Haste makes waste: What happens when you rush to race

“At least the winch is working!” “Yeah, this trailer is sweet! So, where do you want all the parts?”

We’d ended an endurance race in our LFX V6-swapped Miata with this conversation. No podium, no trophies, just a long tow home in awkward silence.

And we’d done it twice.

First, at Carolina Motorsports Park after a broken axle ended our weekend. And now again, after joining the Lucky Dog Racing League at Atlanta Motorsports Park.

This race’s villain was our junkyard transmission, which locked up solid after less than a day of racing. But blaming the transmission is like blaming the infantryman: Our real issues were far higher up the chain of command, and had started months earlier–months earlier, when we decided to completely rewire our Miata.

It was a great plan on paper, and one we’ll cover in a future story: We’d replace the car’s temperamental electronics and piecemeal harnesses with a new dash and PDM from AiM Sports.

We’d have a more reliable, more capable system, better data logging, and more options for expandability. But then reality set in: A few rounds of ordering parts, a few short-notice business trips, a few email chains with AiM’s tech experts, and a few other projects all conspired to turn months into weeks, finally culminating in a Miata that wasn’t running two days before the race at AMP.

After that first failed race, we’d pledged to work on our spares stockpile, our checklists, and the car’s ever-lengthening to-do list before returning to the track. We’d done none of that, and spent all of our time wiring instead.

[10 lessons to keep your race effort disciplined]

This is when we should have pulled the plug: “Sorry, but the car just isn’t ready–never mind the rest of the systems and the team that will make this race a success.”

Yeah, we didn’t say that. Instead, we said, “If we skip that Friday test day, we’ll have an extra day to get the car running! We’ll see you at the track!”

Then we thrashed to finish the car for two days straight, sleeping four hours per night and going cross-eyed from all of the crumpled up, coffee-stained wiring diagrams that littered the shop like bedding in a hamster cage. As soon as the car fired, we drove it straight into the trailer, heaped a random assortment of tools and spares on top, and drove 500 miles to the event.

The reality of our situation hit us as we unloaded: We didn’t even remember to bring all of the fuel cans, meaning we’d have to buy more gas after every other pit stop.

Only the car’s core circuits were working, meaning no Coolshirt, no camera power, nothing except the bare minimum to do circles around the track. And overall, our effort reeked of unpreparedness. A finely honed racing effort this was not–it would be a miracle if we finished this race.

But we’d driven all the way here, so we passed tech, drove back to our paddock spot, then kept working on the car for another four hours until it was time to get some sleep before the race.

There was no plan, no master checklist, no coordination. Instead, all four of us grabbed whatever tools we could find and just started working. We tidied wiring, padded cage tubes, mounted the dash and cursed at the decisions that had led us here. And by the end of the evening, we at least had a minimum viable product to go racing. The only question was “for how long.”

Ten minutes, as it turns out.

Seriously.

That’s how long it took our Miata to blow sound on AMP’s infamously stingy meter. We’d been worried about passing sound, and planned to add an extra muffler to the car’s exhaust system.

That, like everything else on the to-do list, was ignored. We hadn’t even had time to buy a spare muffler and pipe. So we pulled the car off track and spent more than an hour buying parts, sticking them together, and eventually attaching an ugly (but quiet) muffler to the back of our Miata. We were back on track.

And, well, we were slow. Honestly, it’s tough to remember if the results or the drivers’ radio chatter was more demoralizing. The former showed us near last, while the latter was a never-ending loop of gripes, complaints and suggestions we couldn’t execute until we got home–and status updates about parts getting worse: “I swear this car has extra bushings moving around in the front suspension.” “Wow, we’re real slow in the corners IN A MIATA WITH AERO WHAT THE [unintelligible].” “This is shifting worse and worse.”

One high point was when, during a pit stop, we realized the passenger-side lower control arm really had come loose, and smacked the wheel back to roughly straight before torquing it down on pit road–we had no idea what our new alignment was, but it had to be better than the continuously variable one we’d apparently been running.

In short, we’d built a really fast car on paper, but focused so much on adding features and trying cool new stuff that we were now right back where we started a decade ago: Running a fast, poorly sorted car with a poorly sorted team and embarrassing ourselves in the process.

So, it was nearly a relief when the car finally stopped moving. Credit a transmission that locked up nearly solid after a pit stop.

We limped the car into the paddock and pulled the drain plug, expecting glittery transmission fluid to pour out. Instead, less than half a quart of oatmeal-like liquid emerged, meaning we’d been racing on an empty transmission.

Had we forgotten to fill it? We’d taken no notes and, again, had no checklist.

Had it lost its fluid due to a failure? We’d run out of time to check it and had no idea when or where it left. And because most of our drivers had never driven the car before, three of them had no idea that the shifter shouldn’t feel like stirring a bag of rocks

And, of course, we didn’t have a spare transmission with us, nor were we able to find one within a six-hour drive.

To cap off the weekend, one of our drivers then stepped into the car to grab something and landed his foot right on the pull cable for our SPA Technique fire system.

No problem, right? Stepping on a sheathed cable is totally fine.

Unless, because you were in a hurry to install the system last-minute and didn’t have enough cable, you literally cut a corner while routing it. Our fire pull cable was basically floating around in mid-air, meaning one poorly placed foot instantly set off the system. Our car was now broken AND unsafe to drive AND in need of a few hundred dollars of extra 3M Novec 1230 fire suppressant before it could legally go back on track.

All around us, we saw competitors having an absolutely fantastic weekend. Lucky Dog puts on great events, AMP is a beautiful facility, and we wanted so, so badly to be the ones smiling on pit road.

But we’d showed up to class without doing our homework, forgotten the lessons we’ve learned over decades of racing, and failed.

It’s time to go back to the drawing board, and the checklists, and the spares pile, and the testing. An LFX-swapped NA Miata might be flying too close to the amateur endurance racing sun, but we owe it to the world to at least try and make it work. We’ll regroup and try again at CMP this coming weekend.

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