My teammate, Henry Payne, and I started and finished this entire race with NO CLUTCH. The master cylinder failed during qualifying, and I almost didn’t enter the race, but hey what’s the worst that can happen!? And as you can see in this video, I kinda got the hang of clutchless racing after a while, not that it’s fast — you just have to match the revs really well on both downshifts and upshifts. (It ends up slowing you down more on the upshifts, because you have to wait for the revs to drop before shifting, and these cars have the heavy, stock flywheel so that takes about a second per shift.) Henry had a different approach — he just left it in fourth gear most of the track! We checked the times, and they were pretty similar — and his approach probably tore up the transmission less. We finished dead last in our class, but we finished dammit! Partial race only. I killed the engine starting the car in the false grid — hard to start a car with no clutch! Anyhow, that engine kill cut the camera off, and I didn’t realize it until a couple laps into the race, had to reach back and start the videocamera myself. Same thing happened at pit change, so we don’t get to see Henry’s stint. Needless to say we fixed the clutch before the next race!

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Spec Miata crashes into a wall because of brake failure at Pacific Raceways in Washington State, brought to you by edgecameras.com

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Jared Lendrum, driving the #13 1.6 spec miata. Video is shortened, with the music removed. The video includes the the fastest spec miata lap of the day, 3:19 minutes. Video was taken with a Go Pro Hero Wide attached to the front hoop of the roll cage.

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Now, John takes the wheel of Craig’s G-Prepared Fiat 850 Spyder to gahter up some seat time before he drives it at the SCCA National’s in September. www.engine-machining.com 949-631-6376

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