Porsche really built cars for the specific series people were racing in so that you didn't have to do much in order to be competitive. They even have a few semis showing up at the track with race parts in case you need help. It's an amazing platform to go racing with, at just about any level.
Oh hell yeah. Best we did was 11th overall, which was an amazing finish, considering LMPs, etc. Beast of a car.
Oh yeah, you don't have to convince me what a feat that was, and against some serious competition. Jason has his eyes set on bigger endurance series and races like the 24 hours at Daytona.
Went and worked on the car, the hauler and our custom pit wagon. We're going to look like a prepared team at Daytona, with our own tools and shit, just in case we don't get share pits with Joe's coworkers.
I went back to the shop yesterday to help finish the last big items, prepping the car for Daytona. I walk and see a familiar face working on the car, but I can't quite remember where I know him from. Tells me his name, I still can't remember where I met him. He and I swap the rear axle to the one set up for Daytona. We start other projects and just bullshitting and swapping stories and it hits me where I know him from. He is the top Champcar official over the entire technical inspectors department. I thought that was ballsy... having a person in that position, helping prep your car. It probably worked in our favor, he found issue with our shocks, with the potential to put us over the 500 VPI and add penalty laps because they're considered adjustable. It would have been heartbreaking if they were found after a great finish, instead of in the shop where we could make the change.
Nice! It really is amazing the amount of technical rules that apply and how differently they can be interpreted. Some of my favorite stories are from those who cheated, and how. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend The Unfair Advantage by Marc Donahue. Fantastic book by an engineer that went racing in the early days. Hell of a read.
I'll have to take a look at that. The only thing with these shocks, they still had the Schrader valve to charge them with nitrogen. We can take them to a shock tech and have them blocked off. Joe is also setting up an experiment between the shock guy and champcar officials to see how much changing pressure alters performance on a shock dyno. We're thinking it may be negligible, and they can change the rules to save money on teams having to get the valves blocked off. Obviously, being able to adjust the internal valve is something that doesn't belong in a budget series. But just having charging valves shouldn't be illegal.
We did not finish the Dayton 14. We had a rough day. I'll give a more thorough write up when I get some time. Short version... We were fast, running 11th overall after starting in the rear becauseof pit draw, ran out of gas because of sudden malfunction in fuel data, had a small gasoline fire during a pit stop, fuel pump went out and was swapped to continue, exhaust y-pipe failure is what finally ended our day.