Well a pre-goal, was to actually drive. The changes I made (stopping OneDrive from syncing, installing the latest updates so they weren’t downloading in the background and not having a video uploading on another device) all resulted in no performance issues at all. Yay!
The real goal: Drive like I do in real life – putting down a string of consecutive and consistent laps. I’ve found in the past in iRacing that I go off A LOT more than I do in real-life, usually having multiple incidents with walls in a given practice session. That’s not what happens in real life and while I am not driving anywhere near the same car, I believe I should be able to drive in the virtual world as I do in the real world; safe, consistent and somewhat fast. 🙂
After a day more focused on setup and updates on the machine, my goal was just to put down a true initial baseline of what I can do in the Mercedes AMG GT3 and Road Atlanta. Ideally, I wanted to drive the entire 60 minutes without an issue but I was only able to make it just past 30 minutes with no crashes. The good news was that I improved my personal best AND I put down several laps within .5 of my personal best, clicking off a consistent string of 1:22.xxx lap times and while trying different things.
I wanted to use this baseline of data to be confident in what I could do when analyzing the data with Virtual Racing School data packs.
22 laps without crashing! Not bad for not driving as much as I wanted to the past 6 months.
Lessons Learned
Pareto lives! I am down 2.197 seconds from my reference lap and one segment alone accounts 0.809 seconds, almost half of the lap time. Two segments (4 and 7) account for almost half of the delta.
By default, in testing, a car starts with a full fuel load – in the Mercedes AMG GT3, it was 30 gallons. The car in the reference lap was running with about 10 gallons and 9 gallons in the lap I am using for reference. That is a ~15 gallon and 90 lbs. difference. THAT IS HUGE – though, I still have much more work to do aside from losing car weight.
The data exposes all – the major theme of comparing the two laps is clear. I am braking too hard for the most of the significant turns where I am losing time and then getting on throttle sooner and harder than my rabbit.
I need brake slightly sooner, lighter and carry more speed through the corner and this will require coming on throttle softer.
This is consistent with what I’ve seen in real-life, comparing my data with a super fast driver like Olivier.
One thing I am going to work until I can get it
Segment 6, which includes turns 6 and 7. Brake sooner, lighter, carry more speed in, know that mid-corner will be not as planted and I will have to be more gentle with throttle application on corner exit, because I’ll be carrying more speed. The goal is still to get to throttle as fast as I can but I’ll be more at the limit.
Alright, so after getting all the updates installed, it was time to drive for the first time on this 30 day challenge.
Three, two…. [FREEZE] …one, go!
Well, it didn’t get off to a great start. Almost immediately as I loaded up the Mercedes AMG GT3 and Road Atlanta, I noticed that it took a long time for the server to connect and the actual sim environment to load. Alright, no worries – it’s early for me too, maybe the internet needs some coffee.
Once I got into the car and started heading out, within the first 30 seconds of a lap, I got a freeze/stuttering experience but the car would come back and I could keep going. Ok, that sucks but let’s stay focused and keep going.
But then it happened again, and again, and again. Time for evasive actions.
Step 1: Check video quality settings
I remember at one point last month, a big Windows update wiped out my settings and driver stuff for the NVIDIA graphics card and in my attempt to fix stuff, I made a bunch of changes in the iRacing graphics settings. So I reset them all to somewhat default settings, while still allowing for three monitors.
Went back to racing and… still had issues. No perceived change. Frustration level: 4
Step 2: Check background processes and other things that could be using up the internet connection
I shut down iRacing and checked out what other processes were happening that might be using internet bandwidth:
OneDrive – it was syncing 9GB of stuff, of which I should just not sync anything on this computer since I only use it for iRacing. Sigh.
Other browser windows – there were a couple other browser windows, like Virtual Racing School, so I closed those down.
Steam console – it was connected and I tried to close it but it kept popping back up. 🙁
Result? A somewhat perceivable difference so I decided to keep going and just get as much seat time in as I had already burned through 40 minutes of my hour.
Result: Limited quality track time
This was really frustrating. I got about 6 or 7 clean laps and most were ruined by the stuttering. My son was awake and I decided to figure it out later and at least see if my data was being logged by the Virtual Racing School system and while the lap times sucked, at least that worked.
Aha! Found the culprit!
Just as I was about to get out of the sim rig, I decided to search on the web for other people who have had this issue. Pages were loading slowly but loading and then suddenly, everything stopped loading. WTF? Did my internet go down? Checked networked status and no, packets are still being sent and received. I was about to get up to reset the router and modem when I looked over and saw my phone that I had used to record the part 1 of this day 1 video blog and it was uploading the HD video to YouTube.
I paused the upload, turned off the WiFi on the phone and looked at the PC. Suddenly, the pages were loading again. Then literally a few seconds later, I see a pop up from Windows that it was getting ready to install the Windows 10 Creators Update. Great. So two big upload and downloads were essentially eating up the internet connection.
Lesson learned? Make sure your internet connection is clear and prioritized for your iRacing. Having someone else uploading something, streaming a movie, having a Skype video chat, will not do you any favors.
I’ve seen several articles on taking on a new thing by doing that thing for 30 days in a row, such as running a marathon (30 marathons in 30 days), stretching 10 minutes a day for thirty days, meditating, doing 15 burpees per day for thirty days and so on.
Why?
Usually it’s help start a new habit, kick a habit or accelerate development in something. No difference here, I’m doing this to get faster and have fun!
The goal: 1 hour of racing per day, everyday, for 30 days.
While I wish I could race a real, physical race car each day, I don’t have that kind of scratch or logistics setup but I do have a pretty sweet sim racing setup and iRacing.
So everyday, usually in the early AM’s, I’m going to practice and/or race on iRacing. Through the next 30 days, I’ll also have at least 2 full race weekends where I’ll be racing in the real world. So for those days, I won’t be on the simulator but instead on a race track, in my race car! Yeah!
What do I expect to happen?
I’m not exactly sure but I am at least hoping to get noticeably faster in the virtual world, hammer out details on my sim setup and be better at learning to get fast.
To stay focused and reduce variables, I am going to focus on just one car and one track. The Mercedes AMG GT3 and Road Atlanta. Why? Having a rabbit to chase. I’m a huge believer and advocate in the power of data + video.
Literally thousands of virtual laps of this track but have yet to actually drive it.
Here is a good review of the car, right before it was released by the crew at Inside Sim Racing.
There is a new service that recently launched, Virtual Racing School, and while I’m new to it also, I am in love with the premise and potential of what they are doing. With a simple download and activation, VRS logs all of your iRacing data and video and saves it to your profile. No downloading, uploading or anything to deal with. Just install, activate, drive and you’re all set.
As part of the service, they also have data packs for certain cars and track combinations and even setups, that you can automatically use as a reference point to work towards. This is massive! Having someone else who is much faster than you, in the same car, same track and similar conditions is one of the best ways to learn and learn fast.
Getting ready
So I decided to start the journey, one day ahead and get my day 1 as smooth as possible. I booted up my computer, installed updates to Windows, iRacing and NVIDIA. My goal was to be able to simply wake up the next morning, do my morning routine and be up and running, in a race car within 15 minutes of getting out of bed.
I’ll create a post later on with the details on my current sim setup, so you all can get the full details then but at a high level, here is the setup:
Custom built PC – my first.
About a decent level up from minimum specs to be able to handle Oculus virtual reality.
Intel i5 processor (can’t remember the exact model)
Logitech 5.1 surround system but I can only get 2.1 to work. 🙁
3 AOC 24″ Monitors – got them on Best Buy on sale. They’re pretty good but the back sucks for mounting them to a triple monitor stand. More on that in a separate post.
So, while I technically have a motion simulator and I have an Oculus and have used them for iRacing, I will most likely not use them very often over these 30 days. Main reason: we live in a tiny apartment and I’ll be doing most of my daily racing in the early AM, while my wife and 2 year are asleep, 15 and 40 feet away, respectively. The motion simulator isn’t super loud but it makes noise and my wife has complained about it before.
The Oculus is AWESOME but I sweat easily and have found that when I’ve worn it for 20 minutes plus of intense driving, I sweat pretty bad and the lenses start fogging up. So I’ll be using the triple monitors and headphones, without motion.
What: First sprint race weekend of the year, shaking down the car with new upgrades, testing and experiencing the highs and lows of racing.
If I knew then, what I know now:
Make no assumptions on communication! Make sure everyone on your team knows exactly what is happening and when. We lost a day to shake down the car and found an obscure issue with the new transmission resulting in more lost track time on Saturday.
Make sure you know what kind of qualifying is happening, open session or pressure style and adjust tire pressures accordingly.
Plan where you want to be on pre-grid for open session qualifying wisely so that you can benefit from drafting other cars in class and even faster cars.
As I mentioned the 6 Hours on the Ridge post, I primarily race with ICSCC, which is a sprint race focused sanctioning body. Aside from the endurance races that bookend the start and end of the season, each race weekend is made up of the following elements (for the most part):
Friday test and tune – usually for race cars only but sometimes includes High Performance Driver Education (HPDE drivers).
Saturday – Practice, qualifying, non-points races and a 1 hour endurance race.
Sunday – Final qualifying and points races
Here is a picture of the announcement for the race weekend of which if you do a couple of groups, that is plenty of track time. This weekend and for the full year, I did Group 1 (the main group for the PRO3 annual championship) and the Mini-Enduro.
The schedule for the first sprint race of the season. I’m in Group 1.
Shaking down a refreshed car
Initially I was supposed to get the #209 Track Attack PRO3 car back from Advanced Auto Fabrications at the 6 hour race but when they were doing final checks on it, they found that the newly rebuilt transmission wouldn’t go into third gear. So we decided to have that fixed and bring it down for this weekend, where I would shake the car down and ‘take delivery’ from all the repairs and upgrades they did.
What I did not make explicitly clear was that I expected AAF and crew to be there on Friday, which they would do more often than not, but not always. I even checked in the Monday prior to make sure all was on schedule but I did not explicitly ask about Friday.
Big mistake because when we drove down on Thursday night, so we could be all unloaded and ready to drive on Friday AM, the gigantic black AAF hauler was nowhere to be seen. AAF and crew decided to skip the test and tune due to the limited amount of track time and forecasted rain in the morning. They’re not scared of rain, just that if it isn’t supposed to rain on Saturday or Sunday, the risk of damage is higher than the benefit.
Regardless, we made the most of the day by working on odds and ends in the RV, spend some quality time with the family, caught up on work and chatted with folks up and down the paddock. The AAF crew showed up on Friday evening and by Saturday AM, was all set for the first on-track session.
As I got going in the morning practice run, it took me a few laps to get into the groove of things, remember the course and get up to speed. Initially letting several cars pass me but then quickly catching and passing them again. Lap times were solid, with nearly a .8 second improvement from the year prior. SWEET!
When we came off the track, a fellow PRO3 driver mentioned that they saw smoke coming out of the back of my car, a light smoke but consistent. We checked the car and sure enough, the rear and under body was coated with transmission oil. We were leaking somewhere from this newly rebuilt transmission that aside from this, seemed to be running great.
That is transmission oil – note that it is everywhere.
Over the next several hours, we went step by step, replacing the main rear transfer seal and then the shifter seal. We thought we had it addressed but after the non-points race, still had oil.
Long story short, it turns out that when the transmission was sent for a rebuild, they took my old transmission in as a core and sent back a different transmission, from an older model of the E30, which had a different kind of shift mount assembly. This assembly had two bolts that mounted to the top of the transmission, which served the purpose of securing the assembly and sealing two bolt holes into the transmission itself.
We don’t run the OEM shifter assembly, opting instead for the incredibly awesome CAE shifter assembly, which meant those holes were completely exposed and the source of the leak. This obscure situation had never come up with this crew of people who have been racing E30’s for over 10 years and built and rebuilt dozens of PRO3 cars.
We didn’t figure this out until Saturday early evening, after we opted to not run the 1 hour endurance race, to save the transmission (if it kept leaking) for the Group 1 qualifying and racing on Sunday. We felt the risk was too high to run low on transmission oil in the 1 hour and potentially damage the transmission itself.
In conclusion, lack of communication and shaking down the car resulted in a completely lost Friday of running and 1 hour of endurance racing. Sigh.
Qualifying
For the weekend, we had two qualifying sessions, one for the 1 hour endurance race and qualifying times for the Group 1 race.
1 Hour endurance race pressure qualy
Something unique to the Cascade Sports Car Club, which I love is pressure qualifying. One out lap, one flying lap and one in lap. Unfortunately, we did not realize this until we got to grid and didn’t adjust the tire pressures accordingly to compensate for the much fewer laps we’d run. At least everyone else was in the same boat. I love this type of qualifying because it eliminates the ‘draft’ variable – this is all on you as a driver, to make a fast lap happen there and then. Not relying on getting a draft from a faster car or following and learning from a faster driver. At a track like PIR, especially with no chicane on the front straight, a draft can make a HUGE difference, in the order of .25 seconds or more if you can get the right draft on the front and back straights.
Here is the video of my ME2 qualifying lap, which put me on pole for ME2 class but was a solid one second slower than my fastest laps in a regular qualifying session.
Group 1 qualy
Qualifying for Group 1 was spread across the fastest lap times in the Saturday non-points race and Sunday AM qualifying. The fastest time across those two sessions would count towards the final grid placement.
In the Saturday AM race, I qualified 4th with a mid-1:22 lap time and finished the race in 3rd. It was an excellent race, where I got a great start and was running in 2nd before turn 2 of the first lap. I tried to hitch myself to Brian Bercovitz, the eventual race winner but he got away and was stuck battling with Corey Peters for 2nd place. I ran in 2nd for about half of the race but I ended up going too hot into turn 1, went wide and that was enough of a mistake for Corey to capitalize. That meant Kyle Byers in the #55 PRO3 car was on my tail. We ended up battling pretty hard, exchanging some bumper paint but nothing serious – just good, solid, respectful, hard racing. He ended up getting a little sideways on the second bump he gave me and that was enough for me to pull away and finish in third, with a lap time of 1:22.274 and a new personal best.
Sprint non-points race results and qualifying 1 times
I would normally post the video here but I forgot to hit ‘record’ – I’ll try to get the videos from Corey and Kyle to share.
Sunday AM qualy brought out excellent conditions; dry, sunny and a cool breeze in the low 60’s. I got on the grid early and was the lead PRO3 car on track but after a few laps, I realized I was reproducing low 1:22 lap times while everyone else was running in a pack and getting help with drafts. So I came into the hot pits, checked tire pressures and waited for the right pack to come by and tail them.
I eventually got behind the pack with Corey Peters coming off of the back straight but he quickly picked up on my game and pulled off on the main straight away. No issues, there was still another couple of cars to get behind. On a decent flyer though, another driver, who I used for a draft and got by on turn 1 decided it was time to race and dove in to overtake in turn 7. Why?!?!?! What makes this more frustrating is that he then pulled off and slowed down that same lap, in the following straight away. I can’t confirm but I think he also picked up on what I was planning and decided to ruin my lap.
No issues again and finally, I saw Brian Bercovitz and got behind him for one last final flying lap. All looked good, with the predictive lap timer showing a 1:21.8xx for the first part of the lap but then I missed a downshift to third on the only left hand turn on the course. This ended up still producing a solid lap time but I ended up qualifying in 5th place, where as if I would have executed, I would have qualified third and possibly 2nd in class.
The Main Race
The goal was simple: get a solid start, make up a couple positions in the traffic and be in the top three by the end of lap 1. This would give me a fighting chance to get near the front and try to stick with Brian, who was on pole for our class. I found during qualifying that if I could get behind him, I was able to keep the gap nearly the same.
Below is the race video and note, it has no data overlay. The reason? I didn’t complete a single lap. I got a solid start and wedged myself in a position to go after 2nd, 3rd and possibly first by turn 7. Unfortunately, up ahead, a Spec E46 car went off to the left and tried to get themselves back on the track without waiting for the pack to go by (my opinion). When his front tires, who were turned to the right, hooked up on the track surface, they gripped and shot him across the track and into the on-coming pack of angry PRO3 cars.
I saw it happening, moved to the right but still got a glancing blow on the rear quarter panel. Initially I thought all was well because it didn’t really knock me anywhere but as soon as we hit turn 7 (right hand turn leading to the back straight), I saw and heard heavy tire rub and then the cabin was engulfed in tire smoke. I went into the hot pits, got checked for fire but the damage was too much. We could have swapped tires and rolled the fender in the hot-pit but we would have gone a couple laps down and I didn’t think it was worth it and called it a day.
Conclusion
It was a tough way to start the sprint season but when you sign up to go racing, this is a potential outcome that can happen any weekend. I take 100% accountability for what happened and don’t blame the Spec E46 driver in any way. All things considered, had a great time with friends and family, personal best lap times, fixed teething issues on the car and was still able to take it home, running and with some cosmetic repairs needed before the next race. There were three other cars involved in the incident and they would take my place in an instant as their cars did not fair as well.
Damaged driver side quarter panel and hard rubbing on tire.The guys using a jack bar to roll the fender so the tire could clear.
What: Motorsports is exactly that, a sport that revolves around motors. It is a sport, thus health and fitness is important. Road racing works your heart (and lungs) like if you were running a marathon. A healthy heart is critical!
If I knew then, what I know now: Have a healthy mix of aerobic, anaerobic and strength training to your work out program. Too much of anything is not good. I’ll cover this in a separate post.
Bodyglide Anti-Chafe Balm – nipple chafing and bleeding is real and no joke. Depending on the shirt I am wearing, if I am running more than 4 miles, it’s required.
Foundational truths
Before we dive into what should be done, let’s all get on the same page about what happens when you’re driving and especially when you’re competing.
Your heart is important: This is not a question or an opinion. It is important for you to not only live but to handle stressful situations. While most of us enjoy putting a car, motorcycle, kart or boat through it’s paces, the fact that your heart rate goes up, means that it is a stressful situation, where your body and heart (and lungs) specifically, work harder.
Oh yeah, the lungs: The lungs are the things that bring oxygen into the bloodstream, of which then the heart pumps all that good, nutrient and oxygen rich goodness all over the body. Then the various body parts use that goodness to power themselves, such as the brain, eyes, muscles, literally everything in your body.
Maximum Heart Rate (MHR)
Per above, as we get older, this goes down. See below and find your age.
Find your age and see what the estimated ranges are for you.
I am currently 33 (less than a month from 34) and what this says is that my maximum heart rate is around 185 Beats Per Minute (bpm). If I were to get my heart going above that OR near that level for too long, I’d probably end up in a hospital unless I explicitly trained my heart for those situations.
It’s been documented in several articles, studies and my own personal data collection (below) that for a racing car driver, the heart rate can range from 120 – 160bpm, throughout a race.
Below is an example from a race, in August this past summer as I was wearing an Apple Watch and collected heart rate data (note – I did not start a workout session and thus why it didn’t collect data every 1 second). Note that you can see when I started doing warm up exercises before getting into the car and my heart rate picking up as we got into the thick of the race. If I remember correctly, the race started ~4:35pm and was a 1-hour race.
Heart Rate data from my Apple Watch during a 1-hour endurance race.
Update: When I was originally writing this post, I looked everywhere for this screenshot below. This was taken using a Fitbit Surge, during a day of three races and near 100 degree heat. That is some serious heat, sweat and elevated heart rate. Racing is no joke!
Heart rate logs from one day of intense racing in nearly 100F.
Now, here is a screenshot from a 4+ mile run I did recently as well at a ~9:00 minute mile pace. Not super fast but not a slouch by most measures.
August 2017 ~6 mile run using Endomondo and a Polar Heart Rate monitor
What does this tell us? Driving at even 7/10’s in a track day or racing session for ~20 minutes is the equivalent, cardiovascularly, as going for a relatively intense run. So you are sitting in a hot race car, covered head to toe with fire-resistant material and your heart and lungs are working like if you were running a half-marathon.
Ok, healthy heart and lungs are important, but why again?
Like everything else on this site, it’s about helping you be a better driver. A driver who makes good decisions, usually, ends up being a faster and more consistent driver than someone who doesn’t make good decisions. Several things can lead to someone making bad decisions behind the wheel (on-track that is):
Being nervous or confused (which usually elevates the heart rate)
Being scared (which usually elevates the heart rate)
Being angry aka the red mist! (also elevates the heart rate)
Being tired (I won’t repeat again)
It gets more difficult to make good decisions, quickly, when you are tired, sweaty and out of breath. So the goal here is to condition your heart and lungs in a way, that you’re comfortable being in the stamina & endurance zones, and can make good decisions.
I personally felt like my overall athletic and aerobic endurance was and is a competitive advantage in most races, as I felt just as fresh at the start of a race, as I did at the beginning. Start strong and finish just as strong! This was even more pronounced on the 1 hour or longer races and especially when it was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
What should you do?
Disclaimer: We are not doctors, nor play them on TV. Consider consulting your doctor before taking on a new exercise program.
We will cover other types of exercise for different benefits in future posts but for here, we will focus on cardio health. The goal is to do exercises, that have you for the most part, in the stamina & endurance zones. It’s ok to peak every once in a while into the conditioning zone or drop momentarily into the weigh loss zone.
Most of my driving sessions are 20 or 30 minutes and sometimes 60 minutes long. So I target conditioning myself to be able to easily handle 30 minutes by exercising for 45-60 minutes and having regular (about every other week) 60-75 minute workout sessions, usually 6+ mile runs. This is grounded in a theory from playing football and Taekwondo. Practice should be harder than the actual competition (most of the time) so that at least from a conditioning standpoint, the competition will be a relative breeze or you at least have plenty of reserves to go harder.
Here are some top exercises and plans to consider:
Running: It’s pretty much free. I found it the best to sign up for a race that forces you to build up to a goal, set a schedule and stick to it. Better yet, do a race with a friend or two, so you have support and accountability for when you’re too lazy to run in the rain.
Highly suggest downloading an app like Endomondo, Nike Run Club or MyRunKeeper. They all have some kind of functionality where you can state your goal (like run a 10k), the pace you want to have and when your race will be held. They come up with a personalized training program to build up your performance, you just run! Sometimes these are in premium memberships but you can easily find training plans online and just track them manually.
Here is the training plan I am using to run a half-marathon in September.
I’ve also used running on days while I am at the track to do track walks, after the track has gone cold for the day.
Cycling: One downside to running is the repetitive joint impact throughout the body, especially toes, ankles, knees, hips and back. Cycling is a great alternative to running for cardiovascular performance. I personally bought a used Bianchi road bike and over the past few years have used it off and on as an alternative to running.
Same plan though – whatever time you were planning to run, get on a bike in the gym or on a trail and cycle up a storm.
Swimming: Admittedly, I am the least experienced here as I rarely get in a pool but I know it is great for aerobic exercise, working the body overall, core development and joint relief. If you have access to a pool, get on it!
Conclusion
Cardiovascular health and performance are not just important to live but they can give you a significant performance edge in driving. There is a reason you see several top professional drivers all over the world, also spend significant amounts of time doing the exercises above and in examples like Jenson Button, competing in Iron Man and Triathlon competitions.
Consider regular cardiovascular exercise to be part of keeping yourself healthier and it has a big potential upside to your driving.
What: First race of the season, a 6 hour race at the Ridge Motorsports ‘water’ Park. Non-stop rain, great for driver development but sucked for everything else. Qualified on pole but finished 2nd in ME2 class.
If I knew then, what I know now: Check all vital systems at least a few days prior to the race weekend. Not having our radios and GPS receiver working caused us the win and this was all preventable.
Products that you should check out:
Sampson Digital Pro Racing System – this is what we have, paired with an in-helmet speaker system on a Stilo helmet and an IMSA wiring adapter. When we test it and hook up properly, it works perfectly!
Background
April 30, 2017 marked the first race of the 2017 club racing season, the 6 Hours on the Ridge, held at the Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton, WA and put on by the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs (ICSCC). For those of you who are not from the Pacific Northwest, in the United States, this sanctioning body probably doesn’t ring a bell.
The ICSCC operates in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia (Canada) as essentially a Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) but with not as much “politics”. This is primarily because it’s a smaller organization and thus, rule changes don’t impact as many people and there aren’t as many people lobbying for a change one way or another. They adopt and support most classes that exist in the SCCA and even NASA, such as Spec Miata, Improved Touring Classes, Spec E46 and so on.
The SCCA does exist in the PNW, it’s just not as strong, though it’s been growing the past couple years. NASA had a brief stint in 2013-2014. One series that is unique to the PNW and ICSCC is PRO3. It’s like Spec E30 but with more modifications allowed, based on an Improved Touring Class formula, has the largest car count in the PNW with over 80 race cars built and fields ranging from 15 – 45 depending on the weather. It also some of the best drivers, many of which have gone on to the professional ranks in IMSA and Pirelli World Challenge. The PRO3 car qualifies nicely in the E2 and ME2 classes for endurance races.
PRO3 fields are huge and look at the crowd on hand to watch!
Our car – The Track Attack #226
For this race, we were fortunate to have on our best friends, Manu Yareshimi, run a team for second year in a row and going for repeat wins. Last year we campaigned his car in the same race and got first place in the E2 class!
Manu about to go in during a pit-stop. We won!
Manu’s PRO3 car is one of the best built PRO3 cars ever, originally built by a previous owner who has moved on to Spec E46 and with the folks at Advanced Auto Fabrications doing all of the work. And they do top-notch work! It’s a front running car that has been taken cared. More on the #226 in a future post when we feature his ride.
The team
Being a 6 hour race and with rain, lots of rain, in the forecast, we felt like as few pit stops as possible and thus probably three, two-hour stints, across three drivers. That meant Manu, myself (Gama Aguilar) and 2016 PRO3 Champion and new Spec E46 driver, Olivier Henrichot. There’s one word to describe Olivier: fast. Just nasty, dirty and unapologetically, fast. Check out some of his race videos on his YouTube channel. He has or is close to having just about every PRO3 track record in the local tracks.
This was actually a re-do with Olivier as we were originally going to run the 8 Hour Festival of Endurance in October 2016 at Portland International Raceways but a freak storm that never lived up to it’s hype caused the race to get postponed and most of the drivers and crew weren’t able to make the new date happen.
Bryce, Jordan and friends were there, just as they have been for most of our races, making sure the car was running, we had a strategy and pit-stops were executed well.
Testing, practice, qualifying
We arrived on Saturday for a test-and-tune day, to not only shake down the car but beat the rust off of our driving skills as it was the first time any of use had done anything but sim racing in 2017. We had originally prepped the car for the 8 hour in October that didn’t happen and then it just sat in the garage. We drove and made some adjustments to try to dial out some front-end push, that would then be followed by some aggressive over-steer if we tried to coax the front end to bite. At the end of the day, we made compromises to allow the front end to have more bite, slow the weight transitions but not be too tail happy as not all of us had or have lightening hands, like Olivier.
We woke up Sunday morning to just clouds but then the first drop of rain started around 8:15am and did not let up the WHOLE DAY. We’re not talking showers or even steady rain, we’re talking downpours transitioning to monsoons and back to downpours. Aside from being wet and cold when not in the car, it was a blast!
We had a brief practice session where Manu and I split the time and then we put our hot-shoe in for qualifying. He not only put us on-pole for E2 but 7th overall, splitting half of the Spec E46 field! #winning
We’re on pole for ME2!
The race!
The race started in a steady rain and when the green flag dropped, the spray began and the race was on! The first hour went off with all but two things going as expected. That first thing, which at the time felt insignificant, ended up being the biggest lesson learned. The radios didn’t work. Well, at first it was that we when we did a test connection with Olivier’s helmet and the in-car radio system, the connectors on the system and his helmet weren’t compatible.
Near the front of the grid for the start of the race. Look at the fanfare!
We brushed it off and just assumed that it would work with Manu’s helmet and mine, just like it had the past couple of years, without an issue. The first sign of this fatal flaw was about 90 minutes into his stint, we gave him a thumbs up as he passed start/finish. The very next time by, he comes into the pits to see what’s going on? There goes half of his almost one full lap lead.
20 minutes later, he comes in after going off to check things out and make sure there was no damage to the car. It all checked out and we decide to do a driver change since it was close enough to the 2 hour planned stint. Manu goes in, connect radios, turn them on and… nothing. Ok, we’re going off of pit boards only.
Separate story on Manu’s amazing comeback in a separate post but this was Manu’s first time in a race car in exactly one year and after recovering from a life-threatening disease. So he was working his way to getting back on pace. Slowly but steadily, his lap times were coming down, even with conditions getting worse but we lost the lead and because our main competition left their fastest driver in the car for about 3 hours (Corey Peters and the KD Motorsports crew), they eventually got two laps up on us.
An extended black flag all due to a car going into the start/finish wall stopped the bleeding and when racing got back underway, Manu had figured out how to drop another 8-10 seconds from his lap times – AWESOME!!
With about 2.5 hours left in the race, it was my turn. We tried the radios on my headset and nothing. No sweat – just focus on the goal: drive clean and take big chunks out of the 2 lap lead the competition had on us. The second hiccup we had was that the GPS receiver on the AIM MXL dash had bitten the dust. The last few times on track, the receiver was hit and miss but would always eventually get going. No matter, we strapped in Track Attack on iOS and got going.
Within a few laps, I started clipping away lap times in the mid 2:24-2:25 range on a consistent basis. The conditions were absolutely horrible. Fun but horrible. Aquaplaning on the front straight and the worst was near the top speed area, right before start/finish. A big puddle of water mid-track and the middle of the transition between T4 and T5. While not super tricky, exploring and searching for traction in the ‘carousal’, a long left-hand sweeper.
Then there was the worst part of the track in the rain, T9. A slight right hander, that we call ‘the kink’ because right at the corner there is curbing and an immediate uphill climb on the corner exit. This is great in the dry because you attack it hard, staying flat and using all that grip you get when hitting a steep uphill and on-camber climb. In the wet though and in these southeast Asia style monsoon conditions, a lake had formed as water collected from all directions and no drains for relief. It was kind of straight forward: no matter what you did, it was going to feel like hitting a standing water, at-speed, because that is exactly what we were doing and it was going to spit you out the other side and your only goal is minimize how sideways you would be spit out.
Turn 9 – how I hate thee!
After the first 10 or so laps and a few full opposite lock situations, I thought I had it figured out but I would discover that what would work on one lap, had no guarantee of working another lap. I even resorted to attempting to follow the path of the Spec E46’s, who were placing their right tire on the curbing, claiming it had more grip but if you got it wrong, the penalty would be severe. I paid a severe penalty, barely being able to keep the car on-track. Despite all of this, I was making up ground fast, having made up one lap and more than halfway through making up the second lap. That progress wouldn’t end with what we wanted, over what ended up being the last 30 minutes of my stint, I ended up going off-track (even if it was just 2 wheels off) 4 times.
I eventually got the rolled up black flag, the last warning before being called into the pits and even though I backed off the pace, I still went off again, dropping two wheels on the exit of the kink. I didn’t know what was going on – almost whatever I tried, it would work one lap but not the other. I got black flagged for the first time ever. Had a good conversation with the race steward and promised to back off the pace even more, crawled through the kink on the out-lap. Made it! Ok and now early and soft brakes for the ‘thumb’ and… nothing. No slowing down, no lockup, no turning, no response to brake pedal modulating – just gliding straight off the track.
Embarrassed, confused and disappointed, I kept the car moving so I wouldn’t get stuck on the mud as I had gone a solid 50-75 feet off-track, got back on track and made my way back to the hot pits. I had the crew checkout the car and while they couldn’t find anything wrong, we saw a big dent in the skid-plate, mud and dirt everywhere and no way to explain what happened. So we figured we must have been leaking oil and called it a day.
Results
We finished 90%+ of the race laps so we classified in 2nd place. The 1st place KD Motorsports car would end having to be towed in 4 laps later but still winning overall. It turns out that they had a slow oil leak and eventually their engine seized – explaining part of why I went off so much; they had been dropping oil across the track for several laps. While that sure as heck didn’t help our cause, I put all the blame on us. We should have tested our radio setup the day before and gotten them working, so we could have been in communication with the pit wall and telling the race steward that not only were conditions difficult but that something else was up on the track.
We should have had lap times the entire time, with the crew checking lap times on Race Monitor to tell the drivers that we could slow down a bit and still make progress. This race was lost the day before and even the week before. We failed to prepare properly – we could have tested radios and GPS a week, a month, several months prior.
Let’s end the article on a good note with this amazing picture from FlyingBye Photo!
