Woodsy and Scott Meier went to cheer on Dennis Olthoff for the first Time Trial
at Indianapolis Raceway Park on April 30, 2005, and ended up helping him
replace both axles. Here is Woodsy's report:
Just got back from IRP and the One Lap about an hour ago. Dennis was kicking
some a$$ on the track until an outer CV joint on the driver's side blew apart on
the track (it had about 14,000 miles, were the same ones in at Run & Gun and
are absorbing 680 HP).
Fortunately, he was carrying 2 new axles and swapped out both before his class
ran again. He did not make the full # of laps in the first round (I don't believe)
and hurt his times somewhat when he was a little too enthusiastic in an effort to
make up some points, locked up his front driver's side brake and ran a little off
course.
Dennis was running 6 seconds faster than the Dodge ram, which, by the way, was
a full tube framed independently rear ended truck that looks like it was left over
from the Busch truck series.
Don't let that Dodge Ram "SUV" fool you. That is a flat out race truck
and was trailered
to the Tire Rack where the event started with wet skid tests. If you look at the skid test
results, you'll probably see that none of the High HP machines did as well as, say, the
VW Beetle that was running, or many of the other less powerful machines.
So in the first set of laps, Dennis DNF'd and the second series had cooled the track
down
from some cloud cover that cleared just prior to him returning to the track. He locked up
a front brake and got off course a little.
Dennis replaced both axles prior to hitting the track the second time and was going to
pick up
a couple of spares at Dynamic as he ran by there last night on the way to the next point.
It was the first day and hopefully he got his breakage out of the way
and will have few
problems the rest of the week.
Lots of interesting cars - a CAV GT40, an Elise, an Ultima, several Vipers and
NSX's as well as a myriad of other examples.
Lot's of nice folks too.Met a guy from northern Ill. that owns a low # SPF MKIII.
Took a friend that works in the shop and he had a great time. Hopefully Dennis's
parts problems are over....... Continued race coverage
