Been there amigo.I wouldn't say it hurts. Just the nature of the beast, they can be frustrating.
After making some changes to the car for this year, finally made it out for my first bracket race (always been a heads up car) on Saturday.
First time run wasn't bad, in fact it was encouraging. 2nd time run, for no apparent reason it tossed the oil pump belt at full song but was shut off before anything disastrous happened. Put the belt back on and adjusted the tension and had 85 psi oil pressure so not too concerned as engines are fairly resilient. Started it up to roll in the water box for eliminations and thought wow seems to be idling kinda high, everything seems ok so lets go. Launched it and ran it out but it felt kinda lazy the whole run. Get the time slip and wtf is going on here. How the heck did we lose 4 tenths and 12 mph since the first pass?
Loading the car up it just doesn't sound right it doesn't sound as crisp as normal.
We get digging this evening and find spark plugs in 2 cylinders (1 on each side) wet. Yank the valve covers to have a look and find intake push rods and rockers damaged and both valve stems beat up. One valve tip is broke off basically flush with the keepers.
Will call the engine shop tomorrow and see about parts availability, turn around time, cost etc.
There's a meme for it but it's just part of the 4 stages of owning a race car.
1- hell yeah it runs
2- sure I'll race
3- what's that noise
4- darn thing is always breaking
I will say it must be a beast if it dropped 2 cylinders and only fell off 4/10ths.