to do between races on Saturday and Sunday.

Our notes are thin for details on the races, so we’ll just keep it to the outcomes. Saturdays final results for the cars in the NBB group included a 7th for Ray Zanotto and 9th place for Frank Bushman. The Row’s were back in the pack with 25th and 27th place. Bennett McMicking was 12th in the Spec E30 race and 1st in the GTS1 class to stay on top of the standings in that group. Sunday’s finals showed a steady Ray in the 9th spot, Matt, Rick and Frank in 19th, 25th and 26th place respectively. Bennett had a 15th spot in Spec E30 and battled for a 2nd place in GTS1.

The next weekend of racing was in November, and NASA decided to do things a little differently, putting the qualifying on Saturday and two races on Sunday. Greg Peterson was back at the wheel of the bright green #76 holding third place in the overall standings. With a bad showing by the front runners, he he might just pull off a little coup and bring home the championship. Unfortunately the front runners finished 1 and 2, making the afternoon race a battle to see which one of them would win the number one position. Greg’s 4th place finish kept him solidly in 3rd overall, with a slight chance at the top spot, if the other two knocked each other out. The rest of the group had Ray Zanotto in 9th,  Bennett McMicking placed 14th, Matt Row 20th and Rick Row 22nd.

 For the second race in the afternoon, rather than running the normal 30 minutes, it ran 50 minutes. The mornings race finishing results, set the starting grid for the afternoon. Greg jumped into the lead and kept it for the 50 minutes to win the second race of the day! Greg’s finish solidified his third place in the overall standings, with Team BTM taking the championship and Loren Trefethen in second. Good job and congratulations to both of them.

The final point standings for Spec E30 in the NorCal Region have Greg Peterson/Team NBB in 3rd place, Bennett McMicking taking 6th, a steady Rick Row in 15th place, Ray Zanotto in 20th, Matt Row 23rd, and Frank Bushman in the 25th spot. We also want to salute Bennett for his 1st place points finish in the GTS1 class. To all the drivers, helpers (that would be Bryce Mosher), all the boys at North Bay Bavarian, friends and family,… HOORAY HOORAY to you all for your wonderful support! 

We would also like to congratulate the third place overall finishers in the 2011 NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill, – Team Stammer Inc./Bavarian Performance. Rick and Matthew worked as pit crew members to help with this great finish in a long race. If you care to see what that race is like, here is a video from the Nitto Tire/Bullet Performance team that finished in fifth place overall.   http://youtu.be/Q9nsl6m366c

And finally, here’s a little tidbit I found in the NorCal Spec E30 website -www.norcalspece30.com - talking about our pal …..

“The Evil Genius Racing Hard Charger Awards – Recall that in the last three years, for the last race weekend the EGRHCA traditionally goes to the Regional Champion.  Brad McClure picked up a crisp $100 for that….easy.  Now, since an October EGHRCA winner was not picked it was decided to pick one from the season ending race weekend.  After Sunday’s final race, where Greg Peterson successfully held off Brad and Loren in a very hard fought battle, Mr. Evil Genius himself, John Pagel came to me after the race and wanted to award Greg the weekend’s hard charger.  Great choice but  one our constraints on the EGRHCA has been that a racer can only win one per season and Greg having won in August, we had to choose another racer for the award. 

This was going to be difficult…I spoke with Will Faules and he really didn’t have a standout in mind. So once again, I was left with the executive decision to pick a hard charger.  The problem I had was, from my vantage point on the race track, I could not gauge much from my position.  Dang…who to pick?  My choice became crystal clear walking past Impound after the final race.  I ran into Rick Row on his way back to his trailer, beat-tired and oil -grimed from working beneath Greg Peterson’s race car (he and Matt had to drop the tranny to get the flywheel out).  It then occurred to me that Rick should be awarded the EGRHCA for all the unselfish help he has given to his fellow racers fix their cars throughout the 2011 season. I think it’s safe to say that almost the entire SE30 field has at some point sought out help or advice from Rick during the season.  I quickly located Will Faules and ran my idea by him and he wholeheartedly agreed that Rick was a great choice.  Rick is ALWAYS first in line to help out a fellow racer.  His BMW mechanical knowledge and know-how is seemingly inexhaustible. Congratulations to Rick, for being the October 2011 recipient of the Evil Genius Racing Hard Charger Award!”

 And with that, we wish you a very Happy New Year in 2012!

We’ll take a break from the writings about the LeMons and Spec e30 races to look back at what was going on in 2009. Today is November 8, 2011, and the 7 days of the La Carrera Panamericama in Mexico has just finished this last week. As you probably know by now, this is a race we keep a close eye on, because of our past involvement, and also the wish that NBB will participate in it again. Back in January of ’09, it was an almost certainty that two cars would be built to compete in the LCP and one for the Chihuahua Express. Let’s take a look back and see what was going on… 

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Two cars will be built because we have two interested party’s. One is Rick, he’s done the race before, he wants to promote his BMW repair business, he also wants to involve the people who work for him and to include his family. The other is Frank, and he simply wants to go racing, he’s done it in many forms before, and now the Carrera is his intention.

So now we need something to start with and Frank was first to find two available candidates. One had been locked away in a shipping container for a decade or more and the other set rusting nearby in the same backyard. Both of these cars came at the right price, free, that made the decision easy to take a closer look at them.

While Rick owns a shop, and sees a lot cars come through, 2002′s aren’t as commonplace as they once were, so the next one came from an ad on Craigslist. The pictures advertised what looked to be a solid choice, except they never showed the front left fender. Sure enough, that was bent along with the frame, but for $500 it was worth seeing if it could be straightened. In short order two more appeared. One being an orange lovely, dragged out of a garden in Sebastopol, and traded for an oil change. The other, a very clean 1976 square taillight, big bumper model. Too nice to cut up, and when sold, it’s worth its weight in racing parts.

The job of evaluating the last four and reducing to a final two was fairly easy. The ’67 beige 1600 yard find had too much rust to be rebuild and made reliable. It’s headed for the scrap bin. The 1973 gray primered car, while a good prospect, but with the bent frame, will be held in reserve. That leaves us with the green 1969 container find, and the orange ’72, as the best prospects. This pair is over 35 years old and have some dents and corrosion that needs to be repaired and thats the next step.

Both of these will now be stripped down to the bare minimum inside and out, scraped and sanded, have some excess metal removed, and bodywork done.

Please read – http://lcp2007.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Moving Forward

The projects aim is to build two cars for the 2009 La Carrera Panamericana race and to have one of them ready for the 2009 Chihuahua Express race in March. For that to happen, a lot of things are going to have to move forward…quickly. The red car has been to the body shop to have the fenders and nose panel replaced, and will now sit while the green car advances in the fabrication process.

The fuel cell has been set into place, and some brazing done to the body to fill holes where trim was attached and rust had settled. The inside of the car has been taken down to bare metal, and most of the mechanicals

have been removed except for the wheels to keep it mobile. The present job involves building a roll cage. This has become one of the most important requirements to let a car through technical inspection, after an accident in

2006 critically injured a co driver without an adequate one. Once the roll cage is finished, a dashboard will be fashioned and then the car is ready to paint.
 
Please read – http://lcp2007.blogspot.com/

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Standing Still

If you are standing still you can hear the clock ticking for the countdown to have a car ready for the Chihuahua Express. Unfortunately, it’s looking like things aren’t going to progress fast enough to be prepared for that race. The upside is, the roll cage is finished along with the dash and mounting the fuel cell, which means the car is now off to the body and paint shop. Once that’s done, the stack of parts can be assembled and things will start to advance more rapidly.

The seats are here along with most of the safety gear and communications. There was a problem with the coil-over suspension, it came for a completely different type car, but that’s been remedied. All the brake parts are sitting in boxes, waiting. The transmission and differential are all set to be put in, but the motor is another story. The head has been sent out to the experts to be worked on and it’s ready. But the pistons are another week away, and that means the block can’t be worked on until they’re here. No pistons= no block= no motor. The math is unfriendly, but there’s thirty days until the convoy leaves El Paso, let’s see what happens.

Please read: www.lcp2007.blogspot.com

The weekend of October 22-23 was the 24 Hours of LeMons race also known as THE SKANKAWAY ANTI-TOE-FUNGAL 500, SPONSORED BY CRUSKIN-SKANKAWAY INC., THE OFFICIAL FUNGICIDAL TOE CREME OF LEMONS. That’s quite a mouthful, even for a Lemons race. The Dream Team from North Bay Bavarian was driving a BMW 325, a car donated by Martin Lauber, who is currently battling for contention in Mexico’s La Carrera Americana. Good luck to their Alfa Romeo team!

The weekend started with a tech inspection ruling that the car had too many race parts. Understand that the premise of the race is to have a car that does not exceed $500 to buy and prepare. The NBB car was awarded only a 29 lap penalty, thankfully because their VIN number ends in 29 not 99.

Saturday’s race started with Dream Teamer John Sparks, setting a hot pace and erasing a few of those penalty laps. He actually ran the races fastest lap until about mid-day Saturday. The rest of the day went fairly smoothly, other than a couple of black flags collected by the Row family. These infractions were overcome by generous donations of cash and promises to be better human beings in the future. The end of the day finished well for the team, with no major problems.

The thing I noticed about this race, was that cars were really going for it out there, no putt putt’en around, just let’s go fast and get outta my way, even if I don’t know what I’m doing!

Sunday’s racing went well until about mid-day. With Dream Teamer Derrick Welch driving a very fast, but relaxed pace, he was bumped hard by The Mini Moke Thing into another car and into the wall.

That little get-together tore up the left side of the car, bent up a steering arm, bumper and rear wheel, and caused some over heating problems. Nothing the Dream Team couldn’t repair, but it put a major kink in any thoughts of pulling off a come from behind win.

 About 40 minutes in the pits for repairs got the car back out again on the track with Dream Team driver Frank Bushman taking no prisoners, and making up for lost time. Unfortunately because of the accident, and the front end being tweaked, the car developed a problem with over heating. Back into pit row, more repairs and D.T. Captain Matthew Row taking over, making a slow climb back up the standings. By now, the engine had also developed a rod knock which finally proved to be fatal before the end of the day.

The final standings show that North Bay Bavarian’s Front Row Racing finished 97th out of 164 starters, completing 212 of 378 laps. A solid middle of the pack showing, and all drivers agreed that a good time was had by all.

October is the month that racing will get going again for the Spec E30 group at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. I thought I’d be telling about the results from the September racing, but there wasn’t any E30 racing at either Infineon or Thunderhill.

 It’s also the month for the start of the La Carrera Panamericana in Mexico. One of the cars participating, a BMW 2002, was built by North Bay Bavarian, it finished well last year, and we wish them all the best this time around.

 What all this is leading up to, is that there is not much to report. So what we’ll do is go back again and show some videos of BMW’s. I hope you have some extra time because there is about 90 of these. They are mainly about the 2002 and are in German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and even English. Some are short one minute commercials, and others are longer, telling the history of the that model.  52 BMW 2002 ads

 Tired yet? Here’s more infomercials on the “New Class” of the German car, the 1500, 1600, 1800 and 2000. There’s also some movie clips from the 60′s and 70′s with a chase or two with those cars . The bad guys seem to always be driving the BMW’s, being chased by a blond hero in a Alfa Romeo.   More Bmw videos

Now, how about a E30 rally car going really fast in the rain, shown from the in car camera     323i E30 

And finally, this last but not least video is from 2007, showing a race from Valerbanen Race Track in Norway. The car is a 1968 2002ti, that works hard to pass almost everyone on the track.            bmw

 And after everything is all said and done, we’ve watched all the videos, we know the 2002 is a great car, you’ve got to have one. But what do you do to make it really special, maybe something like this. Now that’s a 2002!!