This past weekend had Onderko Motorsports at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia
Saturday Morning bright and early we unloaded for the day and I headed over to the drivers meeting. We went over the way the day was going to go, and the order of events and how they would be run. It was a pretty normal start to the raceday.
We got ready for practice, and headed over to the grid to get lined up. We ran decent in practice; I made a significant gear change during the week and it really changed my shift points. Once I got comfortable with the car again, I pulled back into the garage area. There was no use in putting more time on the car with Nationals right around the corner.
Qualifying came and we ran really well. The times came way down, and I really started to get comfortable with the car. Our fastest lap came on the last lap of qualifying, which tells me that the car is working really well and should be fast in the race. When we checked the grid order we found ourselves on the outside of the front row. That was our best qualifying effort this year. So far the day was going very well.
The call came from race control to start getting the cars to the grid. Once again my team got the car ready to do battle. I got ready too, and climbed aboard and belted in. I really felt like we had a great opportunity to get an overall win on Saturday. I knew that if I kept the car on the track and didn’t make any mistakes an overall podium was almost expected. We took our pace laps and took the green flag. The polesitter didn’t exactly jump the start but he did get an awfully great jump on me before the green came out.
I dropped back to third as we headed down to turn 1. It took 2 laps but I got back to 2nd spot. I lost some time to the leader, but I settled in and really started to push the car to catch him. The car was really working well, and we were .5 seconds off the track record with our times. I felt good, the car felt good, the crew was feeling good- and then it happened. BANG.
When I say BANG, it was a bang- followed by the transmission going from 4th gear to 2nd gear. The telemetry started flashing at me telling me the motor was over revving, my brain was screaming at me to get the car out of gear. By the time I pushed the clutch in, the motor had revved to 11,478 rpm’s- well above the 9500rpm redline.
I got out of the racing line and headed for pit lane. I made it back to the garage area and climbed out of the car. I knew it wasn’t the clutch, and my fear was that I broke the main shaft in the transmission. All I could picture was chunks of gears and metal gravy in the bottom of the trans. I didn’t want to mess with it at the track so we loaded it up and went home.
Sunday was supposed to be spent with my wife, but instead I went to the shop and tried to figure out what had happened. Around lunchtime my wife, Marisa, came over to the shop and helped me pull the driveline. She was a big help and actually was the one who first realized what had happened. We run a sequential style gear box, and as we were working she noticed that the shift cam didn’t feel right.
The bolt that held the shift cam had actually sheared and allowed the cam to come loose and would no longer engage a gear. A 2 dollar bolt ended what would have been a great day. The good news is that it should be a quick fix. We are going to put in a fresh engine and the gearbox is currently being checked out. This is not something I wanted to be dealing with right before Nationals.
Next week I should have good news and we should be just about wrapped up and ready for Nationals. A big thanks to Marisa for giving up some weekend time with me to help me figure out what was wrong with the racecar. It looks like I might owe her a special date night. Check us out on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter @justinonderko. Till next week. . .
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