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.
Here's how things went in the weeks leading up to daytona, and race day. Several weeks before the race they bring on a old friend of Joe's, and former pro crew chief that has participated in over a dozen Daytona events. He would ultimately be the guy making the calls during the race, but he is only with us for this race. We also brought on another over the wall crew member, so I could really sit at my table look at all my screens, do fuel math and discuss it with this temp crew chief and Joe. He and I could really concentrate on building a strategy for this race. The random draw for starting position is close behind us. Meaning most of the field would start in front of us. As you can see from the pic below, we greatly reduced the size of the rear wing, and in the beginning it was set at a very low angle. The car was loooooose. I had in-car video this time, and the first couple laps for each driver were scary to watch. Traffic was tight, particularly for Joe when he took the first green flag. Each of them had at least a couple of minor spins until they calmed down. We twice put more wing angle in during later pit stops. That big splitter kept the front of the car planted, and the rear just didn't have much grip, but it would get much better. Right away we're more aggressive with our fuel stops. With our current setup, it would appear that we do not have the fuel pick-up problem we had at Road Atlanta. We did a pump and fill test at the shop, where we got a little over 18 gallons out of the fuel supply line before the first air bubble appeared. We think we have a about 18 gallons of usable fuel. Our first stop we time at 80 minutes, about 15.87 gallons used on my laptop. We put almost exactly that much in it. We still can't make the full two hours driver stint on fuel, but we're very fast and figure we can do 90 minutes easily. This puts us at a minimum of ten stops during the race, only two more than we were hoping for prior to the race. Based on past races, we thought we would get more cautions and 35mph laps, decreasing our fuel usage. It didn't happen like that. This year, they stopped allowing new, unproven drivers and cars in the race. The first hour, typically filled with cautions in previous races, has only a few minor incidents that slow the race down. Joe had done well during his stint. He picked up a lot of positions. He put us in the high 20s overall, and I think 7th in class. This might be the one track on our schedule that favors the V8 class cars over the more efficient V6 class. The top two cars are in our class, one of them being the only D-class car that finished ahead of us last race we ran. Jason gets in the car and he's very fast. After a few laps, I see that it appears he is using less fuel than Joe. From the start, the numbers show him using about 0.15 gallons less per lap. It's a long lap, plenty of places for Jason to be just slightly more efficient. Enough of a difference to raise eyebrows, but not an unbelievable difference. The math is mathing this way for Jason's entire first stint. Every ten minutes I do the math. I present it to Joe and the temp crew chief. Together, we make the call to trust the data from the computer. The fuel light starts to flicker in the car. I keep doing the math. I show Joe and the temp crew chief that the light shouldn't be on. Joe says he doesn't have the faith in the light, that he has in the car's computer measuring injector open time. The fuel light goes solid, and still we push it. It's on early, according to what the computer is saying. We keep pushing it. We start making plans for a stop. Jason runs out of gas in the infield. Worst possible place. They throw a short local yellow and we just start falling behind. We were running 11th overall. 3rd in class, I'm pretty sure, with those other two D-class cars still in 1st and 2nd overall. Clearly we have a top 10 car. We just need luck and strategy. They tow the car to the garage. We stop them short, so we can just push the car to pit road and fuel it. Joe gets in the car. Jason is properly pissed off. When he ran out he was in a turn, setup to stomp the throttle to get the car to rotate thru the turn, and it didn't do anything when he stomped it. A little bit of panic and the lack of power to turn and he went wider than normal. A miata he had just passed clipped the splitter and broke sideways, but got it back and continued. The math is still mathing that Joe is also using less fuel. Something has changed. The car computer is no longer accurate. We should have had faith in the light. We didn't lose as many positions as we thought we would. We drop to high 30s overall, 7th in class. It would seem the top 15 or so cars were all really fast, and we were among them, and the rest of the field was really spread out. We lost laps to the top 15 or so cars, that were all still tightly pack and near the lead lap. We're still in a position to have a really good day. When the guys come back with the weight of the fuel put in the car, it works out to 16.5 gallons used. The computer had said under 14 gallons used. It's still not near the >18 gallons we expected to be able to use. The temp crew chief tells our fuel man to hold the last can in longer to be sure it's full. Joe gets us back in the low 30s overall. We've tightened the car up with the wing. Lost a little speed on the super speedway section, but it's turning much better in the infield section. We decide on a set number of laps to go after the fuel light goes solid between nascar turn 2 and the chicane on the nascar back stretch. Just working our way back up towards to front. We bring Joe in for fuel and driver change. The fuel man does exactly what the temp crew chief told him to do. He holds that can in longer and spills more gas than he ever has. That gas runs along the bumper and drips onto the hot rear brakes. There's the fire I mentioned. Fire extinguisher man quickly puts it out. It fills the car with a nice cloud of whatever is in the extinguisher. Jason, being strapped in, wonders what it is. Joe says, "it's a fire, don't worry about it, buckle up." Jason replies, " Not worried", and continues to strap in. ChampCar, like most other race series I imagine, has zero tolerance for fuel leaks. Rightly so. An official makes us push it to the garage to check it for leaks. We pull the trunk lid and look. There isn't one, officials are now satisfied. Jason gets on the track, only losing a few positions overall and maybe one in class. He continues to move up. I think he gets us up to low 20s overall and 5th in class. If you look back a couple of posts, I mention the lead tech official, and ChampCar board member, working on the car with Joe and I. Well, now he is going to drive it. He's busy as hell during a race weekend, with exception of a few hours in the early afternoon of race day. You're supposed to have 3 drivers for 14 hour races. Nothing in the rule book says it can't be the lead series tech official that has a little down time between lunch and after race tech inspections. Ray is a talented driver and raced his own Champcar for years before being hired by the series. He gets in the car and makes 5 laps, before the fuel pump shits the bed. It happened in last couple of turns, so his tow didn't take that long. Ray said he thought the car felt down on power leading up to the failure, but he had never driven it, so wasn't certain. Prepared as we are, we had a fuel pump. Access is quick and easy, swapping it will not take long. Joe is back in the car after the fuel pump failure. The field is spread out and other cars are dropping like flies. Joe's coworkers in the corvette and foxbody from Atlanta are both already out. He makes two laps and gets black flagged for something dragging under the car. It's the exhaust, broken at the wye. We figure the car ran lean when the fuel pump started failing, the EGTs got super hot and the welds failed because of it. We called it close to halfway through the race. Joe's coworkers in the foxbody, they get back on the track with a bad transmission, just to run enough laps to get office bragging rights. Jason bought another race car when he got home. A nice 1988 Ford Thunderbird. Another foxbody car that we can shorten 10 inches, build with exact same components as the current mustang. It holds 7 more gallons of gas. That generation of Tbird is called the Aerobird. It quite possibly will make a much more competitive car than the 93 mustang. The Tbird will be next year's car, being built with the experience we gain this year with this car. The mustang will likely become an arrive and drive rental to help pay for some expenses on race weekend.
Fantastic write-up dude... and sounds like a blast. So much about racing is just persevering through the adversity, especially when doing endurance events. I remember after EVERY 24 hour race we'd sit in the hotel bar, with thousand yard stares, holding a beer, saying "I'll never do this again". We'd then go sleep for 2 days, Then we'd immediately be talking to each other... "so, for next year, we need to..." Really appreciate you sharing this with us. It's great to read.
It's so extreme, what the car and team goes through. Joe said it, the time we run in a single 14 hour event is what he would run in an entire short track truck series. He works endlessly between races to go through everything on the car because in his mind it is as worn out as a car that has run an entire year of short track races. His list is neverending. He and Jason did say the other crew members need to pull more weight between races. Behind Joe and Jason, Ive spent the most time working on the car, and I live the furthest away. Hell, Ray the official has worked more on our car than the other team members. We have less than a month before we go to Watkins Glen. I will be more conservative with fuel next race. If it were just me making the calls, I would have pit Jason before he ran out. The time for aggressiveness is not in the first 4 hours of a 14 hour race.
Yeah. After we’d run the 24 hours the car would be completely pulled apart and rebuilt. It was just worn out.
Love seeing these write-ups. I've never been involved in racing but I do love it and I really like reading all the behind-the-scenes action. Good luck in the race!
That is the part that ended dreams, and our day at Daytona. That is one of only a few parts making up the exhaust system, that were bought, and not fabricated by Joe. The rest of the tubing was bent and welded right there in that shop. We're hoping the next wye lasts. We'll be adding support closer to the wye, to see if it helps to reduce flexing in the area. Yesterday, we... - Reassembled the shocks and struts, after they came back from being made legal by deleting the Schrader valves. - Fixed body damage. Removed the busted splitter and started painting the new one, which will take several coats over the rest of the week. - Reworked the fuel system and added a vent check valve, hoping that this will cure the situation we had, where we only got 16.5 gallons in when it was empty and should hold over 18. The new check valve has ping pong balls in it, that float when fuel reaches it. We've changed our theory on the fire, pretty sure too much fuel was going to the vent instead of the catch can, and it overflowed onto the hot brakes and ignited. - Rewired our in-car warning lights, sending a signal for fuel pressure instead of oil pressure. I can still see oil pressure on my screens in the pit stall, but there is no warning light, just the number. I just have to keep my eyes on it more. The engine was refreshed after Road Atlanta, and has a over 6 hours on it since, and appears to be doing great. We've been fighting fuel system issues from the start, we need all the warnings and data we can get related to fuel. - Removed the all the brakes, added anti-knock back springs to the front calipers. We've cracked brake rotors during both races. Joe took our new rotors to bake in his oven, hoping to stop the cracking. - Added another NACA duct to the right side and plumbed it to blow cool air on the fuel pump. - Pulled the front hubs off to be broken down, cleaned and repacked with grease. - Cleaned and decreased the underside of the car. - Worked a bit on the car hauler. - Oil changes for the Generators we carry for the paddock and pit stall. - Since the driver's seat is 18" further back than stock, Joe fabricated a custom shifter, we broke it down, cleaned and lubed all of its moving parts, and reinstalled. Joe had already done a lot on the car since being home, but there is still quite a list of things to do in the next few weeks. We had a productive day and are ahead of Joe's estimate on time that our list would take. We got everything done that we had the parts to complete. The interior will be getting rearranged, moving the car computer and comms system rearward. Goal is to get it further away from the engine and battery, to reduce some interference from the car's charging system. Nett will probably know what I'm talking about, the whine in the headset when the car is running, especially at high RPMs. Printing another rear wing, sized between the large one and the Daytona wing. The car also gets and aluminum drive shaft, that is so light, compared to the stock shaft. We're supposed to have a practice day in a couple of weekends. The car will come up to Jason's shop, and we're going go thru the motions of a race day. From pit setup to pit stops. Jason is even going to drive the car on the back roads, so we can check the fuel consumption guage that was giving me inaccurate data. I doubt we'll trust the guage enough to make decisions based on it anytime soon, but we're going to record it and see if it was a failing fuel pump that messed it up. The car is probably street legal under NC antique vehicle category. We'll work on getting Discord to work for Car to pit communication. When it works properly, it is so much clearer than race radios and should technically be able to communicate at all track locations from anywhere with with starlink, but we always have trouble with it at the track, even though it tests fine at home. Our time to fuck with it at the track is always limited, so we just switch back to the radios after a few frustrating minutes. The radios suck, it would be nice to replace them with discord. We'll do more pump and refill tests on the fuel system to make sure we're consistently getting all the fuel in the car with our newest setup. It also gives a chance to bed in the new brakes before we get on the track. Watkins Glen is next. It's another track that overwhelmingly favors the balance of HP and efficiency of the V6 class. Dan, in the Eddie Vetter corvette is the only V8 powered car to ever win a Champcar event at the Glen. The Eddie Vetter team and Joe's other cowokers in the 60 car will both not be in this race. They both have expensive mechanical issues. When Dan returns, it be on his fourth engine this season. He replaced his engine after Daytona, and blew that second engine up on a track day at CMP. He went to a corvette salvage yard several states away for the engine that would make 7 laps at Daytona. I think he has only done 46 laps in competition this year. Watkins Glen is also our first two day event, with two 7 hour races over Saturday and Sunday, instead of one 14 hour race. The rest of our schedule will be two race events. I'm looking to see what we can do with a race day, and then opportunity to make improvements in the afternoon and night before the next day. We will also have some pre-race testing times on Friday, something Daytona didn't allow. I have a good feeling about this race. I don't know of any team that puts in as much work in between races as we do, and one day it will pay off. The teams that I have met and gotten to know certainly do not outwork Joe, Jason and myself. Joe especially, his life is all about this car and series, right now. Between every race, the car is improved and brought back to nearly new condition. The car was so fast at Daytona, we don't need the aggressive fuel strategy with which we approached Daytona. We just need run a clean race and be there at the end of it, and keep improving every race.
Watkins Glen is a fantastic track... you guys will have a ton of fun. Sounds like you guys are putting the work in to do well at the track, that's for sure. Looking forward to the results!