Gleason Bros. Racing

This post is going to be more of a reflection on the year than a post about the last race.

So my rookie year has come to a close. It was a frustrating year, but you know what... it really could have been a lot worse. I had my bumps and bangs, I spent nights repairing damage, but I didn't have to clip the car or replace suspension parts. But I only mustered a single top 10 (personally, when Brad drove the car it finished 8th) and to me, that's not good enough. I'm a very competitive person and when I can't do as good as I should do, then I get upset. I don't blame anyone else for my poor season, it's all a learning experience. 


I learned more about racing this year by having a poor car than I probably would have if I was up front all the time. If I had a good car, I wouldn't have learned what it's like to drive a car that was underpowered, that wasn't handling, that had a vibration I had to diagnose. I wouldn't have learned how to pass someone when I had a push, how to induce oversteer, how to apologize to someone for spinning them out. I will say, our season may be shorter than most tracks, but it's still just as stressful as any other track. 


I spend a LOT of time in my garage working on the car. During the season, I was in the shop every night. The most frustrating thing about the year was, it performed on the track like I left the car on the trailer during the week. It looked like I didn't touch the thing and just struggled the whole year. Nothing could be further from the truth. I had the car on jackstands, looking it over, tweaking this or that, checking all the parts, driving 40 minutes to Niantic to borrow springs and scales, cleaning the carb and fuel system, changing plugs, all the stuff I should be doing. But nothing was working. Not a bit. Toward the end of the year I began receiving a lot of help from fellow racer and good friend, 2-time Sportsman Champion Chris "Moose" Douton. With his help we began finding things wrong with the car. Chassis binds, caster issues, camber problems, shock difficulties. We started to sort it all out, but then the end of the year was here, and it wasn't quite there yet. The car had a new problem, and it wasn't the chassis. The motor felt pretty doggy and just wouldn't go. I felt like a little fish in a sea of sharks. I was told it looked like I was driving a 3 cylinder Yugo. I still don't know what it was, but towards the end of the year, I just seriously lacked power. I'll figure it out.


So onto the race. Moose and I made a mountain of changes at his shop, A-1 Auto Center in Niantic, the night before and I was feeling pretty good about my chances for improvement. When I took it out in practice, it was rotating a lot better than the week before, but still lacking oompf. I replaced the alternator because my previous one had broken the week before, and the new one I put in was charging at 18 volts. I couldn't have that, so I disconnected it and ran on battery the rest of the night. Moose came through for me again and let me use his generator and battery charger. In the heat race, there was a pretty bad wreck between Keith in the #19 and Steve in the #14. Keith was heading to my inside, and I gave him a lane, but I didn't see Steve on the far inside. Apparently they touched and hooked together, all I saw was them head into the fence in my rear view. You never want to see that, especially in a heat race, and especially during the last race of the year. I know what it's like to have a car wadded up and have to spend all winter repairing it, so I feel bad. In the feature it was more of the same. Car not handling as well as it could, and it was a pig, so I kept her clean and just finished.


I made sure I walked over and congratulated Scott Michalski on his championship. He should have been a champion at least 3 times by now, so it was good that he finally got his. His son Trevor should win Rookie of the Year, he's a good kid and I found I could always race him clean. Trevor didn't even know how to drive a stick before this year, so he shows promise. I wish I had his car during the year, but we can't have everything! 


I have something up my sleeve for the World Series. As is always the case with my writing, I will not slam, badger, or give away any secrets online. We'll be experimenting again and I will say, it's either going to die, or fly. I will be in the Outlaw race because of time constraints. See you then!


~Brent~

So with the year winding down, I decided that all I want is to finish out the season in one piece, so I can update the car for next year. I've spent so much time on it trying things to no avail that I just want the year to be over, and I'm close to getting my wish. 


I've been getting a lot of help recently from good friend Moose Douton. Since he's been helping me, the car has been getting increasingly better. This week, there was a serious revelation. He was helping me change a spring and make a wedge adjustment, when he noticed something interesting. I had known all along that the car had neoprene (or urethane) bushings in the suspension, but I didn't think much of it. He checked them out and found that they were binding the rear suspension, causing serious chassis issues. He had finally pinpointed exactly why my car was not handling or reacting to any change. 


It made perfect sense, but I'd never known that something like that was happening. I claim rookie ignorance. This means that all the help I got along the way with Brad may actually be more valid, since everything that was done to the car could change day to day because of the horrible chassis binds. I spent a lot of time Saturday replacing all of the trailing arms to remove the problems, and I have to say that I'm excited. It moves like it should now and I'm ready to give it a shot.


Anyway, about the rest of Thursday. Car was tight again, I won't even go into all the chassis issues since I already made mention of what was wrong. I'll spare you the details. I started in 2nd in the heat. I noticed as soon as I took off that the engine wasn't as up to snuff as it used to be. I had the carb apart and I think I put the gasket on wrong, or it had some junk in it because the air cleaner rod snapped and the cleaner assembly was free roaming. Whatever the cause, it was pretty lazy. I was a human pincushion for the entire race. Nobody wanted to try and pass me, they just wanted to break my rear bumper. I can understand that I was slower than usual, so I held my line. I guess it wasn't enough for some, because they beat the hell out of me. I don't usually complain, but what good is ramming me going to do? I can see a little push, or a bump, but they were hitting me so hard that I was seeing stars. They literally BROKE my bumper in a heat race. Is it going to magically wake up my car? You're not going to scare me out of the way, because I'm not afraid of anyone who races there, so I don't fully understand. Anyway, I finished 7th, I guess it was good enough to HQ, so I was starting 2nd again in the feature.


It's a new thing to be up front. I started in back all year to get a feel for it, but being up front is a whole other animal. I lined up next to Keith in the #19 for the second time. Green flag, and I'm getting pushed by Ian in the Godbout #37. Good thing too, if I had the motor these front runners had, I'd have some good finishes this year. But Ian pushed me (pushed me, not slammed me) past Keith into one, and I just stood on it. The car rotated great and I motored down the backstretch with the lead. It's the first time I've ever lead the pack in any sanctioned race. It was a very short lived experience, but for a rookie, it was one of the coolest experiences I've had this year. To know that you're the guy everyone is chasing, all the fans are looking at, everyone is paying attention to, really gives the old ego a good boost. The confidence factor goes through the roof when you're in the lead, you want to do anything to stay there. But, the caution came out when I got to turn 3, so we had to try all over again. Restart #2, deja vu. Ian pushes me past Keith into one, and I hammer it to come out of 2 with the lead. But, the engine laziness showed as the #37 was able to spring to my inside by turn 3, and I found myself dropping back steadily after that. 


I never drove a car harder in my life than I did Thursday night. My results aren't reflective of the effort I put into that wheel. But, no matter what the results were, I had a seriously good time. I learned a hell of a lot and since then, I have fixed a lot. I'm excited to see what happens when the rear of the car is able to rely on springs and shocks, and not a chassis bind to handle. I'm also only 28 points out of the "true" rookie lead. Randy in the 05 is technically a rookie, but I don't know if they'll give it to him because he won an outlaw race a couple years ago. But I'm behind Trevor in the #52 and I figured out that he has to have a bad day and finish 25th or worse and I have to finish 10th to have a shot at the lead. They said points don't really matter in the rookie chase, but I guarantee it does. Trevor's a good kid, and I don't really care if I get it or not, I just want to give myself something extra to try for. 


Until next time,
Brent 

If you'd asked me if I expected this week to turn out the way it did, I would have said no. Definately not. I went from being frustrated and wondering what I was going to do to get my car to be faster, much less being competitive, to jumping up and down in the grandstands as my brother took the checkered flag in the Sportsman feature. I didn't even have time to change out of my firesuit, I just threw a hat on and ran up to watch the race. 


I'll go on about my car first. I'm almost to the point where I'm going to beg someone to help. Preferably someone who was a crew chief, or a setup person. Everyone knew that Brad helped me before, but that setup didn't work with how I drive, so although I'm grateful for the help, I just have to fine tune it to run how I drive it. Chassis dynamics for a Fox-body mustang are an absolute mystery to me. I've spent 10 years setting up a Metric "G" chassis with different suspension components and this car is much different. It's about 600 lbs lighter than a sportsman, a little over half the horsepower, has a modified Macpherson strut setup, an inch wider tire, less fuel load and burnoff, so it's more complex than I thought. At the same time, they aren't that hard to figure out, I just don't have the time left in the season to get it where I need it. I really wanted to spend this season getting the car set up where it's competitive, and I was only competitive for maybe a week or 2. One week I finished tenth from starting in the back, the other week I was up to 5th and ended up in the fence because of a dirty racetrack. 


So there was more of the same this week, car was tight, wouldn't go. I've started making big changes and desperately searching for the handles with time running out. I looked over the setup notes from 2002-2008 that Jay Paquette gave me when I bought his car, and I'm glad I did. I looked over how the car reacted with the cross weight differentials, and I think I was way too high on the cross weight. Obviously, that would explain the push in the car. Also, I made swaybar alterations to make that work properly, as well as caster/camber changes to the right front. I inspected the right front tire, and I found the wear pattern was too far on the right edge. Driving a mini, you have to throw the car into the corners hard, and without that proper camber, the tire doesn't work correctly. I'm slowly finding things wrong with the car. If everything I'm doing now with an educated guess works better than when I was just throwing a lot of hope at it, you'll see a happy person.


Most people would say, "You're doing great as a rookie, 18th in points, a top ten, what more do you want?" Well, with 2 other true rookies in front of me, I'm not satisfied. I have decent equipment, but at no time this year have I been able to showcase it's true potential. I'll get there, but I'm not a patient person.


So my brother Jess has been through 5 engines in his Sportsman this year. If you haven't heard the back story to his win, then it'll show why that seemingly routine win was much more special than that. If you've ever had to pull an engine out, you know that it's not fun. Try doing it 5 times in a season. We've been under that hood more than someone has sat in the seat. We've been on the brink of giving up. We've taken weeks off, just take a look at the results. The team was down and out, Jess didn't even want to come to the track because he knew the car wasn't up to snuff and he didn't want to get run over. The past few weeks the car was handling beatifully, so we kept at it, looking to collect checks and go until we could get the parts we need to have the motor going again. Then came last race. Jess finished poorly in the heat and it was just a battle to get a top ten. I came up to the stands to sit with the family with my firesuit still on from my feature, and I figured he could end up with a top ten, if he could stay out of trouble. It was hard to do in that race, as before they even hit the backstretch there was a pretty big mess. Luckily, Jess was far enough back to miss it. Then, things started falling into place. Cars started dropping out and by the end of the race, Jess was in the lead. In order to win races, you need to put yourself in a position to win. We were proof positive of that principle. This win couldn't have come at a better time because our morale was wrecked. There's nothing like a win to breathe life into an ailing team. Don't believe me? Go check out www.scottnickel.smugmug.com, and look for Thompson Speedway 9/10/09 victory lane pics. Check out the emotion in Jess' face after he got out of the car, then you'll understand the story behind it. 


Until next time,
Brent

So it was an interesting week, mostly because it wasnt spent repairing the car. I didn't know what to do with myself. If I owned a set of scales, I would have had the car on them, but since I don't, I spent the week doing other things. I went after that stupid vibration instead by nut-and-bolting the car and changing out the driveshaft. I found a counterweight missing on my old shaft, so I thought it was worth a shot. 


This week at the track was just more of the same. I was fighting handling issues and I still had that stupid vibration. I'm beginning to think it's the wheels being out of balance. But for the past few weeks to a month, I've had debilitating handling problems. Not having scales is biting me in the ass. I've been involved in racing for over 10 years and this has to be the most I've ever worked on a car. But I'm keeping at it as best I can, there's no white flag here, so long as there is hope.


We didn't have much time to practice this week because the Whelen Mods were there, and practice started at noon instead of the usual 3pm. We did make the 3pm practice, but I spent the first practice scuffing in new tires. Second practice was spent on race setup because we were being thrown out there with no heat races. Still had a push. I made another wedge adjustment, a swaybar adjustment, and hoped for the best. 


Being down to prayers alone, I was starting 13th. As soon as the green flag drops, I get stuck on the bottom because the car will not enter the turn. I'm whittling down the possibilities as to why the car won't handle, but I'll get back to that later. We got things sorted out really quickly, by lap 2 we were almost all single file. A caution on that lap put us all back together. We go green again, and I'm looking at different lines to get around the track better with this handling condition. On lap 4 I'm behind the #7 of Romjue with Ian Brew in the #37 next to him. Coming down the frontstretch I tuck in behind Brew and try to get around the #7 coming into turn 1. Next thing I know, I've run over the #7 and we go spinning off into the turn. I collected the #20 of Pomposelli and got nicked by Tim in the #5. We had minor damage, but nothing too serious. I couldn't get the car started, so I rolled it down the banking and pop started it. 


I didn't know what happened, I thought I was in a safe place, I even lifted early so I wouldn't run into anyone and get a clean run coming out of the turn. I looked at my in-car camera, and I was right in the tire tracks of the #37. But, I didn't see the #7 come down either. I guess it was just one of those racing things. I didn't mean to get into him, but it's just a little puzzling. I guess if you were in the grandstands it would look like I spun him out, so that's what I believed. I apologized afterwards, and he seemed to understand. It still cost us better finishes, but sometimes things happen. We raced clean afterwards and like Steve said, it would have been an exciting race if we were 15 places forward. 


I put the car on borrowed scales this week and it would not adjust properly. So, I went back to basics, which is what I should have done in the first place. We measured the frame heights, and everything was wrong. I went back to my notes and asked a little advice, and after about 6 hours, 2 springs, 2 struts, and a set of sway bar bushings, I'm happy with the results. So, I have to wait a few more days to try the new setup, and I'm feeling a bit more confident in my chances for the next race. I basically took a setup sheet, balled it up, and tossed it at the car. I have to try something, I'm hoping it's like the "lottery" gag. I throw something at the car and it miraculously works. We'll have to see what happens, if it's good, I'll write about it. If it sucks, I'll complain about it!


Brent