Sorry this is a little long, but I had a great race. A quick history of my racing to get things started. My father raced in IMSA in the early 70’s in the RS series. In 1974 he was he highest finishing privateer for the season. I grew up at tracks all around the country. I got to see Mark Donahue race and even break the closed course record at Talladega in the Cam 2 Porsche 917-30. He even put on the 1974 Sebring at Road Atlanta race. As you can see this story is more than just about me.
Years ago I did some fabrication work for some friends on there various race cars and decided that maybe I could do this. After several years of trying to make bad cars good, I built the first ITB mustang. The car has a 2.3 four cylinder and a 5 speed, not a lot of go but parts are cheap and there is tons of aftermarket support. . These cars have been great however, in four years of running mustangs; we have never had a mechanical DNF. During the winter of 2006 I built a new chassis. The new car has been a 10/10th effort. Every aspect of the car was looked at during construction. It is really good at tracks like Roebling Road. The mustang likes fast flowing turns not heavy stops and starts. VIR is not the best track for the car but we will give it our best shot. The deal with dad is that I prepare the car and we share the driving duties trying to hit 4 to 6 weekends a year. I never thought that I would be able to race together with my dad. It has truly been a dream come true. In the 80’s and 90’s we went to tons of races together, always talking about different lines cars were taking and how we would do it.
In 2004 we tried to run in the first 13 hour race, we went 30 minutes. Dirt on the track coming out of 3 caught my dad off guard and he hit the Armco, and that was that. Three years later we decided to give it another go. We backed off our normal race season and started prepping the car in June. In early October we went to the motorcycle track in Alabama, Talladega Grand Prix, and tested for the day to give the car a shakedown run. All went well and we loaded up the trailer and headed out of Atlanta November 1st.
Practice and qualifying went well. We both had not run at VIR since 2004 and we had to find our way around again. The most fun was during night practice trying to keep up with Greg Amy who was driving the eventual class winning Volkswagen Golf. I learned a lot. One, if we wanted any chance we would have to run a perfect race. He was fast and the car was well prepared. Second, if you want to shake someone behind you at night, drop a wheel off the track and the dust cloud will give the following driver a white out condition. Lastly, I needed to work on our turn in bite if I wanted to get to every apex. I adjusted the shock setting and that helped out some.
We were last in class from qualifying, but that’s o.k., we were 4 seconds a lap faster in night practice. Once again I need to that Greg for that, he showed me the faster way around. There was only one pace lap and it was the fastest lap ever. Probably done to spread the field out and boy did it work! I started the race and we planned to go 2 hours and 45 minutes per stint. We set a race lap goal of 2:31 with out traffic. Our first goal was to finish. I was very careful the first stint, maybe too careful. I did not push hard enough in traffic and we quickly lost a lap to our class leaders. Also, our rookie crew was great, we were just a little slow and our pit stops los us some more time. The only problem with the car during the first stint was that it stuck in 3rd gear a few times. This was a new problem that we have never had and it really worried me. I figured out that shifting too quickly down from 5th was the problem and being gentle with the box ended that problem.
My dad did great during his stints and we pushed on through the afternoon. He was spun around by a miata in of all turns, TURN 3! late in the afternoon. After the hard hit to the right rear by another car he thought OH S**T the car is done. But the mustang is really tough and other than some bent sheet metal we pushed on into the night. The mustang continued to run strong and other than the chief steward restricting us to just one person pouring fuel in the car, we had no other problems. What was so funny about there ruling was that there were 2 pages of rules about refueling; nothing was said about the number of people putting gas in the car. But, you can’t beat the man so we followed their wishes.
As the afternoon progressed we bounced between 2nd and 3rd and as night fell we started to think we might have a chance of not only finishing but finishing quite well. We made our last stop at 8:00 pm during a caution. I was put in the car to finish the event and I was ready for the night. I headed out of the pits, pop on the extra lights pull out onto the race track and all of a sudden the world goes dark with a loud bang. Now I know what you are thinking, a massive light failure right. Well, at the last stop we checked under the hood like we had in the past. The only difference was that we forgot to put the hood pins in and when I reached about 80 mph up went the hood. I rolled off the track and thinking that the caution was still out I hopped out and jumped on the hood several times to get one hood pin back in. The hood was really bent up. Then all of a sudden the entire field went flying down into turn one, the green flag dropped. I quickly jumped back in the car knowing that standing trackside is not the place to be. I buckled up and after a couple of laps the right side of the hood keep raising way up on the straits and I decided that getting that fixed was the right thing to do. Plus, the stewards were mad that I got out of the car and suggested that we come in and fix the car.
Well, we got it fixed but lost 2nd place and I went out to see what I could do. I pushed as hard as I could in the dark and got my revenge on plenty of cars that were faster than us during the day. I really liked driving at night. I passed quite a few faster classed cars in the dark. I just new where the car was going to end up even if I could not always see where I was heading. With about 30 minutes to go we realized that we were not going to catch the 2nd place car and that was good. The brake master cylinder had been overworked in the last 2 hours and the brakes started to get soft.
All in all it was a great race. Several people after the race said they felt that there was no way a mustang of any size would finish the race. Other than the screw driver used as a hood pin, we never put a tool on the car the entire race. We had a great crew and we will work on our pit stops, including a proper overhead fuel rig. We lost a lot of time in the pits. We will also work on the car. We need to improve the rear end feel of the car. I also feel that this was a once in a lifetime deal to run a race like this with my dad. Three years ago he had open heart surgery.
We almost lost him. I can’t wait until next year
Ron Sattele, Jr.
