So its been a loong time since I’ve posted on the blog, over 2 months! I’ve had a couple of races over a few months, and overall been super busy. Lots of changes in everything from a new position at work to personal life stuff. Lets just say that I’m living “by myself” now
I’ve gone through the car after Daytona and performed some maintenance and a few upgrades to get it ready for the next race. Its the SIC, which will determine the SE year end champion. Right now, Kip VanSteenburg and myself are tied in points, so its winner take all at this next race. Only “performance” upgrade is to redo the alignment and corner weights to optimize the car for the next race at Roebling Road in October. I’ve also added a fire system instead of a plain extinguisher and replaced wear items like axles and wheel bearings so the car is in tip top shape for the important weekend. I’m hoping that with this new handling setup and the new rear swaybar, the car will be even more awesome then it was earlier in the year where I beat Kip at Roebling twice.
After that its onto the ARRC the first weekend in November. The car will be absolutely perfect for this race and I’m really looking forward to it. It should be faster then it was last year (added splitter, swaybar, etc) and I know I can drive the car a bit better then last year. Hopefully I can walk away from this even National Champ. We’ll see what happens.
Coming up next weekend though is the Petit Lemans at Road Atlanta. The ALMS is in town, along with support races from Speed World Challenge and the VW Jetta Cup. My friend AJ Nealy is racing in the VW Jetta cup and I’ll be there cheering for him like crazy. I’m also on a photo assignment from Grassroots Motorsports, so I’ll have my camera, an assortment of rocking lenses, and be shooting all weekend. Should have a few thousand shots probably and will post the best here after the weekend. Can’t wait!
Right after the Mid Ohio ITFest, I decided to run the opposite way and do a weekend in Daytona. While I was at Mid Ohio we were talking about competition, and one of my friends said “you’re at the point where you’re going to have to search out competition to get better instead of just being complacent”. Made sense for me to go to Daytona and fight with some of the best that the SE had to offer
Daytona was awesome. I have a whole another level of respect for the NASCAR boys now. There are bumps on the banking. These make the car bounce up and down at 130mph and sort of feel odd. I couldn’t imagine this at 200 while side by side. Them boys have some brass balls. I’ve never been there before, and after missing the test day on Friday, I had to learn the track in my first qualifying session. Like in Mid Ohio, I picked up time every session, and ended up running very fast on Sunday, being the fastest in ITA.
I had a great time and a great race with Kip VanSteenburg. In the end, Daytona is a power track, and the ITS cars are much faster then we are in the straights. Unfortunately, they are slower in the turns. I got really f-ed by a couple of RX-7s during the races, to where they just parked it in front of me in the turns and I lost all my momentum. Once that happens at Daytona, the cars in front of you are GONE. Ended up losing to Kip on Saturday about a few seconds, and then on Sunday by 0.3 after a GREAT race. The 2 part race video from Sunday is below, enjoy!
I ran the IT Fest in Mid Ohio this year. The IT Fest is the mid year big Improved Touring race. Its a little more centrally located then the ARRC so its a little easier for the NE and the MidWest guys to make it here, rather then Road Atlanta. With the best of the best in Improved Touring, coupled with the fact that I’ve never driven at Mid Ohio, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy weekend. The ITFest is a 3 race weekend, with a qualifying session Saturday morning, and then a Saturday afternoon race, Sunday morning race, and a Sunday afternoon “feature” race.
I tested well, qualified ok, and ran pretty decent. I improved every session out, and finally got the hang of Mid Ohio, but I didn’t have enough to really “get it done”. Ended up finishing 5th in the 3 races, and 5th overall. The Sunday feature race though, was the most fun I’ve had in a race car so far. It was an absolute barn burner, and a battle for 40 minutes with two cars and great drivers from the Northeast. I learned a lot of racecraft and a lot about Mid Ohio during this race as well. I can’t wait to do it again next year.
Here are two videos of the Sunday Feature race. I tried to edit the footage down by removing all the times where I wasn’t passing someone or being passed, and it was still 20 minutes of video
So between camping, working, and drinking beer, maybe not in that order, I got some more work done on the car. I just about got the front splitter done, and started to put the stickers on.
I decided to redo the front splitter, as I wanted a slightly better design then the previous one I bought. It attached to the stock lip spoiler, and I was never a big fan. Inspired by a message board post, I made some aluminum brackets that attach the splitter right to the bumper cover. Only thing I have left to do is pick up some sheet aluminum and make an air dam.
Also, my stickers from KC at rallydecals.com came in today. Ended up being close to 5 lbs of vinyl. Woah. I put the numbers and Conover sticker on the back of the car, and then finished up the hood. Those were kind of my “warm up” as the sides should be fairly difficult. Little stickers are a breeze, but the 3×4 foot pieces of vinyl are kind of a pain to work with and line up. Looks good so far, and below is a little sneak peak
I put a few good hours into the race car today. Got more stuff done that was on the list, and also decided to make a couple of things “better”. A good quote I heard a few weeks ago is “better is the enemy of done”. I had some slight overheating “issues” at the last few weekends, in that I had to run the heater when I was in the draft, to get the car to stay at 190 degrees. If I pulled out of the draft I was fine. I decided to go ahead and fix that issue, so I ordered up a C&R aluminum radiator. Install was a piece of cake, and I also put in some new radiator hoses just in case.
Also finished up the sway bar brackets I started on a month ago or so. At VIR the swaybar was just fine on the 2nd to last setting, but with these brackets, I can make it stiffer very easily. They also put the heim joints at a nice position regardless of the setting. This was the first time I got to use the drill press and also put my new table top grinder to good use. I used to just use the “wheel of death” air powered zizz wheel, but the table top grinder is much nicer.
Only a few things left on the list. I’m going to build a new splitter on the new bumper. I decided I can do it better then the current iteration that uses the stock add on lip. If I fail at it, I’ll just use the old one, so not a big deal. Also still have to get the graphics from KC so I can put them on the car. Lastly, just a thorough nut and bolt and some final clean up and she’ll be ready for July 17-18th at Road Atlanta.
