If you are new to racing this year: We run an electronic counting system in the NW. You will need to either rent or buy a transponder from Mark. This can be done at the race. You do need to have a place to mount it on you car. It should be about 12-18" above the ground, hanging over the edge of the car. If you look at some of the pictures that Zaine posted of our last years race you will see how many cars have them mounted, it looks like a hockey puck. It connects to the 24 volt system on the car.

This is from Mike Hodgert:

Hi all,
Just a reminder about this weekends race at Mt Hood CC in Gresham, OR. Just East of Portland.

BE SURE THAT ALL OF YOUR CARS WILL PASS ALL OF THE RULES AS ALWAYS

BE SURE THAT YOUR MINOR STUDENTS HAVE THE K & K INSURANCE "MINOR RELEASE' FILLED OUT COMPLETELY AND SIGNED/WITNESSED AS NEEDED. BRING THESE WITH YOU!!!

BE SURE ALL DRIVERS BRING THEIR DRIVERS LICENSE.

MAKE SURE THAT ALL OF YOUR DRIVERS HAVE ENOUGH BALLAST TO WEIGH THE 180 POUNDS AFTER THE RACE IS OVER!!!!

Be ready for rain, sun, or whatever---AND READY FOR LOTS OF FUN AND LEARNING/

If you have stuff to pick up from my from the group buy--try to get to our truck/trailer ASAP when you get there so I can take care of that business before it gets too hectic.

Any questions about this upcoming race, contact Mark Watts at---mark_watts@centennial.k12.or.us--or 503/762-6108

Hope to see all of you at the races,
Mike

This is a map of the race course for this weekend that Zaine Staplton put out last year. Thought this might be helpful to those that have never raced on this track. Hopefully you can get to it. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?source=ig&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=h&vps=1&jsv=199b&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=110303924879668737433.00047d738882d63193df6 Mike

The link to the map still works if anyone is wondering.

Yesterday morning the NW racing season started. We had a great turn out, just under 30 cars I believe. The Mt Hood track is a great track, but it unfortunately is very rough. The poor quality of the asphalt was too much for many of the cars to withstand. If there is a lesson from the rough track it is definitely, learn how to weld. Cobbled on chicken scratch cold welds will fail, and they did. Lesson two was that wet pavement can be and is slippery. The rain started a couple hours before the race did and continued throughout the race. There are a couple tight corners on the track and more than one car found the curb line to be far tougher than the car they were driving. The luckier drivers sometimes "spun out" on the corners, but were able to continue without damage. The best lesson of the day though was the student whose car was not finished started the race late. When I released his now completed car to enter the race he told me he was going to drive full speed to make up for lost time. I told him, "If you do that , you will crash"and that he needed to drive the first two laps a little on the slow side till he got the feel of the track. He assured me that he had driven it last year and was off. He made it around turn one and then hit a parking lot curb. I estimate he made it about 1000' when this happened. He would have got far more laps if he had slowed down, got the feel of the car and then opened up. As has been said before,"No race is won on the first lap, but many races are lost".

Mark should have the results up soon.

Also, a special thanks to Gresham Ford. They not only were a sponsor, but brought hot dogs for all to eat.

Mark and Aaron, Great race. As Lon Mills used to say way too often "What did you learn today." Hopefully all teams learned a lot. I know my students may now believe me when I say that is not a good weld and it will break...You need more bracing....Be sure to go over the inspection form so you are totally ready for the race....Make your car comfortable enough that your body can drive it for a full hour....Your car is too low and will drag the track and be black flagged by the end of the race as the frame sags a little....Be sure your battery can not move around...etc. On the way home they were talking about what all needed to be improved/fixed before the next race. Hopefully Willamette does not end up with 7 of the last 8 cars at any other race this season. All of our cars were brand new mostly built by students new to the program. We did have 3 cars that were from last year. Two had steering failures and wrecked--one on lap 3 and the other during practice. The other was driven by a student with a freshly broken arm and the rough track was causing too much pain after 1 lap. Two of our new team of beginners did OK and at least our batteries took 1st and 2nd in your cars. Maybe they will keep up this tradition for the rest of the year. Even the adults had lots of trouble. My Tank of a Wolverine car was the only adult car to survive....and it picked up new rattles. Two of the adults., both Cloud built cars that usually dominate here, went down after 10 laps and our adult car was the one whose steering failed on lap 3. Not much of a race to be the only adult racing after 30 minutes. Hopefully at Hood River we will have more teams come. We only had 5 high schools show up for this first event. With the new cars and teams in the NW this should be one of our largest set of racers in rent history. We will be looking forward to seeing more cars and teams at the next race a month away. Thanks again to you, Gresham Ford, and all of the participants of yesterday's fun--but rough--event.

Mike, what do you mean by "at least our batteries took 1st and 2nd in your cars."

Zaine Stapleton wrote:

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Mike, what do you mean by "at least our batteries took 1st and 2nd in your cars."

Was Centennial borrowing yellow tops?

Zaine

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Yes, we have batteries on order but they have not arrived yet.  We were using batteries borrowed from Wilamette.  This race definatly proved to not be a speed race but an endurance race.  The winners were the cars that did not break or hit the curb lines.