Get to the track early.
We didn't make it to the track until almost noon. By the time we got through inspection, we missed most of the test time on the track which had cost us $200.
Sleep is your friend.
Working past midnight for weeks and then driving 300 miles after a night of no sleep is an accident in the making.
Stock brakes suck.
This is the big one. We had to swap out pads twice during the race. Each time cost us more than an hour of track time and made the time we did have on the track a bit scary.
Being slow makes you slower.
Without the fan, our car was just a stock Civic. That means we were constantly getting passed and forced into bad lines. Getting a bad line in a car with 0 acceleration means your going to be slow down the straight and get pushed into a bad line on the next corner. Rinse. Repeat.
Visibility is your friend.
Our rear visibility sucked because of all of the gusseting that we put in for the fan. Our blind spot was pretty much anything behind the front door. This lead to a large number of black flags...