Finally getting settled and can give a little more in depth update on the event. All the preparation for the 6 months leading up to the race had a huge impact on our success but it wasnt without issue.
Day 0: (Cordova) Ended up in the sand trap due to my own stupidly. Luckily the car didn’t get any damage other than my ego being hurt a bit. In short I was told that the shut down was way longer than what I was used to and didnt pull the cute since its a pain to repack. I mis-calculated how hard I needed to brake and ran out of real estate.
Day 1: (Cordova) Put an easy 9.0 tune up in and ran a 9.07 so away we went. Within the first 10 miles we had some fuel pump issues that landed us on the side of the road but I figured out the cause and we were able to go on our way. The roads were stupid bumpy and unfortunatly about 2 hours into the drive portion, the mounts on my Scott Rod wing stated to fatigue and I was forced to remove it. Luckily there was minimal damage to the trunk's paint.
Day 2: (Byron) While staging on the line it started to rain and they ended up canceling the event for the day. It ended up storming really bad for a couple hours so we waited it out at the track and as soon as there was a break in the weather we started our journey to GLD.
Got a sweet burnout pic before all hell let loose
Lake Geneva
Boar’s Nest Saloon
Mars Cheese Castle
Day 3: (GLD) We started having a ticking noise that we could not figure out. Knock on wood we left the Byron tune up in it and went 9.04 without the engine eating itself. Half way through the 200 mile drive we did a oil change and cut the filter apart with no metal so we knew we were good. At about midnight I pulled the exhaust and swapped in a fresh manifold gasket with RTV and the noise went away.
Field of Dreams
Day 4: (Tri State Raceway) The track was greasy and nobody was making it down clean. We softened up the tune and cracked off a 9.3 and went on our way. The facility was super nice, but the groove was narrow and lots of people were having issues.
Motion Raceworks Party
Day 5: (Cordova) We put a little more jam into the car and cracked off a 8.9 at 161. Our plan was to put the moon tune in it and crank everything up but looking at the datalog injector duty cycle was much higher than it should have been. We had heard of some peoples filters getting clogged from shitty fuel along the way and didn’t want to damage anything so we called it a day. Bigger injectors and maybe a second fuel pump are on the list and a slew of other upgrades after this week. I think I have ourgrown what I currnetly have.
Overall the event was completely different than I had expected. Beforehand I was expecting to basically have a "track day" and then casually drive to the next place. In reality it was non stop from the moment we were up till we would go to bed getting 4-5 hours of sleep each night. There was a constant cycle of swapping wheels, parachute mounts, engine diaper, packing/unpacking and a bunch of other stuff that needed to be accomplished on top of all the driving and making passes at each track. Originally I wanted to run a 9.0 and progressively turn the car up more but after the first day of driving my perspective changed and I didnt want to be ragging on the engine as there was enough stress on everything and I didnt really have a plan b if something catastrophic happened. We met a lot of cool people and had a lot of very technical conversations with people way smarter than us which was some of my favorite parts of the week. Overall, everyone was supportive of each other and willing to help out which was awesome and unique compared to the grudge race scene im used to. I cant thank
P
PJx5x enough for all his help. We worked great together as a team.
