It shows potential! (4/13/2013) - 7 hours - Portland International Raceway:
This was the first race with our new chassis. We had done a lot of work to strip weight out of the car, and had shed around 100 lbs between the old and new chassis. The entire drivetrain/suspension was just transferred over, so that portion was exactly the same. With the lighter/stiffer chassis, this thing is good. Surprisingly good! Nathan Feigion starts the race in 23rd place and starts working his way through traffic. By the time he is done with his stint, he is in 2nd place and has ran a team-best 1:35.0!
I get in the car and make it up into 1st place with a fastest lap of 1:34.7, a whopping 2.7 seconds faster than our previous fastest! The car feels great as I slowly put a full lap up on second place. We have never before been in the lead of a race, much less have a lap up on 2nd! By the end of my stint I have been in 1st for 43 laps, and it's time to pull in for a driver change. We have a great pit stop, put my dad in the car, and send him out.
Immediately we get back on the radio that the engine is running on three cylinders. What? No... that can't be right.. it has been working so perfectly! We did check the oil during the pitstop, and the dipstick is right next to the distributor.. Did a plug wire get pulled out? We call my dad into the pits and start checking the easy stuff. Plug wires all look good, everything seems seated good. Fuel injectors are plugged in well, nothing obvious.. but we do figure out that it's cylinder #3 not firing. Let's send him out and come up with a plan. We don't have a spare cap or wires with us, so Ken drives to grab some while Dave circulates PIR, running 1:43-1:50s.. we are down to 5th and sliding. Ken gets back with our parts and we try swapping #3 plug wire and spark plug. No help... send him back out again while we regroup. We are now down to 10th. We suspect we have a failed fuel injector. We have a spare fuel rail with injectors in it, so we decide to swap the entire setup out. 20 minutes later, we are back on four cylinders! However we are also in 21st place.
Ken gets in the car and he starts moving through traffic again. We finish the race in 16th. We are happy we triumphed over our fuel injector issue, but we know we have the capability of running up front. We finished with the third fastest lap behind two modified V8 cars. We start the ritual of swapping out brake pads and check things over for the next day, then get some rest.
TECH TIP #7: If the rules don't have a minimum weight, take advantage of that! With ChumpCar rules we had very limited modifications we could do to the engine, but cutting out weight was open. Losing 100 lbs (a lot of it high in the chassis) and gaining the stiffness was worth over 2 seconds for us! (I'm sure we had some driver improvement as well..)
The First Trip to the Podium (4/14/2013) - 7 hours - Portland International Raceway:
We send Ken out in wet conditions, and he starts in 25th place (random starts in ChumpCar). PIR is notoriously tricky in the wet. Old racing surfaces with a lot of rubber worn in, flocks of geese that like to deposit poop that is more slippery than baby oil, and the track is absolutely flat. Zero elevation change. A fellow Nissan team with a Z31 300ZX (Red Square Racing) goes hard into the wall right in front of us. It is treacherous out there, but Ken keeps moving through traffic and in one piece. By the end of his stint the track starts drying out.
Dave gets in the car and heads out on a mostly dry track. Things are looking up as Dave gets into 6th place until.. it starts raining more. With the least amount of experience on track, Dave is struggling in the treacherously slippery conditions of PIR. The front-wheel drive cars are now walking away from us and we drop down to 9th place. The track starts drying out again as Dave pits to turn the car over to me.
I have a lot of ground to make up, but the sun is out, the track is dry and I can really push. We are six laps away from a podium finish, but I start the work of unlapping ourselves. We have good cornering speed, but quite a few cars can outpull us on the straights. I run a 1:34.8 as my fastest lap, and turn the car over to Nathan for the last stint two laps away from the podium.
Nathan also has dry track and starts laying down some great laps. With 44 minutes left in the race, Nathan passes the 4th place car to put us on the same lap. At 27 minutes to go, he passes the same car again for 3rd place! Our team is ecstatic, this is our first trophy! The welded together scraps making an alien from the movie 'District 9' is unique and so awesome looking! it's so cool... we want another one!
Left to right: Nathan, Nate (me), Dave, Ken
You can see in the picture below that Nathan just beat my lap time at 1:34.7, starting a friendly intra-team competition for fastest lap.
TECH TIP #8: After a race weekend, go out for pizza (or whatever favorite food)! If the race went great, you are celebrating. If it didn't go well, you are drowning your sorrows. Either way everybody wins!
Video from the race: