Race #1 - Pacific Northwurst -- April 19-20 20025

Submitted by shredjesse on Mon, 04/21/2025 - 10:39

First race is in the books! With a lot of work and effort we pulled off a pretty amazing rookie debut with no penalties / black flags, no off track mishaps or spins, and we managed to finish 4th in B class (out of 14 cars) and 12th overall (out of 41).

Leading up to the Race and Practice day:

A bunch of last minute work was put in to get the car race ready and prep the team. Radio got installed and tested (and it sucked), GoPro recording added (which didn't last the whole race) and some fuel jug improvements were made to increase fueling time (which was an improvement but we need better). There was also a mad dash to secure commonly replaced items, which incidentally have all lasted for us throughout the entire prep season and then the entire race itself.

Prior to the event we'd done a few sim days at one of our team members locations. There were mixed opinions on how much the sim worked for us, and we all were constantly crashing in the same. That definitely made the team feel cautious going into the event.

For the practice day itself on Friday (day before the event) once we all got in the real car we all felt quite natural and at home and had zero issues familiarizing ourselves with the track. I personally spent just 10 minutes figuring out race lines and what not, then spent another 20 just faffing around with all the "off line" parts of the track for the inevitable side by side passing that will occur and then felt no more time was needed. Most other folks had no issues familiarizing themselves with the car, and the only folks who took additional time was Dave to scrub in the all season tires we had, and Pat as he had not actually tracked the car before and needed to get his seat time up with the car.

After the practice day there was a track walk, where we all went for a stroll around the track. As you can see from the picture above... Turn 3 has some serious elevation going on along with being quite a tight turn! It was fun to walk but we didn't really learn much we hadn't already figured out. We all discuss what lines we thought we were taking, what worked where, what ideas we had... etc etc.

One last little modification we pulled together before the start of the race was adding a simple small latch to basically "lockout" neutral. The car is pretty doggy in 4th and is constantly trying to shift into overdrive, often meaning the car has to make two very slow gear changes as you're trying to accelerate out of a turn. Driving the car in 3 works quite well and the car shifts are quite aggresive... but if you're used to a manual where you're generally going from 4th to 3rd into a turn... that is a forward motion. Forward from D on our shifter puts you into neutral, which is really slow. Also, if you're going from 3rd to drive as you get onto a long striaght... push it a bit too far and you'll find yourself in neutral. So, we added the neutral lockout and it really helped us all out.

Race Day 1

Race day 1 was a strong start for our team. Our initial goal was to get everyone an hour of seat time. Our stretch goal was to finish outside of last place. We had an order of drivers going out, organized from who had done the most work on the car to the least (though nobody had done an insignificant amount of work) along with myself going last to recognize everyone elses financial contribution above my own.

One of the big strategies we had to face for the weekend was tire choice. We had a Hankook Ventus RS4 which is an exceptional dry weather tire for endurance racing. We also had a Continental DWS60 set of "ultra high performance" rain tires. Rain was forecasted to be intermittent for the weekend, leaving us with some tough choices. Do we run the all season tires and run slower in the dry but safe in the rain (and MUCH faster than others)... or do we run the Dry tires to maximize our dry weather capabilities and just dial it way back for wet weather conditions It's also worth noting for folks unfamiliar with this series, the pitting situation is quite limited so we can't hot pit and nascar style swap out wheels.

Unfortunately for us... as conditions started to dry up we didn't communicate to our driver out there to keep the pace reasonable, nor did the driver know to seek out the wet part of the tracks to keep the tires cool. So we nuked our front drivers side tire and when it came my turn to drive, I had to pit to swap tires. This pit unfortunately cost us some time, but when I went back out I was able to run an exceptionall fast time for our group and in general for the competition. We also learned a few lessons on how we need to be able to perform tire changes much faster, as we have hub adapters that didn't fit perfectly fitting us and complications with the clearance for the socket being so precise that any imperfection prevented us from quickly snugging the tires down.

A few other problems happened throughout the day. Namely, our radios were pretty much worthless at pace. We adjusted though and went with one click for okay, and sure enough that let us do our thing. Then, later in the day we lost all comms with the drivers, but we had our fuel consumption and what not well enough planned out that it didn't matter.

A fun takeaway from day 1 was that we absolutely dominate in the rain. There were several much more capable cars out there, one that was so cheaty it rivaled my Corvette in value for sure. While those cars walked away from us in the Dry, we danced circles around them in the rain!

Between Race Condition

While we had forecasted to spend the first night doing maintenance on the Accord... there really wasn't anything to be done. It would seem our team nailed the reliability aspect! I knew going into it we'd need a lot of coolers and oil pressure backup... and sure enough that seems to have paid dividens as we found our oil to be pretty much brand new looking still after day 1. The trans oil smelt ever so mildly burnt, but the color was the same as before we went into the race so we tried to not read too much into it.

We popped the brake pads off and rotated them, noting though that the new endurance pads were exceptional up front but too grippy in the rear for wet conditions. We switched the rear brake pads back to street pads as we expected the next day to be pretty wet and thus would help restore better wet conditions braking bias.

For fun we ran to the nearby walmart to pick up a bigger amplifier to make the accordion music louder. Unfortunately, this manuever would not pay dividens and all it did was ensure only we heard the music while folks behind us did not. We'll up our speaker game further next round though!

Race Day 2

Entering Day 2, we were in 7th place and 16th or so overall. Weather wise, day 2 started pretty overcast looking and with significantly more rain in the forecast. The pavement however started dry, so we were cautious about just what strategy to take. Do we run the all seasons and pace ourselves when it's not raining? Do we run the dry tires and pace ourselves if it rains? We surely don't want to be doing lengthy tires changes if we can avoid it. We settled on running the wet tires, which was perfect as it started to mist right as the event started.

Proof we were right was fairly instant. Pat got on the track and it was raining so much he said there was water sloshing around the passenger side of the car. Our car dominates in the rain though compared to nearly every other car out there though, and we were able to run literal laps around the vast majority of folks. Another beneficial part of running in the rain is our fuel consumption dropped noticeably, allowing us to run an hour and 20 minutes a driver and fuel refill instead of hour long stints.

Unfortunately, as our second driver got in the car things dried up, and this was the same driver who nuked tires the previous day. So we had to tell them to tone it down on the lap times, which perturbed them, but it's a team thing and a marathon not a race. They finished their session, I hopped into the car and also started nursing it around the track... and then it began to rain. Sure enough, we were slipping and sliding, but most other folks were spinning several 360s all over the place. For about 30 minutes, we absoltely dominated... and then it started to dry up. That made for it's own form of fun driving there, where I had to adjust my driving to chase down wet sections of the track to ensure I didn't cook the tires. This made for some fun driving, along with some other folks surely wondering just what the heck we were doing passing them and then dropping way off to a part of the track nobody runs!

Somewhere in the middle of the day, we had moved from 7th to 4th, and from 18th overall to 14th. I think we can safely attribute a lot of that to being so competent in the rain. We turned faster laps, but more importantly we never spun and had to deal with being black flagged. Lemons likes to doll out punishments for being black flagged... and those punishments can take as much as 20 minutes. So not only were folks slower, and then spun losing the time there, but then they'd often get black flagged and punished for their mistakes. So not only did we put down faster laps... but we were avoided the potential double loss that a spin would incurr.

Dave hopped in the car for the final driving session and nursed it on home. We were 6 laps up, and as long as we didn't muck up we were going to hold onto our position. Dave held it together, and we made it happen!

Final Results

You can see in the picture above that we placed 12th overall out of 41 entrees. Not too shabby! Our best lap time was also top 10 worthy, though a far cry from the insanely fast time some of the more cheaty cars were able to put down.

In our class we placed 4th out of 14 cars, which we feel pretty good about. We had a 6 lap penalty to start, which wouldn't have fully made up the difference, but if we can lose that penalty combined with some improvements to our techniques, we think we can get top 3!

Here are the Mylaps race results, though I can't guarantee how long that information will remain online.

Here's pictures of us standing around at awards. We didn't win any award. We'd had hopes that there was maybe some sort of Rookie award we could win for being a rookie team with a brand new car and getting no penalties, but eh there wasn't and such is life! The other folks who won awards all surely deserved it!

Takeaways & Lessons Learned:

Improve fuel situation. Our more frequent and slower fueling changes made it so slower cars than us beat us at this event. A 24 gallon fuel cell which we can fill quicker would really let us cut down on pit times and refuelling time, which is where a bunch of the teams above us absolutely destroyed us according the numbers. We were the second fastest car in the B group, but still beat the fastest car because we we dominated in the wet.
Whomever takes the torque wrench is now responsible for torqueing ALL of the lug nuts. We had a loose lugnut at the end of Day 1 after our wheel/tire swap due to a miscommunication of who did what. So now if you touch the torque wrench, you are responsible for all lug nuts to make things faster.
Tire changes need to become faster. This race exposed some shortcomings of our toolset and car configuration. Some thin walled sockets will really help as the current wheels don't have much clearance. Upgrading to extended and bull nosed wheel studs would also help us out. Our front wheel hub adapters also were a pain to deal with. Ironing those details out should let us reduce our wheel changes and get back to shredding sooner!
Managing wet tires better. We absolutely crushed it in the rain, generally standing 15 seconds a lap above everyone else. However, we didn't realize just how much we would cook our all season tires driving fast in the dry would do. So now if we make the call to run wet tires we need to keep an eye on lap times for folks and have them reign them in sooner, as nuking a tire is expensive and necessitates a slow tire change. Maybe there's a wet tire that doesn't fall off as hard, or maybe we just didn't have enough pressure? Hard to say...
Our Radio Situation sucked. We couldn't understand the drivers at all. Fortunately, they could understand us, so we'd relay a message and ask for one click to confirm. This worked out nicely as it didn't require much thought from the driver, and let us just do some quick fuel level checks or reminder the driver to quickly scan the gauges.
We need to approach our pit location strategy better. Getting fuel to and from the hot pits is easy. Howver whatever you can do position wise to minimze time from cold pit exit to your paddock spot to back on track will save you a bunch of time and help you be competitive.
We need to improve our GoPro recording. Something caused the GoPro to not want to record day 2, and it wasn't worth risking placing well to faff with it so we just went it as is.
Our Accordion music situation isn't radical enough. Nobody behind us can hear it, and we hear it too well. We need to fix that!

GoPro Video Coming Soon!

We unfortunately only have meaningful video of day 1. For whatever reason the GoPro got upset day 2. We're working on improving things for recording, more informaiton to come!