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More Than a Race Weekend: Competition, Development and Community at the 2026 IRDC Summer Classic

Racer on Rails-supported Spec E46 BMW race cars beneath paddock tents, reflected in rainwater at Pacific Raceways.

The IRDC Summer Classic is not just another race weekend at Pacific Raceways.

IRDC’s May event can produce excellent racing, but spring in the Pacific Northwest always arrives with an asterisk. Cold temperatures and rain can thin the entry list, scramble preparation plans and turn the weekend into an exercise in weather-radar interpretation.

The Summer Classic, traditionally held in late June or July, carries a different energy.

Good weather is never truly guaranteed around here, but the odds are much better. The fields grow, the paddock fills and the competition becomes stronger. It is one of the cornerstone events on the International Race Drivers Club calendar and, in many ways, the weekend when the local racing community is most fully assembled.

The 2026 Summer Classic took place June 26 through 28, with Friday testing leading into two days of qualifying, championship races and a one-hour mini-enduro on Pacific Raceways’ 2.25-mile road course. The event was held under the umbrella of the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs, the Pacific Northwest sanctioning body commonly known throughout the paddock as Conference.

For Racer on Rails, the weekend became a concentrated example of nearly everything we are trying to build.

We supported drivers fighting at the front of Spec E46. We helped another driver make systemic progress through coaching. We introduced a new novice to wheel-to-wheel competition. We kept Stefan Tomalik race-sharp while his own car was being prepared for GRIDLIFE GT competition. We welcomed NASA Northwest’s Jay Perry to Pacific Raceways for the first time and watched him progress from learning the circuit to winning on it. We helped Ellen Porter and Mathieu Martin fit racing into the realities of careers and parenthood. We supported more than half of the Spec E46 field in one form or another.

Then, after the engines went quiet, we partnered with Racecentric to bring racers, volunteers, tuners, time-attack competitors and automotive enthusiasts together at the Racer on Rails facility.

It was more than a race weekend.

It was competition, development and community sharing the same piece of pavement.

A Difficult Start to the Weekend

Saturday morning’s qualifying session provided an immediate reminder that even the Summer Classic can retain a little Pacific Northwest unpredictability.

The track was mixed and drying.

Everyone faced the same decision: wait for the surface to improve, choose wet-weather tires that might quickly overheat, or go onto the circuit with dry tires and accept that parts of the lap were not ready for them.

Most of the field chose dry tires.

The front half of the track was beginning to develop a usable line, but the back side remained damp in places. That mattered because the moisture was concentrated around the part of Pacific Raceways where drivers least want uncertainty: Turns 5A through 6.

That sequence is fast, committed and unforgiving. The car becomes light as the road falls away, the walls feel increasingly close and a driver must trust that the grip waiting on corner entry will still be there when the car reaches the apex.

Damp patches in that section are not merely inconvenient. They change the entire risk calculation.

Everyone had to balance the same questions. How quickly was the track improving? Where was the remaining water? How much commitment was justified when conditions could change from one corner to the next?

No risk, no reward.

Stefan Tomalik navigated the conditions with a 1:38.551, taking the top Spec E46 qualifying position. Dan Gavrila followed with a 1:38.645.

After an entire lap of changing grip, the difference between them was only 0.094 seconds.

It was an early indication that the two of them were going to spend the weekend operating in the same narrow window.

Keeping Stefan Race-Sharp

Stefan has spent much of the season rebuilding his BMW M3 for GRIDLIFE GT competition at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in September.

Preparing the car is only one part of that project.

The driver also needs preparation.

GLGT will place Stefan in a fast and varied field, surrounded by cars that generate lap time in very different ways. He will need to manage traffic, adapt to changing situations and make good decisions while racing against unfamiliar competitors.

That cannot be recreated through casual track time alone.

The best preparation for racing is racing, especially against people who demand your best.

For the Summer Classic, Stefan returned to the Racer on Rails Silver Bullet in Spec E46. The goal was to keep him competing, keep the decision-making muscles active and measure him against some of the strongest club racers in the region.

Dan Gavrila provided exactly that benchmark.

Dan is exceptionally fast at Pacific Raceways. He knows the circuit intimately and is capable of extracting pace from the car almost immediately. Stefan’s ability to qualify within a tenth of him in difficult conditions was impressive, but Saturday’s race would require something different.

Qualifying rewards the fastest individual lap.

Racing rewards the driver who can keep doing the work while managing traffic, pressure, tires and the changing behavior of the car.

Stefan converted the mixed-condition pole into a Spec E46 victory.

According to the official Saturday race results, he completed 17 laps with a best time of 1:31.346. Anthony Lo finished second, Dan third and Matt Dawson fourth, putting four Racer on Rails-supported or managed cars into the first four positions in class.

The strength of Stefan’s race was not limited to one lap.

The Saturday lap chart showed him repeatedly operating in the low 1:31s, 1:32s and 1:33s, continuing to apply pressure without allowing the quality of his driving to unravel.

That ability to repeat pace is essential.

A driver preparing for a larger, more unpredictable competition environment does not need a single firework of a lap. He needs an entire box of matches.

Sunday morning shifted the order.

With a dry circuit, Dan qualified on the Spec E46 pole with a 1:31.239. Stefan followed at 1:31.574, just 0.335 seconds behind.

Charles Beach qualified third at 1:32.197, while Anthony’s 1:32.199 left him only two thousandths of a second from the second row. Matt followed at 1:32.923, according to the official Sunday qualifying results.

The stage was set for another battle between Dan and Stefan.

Unfortunately, a mechanical concern that had been following Dan’s car throughout the season finally caught up with it.

The engine had regularly produced blue smoke on startup, suggesting that something inside was no longer entirely happy. Dan remained fast despite the warning signs, but the problem ultimately developed into a head-gasket failure and engine damage.

Even with the car deteriorating, Dan recorded a 1:32.031 during Sunday’s race. The speed remained, but the machinery could not carry him through to the finish at the front.

Stefan could.

The Sunday race results showed Stefan completing 17 laps and earning his second Spec E46 victory of the weekend, finishing 15.341 seconds ahead of Charles Beach.

Anthony placed third, Matt fourth and Wes Griffith seventh. Dan was classified eighth after completing 15 laps.

Stefan left the Summer Classic with two victories against serious competition.

More importantly, he had spent the weekend practicing exactly the kind of driving he will need at Laguna Seca: adapting to changing conditions, operating under pressure and delivering pace repeatedly rather than occasionally.

Anthony Lo’s Quiet Level-Up

Anthony Lo’s weekend deserves more attention than a pair of podium finishes alone might suggest.

Although we were not providing Anthony’s full trackside support program at the Summer Classic, Racer on Rails manages and maintains his car. That has given us a close view of the work he has put into his driving and the progress he has made over the past year.

The difference is visible from outside the car.

It is also visible in the timing sheets.

At the 2025 Summer Classic, Anthony qualified third in Spec E46 on both days. His Saturday qualifying time was a 1:32.751, followed by a best race lap of 1:33.002 and a second-place finish in the Saturday race.

On Sunday, he qualified with a nearly identical 1:32.752. His race ended after 13 laps, leaving him classified sixth, with a best lap of 1:33.018. The full progression can be seen in the 2025 Sunday qualifying, race results and lap-time report.

One year later, Anthony returned and delivered a more complete weekend in a nine-car Spec E46 field.

Saturday’s damp qualifying session does not provide a meaningful year-over-year comparison, but once the circuit dried, Anthony recorded a 1:32.637 during the race.

That was more than three-tenths quicker than his best race lap from the same event in 2025, and it helped carry him to another second-place finish.

Sunday provided the clearest measurement.

Anthony qualified with a 1:32.199, improving on his 2025 Sunday qualifying time by 0.553 seconds. That placed him only 0.002 seconds behind Charles Beach and less than one second from Dan’s class pole.

He followed qualifying with a third-place finish and a best race lap of 1:32.677, completing all 17 laps.

At this point in a driver’s development, progress is rarely measured in enormous chunks of lap time.

It lives in tenths.

It appears in consistency, confidence and the ability to execute across an entire weekend. It shows up when the driver is no longer searching for a fundamentally different technique, but refining braking points, releases, minimum speeds and the quality of every transition.

Anthony has put in the work, and he has genuinely leveled up.

Last year, the pace of drivers like Stefan and Dan represented something Anthony was chasing.

Now he is close enough that they need to keep checking their mirrors.

Systemic Progress for Wes Griffith

The Summer Classic was our first weekend working directly with Wes Griffith as a coaching client.

The objective was not to manufacture one spectacular lap. It was to understand the underlying behaviors limiting his performance and help him build a process that could produce repeatable improvement.

There is an important distinction between finding speed and learning how to become faster.

A driver can stumble into a personal best through favorable traffic, fresh tires, a particularly brave moment or a lap where several variables happen to align. That lap may be real, but it is not always transferable.

Systemic progress appears when the driver understands what changed, why it worked and how to reproduce it.

That was the work with Wes.

We focused on giving him clearer references and a more structured approach to the lap. Rather than trying to attack every corner at once, the goal was to reduce ambiguity, identify the largest opportunities and make deliberate changes that could be evaluated through data and driver feedback.

The results began appearing immediately.

Wes recorded a 1:36.135 during Saturday’s race, breaking through his previous personal-best territory. On Sunday, he lowered the mark again with a 1:35.927.

The lap times were exciting, but the more meaningful development was the process behind them.

Wes was not simply trying harder. He was becoming more precise about where and how he applied that effort.

He began improving his understanding of what the car needed, how the corner phases connected and where commitment would produce speed rather than merely additional risk.

He did not beat his personal best once and spend the rest of the weekend admiring it.

He reset it, learned from it and moved it again.

That is the kind of progress that can continue long after the weekend is over.

Matt Dawson and the Joy of 8,500 RPM

Matt Dawson arrived at the Summer Classic with two very different BMWs and two very different assignments.

In Spec E46, he continued developing within one of the weekend’s most competitive classes. Matt finished fourth on both Saturday and Sunday, recording best race laps of 1:33.069 and 1:33.645.

Then there was the Z4 M Coupe.

Matt purchased the car earlier this year, adding a machine with an SCCA National Championship-winning history to his collection.

It is a wonderfully distinctive race car, powered by an engine that rewards commitment all the way to its 8,500-rpm redline.

Tyler Campbell and Matt Dawson talk beside a race car in the Pacific Raceways paddock.
Tyler Campbell and Matt Dawson catch up in the paddock during a busy weekend of Spec E46 racing and seat time in Matt’s BMW Z4 M Coupe.

Matt was more than happy to explore the entire tachometer.

He entered the Z4 in the one-hour mini-enduro, completing 36 laps and finishing fourth in the MEO class. His best lap was a 1:30.689.

Learning a new race car is serious work.

The driver must recalibrate nearly everything: braking references, control effort, visibility, gearing, tire behavior and the subtle signals that indicate whether the car has more to give.

It can also be enormous fun.

Every time Matt climbed out of the Z4, he was grinning from ear to ear. Some cars make their case through engineering diagrams and trophy cabinets. Others make it every time the engine reaches the top of the rev range.

The Z4 managed all three.

Jay Perry’s First Visit to Pacific Raceways

The Summer Classic also welcomed Jay Perry from NASA Northwest for his first opportunity to race at Pacific Raceways.

Jay arrived with his C7 Corvette and a substantial learning assignment ahead of him.

Pacific Raceways is not a circuit that reveals all of its secrets immediately.

Its elevation changes obscure sightlines, several important corners are connected in ways that are not obvious from behind the wheel, and the fastest sections require a driver to build trust gradually.

Learning the track is one challenge.

Learning it while racing a powerful Corvette against experienced local competitors adds several more layers.

Jay embraced all of it.

He became quicker and more comfortable throughout the weekend, gradually piecing together the circuit while learning where the Corvette’s power, braking capability and balance could be used most effectively.

By Saturday’s race, Jay was already battling Dan Rogers in his BMW M3 GTR at the front of the SPO class.

Dan won, but only barely.

After 14 laps, the two cars were separated by just 0.347 seconds, with Jay recording a best lap of 1:27.930 in his first race at the circuit.

Jay returned Sunday with another day of knowledge stored away and immediately put it to use.

He lowered his best lap to a 1:25.046 and beat Dan to the finish by 1.894 seconds, splitting the weekend’s two races with a driver who brought both serious pace and extensive Pacific Raceways experience.

That is a serious achievement.

Jay Perry holds a first-place trophy and checkered flag beside his black C7 Corvette at Pacific Raceways.
NASA Northwest’s Jay Perry celebrates an SPO victory beside his C7 Corvette after learning Pacific Raceways and splitting the weekend’s races with Dan Rogers.

Jay did not simply visit a new track, collect some laps and head home. He learned quickly enough to challenge an established local front-runner, race him closely on Saturday and then find the additional performance needed to reverse the order on Sunday.

It was also exactly the kind of crossover we want to see more often.

Organizations such as NASA Northwest, IRDC and Conference may operate their own events and championships, but they are all part of the same regional motorsport community.

Drivers moving between them bring new cars, different experiences and fresh competition into each paddock.

Jay arrived to experience Pacific Raceways for the first time.

He left with a victory, a rapidly expanding notebook and a very good reason to come back.

Federico Mira Picone’s First Novice Weekend

Federico Mira Picone arrived at Pacific Raceways for his first novice race weekend in the Racer on Rails Jägermeister-liveried PRO3 car.

A first wheel-to-wheel event asks a great deal from a driver.

There are race starts, flags, traffic, passing decisions and procedures that cannot be fully recreated during a track day. The driver must learn to allocate attention across the entire environment while still operating the car quickly and accurately.

The objective is not simply to go faster.

It is to build awareness, judgment and capacity without allowing enthusiasm to outrun experience.

Federico’s first qualifying session took place on the same mixed and damp circuit that complicated the Spec E46 session.

He recorded a 1:55.205, but the time was much more representative of the conditions than his actual dry-weather potential.

Once the circuit dried and Federico became more comfortable, the stopwatch began shedding seconds in large handfuls.

During Saturday’s race, he recorded a 1:40.098, completed all 16 laps and won the novice class.

The roughly 15-second difference from qualifying was not the result of a magical transformation. It reflected the enormous contrast between a damp, mixed-condition session and a dry race, combined with Federico’s growing understanding of the car and the environment around him.

He returned Sunday and continued moving forward.

Federico qualified with a 1:40.674. In the race, he lowered his best to a 1:39.219 and earned his second novice-class victory, finishing only 0.952 seconds ahead of Kevin Sun after 13 laps.

Federico’s family and friends were present throughout the weekend, turning the occasion into more than a licensing exercise.

They were able to see the work, the nerves, the progress and the satisfaction that came with completing his first races successfully.

The car’s reliability also played an important role.

During earlier weekends with Ron Tanemura, we had worked through the transmission issues that previously affected the PRO3 car. That work meant Federico could focus on learning how to race rather than wondering which gear the car might choose to surrender next.

He is scheduled to complete his remaining two novice weekends with Racer on Rails this year, earn his full competition license and then decide what the next stage of his racing journey should become.

The first chapter was a strong one.

Ellen Porter and Mathieu Martin Make Space for Racing

Motorsport has a habit of consuming every available hour.

That makes participation especially challenging for Ellen Porter and Mathieu Martin, who are balancing demanding professional careers with raising two young daughters.

Getting both of them to the racetrack required its own exercise in scheduling, logistics and teamwork.

At the Summer Classic, they split the championship races. Mathieu competed in the large PRO3 field, while Ellen raced in CT4.

Ellen completed 15 laps in Saturday’s race, finishing 12th in CT4 with a best time of 1:39.887.

They then combined their efforts for the one-hour mini-enduro.

Mathieu and Ellen shared the No. 26 car, completing 32 laps and finishing third in the ME2 class. Their best lap was a 1:39.874.

Couples who race together may not eliminate every disagreement, but at least they can arrive at the discussion with timing data.

More importantly, Ellen and Mathieu demonstrate that motorsport does not need to be an all-or-nothing pursuit.

With the right equipment, planning and support system, racing can remain a meaningful part of a busy life.

Sometimes that means competing in separate classes. Sometimes it means sharing a car. Sometimes it means handing the steering wheel to your partner and trusting them to bring it back in one piece.

They made the space, shared the work and left with a podium.

Supporting More Than Half of the Spec E46 Field

The Spec E46 results also illustrated how deeply Racer on Rails has become connected to the local class.

We were providing trackside support for Stefan, Dan, Montey Mathison and Matt. Wes was working with us through coaching, and Anthony’s car remained under our management and maintenance program.

In one form or another, Racer on Rails was connected to six of the nine cars in the Spec E46 field.

The purpose is not to create a protected island inside the paddock.

It is the opposite.

When more drivers have access to strong preparation, dependable trackside support, engineering and coaching, the entire class improves.

Cars become more reliable. Drivers become more capable. The racing grows closer, and everyone is required to continue raising their level.

Saturday’s first four Spec E46 finishers were Stefan, Anthony, Dan and Matt.

On Sunday, Stefan won again, Anthony finished third and Matt fourth. Wes lowered his personal best multiple times, while Dan demonstrated race-winning pace before the engine problem ended his challenge.

That is the kind of environment we want to help create.

Competitive on the racetrack.

Collaborative in the paddock.

Relentlessly focused on improving both the drivers and the machinery.

Connecting the Motorsport Ecosystem

The weekend’s most important activity may not have appeared on a timing sheet.

Racer on Rails partnered with Racecentric to host a club and volunteer dinner and mini car show at our facility.

There was barbecue, cold soda, race cars, beautifully prepared show cars and people from several different corners of the automotive world.

Racers and volunteers spent the evening alongside tuners, builders, enthusiasts and time-attack competitors who might not ordinarily occupy the same paddock.

That mixture was intentional.

Motorsport is often presented as a pyramid, with professional racing at the top and every other form of participation stacked somewhere beneath it.

In practice, it behaves much more like an ecosystem.

Club racers need mechanics, engineers, fabricators, photographers, organizers and volunteers. Tuners benefit from lessons developed through competition. Time-attack drivers may eventually become wheel-to-wheel racers. Show-car owners can become track-day participants. Young enthusiasts can discover careers they did not know existed. Volunteers can build relationships with teams, and teams can become stronger members of the clubs that make their racing possible.

Every part feeds another.

The goal of the evening was to celebrate the club, thank the volunteers and create more opportunities for those different communities to rub shoulders.

Not through a formal conference or a carefully scheduled networking exercise, but over food, cars and the shared language of people who care deeply about machines.

For one evening, the Racer on Rails facility became more than a place where race cars are stored, prepared and repaired.

It became a gathering point for the broader automotive community.

That matters because the long-term health of racing will not be determined solely by what happens between the green and checkered flags.

It will also depend on whether there is an inviting, connected world surrounding the competition.

Progress in Every Direction

The 2026 IRDC Summer Classic produced strong results for Racer on Rails, but no single trophy or finishing position captures the weekend.

Stefan Tomalik won both Spec E46 races while sharpening the skills he will need for GRIDLIFE at Laguna Seca.

Dan Gavrila demonstrated front-running speed before a known mechanical concern developed into an engine failure.

Anthony Lo turned the promise of his 2025 Summer Classic into a more complete 2026 performance, improving his dry-weather pace and earning podium finishes on both days.

Matt Dawson raced hard in Spec E46, then spent the mini-enduro exploring the upper reaches of the Z4 M Coupe’s tachometer.

Jay Perry learned Pacific Raceways at remarkable speed, battling Dan Rogers throughout the weekend and leaving his first visit with an SPO victory.

Wes Griffith broke through previous limitations and lowered his personal best multiple times during our first coaching weekend together.

Federico Mira Picone completed his first novice event, won his class twice and took a major step toward earning his full competition license.

Ellen Porter and Mathieu Martin found a way to balance careers, parenthood and competition, then shared a podium finish in the mini-enduro.

Around them was a Racer on Rails operation preparing cars, coaching drivers, solving problems and supporting more than half of the Spec E46 field.

Then, when racing finished for the day, we opened the doors and brought the wider community together.

That was the real story of the Summer Classic.

Competition, driver development, vehicle preparation and community building do not need to exist as separate activities.

When they are connected intentionally, each one makes the others stronger.

That is the ecosystem we believe in.

And that is exactly what we are trying to build.

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Racer on Rails at Portland: Heat, Heart, PRO3 Lessons, and Runoffs Testing at The Dash for Kids

Ron Tanumera driving through the PIR festival chicane in the Racer on Rails BMW PRO3 race car.

Portland International Raceway has a way of making club racing feel bigger than the lap chart.

Maybe it is the setting. PIR sits inside Delta Park in North Portland, tucked into one of the more unique pieces of motorsport geography in the country. Long before it became a racetrack, the land was Vanport, a wartime city built to house Kaiser shipyard workers during World War II. At its peak, Vanport was home to nearly 40,000 people and was the second-largest city in Oregon. In 1948, the city was destroyed by flooding. Years later, the remaining street grid helped form the bones of what would eventually become Portland International Raceway, with the first Rose Cup race held in 1961.

That history matters. PIR is not just another track carved into an empty field. It is a public park, a community gathering place, and one of the great regional motorsports homes in the Pacific Northwest. It is flat, fast in places, technical in others, and just awkward enough to reward drivers who can get the car rotated, settled, and back to power without wasting motion.

For this weekend, Racer on Rails returned to PIR with Cascade Sports Car Club for an ICSCC Conference race weekend, The Dash for Kids XLII.

For anyone newer to Northwest club racing, ICSCC, often simply called “Conference,” is the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs. Founded in 1957, it is an association of independent sports car clubs across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and it remains one of the core regional racing structures in the Pacific Northwest. One of the things that makes Conference special is that it is very much club-powered. Drivers are represented through their member clubs, and those clubs participate in the governance of the series. It creates a regional racing culture that feels practical, involved, and very connected to the people actually building, towing, fixing, flagging, and racing the cars.

Cascade Sports Car Club is one of those foundational clubs. Cascade began in 1953 as the 4-Cylinder Sports Car Club of Oregon, changed its name to Cascade in 1956, and has grown into a club with a year-round schedule that includes track days, driver education, road racing, rallies, and volunteer support for major events at PIR.

The Dash for Kids is one of Cascade’s signature weekends. It blends Conference championship road racing with a community charity event, including race car rides, paddock access, family activities, and fundraising for local organizations. The 2026 event marked the 42nd running of The Dash, with race car rides offered during lunch on Saturday and Sunday for donations to the charity.

That meant this weekend had two lanes of purpose for us.

One lane was competition and development.

The other was community.

And, by the end of the weekend, we got a full serving of both.

The Racer on Rails Plan

Originally, we expected to have three drivers on the weekend but one driver had to bow out last minute which left us with two primary competition programs. The silver lining was that open third slot gave us an opportunity to bring out the Racer on Rails #136 Spec E46 race car to give some lunch time charity rides! Can’t complain about that!

For Ron, the goal was not results-first. The goal was development-first.

Ron’s larger arc this season has been about building the kind of adaptable driving skill that transfers across platforms. He has driven Spec E46, the Porsche Cayman GT4, Spec Racer Ford 3, and now PRO3. The long-term objective is not simply to be fast in one car. It is to become the kind of driver who could step into an endurance team environment and be trusted: aware, consistent, confident, mechanically sympathetic, and able to keep the car in a competitive window.

That is a very different target than chasing a single lap time.

PRO3 is an excellent tool for that kind of work.

The class began in the Pacific Northwest in 2002, growing out of a group of BMW E30 racers and friends connected to the Puget Sound BMW CCA scene. It has since become one of the strongest amateur racing classes in ICSCC, the PNW, West Coast and if the group raced nationally, it would be one of the largest racing classes at any weekend, with large grids and deep competition.

It also has a very specific personality. People often casually describe PRO3 as a spec class, and while the rules are restrictive, it is better understood as a tightly controlled, Improved Touring-based formula. The cars are BMW E30 325i chassis with stock M20B25 engines, controlled tires, and rules designed to keep the emphasis closer to the driver ability end of the spectrum rather than spending or exotic development.

More importantly, they are analog. No ABS. No traction control. No stability control. Many cars run without power steering. The braking window is narrow, the tires are easy to over-ask, and the car will absolutely tell on you if your inputs are sloppy. That makes PRO3 one of the best classrooms in Northwest racing.

John Hoolihan and Ron Tanemura demonstrating just how analog the PRO3 race cars - locking up going into T1 at PIR.
John Hoolihan and Ron Tanumera demonstrating just how analog the PRO3 race cars – locking up going into T1 at PIR.
(C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

It is also where Gama started racing, and that matters. We have seen it again and again: drivers who can run at the front in PRO3 tend to carry that skill into almost anything else they drive. It teaches commitment, car control, racecraft, mechanical sympathy, and humility. The car is not going to save you. You have to do the work.

For Gama and the 370Z, the weekend had a different purpose. This was a test event for the SCCA Runoffs at Road America later in the year. On paper, PIR and Road America do not look like twins. Road America is longer, faster, and more dramatic, with far more elevation change. But from a setup and systems-testing perspective, PIR still gives us useful information.

Gama Aguilar bombing through the PIR Festival Chicane in his 2011 Nissan 370Z Nismo road race car, running in SCCA Touring 3 Specification.
Gama Aguilar bombing through the PIR Festival Chicane in his 2011 Nissan 370Z Nismo road race car, running in SCCA Touring 3 Specification.
(C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

PIR’s flatness, surface, braking zones, and mechanical-grip demands make it one of the best regional proxies available to us. It would not answer every Road America question, but it could answer some important ones: Do we have real pace? Can the car stay cool? Can we run hard in race conditions? Can we trust the package over a longer stint?

With hot weather forecast in the mid to high 90’s Fahrenheit across the weekend, those questions became even more relevant.

Friday: Promise for the Z, Trouble for the PRO3

Friday test day split into two very different stories.

For the 370Z, the car felt good right away. Track space was limited, and with traffic it was difficult to build a truly representative lap, but the underlying feeling was positive. The plan became straightforward: use Friday to get the car into its window, then put on a new sticker tire set Saturday morning and take two shots at qualifying.

The first shot would come in the morning mini-enduro qualifying session.

The second shot would come in Group 4, where Gama had also entered in ST. Group 4 had faster big-bore traffic, but fewer cars overall. That gave us a better chance of finding the clean air needed to see what the car could really do.

Ron’s Friday was much less tidy.

The PRO3 car developed shifter issues, possibly tied to a deeper transmission issue (Note – We would later confirm the transmission itself was healthy; the shifter issue was the real culprit). Rather than force the car through a compromised test day and risk making things worse, the team made the right call: park it early, diagnose what we had, and prepare to get Ron back on track Saturday.

That kicked off one of those classic club-racing logistics adventures.

Mitchell drove back up to Seattle on Friday evening, grabbed the spare transmission from the shop, and headed back down early Saturday morning. By 7:00 a.m., the team was back under the lift, working to get the transmission into the car and get Ron back in the fight.

No velvet rope. No magic wand. Just people, tools, caffeine, and the quiet soundtrack of “well, this is what racing asks today.”

Saturday Morning: Thrash, Traffic, and One Clean Lap

The team got the PRO3 car back together Saturday morning, but the shifter assembly continued to fight back. It had come loose and was operating strangely enough that even after the transmission swap, there was still work to do.

The good news: the team got it functioning.

The bad news: Ron missed qualifying for both Saturday races.

That meant he would start from the back.

For a driver-development weekend, that is not always a bad thing. It is not convenient. It is not ideal. It definitely makes the day louder. But it gives a driver exactly the kind of work that cannot be simulated cleanly: traffic, starts, passes, imperfect rhythm, and the need to adapt to the car you have rather than the car you wish you had.

Meanwhile, Gama rolled into Saturday morning qualifying on new tires hoping to get a clean representative lap in the 370Z.

That part did not go to plan.

By the time we got to pre-grid, there were already more than 25 cars lined up. The decision was to go to the back and create space, but with 50-plus cars on track, including a large Spec Miata field, there simply was not enough clear racetrack to put the lap together. Then the session ended early due to an incident.

So we waited for Group 4.

This time, the track-space plan finally worked. Fewer cars. Faster traffic. A better rhythm. And then, finally:

1:23.592.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZnKfwEgRnP

That lap put Gama P9 overall in Group 4 qualifying and P1 in ST. More importantly, it gave us the first clean signal that the 370Z had real pace in the package.

Was it perfect? No.

There was still time left on the table. Based on feel, predictive timing, and the work Gama and Tyler had done around the car’s potential, the estimate was that a 1:23.2 was likely available in that session. With a cleaner sticker-tire run and a true max-effort qualifying format, the team believes a 1:23.0, and possibly even a 1:22.8, was realistic, even in with temperatures already at 80F by 9am.

But for the goal of the weekend, the message was clear: the car had the nationally competitive pace we expected.

Now we needed to find out if it could survive the heat.

Ron Starts at the Back and Gets to Work

Ron’s Saturday was the kind of day that can turn into a throwaway if the driver lets it.

He did not.

After missing qualifying, he started from the back in Group 2 and worked his way forward to P10 in a 22-car PRO3 field, with a best lap of 1:31.721.

Then he backed it up in Group 5, finishing P5 in CT4 with a best lap of 1:31.210.

That was a big deal.

Not because P10 or P5 are magic numbers by themselves, but because of how he got there. Ron had to adapt after a messy mechanical start to the weekend. He had to race from the back. He had to get close to other cars, work through battles, and keep the car moving forward.

Ron making moves early in the Group 1 PRO3 race, starting from the back.
Ron making moves early in the Group 1 PRO3 race, starting from the back. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

This is exactly the kind of growth we wanted from PRO3.

In clean air, drivers can work on lap time. In traffic, they have to work on craft. Portland forced Ron into the craft side of the ledger, and by the end of Saturday he was not just circulating. He was racing people. He was putting the car in places that mattered. He was becoming more comfortable with the car moving around underneath him.

That is the good stuff.

Not shiny, not always obvious from the outside, but very real.

The 370Z Race: Pace Confirmed, Cooling Not Yet Solved

Saturday afternoon, the 370Z lined up for the Group 4 race.

The goal was not necessarily to chase the race result. The goal was to run the car hard in heat and see what we had from a reliability and cooling standpoint.

The afternoon temperatures were already brutal, climbing from around 90 degrees toward the mid-90s as the race went on. That was useful. We are unlikely to see those exact conditions at Road America in early October, but that was the point. If the car could stay cool at full tilt in this environment, we would have a lot more confidence heading into the Runoffs.

Unfortunately, the race showed us that there is still work to do.

Early on, the car was running normally in clean air. Then, after a full course yellow around six or seven laps in, water temperature warnings started to appear. The car was not done, but it was no longer free to race at full attack. Gama had to manage it with lift-and-coast into braking zones, short-shifting around 7,000 rpm, and rolling back into throttle more gently than normal.

That kept the car alive and allowed us to finish, winning ST with a best race lap of 1:24.826.

But the result was not the lesson.

The lesson was that if we had needed to battle hard, defend, attack, or run nose-to-tail for position, we would have been compromised. The pace is there. The car is closer. But the cooling system still needs more margin before Road America.

Gama Aguilar bombing through T1 at Portland International Raceway in his Nissan 370Z Nismo.
Gama Aguilar bombing through T1 at Portland International Raceways in his Nissan 370Z Nismo. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

That was valuable information.

We had also entered the one-hour mini enduro, which would have been the closest proxy for the 45-minute Runoffs race distance. But with the car already showing heat-management limits, and with the afternoon only getting hotter, there was no reason to keep poking the dragon with a torque wrench.

We had learned what we needed to learn.

The team made the call to park the car for the rest of the weekend. The official results show the 370Z as a DNS for the mini enduro, which was exactly the right decision.

Sometimes the smartest lap is the one you do not run.

Sunday Morning: Ron Finds Another Gear

Sunday morning was Ron’s chance to reset.

The car was back. The conditions were better than they would be later in the day. The goal was to make the most of the cooler track before the heat came in.

Ron got after it.

In Group 2 qualifying, he dropped into the 1:30s with a 1:30.946, good for P11 in PRO3.

Then, in Group 5 qualifying, he put together a 1:30.554 and qualified P1 in CT4.

Pole position. 💪🏾

The first pole position of Ron’s driving career. Let’s go!!!

Ron getting after it through the festival chicane.
Ron getting after it through the festival chicane. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

That moment deserves to breathe a little.

Ron’s weekend started with the car parked early, a transmission run to Seattle, a Saturday morning thrash, missed qualifying, and back-of-grid starts. By Sunday morning, he had settled himself, kept building, and put the car at the top of the CT4 sheet.

That is not just pace. That is resilience.

And in a PRO3-based car, it means something. These cars do not give you lap time for free. You have to ask the right questions with your hands, feet, eyes, and timing, then listen carefully when the car answers back.

Ron was getting more comfortable throwing the car around. More comfortable letting it move. More comfortable staying in the fight when the environment got messy.

That is the development arc.

Sunday Afternoon: Racing in the Skillet

By Sunday afternoon, PIR was hot.

Very hot.

Air temperatures were deep into the 90s, with track temperatures well above 130 degrees. No one was expecting record pace in those conditions. This was about execution, racecraft, and keeping the car underneath you while everyone else was dealing with the same greasy, overheated racetrack.

In the Group 2 PRO3 race, Ron had challengers all around him. That is what happens when you start to make your presence known. People race you differently. They expect you to be there. They fight harder.

Not an inch to give in PRO3 racing, little mistakes have big time costs.
Not an inch to give in PRO3 racing, little mistakes have big time costs. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

Ron started in position, battled early, and kept working through the race. He got past the group he had been racing with the day before and finished P8 in PRO3, only a couple of seconds behind the next cluster of cars up the road. His best lap was a 1:31.354 in the heat.

P8 in PRO3 is nothing to sneeze at.

That mid-pack and front-mid-pack zone in PRO3 is filled with serious drivers. In a class that deep, moving from “learning the car” into “competing with the pack” is a meaningful step.

Then came the Group 5 CT4 race.

Starting from pole, Ron got mugged at the start and had to fight for the rest of the race with Payden Baxter and Matthew King. It turned into exactly the kind of race he needs more of: pressure, passing, defending, imperfect lines, and decisions that had to be made quickly.

He finished P3, on the podium, with a best lap of 1:31.164. That was barely off his Saturday CT4 race pace and impressively close to his cooler-session qualifying benchmark, considering the heat.

Mega.

A first pole. A podium. A P8 in PRO3. A weekend that began with mechanical drama and ended with real signs of competitive belonging.

Awesome work, Ron.

More Than Lap Time

The biggest thing from Ron’s weekend is that the progress was not just numerical.

Yes, the lap times improved. Yes, the results got better. Yes, he put the car on pole in CT4 and ended the weekend with a podium.

But the more important part is that he had to keep the fundamentals alive when the racing got loud around him.

That is one of the hardest transitions for any developing driver. It is one thing to drive well in clean air when the plan is simple. It is another thing to drive well when someone gets alongside, a start gets messy, the car moves underneath you, or a pass does not happen in one corner.

Portland gave Ron a full buffet of those moments.

The next step is making that craft more deliberate and more repeatable. Not just being fast, but being able to access the driving under pressure. Not just getting close to cars, but knowing what to do with that closeness. Not just reacting to a battle, but shaping it.

That is exactly why we wanted him in PRO3.

Dash for Kids: The Other Reason We Were There

While the racing side of the weekend gave us plenty to work through, The Dash for Kids gave the weekend a bigger frame.

During lunch on Saturday and Sunday, racers and teams offered ride-alongs in race cars and exotic cars, with donations going toward the weekend’s charity. Cascade’s format makes the paddock feel open and welcoming, with spectators able to see the cars, talk with drivers and crew, and get a closer look at the machinery that usually flashes by from the other side of the fence.

For Racer on Rails, that meant bringing down the Silver Bullet Spec E46, installing the extra seat, and joining the ride program.

After making the decision to park the 370Z, that actually became a perfect pivot. The competitive work was done. The car had told us what we needed to know. So instead of forcing more laps into worsening heat, we cooled down, reset, and had fun giving people rides around PIR.

That is a good race weekend.

Not because every plan worked perfectly. It did not.

Because the weekend gave us the right answers.

The 370Z showed pace, then showed us the next engineering problem. Ron got hit with mechanical adversity, then turned the weekend into one of his strongest development steps of the year. The team handled a transmission swap, shifter issues, hot conditions, traffic, race starts, and charity rides.

That is club racing in full color.

Final Takeaways

For Gama and the 370Z, Portland confirmed that the car has real speed. The 1:23.592 in Group 4 qualifying was the cleanest read of the weekend, and the team believes there is more available with a true max-effort qualifying format and cleaner track space. But the race also confirmed that cooling remains a priority before Road America. The car can run. The car has pace. Now it needs more thermal margin.

For Ron, Portland was a major step.

He missed Saturday qualifying, started from the back, raced forward, kept improving, put the car on pole for the first time in his driving career, finished P8 in a very competitive PRO3 field, and ended the weekend with a CT4 podium.

More importantly, he became a little more of the driver he is working to become.

Adaptable. Confident. Aware. Comfortable in the fight.

That is what we came for.

And with The Dash for Kids wrapping the weekend in community, ride-alongs, family energy, and a reminder that racing can be both serious and generous, Portland gave us exactly the kind of weekend that sticks around after the trailer doors close.

Goals. Smiles. Memories.

That one checks all three.

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Portland Hoosier Super Tour Recap: Setup Windows, Mental Unlocks, and a T3 Weekend Sweep

Racer on Rails Nissan 370Z leading a mixed Touring 3 race group through Portland International Raceway during the Oregon SCCA Hoosier Super Tour.
Gama Aguilar-Gamez leads the Touring 3 field in the Racer on Rails Nissan 370Z during the Oregon SCCA Hoosier Super Tour at Portland International Raceway.

The SCCA Hoosier Super Tour is one of the biggest stages in amateur road racing. It is where regional racers, national contenders, Runoffs hopefuls, longtime club racers, and professionally prepared teams all end up in the same paddock, chasing the same thing: speed that holds up when the stopwatch and the field both get serious.

For Racer on Rails, weekends like this matter because they are more than another race on the calendar. They are measuring sticks. They show where the cars are, where the drivers are, where the team is operating well, and where the next layer of performance is hiding.

This round brought us back to Portland International Raceway for the Oregon SCCA Hoosier Super Tour. PIR is a uniquely Northwest kind of racetrack. It sits inside a major city, close to the Columbia River, built on land with real history, surrounded by trees, planes, cyclists, and the strange calm of a public park that also happens to host serious race cars. It is one of those places that feels easy until you try to be fast there.

On paper, Portland looks simple. It is flat, relatively short, and does not have the obvious “monster corner” personality of a place like Road America, Thunderhill, or Sonoma. But that is exactly the trap. PIR asks for precision everywhere. The lap is full of medium-speed commitment, heavy braking moments, curb usage, track-out discipline, and small setup decisions that either build confidence or quietly steal time every lap. If the car is not underneath you, the track exposes it. If the driver is not fully committed, the stopwatch tattles immediately.

Racer on Rails Nissan 370Z Touring 3 race car driving over the curbing at Portland International Raceway with race traffic behind. | (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics
The Portland chicane rewards commitment, curb confidence, and a car that stays predictable under braking and turn-in. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

Our weekend lineup had a little bit of everything.

Chris Johnson was back in his Spec E46 in Touring 3 for the first time since last July. Gama Aguilar was in the Nissan 370Z, also in Touring 3, continuing the development push from Thunderhill. Beef Wellington brought out his Touring 2 BMW M240iR. And while Ron Tanemura was not technically in one of our cars, he was still part of the broader Racer on Rails driver development program, racing a Spec Racer Ford Gen3 with Flat Out Racing and continuing to work with Tyler through our coaching services.

Different cars. Different goals. Same weekend. Same stopwatch.

Chris Johnson: Back in the Saddle, Then Fully Lit

Chris started the weekend exactly where you might expect after nearly a year away from the car: knocking the dust off.

The Spec E46 was on older tires, Chris was rebuilding rhythm, and the first part of the test day was about getting reconnected with the car. Braking points. Corner entries. Trust. References. The little internal checklist every driver has to rebuild after time away.

Chris Johnson driving the blue Racer on Rails BMW Spec E46 Touring 3 race car through Portland International Raceway with race traffic close behind.
Chris Johnson returned to the seat of his Spec E46 in Touring 3 and spent the weekend rebuilding rhythm, confidence, and pace. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

By the end of the first test day, though, the fog was clearing. Even as the track got hotter and conditions worsened, Chris started closing back in on his personal best lap times. That was the first sign that the speed had not gone anywhere. It was still there, sitting under the surface, waiting for him to believe it was available again.

The next day, we had one of those conversations that matters more than a shock adjustment or tire pressure change.

Chris was talking through what he was feeling in the car, but underneath the words were a few limiting thoughts. Not excuses. Not weakness. Just the normal stuff drivers tell themselves when confidence is still a lap or two behind capability.

The conversation was about the things we tell ourselves. What we accept as true. What we assume is possible. What we decide is “about where we are” before the car and the data have actually said that.

Something clicked.

In Saturday’s race, Chris came alive. He got pulled into a tight battle with a few out-of-class cars that were absolutely flying, and that extra competitive energy did exactly what a good race battle should do. It sharpened him. It pulled his eyes forward. It made him stop driving the idea of the lap and start racing the car in front of him.

The result was a major unlock. Chris knocked roughly a second from his previous bests and started driving with the kind of intent we knew was still there.

Sunday morning, he was determined to prove Saturday was not a one-off. He wanted to build on the confidence instead of simply enjoy the memory of it.

He did.

Blue Racer on Rails BMW Spec E46 Touring 3 race car using the curbing at Portland International Raceway during the Oregon SCCA Hoosier Super Tour.
By Sunday, Chris was driving with more commitment and using the confidence from Saturday’s race to unlock another step forward. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

In Race 2, Chris carried the lessons forward. He cleared the cars he had been battling with on Saturday and found himself racing farther up the field, with new competition and a new target. That is always one of the best signs in driver development: yesterday’s mountain becomes today’s baseline.

The wild part? He did all of this while nursing an engine that had given us a scare on Friday. Chris had an over-rev, followed by white smoke out the tailpipe. Jordan kept a close eye on the car for the rest of the weekend, and thankfully it made it through without getting worse.

So yes, Chris had a big weekend on the stopwatch. But the bigger unlock was mental. This was a driver remembering that confidence is not something you wait around to receive. Sometimes you have to go take a bite out of the lap and let the confidence catch up.

Chris Johnson driving the blue Racer on Rails BMW Spec E46 Touring 3 race car ahead of race traffic at Portland International Raceway.
Chris found himself racing harder, cleaner, and farther up the field as the weekend progressed. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

Beef Wellington: A Short Weekend, But the Right Call

Beef’s weekend ended earlier than anyone wanted.

The BMW M240iR had a solid shakedown at Pacific Raceways the week before, so we came into Portland expecting to continue learning the car and building momentum. Instead, the car started overheating after only four or five flying laps.

At first, it looked like the usual race-car mystery novel: temperatures okay, then suddenly not okay. The car would run fine, then start building too much coolant pressure and blow through the expansion tank valve.

The team worked through the problem methodically. Cooling system. Pressure behavior. Failure pattern. Repeatability. The ugly little clues all started pointing in the same direction.

Head gasket.

Mega bummer.

That is never the way we want a weekend to end, especially with a new-to-him but still used/junkyard engine. But there is a version of this story that is much worse. We caught it before destroying the whole engine, avoided turning a repair into a full-scale catastrophe, and got the car pointed toward the work needed before June Sprints at Road America later in the month.

Sometimes race weekends are about trophies. Sometimes they are about knowing when to stop digging.

This was the right call. Not fun. Not glamorous. But right.

Ron Tanemura: Expanding the Driving Toolbox

Ron’s Portland weekend had a different purpose.

He was in a Spec Racer Ford Gen3 rental with Flat Out Racing, while continuing to work with Tyler as part of the Racer on Rails coaching program. The goal was not simply to jump in a new car and chase a number. The goal was to expand his driving range.

That matters.

Ron has been intentionally building a broader driving education. Different platforms. Different sensations. Different demands. The SRF3 is a very different animal from a BMW sedan. It is lighter, more direct, more exposed, and less forgiving of half-commitment. It wants clearer inputs. It rewards decisiveness. It asks the driver to be comfortable with the car moving underneath them.

Ron Tanemura driving a black Spec Racer Ford Gen3 through Portland International Raceway during an SCCA race weekend.
Ron Tanemura used the Spec Racer Ford Gen3 weekend to expand his driving range and build a new real-car baseline. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

For Ron, the weekend established something important: racing the SRF3 is viable for him. He handled the starts well, showed good awareness, avoided major self-inflicted issues, and built a baseline he can come back to.

The next layer is not secret. It is also not simple.

It is about closing the gap between understanding and execution. Ron has done real work in the sim. He knows a lot of the “recipe” for the car and track. But the real car adds sensation, consequence, tire feel, traffic, imperfect references, and the pressure of being around other drivers. That gap between knowing and doing is where driver development actually lives.

The coaching takeaway was clear: more commitment, more decisive brake release, clearer throttle discipline, more willingness to let the car rotate, and more assertive racecraft once the race settles in.

That is exactly why this was a valuable weekend. Ron did not just collect laps. He collected a sharper understanding of what the next phase of work needs to be.

Black Spec Racer Ford Gen3 race car speeding past the Portland International Raceway front straight during an SCCA race weekend.
A new car, a new rhythm, and another layer in Ron’s broader driver development plan. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

And that is the whole point of a driver development plan. Not every weekend is supposed to be a finished product. Some weekends are supposed to reveal the next door.

Gama Aguilar: Engineering the Window

For Gama and the Nissan 370Z, Portland was about building on the lessons from Thunderhill.

At Thunderhill, we had speed, but we were still fighting the car. The Z had pace in flashes, but it was not yet living in a consistent, repeatable window. Under braking and turn-in, the car still had moments where it felt like it was asking for trust without giving enough trust back.

Before Portland, Ian spent a full week digging into the chassis, working through an engineering workbook, checking assumptions, and giving the car the kind of measured attention that separates guessing from development. We are not going to give away every detail of what we found, but the big picture was clear: there was systemic pace hiding in the car.

That was the unlock.

This was not about finding one magic adjustment or chasing a one-lap setup. It was about understanding the car at a deeper level, getting it into a healthier operating window, and creating a foundation we could actually build on across a full weekend.

From there, we reset the approach. The chassis setup moved in a better direction. The car became more predictable. We switched to nitrogen in the tires, including multiple purge cycles to reduce the influence of air and moisture. Then we started fresh on understanding pressure build, temperature behavior, and how to keep the tire in a usable window from the first hard lap to the last.

That became the real work of the weekend.

Not “what makes one fast lap?” but “what makes the car fast, repeatable, and trustworthy every time we lean on it?”

By Friday, the difference was obvious. For the first time ever in the 370Z, we could push the car hard every session and have it respond the same way. The car was no longer giving us a narrow little keyhole of performance. It gave us a window. And once we had a window, we could finally start doing real race-car work.

Side profile of the Racer on Rails Nissan 370Z Touring 3 race car at speed on the front straight at Portland International Raceway.
After ride height, suspension geometry, nitrogen, and tire pressure work, the 370Z finally delivered a repeatable setup window. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

That is a big deal.

The official Race 1 time cards showed the progress starting to show up on paper, with the #109 370Z quickly moving from a 1:26.946 opening lap into a 1:24.759, then a 1:24.526, then a 1:24.701. More important than the single lap was the shape of the run. The car stayed in the window. The laps stayed usable. The team finally had a platform we could tune instead of survive.

By the race weekend, we were fine-tuning instead of firefighting.

The result was an easy Touring 3 pole, a Saturday T3 win, and then another T3 win on Sunday to complete the weekend sweep.

Saturday was not without drama. At the start, there was unnecessary contact with the STU pole sitter that could have ended the race before it properly got going. Thankfully, the Apex forged wheel took an absurd hit and somehow held on. The car survived, the tire held, and we were able to finish.

Racer on Rails Nissan 370Z leading a tight pack of race cars through the Portland International Raceway chicane during the SCCA Hoosier Super Tour.
Saturday’s race had contact, traffic, and plenty of chicane chaos, but the 370Z stayed together and brought home the Touring 3 win. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

On Sunday, we replaced the damaged wheel and tire, put our heads down, and went for a maximum race-pace push.

That was the most encouraging part of the weekend. Not just winning. Not just getting through the races. But seeing that the car had pace in conditions that were not perfect. The overcast morning cloud cover had burned off by the time our Sunday race started, the track was warmer, and the car still had the ability to push toward the kind of pace we have seen from some of the strongest Touring 3 drivers at this event in prior years.

Gama Aguilar-Gamez driving the Racer on Rails Nissan 370Z Touring 3 race car through Portland International Raceway with a Spec MX-5 behind.
The weekend’s biggest win was not just the result. It was finally having a 370Z that could be leaned on lap after lap. (C) 2025 Doug Berger | DBPics

That is the good stuff.

The kind of weekend where the notebook matters as much as the trophy.

The Team Behind the Weekend

Like most race weekends, Portland had its share of curveballs.

Jordan’s personal car broke down on the way to Portland. Beef’s M240iR tried to turn Friday into a cooling system crime scene. Chris’s Spec E46 had to be monitored all weekend after an over-rev and smoke. The Z needed continued tuning and then a wheel/tire change after race contact.

None of that is unusual in racing. That is the job.

What mattered was how the team responded.

Ian’s engineering work before the event gave the Z a new foundation. Jordan kept Chris’s car alive and monitored. Tyler continued guiding drivers through both technical and mental development. The crew absorbed the chaos, kept working the problems, and moved the weekend forward.

That is what we want Racer on Rails to be.

Not just a shop that brings cars to the track. A team that develops cars, develops drivers, solves problems, and helps people leave the weekend with better tools than they arrived with.

Portland gave us a lot.

A Touring 3 weekend sweep for the 370Z. A major mental unlock for Chris. A hard but smart diagnostic call on Beef’s BMW. A valuable SRF3 baseline for Ron. A stronger engineering process for the team. And a reminder that race weekends are rarely clean, but they can still be deeply productive.

We left Portland feeling like the whole program moved forward.

Goals. Smiles. Memories. LFG.

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SCCA US Majors Tour – Thunderhill 2026 – The Last Stop South

Racer on Rails paddock'ed at Thunderhill Raceway Park

In late April, we wrapped up the final stop of our early-season West Coast racing trip with the 2026 SCCA U.S. Majors Tour at Thunderhill Raceway Park.

This trip started in February at Buttonwillow’s new “The Circuit” layout, continued through a NASA NorCal weekend at Sonoma Raceway, and finished at Thunderhill before the cars, hauler, and team made the long drive back to the Pacific Northwest.

For anyone newer to club racing, the SCCA U.S. Majors Tour is one of the national-level competition paths within the Sports Car Club of America. It brings together strong regional and national drivers, gives racers a chance to measure themselves against deeper fields, and, for many drivers, forms part of the path toward the SCCA National Championship Runoffs.

Thunderhill is always a fun place to end a trip like this. It has elevation, fast commitment corners, technical braking zones, and enough rhythm changes to keep a driver honest. For this event, we ran the Crows Nest configuration, which adds its own personality to the lap and rewards drivers who can stay patient, committed, and precise.

For Racer on Rails, this weekend had two main drivers:

Gama Aguilar-Gamez in the No. 109 Nissan 370Z, competing in Touring 3

Ron Tanemura in his BMW Spec E46, competing in Touring 3 and STU

On paper, it was another race weekend. In reality, it was exactly the kind of weekend that shows why we love this sport so much. There were clear goals, real progress, hard-earned smiles, and a few memories that will probably get retold in the paddock for a long time.

Why We Were There

Every driver came into Thunderhill with a different mission.

For Gama, the weekend was an important step in the 2026 Runoffs journey. To qualify for the SCCA National Championship Runoffs, drivers need to complete the required number of race weekends and race finishes. After completing two races earlier in the season, Thunderhill became a critical opportunity to add two more finishes and move much closer to locking in the qualification path.

Ron Tanemura never stops looking for opportunity!

But the weekend was not just about checking a box.

The 370Z is still a car we are actively developing. It has shown strong pace, but like most serious race cars, especially one being pushed toward national competitiveness, the work is never really finished. Reliability, braking behavior, tire temperature, chassis balance, setup range, and driver confidence all remain part of the larger development puzzle.

For Ron, the goal was different but just as important.

Ron’s bigger mission this year is driver development. Not just getting faster in one car, at one track, in one situation, but becoming more adaptable, more trusted, and more complete as a driver.

A big part of that is variety. Different tracks. Different race groups. Different cars around him. Different levels of pressure. The long-term target is for him to be the kind of driver who can step into different racing environments, learn quickly, run cleanly, stay close enough on pace, and be trusted by the people around him.

That does not happen by accident.

It happens by putting yourself in new situations, then doing the work to understand them. It happens by learning how to drive a car when it moves around underneath you. It happens by getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

Thunderhill gave Ron exactly that kind of opportunity.

Ron’s Weekend: Raising the Baseline

Ron came into Thunderhill with a very clear goal: build on last year, get more comfortable with the car moving underneath him, and leave with a higher baseline as a driver.

That is one of the things we love about working with Ron. He is not just chasing a result. He is actively working on his craft. He pays attention to what the car is doing, what he is doing, and where the next layer of performance might be hiding.

Thunderhill gave him a perfect environment for that.

Last year, Ron’s best lap at Thunderhill was a 2:06.24. This year, he came close with a 2:06.46. On paper, that means he did not beat his previous personal best. But the timing sheet does not tell the full story.

The bigger win was consistency.

Last year, Ron had one lap in the 2:06 range, one lap in the low 2:07 range, and a handful of laps in the 2:08s. This year, he had five laps in the 2:06s, eight laps in the 2:07s, and seventeen laps in the 2:08s.

That matters.

A single fast lap is fun. A higher baseline is progress.

Ron’s own takeaway from the weekend was that he did not feel quite as “on it” as he did at Sonoma, but he was close enough to feel like his pace is becoming more real and more repeatable. That is exactly the kind of step we want to see from a developing driver.

The biggest learning was around car control.

Post session – getting that Chequered flag for Ron!

When Ron was faster, the car was moving. It was rotating. He was catching it, correcting it, and working with it instead of waiting for the car to feel perfectly settled. During Friday testing, especially in the later sessions, he started getting more comfortable with that feeling. The next challenge is learning how to access that level of commitment earlier in a session, instead of needing several laps to build into it.

That became one of his biggest themes from the weekend: push earlier, trust the car sooner, and learn to drive closer to the limit on demand.

Saturday showed that progress.

In his first Touring 3 qualifying session, Ron was quick and consistent, including a run of laps in the 2:06s before the session ended. Later, in his second qualifying session, he was fast immediately after the restart, showing that the pace was starting to become easier to access.

The races gave him a different kind of experience.

In Touring 3, Ron finished second in class. It was a solid result, but he did not have as much direct class competition around him as he would have liked. At Sonoma, he had more sustained battles, and Thunderhill was a little quieter in that regard.

But the weekend still gave him valuable race craft notes.

He worked on starts. He worked on positioning. He got reminders about following closer before the green, not over-defending Turn 1 when there is an opportunity to open the gap, and using commitment through fast corners to set up passing opportunities later in the lap.

Then Sunday threw the team a curveball.

During Touring 3 qualifying, Ron quickly realized he had lost fourth gear. The transmission needed to be replaced, and the clock was not exactly being generous.

Thankfully, we had a spare transmission available.

The team looked at the schedule and knew it was going to be tight, but there was still a chance to get Ron back out for the STU race later that afternoon.

There was also something special waiting at the end.

At SCCA Majors events, class winners often receive more than a trophy. This event was hosted by the San Francisco Region, and the class-win flags were a cool keepsake from the weekend.

So we made the call: let’s get Ron that flag.

The team jumped on the transmission swap, got the car buttoned up, warmed up, checked over, and ready. Ron made it to the race.

And he delivered.

He finished third overall in Group 2, won STU, and brought home the flag.

But the real story was not just the flag. It was the full arc of the weekend: clear goals, honest self-assessment, measurable progress, a mechanical setback, a team thrash, and one more chance to go race.

That is the kind of weekend that builds a driver.

Gama’s Weekend: Runoffs Progress and More 370Z Development

For Gama, Thunderhill was about two things: continuing the Runoffs qualification path and continuing to develop the No. 109 Nissan 370Z into a nationally competitive Touring 3 car.

This was only the second full race weekend of the season for the Z, and we came in with some important new learning.

Before the event, Tyler spent time with our partners at Motion Control Suspension to better understand the internal behavior, adjustment range, and service considerations of our three-way dampers with external reservoirs. The details matter, and we came away with more tools in our toolbelt that have helped us start fine tuning the car’s behavior.

For a car like the 370Z, which has shown both pace and some sensitivity around braking behavior and tire temperature management, that kind of learning matters. We have been trying to understand how to make the car more compliant, more consistent, and easier to extract speed from over a full race distance.

Ian Anderson getting the tire pressures dialed in before a session

The goal was not to find one magic adjustment. Race cars rarely work that way.

The goal was to understand the platform better, continue chipping away at reliability concerns, give the driver a car that communicates more clearly, and keep moving the program forward with discipline.

That is the unglamorous part of race car development. It is not always fireworks. Sometimes it is pressure checks, damper notes, tire readings, brake feel, driver feedback, and the quiet little decisions that add up to real progress.

Thunderhill gave us more of that.

On Saturday, Gama finished fifth overall in Group 1 and first in Touring 3, with a best lap of 2:02.789. That result mattered for the points and the Runoffs path, but it also showed that the 370Z had real speed in the class.

On Sunday, the priority was clear: finish the race, keep stacking Runoffs qualification progress, and bring the car home. Gama finished fourth overall and again first in Touring 3, adding another strong finish to the season.

That's another P1 sweep of a race weekend for Ian, Gama, and the Nissan 370z in SCCA Touring 3
That’s another P1 sweep of a race weekend for Ian, Gama, and the Nissan 370z in SCCA Touring 3

Just as importantly, the weekend helped validate some of the direction we are taking with the chassis. The car became easier to work with, more predictable, and more useful as a development platform.

For Gama’s season, the biggest objective was to continue stacking the race finishes needed for Runoffs qualification. In that sense, the weekend did exactly what it needed to do.

For the car, it gave us more data.

It’s not all roses and daisies when chasing speed. Sometimes you find yourself in the grass…

For the driver, it gave more confidence.

For the team, it gave another reminder that the path to national-level competitiveness is built one weekend, one session, and one decision at a time.

The Bigger Picture

The easy version of a race recap is to talk about qualifying positions, lap times, race results, and trophies.

Those things matter. We care about them. We work hard for them.

But the best weekends usually have another layer.

Ron’s weekend was a perfect example. He hit the goals he came in with, but still left wanting more. That is a good place to be. He raised his baseline, got more comfortable with the car moving, built more race craft notes, identified where the next step is, and still came home with a class win flag after the team thrashed to get him back on track.

Gama’s weekend was different, but connected. The 370Z program took another step forward, the Runoffs path became more achievable, and we continued learning how to get more out of the platform without losing sight of reliability and drivability.

That is the heart of what Racer on Rails is becoming.

Yes, we prepare race cars. Yes, we support race weekends. Yes, we care deeply about setup, reliability, data, execution, and all the thousand little details that make a race car work.

But ultimately, we are here to help drivers become better drivers.

Sometimes that means building a faster car. Sometimes that means making a car easier to trust. Sometimes that means helping a driver understand what they are feeling. Sometimes that means creating the right environment for a driver to stretch, learn, and come back wanting more.

We want to help people set goals that matter to them, whether that is winning a national championship, earning a Runoffs invite, becoming more comfortable with car control, developing race craft, or simply leaving the track knowing they took a real step forward.

That is why weekends like Thunderhill matter.

P1 both races in SCCA Touring 3 and collecting some hardware before the weather rolled in!

The cars came back north to the Pacific Northwest with more miles on them, more notes in the book, and a few more stories for the paddock. For us, it felt like the right ending to the first chapter of the season.

And for our drivers, it was another reminder that progress in racing rarely arrives as one giant leap.

Most of the time, it shows up as one better corner, one cleaner race, one smarter adjustment, one hard-earned finish, and one flag you almost did not make it back on track to win.

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SCCA Hoosier Super Tour – Buttonwillow The Circuit

High Performance Race Cars on Track at Racer on Rails.

The Setting: Why Buttonwillow Matters

The opening round of our 2026 SCCA season brought us to Buttonwillow Raceway Park for the first SCCA Hoosier Super Tour of the year, February 21 – 22, 2026.

We raced on The Circuit configuration — Buttonwillow’s newer layout that’s been operating for over a year now and we were here last year, for the very first competition race weekend and event ever held at the new track. Ron competed here twice last season. For the rest of the team, we’ve logged time here supporting customers. But this was our first time bringing the Nissan 370Z to this configuration in race trim.

Touring 3 remains one of the most competitive, tightly regulated classes in SCCA road racing. The cars are production-based, but execution is everything. Small setup shifts matter. Tire management matters. Driver discipline matters.

Buttonwillow’s The Circuit layout also brings a very different technical personality compared to the original “Buttonwillow 13CW” configuration that many West Coast racers grew up on. Traditional Buttonwillow rewards aggression, commitment over bumps, and managing long-flowing corner sequences with a little bit of chaos built into the surface and sightlines. The Circuit, by comparison, feels more modern and much more precise. The pavement quality is smoother, the transitions are faster, and the corners tend to stack technical decisions on top of each other.

Sun is setting at Buttonwillow The Circuit – when the sun goes down, the air and track temps drop fast in February.

Several sections reward sacrificing entry speed to maximize minimum corner speed and throttle commitment on exit, while other complexes punish even tiny balance mistakes with lost momentum that carries for multiple corners afterward. It’s also a track where aero drag, mechanical grip, brake release timing, and tire temperature management all become more interconnected than people initially expect. A car that feels “pretty good” for one lap can quickly become difficult over a race run if the balance isn’t properly managed. In many ways, The Circuit feels less like old-school club racing Buttonwillow and more like a purpose-built modern technical circuit that rewards disciplined engineering and adaptable drivers.

At just over 2.5 miles in length, The Circuit combines roughly two dozen corners and transitional elements ranging from slow, technical rotation zones to fast, committed sweepers that reward precision and patience. The layout constantly shifts between decreasing-radius corners, long loaded exits, quick direction changes, and several areas where throttle timing matters more than outright bravery. For Touring 3 cars, gearing becomes especially important because many sections sit right on the edge between carrying momentum in a taller gear versus risking upsetting the platform with an additional shift.

The track surface itself is relatively smooth compared to the original Buttonwillow layouts, but the environment still plays a huge role in grip evolution. Located in California’s Central Valley, the circuit is frequently impacted by wind carrying fine dust and sand onto the racing line, while dramatic temperature swings between cold mornings and warmer afternoons can significantly change tire behavior and overall balance throughout a race weekend.

Buttonwillow’s Circuit layout rewards rhythm and precision. There aren’t many places to hide mistakes. It’s a track that exposes imbalance — mechanical or mental.

That made it the perfect place to start the year.

The Mindset: Process Over Outcome

Coming into the weekend, our objectives were clear:

  • Establish a stable performance baseline for the 370Z
  • Continue refining Ron’s throttle application and adaptability
  • Validate our tire pressure management process
  • Execute cleanly as a team

We intentionally chose to run lightly used tires instead of bolting on fresh rubber. Not to handicap ourselves, but to operate with discipline and long-term planning in mind.

For Ron, this season is about expanding his toolbox. He’s put in serious off-season work — simulator training, Porsche ice driving, DirtFish advanced programs — all focused on becoming more adaptable and decisive with inputs.

Ron Tanemura carving corners in his Touring 3 BMW Spec E46

For the team, this season is about raising our operational standard. When something breaks, we fix it properly. When development is needed, we create bandwidth for it.

No chasing. No scrambling.

Build it right.

The Weekend Story

The Journey South

Jordan and Ian drove the truck down through snow over the Oregon passes. Enough weather to keep things interesting, but they maintained traction and avoided chains. We arrived in California clean and on schedule.

That matters more than people think.

Testing: Cold Mornings, Steady Gains

Thursday brought cold temps and passing showers. Ron used early sessions to reacquaint himself with slip and rotation. By Friday he was back at 2:00.0 pace — only tenths off his personal best from last year at this track.

The 370Z test sessions were structured and deliberate. Controlled three-lap tire validation runs. Minor line adjustments through Turn 3, 5, 8, and 10. By Friday afternoon, we were consistently in the 1:56s with room left in the data.

The car was stable. Predictable. Repeatable.

Baseline established.

Mechanical Curveballs

Late Friday we discovered the Nissan’s clutch was nearing end-of-life.

Ian working his tail and back off, getting the clutch replaced on the Touring 3 Nissan 370z Nismo

Saturday morning became paddock surgery.

Transmission out.
Clutch replaced.
Qualifying missed.

Ron’s clutch was also right at a season’s worth of cycles, so we proactively replaced his as well. Two clutch jobs in one weekend.

It wasn’t glamorous work, but it was done calmly and correctly.

That’s culture.

Saturday Race: From the Back

Starting P28 overall after missing qualifying, the only direction was forward.

The opening lap was tight but clean. From there, it was controlled aggression and patience.

Twenty-two passes in twenty-five minutes.

Finished:

  • P6 overall
  • P2 in Touring 3

Fastest lap of the race would have placed us P2 on the grid for Sunday.

Gama in his Nissan 370z Nismo working his way through field during race 1.

All on used tires.

Sunday: Clean Execution

Sunday qualifying required careful temperature management after diagnosing a cooling fan issue. Despite traffic on both flying laps:

  • P2 in class
  • P4 overall
Gama and Ron making laps and loving every braking zone at Buttonwillow The Circuit

The race start was steady. The leaders stretched a gap as the rear tires began to show their age around lap five. Turn 1 required finesse and progressive inputs to manage increasing rotation.

Post-race inspection confirmed tire edge wear consistent with heavy cycling.

Final result:

  • P2 in class

Not quite the fight for P1 we would have liked, but an honest and disciplined run.

Starting the Race 2 from the front of the grid but not enough pace to truly challenge for P1.

Ron: Double Podium Weekend

Ron started P3 in class Sunday and battled closely with Spec MX-5 cars running in STL for additional seat time. Those cars were quick and the racing was tight.

There was side-to-side contact exiting Turn 3 that pushed him wide, but he stayed composed and fought back.

He finished:

  • P3 in class
  • Double podium weekend

Both races resulted in an all-Pacific Northwest podium sweep, with Scotty B White completing the trio.

Ron left energized and sharper. More sensitive to the car. More decisive on throttle. Clear on what to improve next.

That’s exactly what this weekend was for.

Tyler and Ron obsessing over the data, trying to figure out how to go faster, faster!

What We Take With Us

We worked through:

  • Snow-covered travel
  • Two clutch replacements
  • Cooling fan troubleshooting
  • Traffic-filled qualifying sessions
  • Tire degradation management

None of it materially impacted our results.

More importantly, the 370Z now has a clear and repeatable performance baseline. The upgraded big brake kit performed flawlessly. The car responds predictably to setup changes.

That’s a full PNW podium sweep for the Buttonwillow Hoosier Super Tour

We leave Buttonwillow not chasing something unknown — but building on something understood.

That’s the difference.

Goals were pursued with discipline.
Smiles were earned in the paddock and at dinner tables.
Memories were made in the moments that required composure.

Next stop: Sonoma Raceway with NASA.

The foundation is set.
Now we build.

Gama making most of the camber near corner apex to get the most speed through the corner.
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June Sprints at Road America – A Weekend of Grit, Growth, and Podiums

Turn 1 at the start of the Touring 3 race at SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints race!

A few weeks ago, we were at Road America for one of the most iconic events in club racing: the SCCA June Sprints.

There are tracks—and then there’s Road America. Nestled in the rolling hills of Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, Road America is one of the most iconic and demanding circuits in North America. At 4.048 miles, it’s one of the longest permanent road courses in the country, with 14 turns that blend technical precision with full-send bravery. Corners like the Kink, the Carousel, and Canada Corner don’t just test your car—they test your commitment. Turn 5 is the “slowest” min-speed corner at a target min-speed of 55-60 mph, depending on the car! That is the “slowest” with the rest of the corners having target min-speed of 65, 80, 90 and 110 mph. ????

And then there’s the June Sprints—a race weekend steeped in history. Since 1956, the June Sprints have stood as a cornerstone of American amateur road racing. It’s a proving ground for national champions and future pros, where every lap carries the weight of decades of racing tradition.

But what truly sets this weekend apart is Elkhart Lake itself. This little town breathes motorsport. Historic restaurants like Siebkens and The Osthoff are filled with old racing photos and stories, and the street signs and commemorative plaques around town proudly mark the original road course from the 1950s, when racing took place on public roads. It’s a place where history isn’t just remembered—it’s woven into the landscape.

Just down the road is RealTime Racing HQ, a name familiar to any longtime fan of World Challenge or Honda racing, SO COOL! And everywhere you look during June Sprints weekend, the town is buzzing with performance cars—from vintage Porsches to modern GT4 machines. It’s a car lover’s paradise, and for racers like us, it’s nothing short of heaven.

Big Brains, Big Gains – Engineering First

Before a single lap was turned, Tyler Campbell was already deep in the work: suspension geometry, brake data, tire modeling—he put in the kind of effort that sets great teams apart. We showed up with one of the most dialed-in testing plans we’ve ever run, and it paid off.

We don’t show up to look cool (or at least we think we try to look cool but look like a bunch of racing and track nerds! ????) and bench race. We’re here to science the crap out of our race cars and racing!

Gama and Tyler discussing setup options, data collected and how to move forward.
Gama and Tyler discussing setup options, data collected and how to move forward at June Sprints.

Wednesday & Thursday – Building the Foundation

We rolled in Tuesday night with storms on the radar. Wednesday morning was still wet, but once the track dried, we got to work. We missed the first test session due to the wet track and expected dry conditions through the rest of the race week, but kicked off our structured setup plan with back-to-back sessions focused on testing our hypotheses.

I ran our Spec E46, not because we expected to win overall, but because it gave us a solid, familiar platform to test against elite-level competition (and the Touring 3 Nissan 370Z needed another heart transplant, we’ll get into that more in a future post).

Every change delivered something new—every lap taught us something valuable.

Dave Orem in his BMW Z4M Coupe bombing through Turn 7 at Road America during the 2025 June Sprints
Dave blasting through Turn 7, building speed and confidence lap after lap.

Thursday, we mounted fresh tires and saw a measurable step forward. All signs pointed toward progress, and it gave us confidence heading into the official sessions.

Friday – Contact, Recovery, and Grit

Morning practice started off well… until it didn’t.

Dave Orem got dive-bombed in Turn 1. The hit spun him, left him stalled, and another car—unable to avoid him—collected the Z4M hard.

Bryce and Rene hammer away at fixing a nearly fully destroyed front passenger side corner.
Bryce and Rene hammer away at fixing a nearly fully destroyed front passenger side corner. Within 12 hours of total work time, across a couple days and with overnight delivery of parts, Dave and his Z4M Coupe were online and ready for qualifying session 2 and the race weekend!

Thankfully, Dave was okay. And thanks to an incredible community, we pulled off a minor miracle: sourcing every part needed to get him back on track.

Shoutout to Trevor and Wyatt at Motion Control Suspension for building a replacement MCS shock on short notice and getting it to us overnight.

Friday Qualifying – Almost There

Meanwhile, I was out for qualifying in the E46. Brand new tires. Low Super Tour points meant I was gridded at the back of the T3 field. But we knew we had pace.

Twice, I was on flying laps that would’ve moved me to P2 or P3—both times caught in traffic at the carousel and kink. Absolutely destroyed those laps.

Gama Aguilar in the Racer on Rails silver bullet rental Spec E46,

We finished the day P4. Not ideal, but we knew more was coming.

Saturday – Reset & Rebound

With Dave’s car repaired, he jumped back in for qualifying.

“I didn’t think about the car at all. I was able to focus on finding space and putting down lap times.”

Exactly what you want to hear after an incident. He wasn’t fully back to pace yet but showed strong progress.

Dave building confidence in qualifying after the hit that took him out of Q1.

For me, Saturday qualifying locked in P4. Solid lap. Solid position. Not a perfect lap, but enough to put us in contention for Sunday.

Sunday – Race Day

Dave’s Race

Sunday morning, Dave started deep in mixed-class traffic. Lost a few spots at the start, but once the field spread out, he got to work.

Lap by lap, he found rhythm, overtook competitors, and with just a few laps to go—reset his personal best lap time.

He finished P5 in Touring 3, proud of the recovery but wishing he had the two missed sessions to build more momentum.

Dave making moves through the Sunday main Touring 3 race at the SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints.
Dave making moves through the Sunday main Touring 3 race at the SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints. BMW Z4M Coupe T3 race car.

Gama’s Race

Hot, humid, and with storms on the radar. The goal? Finish to qualify for the Runoffs—and go for a podium if the opportunity was there.

Turn 1 at the start of the Touring 3 race at SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints race!
Gama looking for a way through at the start of the Touring 3 SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints race.

Great start, dicing for P2 and P3 early. Lap 2 brought a jam up into Turn 3 behind a slowing T2 car. Another T3 car got through; I had to wait. That 3–4 second gap to P3 took several laps to close.

Then it happened.

P3 (another Spec E46) dropped a tire into the dirt under braking. Big wiggle. Lost momentum. I got in the draft, faked right, popped left, held side draft as we bent left—and completed the pass into Turn 5 with a wheel in or nibbling at the grass.

Gama looking to grow the gap to P4 during the SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints race at Road America in the Racer on Rails Spec E46 rental race car, the Silver Bullet!
Gama looking to grow the gap to P4 during the SCCA Chicago Region June Sprints race at Road America in the Racer on Rails Spec E46 rental race car, the Silver Bullet!

From there? Hit marks. Build gap. Don’t look back.

By the final laps, the lead over P4 was 30+ seconds. P2 and P1 had gotten through the local yellow before me, and that ultimately determined the gap. I brought it home in P3.

???? Watch the Race

Want to see the full race and that battle for the podium?
???? Click here to watch the in-car + SCCA broadcast replay.

YouTube player

What Racing Teaches Us

One of the things I love most about racing is how often we’re proven wrong—and how that’s a good thing. What we “know” is always based on the best data and insight we’ve gathered up to that point. The goal isn’t to be right all the time—it’s to stay curious, stay humble, and keep growing.

And that’s what we did at Road America.

Let’s Build Your Path in Motorsports

If the way we race—the way we prepare, develop, and pursue excellence—resonates with you, let’s talk.

We’re not just about cars. We’re about people, progress, and purpose.
And we’d love to help you chase your motorsport goals.

???? Contact us and let’s get started.

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MEGA Weekend at The Circuit @ Buttonwillow Raceway Park!

Double Podium and the top step for Dave and Ron!

The 2025 Racer on Rails SCCA racing program kicked off in California at The Circuit, the newly built racecourse at Buttonwillow Raceway Park. This was a weekend of firsts—not just for us, but for the entire everyone, as we took part in the first-ever sanctioned race on the new track! 

Everything about The Circuit was new; new track, new tire brand for both slick and wet setups, new coaching program, new competitors, and new adventures. Our drivers and crew had plenty to learn, and we approached the weekend with specific goals and a detailed game plan for each driver. With two days of testing, racing, and strategy calls, the team made incredible strides, achieving personal bests, podiums, and a 1-2 finish in Race 2 on Sunday. 

Meet the team 

Ron and Reid in impound, post-session

Ron Tanemura & Car Chief Reid Morris 

#63 SE46 BMW 330i | SCCA Class – Touring 3 (T3) 

  • 2024 ICSCC SPM Class Champion ???? 
  • First-ever SCCA U.S. Majors Tour event 
  • Entering Racer on Rails’ SCCA Competition Program 

Ron has been racing with Racer on Rails in the Pacific Northwest for a few years, but this was his first-ever SCCA Majors Tour race and his fist season working full time with Reid. After earning the 2024 ICSCC SPM Class Championship, he stepped up to challenge himself further in national competition. This weekend was a big new challenge —a brand-new track, new competitors, and a stomach bug. But Ron came ready to party, and nothing was stopping him. 

Rene getting Dave strapped in for race 1.

David Orem & Car Chief Rene Perez 

#6 BMW Z4 M Coupé | SCCA Class – Touring 3 (T3) 

  • Touring 3 podium finisher 
  • Has mastered Heel-Toe Shifting during the off-season 
  • Goal-Oriented approach 

Dave returns to our SCCA program looking to reach the sharp end of the T3 field. With a fresh rebuild on his Z4 M Coupé including a stunning new vinyl wrap, Dave arrives fit, focused and determined.  The pairing showed steady progression all weekend, culminating in a checked bag fee on the flight home for a bag containing new hardware. 

Simon’s sweet Porsche GT3 Cup Car in post race impound

Simon Asselin & Car Chief Jordan Allen (“The Doctor”) 

#81 Porsche Motorsport 991.2 GT3 Cup | SCCA Class – GT2 

  • 2023 SCCA Touring 3 Points Champion 
  • Racing in one of the most competitive SCCA grids, GT2 
  • Third-fastest GT2 lap time of the weekend 

Simon and Jordan have been working together for multiple seasons, and after a strong debut year in GT2 last season, they returned to challenge for the podium in 2025. This series offers the challenge of multi-class race groups including a large Spec Corvette field, Simon’s consistency and pace kept him at the front of the GT2 field, all while navigating the pack of slower class cars. 

Friday Test Day – Cold Starts and First Impressions 

We arrived at The Circuit before sunrise on Friday, greeted by well-below-freezing temperatures and frost covering everything—cars, buildings, and the track. Luckily, the team had already set up the night before, allowing us to jump straight into unloading and prepping for the 9:00–9:30 AM test session. 

By the time the first cars hit the track, the frost had lifted, and the sun was breaking through. This was the first real-world drive for any of our drivers on the new layout, making it a crucial day of adaptation. 

Driver Progress: 

  • Simon Asselin: Locked in the 1:45 range, pushing near the expected top pace. 
  • Dave Orem: Improved into the 2:06 range, showing steady progress. 
  • Ron Tanemura: Battling fatigue, made strides before sitting out the final session to recover. 

With simulator prep translating well to reality, we ended the day confident in the team’s progress heading into Saturday. 

Saturday – Practice, Qualifying & Race 1 

Saturday morning started with feedback sheets from Tyler Campbell, analyzing Friday’s data to pinpoint one or two focus areas for each driver. The goal: apply the learnings immediately in the morning practice and first qualifying session. 

Ron had an early spin during morning practice, leading to the discovery of a failing battery. Missing part of practice, he rebounded well in qualifying.  Dave executed perfectly, shaving seconds off his previous best lap.   

Simon struggled with traffic in qualifying but still secures a start from row 2. 

Saturday Qualifying Results: 

  • Touring 3: Dave P2, Ron P5 
  • GT2: Simon P3 

Saturday Race 1 – Making History 

T3 Race 1: 

The first-ever sanctioned race on The Circuit was a split start, with Spec MX-5 Cup cars leading and Touring 3 cars behind.  The race brings improving track conditions and with the help of lots of data and video analysis, defined goals and executing on our action plans, Dave charges to a 2nd place finish, while Ron continues to improve despite still recovering from food poisoning, finishing the race in 4th. 

GT2 Race 1: 

Better track conditions and cool air set the stage for Race 1 in GT2.  Simon has some great racing of his own, as he trades positions with a few GT2 cars before finishing the race in 4th place.    

Sunday –  Morning Qualifying, Wet Track, Big Decisions 

Early morning rain rolls in leaving us with a damp but drying track.  Our turn is up for T3 qualifying and mixed conditions still exist.  We are forced to make a strategy call on tires, so we go to Jordo at our Weather Desk.  The decision is slicks, and it pays off as the track conditions improve and we begin finding speed in quali #2. 

Sunday Qualifying Results: 

  • Touring 3: Dave P2, Ron P3 
  • GT2: Simon P3 

Touring 3, Race 2 – The 1-2 punch! 

The race begins with a 6-car battle into the first corner making for an exciting start.  Dave sets the pace in class, while Ron, after fending off some light contact from another competitor, sticks to the the Z4M’s bumper and RoR takes a 1-2 finish in Race 2 for Touring 3.  BOOM! 

GT2 Race 2: 

Simon has a solid start and runs in P3, involved in a 3-car battle for most of the race.  After a restart from a full course caution, several cars experience wheelspin, resulting in a loss of 2 spots.  Despite the setback, he fights his way back up, improving his personal best lap time by nearly three seconds (1:44.5) and finishes in P4. 

Wondering what it’s like on the new circuit? Check out a fast lap in Simon’s Porsche 911 GT3 991.2 Cup Car

YouTube player

Final Thoughts – Goals, Smiles, Memories 

As we packed up, we reflected on an incredible opening weekend. The new track, unpredictable conditions, and intense racing made for an unforgettable event. 

  • Dave & Ron delivered a 1-2 finish in Touring 3. 
  • Simon clocked the third-fastest GT2 lap of the weekend. 
  • No major damage, only progress. 

Now, we prep for Race 2. Stay tuned! 

#Goals #Smiles #Memories 

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2024 Hoosier Super Tour Race 3 – Road Atlanta

Stop #3 in the 2024 Hoosier Super Tour took us back to legendary Road Atlanta, our 3rd year in a row and crossing our fingers for at least not a mega thunderstorm, snow, or freezing temps? It didn’t pan out like that at all but one could dream, right???

Coming into the weekend, we had Ann Doherty going for her second race in her new-to-her Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Car (991.2), Dave Orem in his BMW Z4M, Gama Aguilar in his Nissan 370Z and making his 2024 debut, Thad Berger in his Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport MR competing in Touring 1.

Road Atlanta: A Track Like No Other

Road Atlanta is a bucket-list track for racers worldwide. Nestled in the rolling hills of Braselton, Georgia, it’s known for its high-speed back straight away, technical corners, and dramatic elevation changes. The track demands respect and skill, as drivers navigate iconic sections like the Esses and the infamous Turn 12, a downhill blind corner that tests both bravery and car setup.

The track’s layout, with a mix of medium and high-speed corners, challenges a car’s balance and requires a careful blend of mechanical grip, aerodynamic efficiency (where applicable), and driver finesse. Long straights demand top-end power, while technical sectors, like Turns 3 through 5, test the setup and throttle control. Adding to the challenge, elevation changes require cars to manage weight transfer effectively, which puts additional emphasis on precise braking and cornering. This is a fun track, a scary track, and it requires drivers be on top of their game to get the most out of themselves and the car, with high consequences on the outside of most corners due to limited runoff.

The Wild Card: Mixed Weather Conditions

The weekend at Road Atlanta was a perfect example of how unpredictable weather can add another layer of complexity to motorsport. Cold mornings, sudden rain showers, drying lines, and gusty winds all made an appearance, pushing both cars and drivers to their limits.

From a car’s perspective, fluctuating weather conditions impact nearly every system:

  • Tires: Tire pressures and compounds become critical as track temperatures rise or plummet. Wet or intermediate tires need careful management to avoid overheating on a drying line, while slicks can struggle to find grip on damp patches.
  • Braking: Wet weather reduces braking efficiency and increases the likelihood of lock-ups, especially in high-speed zones like the run into Turn 10A and 10B.
  • Aerodynamics: Strong winds can affect a car’s stability, especially in high-speed sections like the back straight. This requires drivers to stay vigilant and adjust their steering inputs accordingly.
  • Traction and Balance: Mixed grip levels from a drying track demand precise throttle and steering inputs, as any abrupt movements can unsettle the car and lead to costly mistakes.

For drivers, preparation is key to handling these challenges. We as a team are glued to various weather services and adjust the approach based on the session’s conditions.

In wet conditions, smoothness is paramount—gentle braking, progressive throttle application, and careful steering are all necessary to maintain control. When the track begins to dry, drivers need to identify and exploit the developing racing line, where grip is highest, without overworking the tires (like we did last year, going on wet tires for what ended up being a mostly dry race).

Ann’s Focus: Learning and Feeling the Car

The goal for race 1 in her new car was simply to operate the car and start to acquaint herself with how the car drove; results were a non-variable. As we covered in the last race report for NOLA – mission accomplished! The biggest take-away Ann had from the first weekend was, this thing is a BEAST and without the driver aids of her former car (Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport) her inputs had to be that much more precise, especially on brake release and throttle application.

Ann Doherty in Baby Shark - 991.2 Porsche GT3 Cup Car
Ann Doherty cutting up through the Esses at Road Atlanta

At Road Atlanta, we moved to a second phase of learning the car. She knows how to operate the car and where all the switches and buttons are located, now it was time to start focusing on how the car truly feels. Specifically, how the car communicates weight transfer from side to side (how do we know when the car takes a set?), the balance of the car rear to front when hitting the brakes and most importantly, getting on that throttle.

Throttle application is critical for every corner but especially at Road Atlanta which is dominated by medium to high-speed corners (the slowest corners have a target min speed of 48-50 mph!) and multiple corners with a target min-speed of >70mph, how she applies throttle, even with some of those exits going into a hill-side, would be critical.

By focusing on her inputs throughout the test day, Ann got herself into a competitive window in the first qualifying session on Friday mid-day with a 1:28.743 and P6 out of 14 in GT2 – great start and knowing there was more potential waiting to be unlocked.

Saturday AM was supposed to be a second qualifying session but with a MAJOR storm rolling through Friday overnight, the track was fully wet and zero chance of anyone going faster than the day prior. Ann and most competitors took the session off to focus on the race which would end up taking place on a mostly dry and green track. Ann had a great start to the race, losing one out-of-class position on lap 1 and holding her own through the first FCY of the race. With the cars packed back up for the restart, she lost positions trying to avoid contact and started picking her way through the field and battling an out-of-class Porsche GT3 Cup Car (running in GT1).

Multiple FCY’s ended up stopping competitors from getting into a flow and after another re-start, she got on throttle just a bit too aggressively and ended up having the rear end of the car come around on her. It also didn’t help that there was clay mud all over the exit curbs from the weather throughout the weekend.

Ann gathered herself up, got back on the track and finished in 9th place. Lots more learned and Ann is ready to keep figuring out her Cup Car at VIR!

Dave’s Focus: Better Feel for the BMW Z4M

This would be Dave’s second race weekend in his Touring 3 2023 SCCA National Championship winning car. Dave started cutting his teeth on the Z4M at Sebring but mixed weather conditions and adjusting to car that is not as heavily prepared as a Spec E46 on the drivetrain front, meant that Dave would need to focus hard on those heel-toe downshifts to maintain the car balance as he entered corners.

Dave Orem climbing the hill at the Road Atlanta Esses
Dave Orem climbing the hill at the Road Atlanta Esses

Dave put his head down and started chipping away at the lap time qualifying P12 but unfortunately the ear on the rear diff cover had enough. The ear failed which started causing harsh clunking/vibrations and while we were able to locate another diff cover, it wouldn’t arrive on time for Dave to make the race.

Big Bummer for Dave but on the bright side and as preview for a future post, this was the straw that broke the camels back. Dave left the paddock determined to learn to heel-toe downshift and leave these issues behind.

Stay tuned for the lengths and efforts Dave went to become a heel-toe master downshifter!

Thad’s Unfortunate Debut

Due to scheduling conflicts, this was Thad’s first race of the season and after an off-season of sim training and building off an incredible driving experience at the previous year’s June Sprints, Thad was ready to hit the asphalt hard!

On the test day, Thad went out for the first session to just shake the dust off himself and the car. Thad came back with smiles and starting to feel it as his best lap time of the session was already near the front of the mid-pack T1 pace that we expected for the weekend! Let’s go!

Second practice session and towards the end of the session, another car loses control coming down the back straight away collecting Thad and causing significant damage to the passenger side of the car.

Thankfully, all safety systems worked properly and Thad walked away from the incident without injury. The Porsche Cayman GT4 MR will need significant repairs and will likely be the last we see the car for at least the 2024 season.

Gama’s Focus: Touring 3 Maximum Results

Quite the race weekend already, right??? For Gama, the focus was on continuing to develop the car by ensuring that we didn’t see anymore the electrical issues and fine tuning the braking system.

The car felt okay through the test sessions leading up to the qualifying sessions but the brake release continued to not feel great, especially when we got into mixed conditions. This meant that I couldn’t attack really any braking zones so the goal was to get up front and stay up front so that I didn’t have to get into too many out-braking duels.

Welp, that plan didn’t pan out too well. haha! Ended up P2 in the Qualy 1 session and P1 in Qualy 2 session, but combined and overall across both qualifying sessions, I’d start race 1 in P3 overall, behind Simon Foweather (Spec E46 in T3) and a Ford Mustang in T2 (out of class car).

Below is a link to a compilation of what would end up being nearly all our green flag running across both races. Each race had multiple FCY incidents where the net result was a P2 in Race 1 and P3 in Race 2. Race 1 started in wet conditions and eventually got to mixed, so it was a game of traction and requiring full wet tires.

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Race 2 was full dry but due to the FCY, we simply didn’t have enough green flag laps for anyone to get into a groove and show any sustainable pace.

Was a bummer to not be standing on the top step when we believed the car had the potential and just needed more green flag laps. But all things considered, it’s still a double podium weekend in very tricky conditions, at a fun but dangerous track, and the car is one piece. #grateful

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New Track, New Car, Who Dis?

The second stop in the 2024 SCCA Hoosier Super Tour schedule for the team was NOLA Motorsports Park – a new track for all the drivers and most of the team. Relatively flat, built on a swamp and host of SRO GT Americas race events the past few years, NOLA ended up being a decently technical track and the Louisiana weather initially welcomed us with 70F, sunny and with a breeze weather. But once the test day came, the cold air from up north and a weather system from down south decided to join the party and aside from Sunday, we had low 40F temps, rain, and wind. Why do we even leave the PNW to go racing???

Thoughts on NOLA

Flat, minor (but critical) banking in some corners, no point-n-shoot corners and not a lot of time above 120mph meant that balancing the car in the cornering bits was going to be a premium.

NOLA has 16 corners with 10-11 of them (depending on how you count the corners) are right hand corners and there are two sections of the track where you have consecutive right hand-corners, which makes those left-side tires important. From Turn 4, you are only making right hand turns until Turn 10! Turn 4 is a slower speed corner which requires a good amount of mechanical grip. Turns 5, 6 and 7 are higher speed corners where you are trying really hard to not over-slow for turns 5 and 6 but as you try to carry the speed into those corners, the left rear tire is taking a beating from the slight high-speed yaw action when trying to rotate the car and then accelerating through the corner.

The esses complex is relatively straight forward but carrying speed into Turn 9 (the first ess) is critical and sets up the rhythm through the rest of the complex.

Finally, the left side tires only get a mini-break before needing to turn hard at Turn 13 and then suffer through a long duration compound section of Turns 13-14, which leads onto the main straightaway.

If you’d like a more detailed walkthrough of the track, check out this video that came in super handy from ASM and Tom O’Gorman.

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Credit: ASM + TOMO Coaching

Ann’s new baby shark! 991.2 Porsche GT3 Cup Car

As some of you may have read in past posts, Ann has been developing at a rapid pace the past couple of years and driven the wheels off a Porsche Cayman GT4 Clubsport, mostly in SCCA GT2 and T1 classes. At the end of the 2023 season, with the repairs needed on the car from a failed tire during the runoffs, Ann made the decision to move on from the Cayman and jump into a GT3 Cup Car. So she spent the off-season looking for options and just in time for the NOLA race, we took delivery of her new steed on the Wednesday before the race weekend. Exciting but yikes!

With her car being new to the team and her and limited information of the running state, we set low expectations for the weekend: get the car on track, have it circulate consistently and have Ann start to build confidence in the car. Any specific result was not a consideration at all for the weekend.

Look at the butt on that! Yeah – it must work out. Ann’s new 991.2 Porsche GT3 Cup Car!

Jordan got to work on the car and after completing a full inspection, we were in decent shape! There were a couple of suspension bits to monitor, some to proactively replace but aside from that, it was just work to get the car personalized to Ann’s preferences and get the car out on the track so we could know more confidently, what we had on our hands. The car was ready to test on Friday but straight up gross, wet, and cold conditions, we made the team decision we’d wait until Saturday where there was a window of potential dry weather.

Saturday started off wet but the rain started slowing around 9-10am, just in time for qualifying. Ann went out on wet tires in case it started raining again (it didn’t) for her maiden voyage and by the end of the session, we had a clean bill of health! By the afternoon race, we fitted a set of the used tires the car came with and sent her out to get more laps, see what breaks and build confidence! After race 1, she moved up several positions, finished P6, nothing broke and ended the race with the last 2-3 laps at a decent enough pace where we could actually start looking at performance.

On Sunday, we finally got a break in the weather with the system that ended up delaying the Daytona 500, moving south of us, leaving us with clear skies but COLD winds. Beggars can’t be choosers! Ann continued to take time off her lap times during qualifying and exchanged places to finish P6 out of 13 in her first race! In race 2, Ann picked right back up where she left off, took another 2 seconds off her fastest lap time to finish with 4 laps in the low 1:50’s. All again on 2 year old used tires with unknown number of heat cycles. Safe to say that Ann is loving her new Porsche GT3 Cup Car and is ready to build on this for the next race at Road Atlanta!

One last thing on Ann to put things in perspective. Just a few years ago, she had never been on a race track, let alone raced wheel to wheel. ~3 years in and developing at a very high rate in a Cayman GT4 Clubsport which is mega fast but has a lot of driver aides, she decided to move onto a monster of a platform. She not only jumped in with full confidence to drive, but she truly slayed this beast on her first outings in it. Incredible job, Ann!!!

Ann driving back into the pits from her first on-track session in her new Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Car!

Dave continues building on his BMW Z4 M Coupe

Dave took his new-to-him BMW Z4 M-Coupe out at Sebring for the first race weekend and made solid progress on the new platform but NOLA brought a whole new set of challenges with the weather and the gearing. The Z4M has won the SCCA Runoffs the last 2 years in a row, in large part due to the M3 based gearing. Nice and tall gears to let it stretch it’s legs out on the long straight aways. NOLA doesn’t have any long straight aways, so we knew going into the weekend that the gearing wouldn’t be optimal for the car but we’d still make the most of it.

Dave took part in all of the test day sessions but as covered previously, the conditions were horrible so they were good for getting a sense of the track from simulator preparations but gave next to no representative data for what ended up being dry the rest of the weekend.

Dave (and Gama) qualified on Saturday AM on wet tires (along with the rest of the field) but it ended up being damp to drying track surface. In race 1 Dave got out to a good start, avoided spinning on the oil left by a T4 car that dropped oil around the final corners leading to the main straight away and finished P6, one spot behind Gama who spun on that oil and had to battle his way back from last place.

On Sunday, Dave worked committing to throttle in one smooth motion during qualifying and dropped another almost 2 seconds from his personal best! In the race, which finally brought some track temperature with the sun appearing, he built on those learnings, took advantage of mistakes from other drivers and came in P5, chipping away at the gap to P4! Road Atlanta should be better suited for the powerhouse BMW Z4M with that long back straight away, two uphill sections where torque pays off big time and it being Dave’s 3rd time back to the track!

NISMO 370Z Starts to Deliver on it’s Potential

At Sebring, we saw signs that the 370z could compete for podium positions but rain in the wiring and dealing with the ice mode issue held us back from being able to truly show the car’s potential. Fast forward to NOLA where the brake vacuum controller that was requested to be allowed, was approved (yay!!) but not legal until March 1st, we had to figure out how to make due with an ABS System that could freak out at any point. We tried a few different things and while not perfect, they were good enough for us to feel comfortable running the car for the weekend.

On the morning of the test day, we decided to switch to wet tires due to the rain that had started but a wheel stud failed when trying to remove the wheel. Ugh! Memo jumped on the problem and 3-4 hours later, the car was ready to go, only to make the last test session of the day, just to make sure everything stayed together. Hats off to Memo’s effort and problem solving – as we chatted on the sidelines through the repair, had this type of an issue occurred while any of us drivers would have been there on our own – game over. Someone help me push this thing into the trailer but with Memo and or team on-hand, dang near anything can come up and as long as it’s safe, they’ll get the car back on the grid.

In the Saturday AM qualifying, we went out on wet tires like everyone else and finished P4, believing we had more pace in the car and on the second row, so all the things to play for. In the Saturday afternoon race, towards the end of lap 2, someone lost an engine, dropped oil all around the last couple corners. In the heat of the battle and with wet spots all around, I didn’t spot the oil (though the team had radio’ed it in) and got caught out when the rear tires hit the oil.

It took me a bit to get the car re-fired and out of the completely soaked grass but got going again, put my head down, worked my way back to P5 and was catching the leading group at 1-2 seconds per lap (of which I didn’t realize at the time and was somewhat frustrated with my pace).

The next day for the Sunday AM qualifying, we swapped on some lower heat cycle tires (specifically, the tires that I used during the VIR Runoffs in the installation laps/sessions) and a new tire on the front left corner. Better tires but still not a full on sticker run. First flying lap was good but I wasn’t pushing 100% and tires weren’t fully into the working window. The 3rd flying lap I let it all out and found myself a very fast Danny Stein in his Mazda STL car which provided a nice tow around the track, which resulted in a 1:55.2XX and pole for T3! On the next lap, I was slightly up on that 1:55.2XX lap time and I was going for another flyer to try and improve. I braked at the same point for Turn 1, did my downshift, turned in and then full front end lock up – sigh. This would end up being a telling sign of the rest of the day.

For the race, we decided to raise the car all around to help with compliance around the bumpy track. Thanks to fellow Nissan racers Rick Kulach and Richard Baldwin, we were able to get our hands on some taller front springs and made the change in time for the race.

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Watch the Sunday Touring 3 Race where Gama Aguilar starts in P1 and leads from flag to flag.

When the race started, I focused on getting a good start and ideally not be competing for the corner going into Turn 1. Luckily that happened and after the first lap, decided to pump out the fastest laps I can could muster so that I could build a healthy gap to P2. All was going to plan until I locked up going into T13 and had to take the escape road. Lesson learned that even though I thought the tires were still fresh, it was simply too much speed for this *awesome* (sarcasm) brake system to handle. From then on, I focused on braking a little earlier and softer in all braking zones, knowing I’d be leaving some time on the table but that would be better than locking up and flying off the track.

My plan was to steadily build the gap so that by the time we hit lapped traffic, I could use that pull away. Unfortunately, the rest of the competitors were not aware of my plan. haha

Sometime about mid-way through the race, someone lost a big lip spoiler or some strip of something that was 4-5′ long and right at the exit of Turn 8 of which I didn’t see until it was too late to do anything but run right over it. There was some loud banging as it went under the car and I had to slow to figure out if anything had impacted the handling/safety of the car. No issues but I lost a solid 1-2 seconds.

The next couple of laps, I had to take Turn 8 more cautiously so that I could see where that object was and not run over it again. Perfect. 🙁

Some laps later, Richard’s 350Z had a tire failure and he pulled off to the right of the essess, causing a local yellow. I ran up on a lapped T3 Mustang right in that spot and there went my entire gap to P2. From then on, it was a battle to steadily build up that gap.

2011 Nissan NISMO 370Z SCCA Touring 3 Spec at night with lights on.
Clearly bias but look at this thing!

Another thing that I have been struggling with is the shifter and specifically, the 5th to 4th shift where the shifter doesn’t self-center and will easily drop into 6th gear, not 4th gear. That shift is critical for Turn 8 and I had to over slow to make sure I got the shift done right and even then, I screwed it up a couple of times – another .5-.75 seconds lost on each screw up.

With a few laps left in the race, started coming up fast on a T4 car going into the essess and made the judgement call to make the pass before we got perpendicular to the standing yellow flag – barely made it!

Finally, going into the last lap, I was focused on matching or improving my personal best, knowing the left side tires were struggling. Half way through the lap, I was almost matching my fastest lap but knew I was vulnerable in the essess due to the 5th to 4th shift but still had a decent run through the section. P2 car was on my rear bumper so going into Turn 13, I ran a more defensive line, braked earlier and softer, go the downshift done and when I started turning, the front end locked up again.

My only choices were to continue plowing forward and straight into the grass, of which when that happens, I would have likely lost control of the car until it hit the asphalt again OR come of the brake and straighten the wheel so I could take the escape road. I did the second path as I had earlier in the race, then focused on making sure I didn’t make contact with anyone while rejoining the course. Coasted through the escape road, looked to my right, saw no cars and then rejoined with a primary concern of not causing a wreck.

Ended the race in P1 but post-race, the stewards felt like I gained an unfair advantage by taking the escape road and while that wasn’t my intent at all, I had no argument against it. Minor disappointment but in the grand scheme of things, very pleased with the results.

We made it through a weekend without the brake vacuum regulator and no damage to the car or other cars, learned more about the car and finally got consecutive on-track sessions to build base level confidence in the car. This car is finally showing the potential we know it has!

Mega thanks to the whole Racer on Rails team that made the NOLA SCCA Hoosier Super Tour weekend a massive success! Next up is Road Atlanta in March where the team is looking to build on success and momentum in 2023. Let’s go!!!

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2024 Hoosier Super Tour Race 1 – Sebring International Raceways

After a very short “off-season” coming off the 2023 SCCA Runoffs held at Virginia International Raceways for the second year in a row, the team regrouped, got cars turned and headed to Sebring, FL for the first race of the year.

With a new racing year, we have some changes on the team. For the first race, we brought down Simon Asselin in his 991.1 Porsche GT3 Cup Car, racing in the GT2 class for a second year in a row. Dave Orem has moved from a BMW Spec E46 in Touring 3 class, to the 2023 Touring 3 National Championship winning BMW Z4 M. Gama Aguilar returned in his freshly rebuilt Nissan Nismo 370Z, also competing in Touring 3 class.

Ann Doherty is in the middle of transitioning into a new car and new class for 2024 – stay tuned for updates! Thad Berger will be focusing on his Porsche Cayman GT4 MR in Touring 1 class but will miss the first couple of races and join the tour at Road Atlanta in March.

Simon Asselin Porsche 911 GT3 Cup Car in GT2 Class

Simon took official delivery and got his first laps in his Cup Car at this race last year. Since last year, Simon has had several solid race weekends, upgraded suspension with Motion Control Suspension (MCS) 3-ways, experimented with different tires, and iterated on both dry and wet setups. With a stronger foundational knowledge of the car and seat time, the goal for the weekend was to build on that and maximize competitiveness.

With the changing conditions throughout the weekend, it was a challenge to iterate on the dry setup but Simon made the most of the conditions for qualifying on Saturday AM with a P5 in full wet conditions and only 1 second separating him from P2.

At the start of the race, Simon lost a couple of positions but quickly got on his horse to recapture the positions and before a full course yellow came out that ended the race, Simon secured P5 and most importantly, improved on his PB at Sebring by 2 seconds!

Simon Asselin in his Porsche 991.1 GT3 Cup Car, racing in the GT2 class.
Simon Asselin piloting his Porsche 991.1 GT3 Cup Car at Sebring International Raceways at the SCCA Hoosier Super Tour.

On Sunday, the forecast was for cloudy skies but dry pavement. Well, the forecast didn’t pan out that way, and not at all. We awoke to passing showers and rain started properly falling before lunch. By race time, it was a full wet race and the first race group after lunch would be the GT2 race.

Right as the cars came around Turn 17 (Sunset) for the green flag, many cars moved into pit lane to change onto wet tires which shuffled the starting grid and created some confusion. A car on the second row lost control of the car at the green flag, tried to keep it together but unfortunately the car hooked right and ultimately making contact with several cars, including Simon who properly collected the other car. Simon had nowhere to go and thanks to all the safety equipment and design of the Porsche GT3 Cup Car, the energy was disbursed, eliminating major physical harm to Simon. He walked away from the incident and has been recovering well. The car took a significant hit to the front end and a more minor hit to the rear. That was the end of the race and we are actively getting the car evaluated and on a path to repair.

Dave Orem BMW Z4 M-Coupe in Touring 3 Class

Building off another solid year of driver development in the Spec E46, wanting to continue developing as a driver but also wanting to have a material chance to podium at our events, Dave couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to purchase the 2023 SCCA Touring 3 National Championship winning car.

The BMW Z4 M-Coupe is essentially an E46 M3 but with a smaller body that can punch through the air more effectively and a much lower center of gravity. At tracks like Road America where the Runoffs will be run over the next two years, where we spend a material amount of time over 100mph, this car is one of the favorites to continue competing for the top steps.

Dave Orem getting used to his new-to-him BMW Z4 M-Coupe in the SCCA Touring 3 Class at Sebring International Raceways

Dave only had limited testing before the trip and in cold/wet conditions so the goals for the weekend were simple: learn the car, build confidence and drive it into the trailer at the end.

During the Thursday Test day, Dave started building confidence in the car and getting used to the taller gearing compared to the Spec E46 but in the last session, he lost what would end up being an axle shaft (no drive), which left the team sourcing parts and getting the car fixed on Friday, thus missing practice on Friday. Saturday he qualified P7 in his first competitive wet session, while dropping time each lap. In the race, he lost a few positions in the start battling with T2, SMX and T3 cars, got himself settled in and started picking away at the cars one at a time. By the time a black flag came out that would eventually end the race, Dave had hit his best lap time in the car and feeling/seeing where the big chunks of time were left.

On Sunday, the Touring 3 race was the race right after Simon’s GT2 race, with full wet conditions. Dave started P16 overall, lost a few spots in the first few laps due to the visibility but after a full course yellow to move Gama’s 370Z that lost electronics due to the wet weather, Dave got moving and got back all but one position.

Overall given the inconsistent conditions throughout the weekend and battling through a lost day of running on Friday, Dave had an excellent first race weekend in his new-to-him race car.

Gama Aguilar Nissan 370Z Nismo Touring 3 Class

Gama debuted his 370Z at the 2023 Runoffs but unfortunately suffered from a catastrophic “Ice Mode” situation at Oak Tree corner where the car suffered significant front end damage, along with injuries that took 2.5 months to mostly recover. In that recovery time, Gama, Tyler Mayer and the team dug deep and got the car fixed and tested in time to make the Sebring race weekend.

Similar tone to Dave’s goal for the weekend, we only had a couple of goals for the weekend: first was to experiment, document, and share results on different potential solutions to better understand and mitigate the risk to “Ice Mode” and second, establish a baseline pace and characteristics to truly start leaning on the car.

Gama shaking down and testing things to figure out the brakes in his 2011 Nissan Nismo 370Z in SCCA Touring 3 Class

One of the leading theories behind Ice Mode is that the brake booster in the 370Z is WAY over-powered. That means that for every pound of pressure/pedal effort the driver makes on the brake pedal, the power assisted brake booster, magnifies that force into the braking system. This is normal in power boosted and ABS based braking systems and it makes sense for normal street driving where the cars are not being subjected to the G-forces that are seen in racing conditions and with extremely sticky tires. Normal drivers don’t need to hit the brakes very hard to get to maximum braking and they are usually on street tires with much less grip.

In our conditions, what we’ve found is that this overly powerful brake booster contributes to the ABS system freaking out and potentially locking the driver out of the braking system. Not good! So to test this theory, we installed an AIM Brake Pressure sensor and a Sakebomb Garage Variable Brake Booster Vaccum Controller. This device in installed in-line between the engine and the brake booster and can adjust the amount of vacuum fed to the brake booster and thus adjusting the maximum about of brake boosting, the booster can provide.

Learnings

After installing the vacuum controller, we turned it all the way “off” in that it didn’t apply any adjustment to the vacuum levels, we hit the brakes (with ending running) with a 10/10 brake pedal effort hit and saw the impact to the brake pressure sensor —> 2,000psi! Holy moly! That is insane. Now granted, that took a massive pedal effort that frankly isn’t realistic in any conditions but our normal pedal effort braking still resulted in ~1,800psi of brake pressure. That is still insane – not even Motorsport ABS systems can handle those levels of brake pressure in a system. We then modulated the pedal effort to see what it took to keep brake pressure below 1,000psi (generally accepted as about the max range most braking systems can handle *and* slow the car down – anything above these levels will not only make the ABS system overwork but it won’t effectively further slow the car down). The result was that it was dang near impossible to repeatedly be that gentle with the brake pedal and the modulation window from 600-900psi was even more difficult.

We don’t know 100% that this is the root of the issue behind Ice Mode but this sure as heck isn’t helping things. So we found the adjustment level where the max brake pressure we could possibly hit was ~1,000psi.

We also tested 2-piece rotors from Paragon, which have a more Motorsport focus hat design for better heat consistency across the rings and hats and we experimented with different brake pads, with all of them being in a direction of less aggressive pads.

Catching the overall theme here? All experiments were around making it harder for the OEM ABS system to freak out from sudden spikes in brake pressure and/or changes in wheel speeds.

The results? We’re going in the right direction. Prior to adjusting the controller to max ~1,000psi brake pressure, we didn’t hit ice mode but were able to get the wheels to consistently lockup in “heavier” brake application. Interesting that a functional ant-lock braking (ABS) system, still allowed tires to lock up. Hhhhmmm….

After making the adjustment and going straight into a race due to the transmission failing during the last test day session, the brake pedal was MUCH better and finally allowed me (Gama) to start building confidence in the brakes.

I started at the very back of the Touring field (split start) in P24. By the end of the race, I’d moved up 13 positions total, finished in P8, right on the tail of the next few cars in class and ending with the 3rd fastest lap of the race! Starting to cook with some real fire!

For Sunday’s race, we’d start closer to the front but in full wet conditions. The start was okay, picking up a position but not able to be more aggressive because how bad the spray was in front – literally couldn’t see more than 10-15 feet in front. Once the cars started stringing out, made up some more positions and mid-way through second lap was in P2 in class. Then suddenly the electronic controls inside the car went dead but the car was still running – clearly water had gotten in somewhere and started causing shorts.

Gama Aguilar moving to P2 before an eventual DNF due to water in electronics.

Going into T17, I broke early and soft but with the amount of water on the track and how bumpy the track is, I ended up spinning along with several other cars and thankfully, came to a stop before making contact with anything. With no functioning electronic controls in the car, I wasn’t able to get it running again and had to DNF.

Making Lemonade out of Lemons

To top things off, a fellow competitor in Touring 3 decided to protest me in the 370Z for running an illegal part, even though we had been openly discussing and sharing the testing plan, as the goal was to figure out how to make these cars safe, not to achieve a performance advantage. We were prepared and okay with this potential scenario but it was still disappointing for someone to protest the car when the focus was on safety *and* that competitor finished ahead of me on both races – e.g. no impact to his or anyone in the podium position places.

Despite that, we leave Sebring optimistic about what we’ve learned to make these cars safe for people to race in Touring 3 class. We are not only going to make a rules change proposal to allow this non-in-car adjustable controller for the Nissan 370Z and we are looking at ways in which we can still limit the vacuum to the booster, without the addition of a controller in case that proposal doesn’t go through.

What’s next? Round 2 at NOLA Motorsports Park!

The next round in the 2024 SCCA Hoosier Super Tour is at NOLA Motorsports Park in New Orleans, LA in February. Dave and Gama will be there for sure. Simon is TBD based on the outcomes of repairing the Cup Car and Ann is targeting to join at NOLA. This will be a new track for everyone so lots of time in the simulator is in store for all of us between now and the weekend of February 18th!

Big shout out to the whole Racer on Rails crew who made getting the cars ready and transported across the country, happen!