Thanks to PMSC for hosting this weekend and to all volunteers for freezing your butts off.

Again no Menards :-(  in fact by the end of the day Sunday there was a large patch of dirt in the kink. Purely speculation on my part but I don't see Menards running this year at all.

It was really cold this weekend, at least it felt that way, probably cause this winter has been so warm to date I'm not used to it, it seemed to get right into my bones and couldn't shake it all weekend. Temps dropped to about -18C both Friday and Saturday night with highs of -11C on Saturday and a few sunny hours in the afternoon and -5C on Sunday again with only about an hour of sunshine. There was no significant snow accumulation. As a consequence of the "deep freeze" the track ice was very hard and street studs found it somewhat lacking in penetration and therefore grip. The welded diff Ovlov does not like slippery, hard ice. I increased tire pressures in the rear to 32psi which seems to work best when there's no bite and left fronts around 22psi. The wind picked up a bit on Saturday but even more so on Sunday and snow "dust" on the track was thrown up into the air making it difficult to see at times.

I wanted to find out how the MR2 would perform under race conditions as I have not run it (anywhere) this year and had replaced the glasspak muffler with a stock exhaust from my track MR2, replaced some ignition components and done a few other maintenance related and bodywork things. Since the Ovlov was not liking the poor grip conditions in Saturday mornings practice session I thought I had nothing to lose, possibly something to gain, by trying the MR2 in the first Street Stud race of the weekend. I did have a set of 2 year old street studs still mounted on 4x100 Toyota stock rims from last year. On visual inspection there were about 25% of the studs missing and of those remaining over half were well rounded on the shoulders so didn't expect any great grip but maybe better than the Ovlov. Problem is it's so quiet now with the stock exhaust you hardly know it's running even when you're standing right beside it - I was not sure if this would work under race. 

Well, it didn't work very well. Number one, I couldn't hear any engine revs! The fat steering wheel completely blocks my tach from view and with a bunch of much louder cars around you drowning out any possibility of what little exhaust note there was, I quickly realized just how much one relies on the sound of the engine when piloting a race car! It was like driving an electric car - no sound input. At one point I was in a gaggle of cars and thought that I heard my engine revving way too high like I had lost grip. So I lifted and suddenly I slowed right down - it wasn't my exhaust note, it was Richard Piper's BMW right in front of me that I could hear! Anyway, that combined with the lack of grip from the crappy old street studs and it was a frustrating ordeal. I will have to replace the exhaust one day with something in between stock and wide open. I had new street stud tires on the back of the Ovlov this year but did not want to bother remounting them to Toyota rims. Also I was not too keen on smashing up the Toyota after having fixed it all up and I have been having a lot of fun driving the Ovlov anyway - nobody seems to like to get too close to it.

So back to the Ovlov - not sure of my finishes but Sunday I believe a 3rd and definitely a SACond in the second race cause Jerry Oosterholt and I had a really hard fought battle SACond for the first few laps. Thanks Jerry for making it exciting (that race video HERE ). Once again the red MR2 of Brian Sexsmith was out front in the SS1 class.

At the start of the season I increased the fuel to air mixture on the Ovlov 3 times and this weekend decided maybe things were a tad too rich when Jimmy McGlade, on approaching the exhaust side of the car early Saturday morning, inhaled, and then suggested I place a bucket under the exhaust pipe and reclaim some of my fuel.

Tim Penwell's Fiero (BTW: Fiero means fire to a little known local tribal dialect in a small, remote area in the mountainous Yabaltara region of Nicaragua, but I digress) once again provided a fine sheen of blue smudge on my windshield as he had an oil line break this time while in front of me. As always a spectacular smoke show but as you now probably have figured Tim - "Where there's smoke, there's Fiero".

I requested Tim Fluegel as "ballast" on Saturday and good job too as he definitely helped in the second race Saturday. His brother Dave was trackside this weekend all the way from the far north of Quebec (a 1650km drive to Minden) and he also provided some much needed ballast in the last SS1 race Sunday.

I assisted once again with the rookie school that Doug Forbes heads up every lunchtime on Saturday's. This time coaching a Mr. Meark (sp?) driving a 1985(?) 3 series BMW. He showed a great deal of improvement during our brief period on track as he was a good student, listening well and applying what I showed him. It's a really nice feeling to be able to contribute back to the sport by helping newcomers accelerate along their learning curve - I highly recommend it - and kudos to Doug for not only starting it but running it and improving it every year since it's inception.

Rodney Schmelter's winged wonder is flying in Photoshop but not at the track. First the fuel tank pickup busted and that dried out a couple of fuel pumps and without anymore pumps left to replace meant no track time for Rodney - where's the Minden Canadian Tire when ya need it on a Sunday?

Seemed like there were a serious lack of entries this weekend with several regular racers no-show and a couple other people I know only showed up for Saturday. Looks like the enduro has been cancelled for this coming Monday Feb. 20th. I don't think there would have been enough ice anyway. In lieu of the event everyone is being encouraged to either donate food items for the food bank at the track or straight up $$$'s.

Andriy Levin, Jimmy McGlade and I spotted a bald eagle flying over on Saturday. Didn't know they hung out here especially in the winter?

Video:

All video for the season will be available on my Youtube Channel ...
http://www.youtube.com/angusmacsac 
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In-car race videos:

SS1 1st race Sat - MR2
SS1 2nd race Sat Ovlov
SS1 1st race Sun - Ovlov
SS1 2nd race Sun - Ovlov