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6 Hours on the Ridge Spring Enduro – Race Weekend Recap The Ridge Motorsports Park

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.

YouTube player

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!
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Tents, canopies and shelter – how to stay protected on track!

 

What:  Having some ideas on what kind of tent may work for you and what you do

If I knew then, what I know now:  I would steer clear of Target/Walmart/Box-store tents all together at the track, they cannot put up with the use and abuse.

Product to check out: ShelterLogic – might not be as top of mind as the E-Z Up brand but solid product at a much lower price.


You should have seen that tent flying across the paddock! Pop-Up tents are one of the most necessary items to have in your track kit! It provides shelter, shade, support, and sometimes, even comic relief. Pop-up tents or E-Z ups as many call them, are the number one, most used and abused item at a track. I have seen my fair share hit the scrap heap for many different reasons. The number one reason is that you have to have one! There are a lot of options and considerations when it comes to tent. Hopefully I can help you decide on what might be best for what you are doing.

Got a team? 10×20 it is for you!

We have a nice custom E-Z up for the Track Attack Pro3 cars. It is a 10ft x 20ft unit that has a steel frame. It is a little heavy, but the quality is good and it is sturdy even in moderate winds. I personally like the 10×20 size for paddock use when at a race track. It allows for the car to be completely out of the sun or rain. It is big enough for a group to stand under during a long enduro race, and is only one item to load/unload out of the trailer for each race weekend. That being said. I am part of a team, and we have the luxury of having someone to help us most of the time when needed. Using a steel framed 10×20 EZ up solo is a bit of a tall order. Having a second person around is key.  It comes in an awesome bag that holds everything in place but man, it is heavy.  Probably around 60lbs total.

Nice big tent that can fit two cars sideways and one car, the long way.

Bigger than 10×20?  Yup!

There are larger sized tents as well. In 2010, when I was on the TC Motorsports Grand-Am Continental Tire team with our Boss Mustang, we had a really large one for the pro-race weekends. It was a 20×40 foot tent, and it took no less than 3 people to erect or take down. For long weekends, or if you have a large team to work with a tent this size may fit the bill well for you. Again, it is one thing to load and unload instead of many. The big tent had a home on our flat deck Taylor-Dunn pit cart when in transport. This was the best way to move the thing when it was packed up as it was very heavy.

20×40 tent!
The grip racing group has a full pro spec tent that connects to their hauler.

One-person operation? 10×10 is the way to go!

If you are a one man operation, or have a very limited crew to work with. Going with a 10×10 tent or even a couple of them is likely your best bet. They are the easiest to work with when alone. They generally package much smaller than the lager sized tents, and are usually light weight comparatively. They are also the cheapest option to purchase as well. For my 4runner, I am going to get a 10×10 to pack for camping, and track work weekends. It is cheap, easy to pack and use solo, and will provide with a bunch of extra usable space when camping at the track.

Several 10×10 tents, grouped together. A single person with two 10×10 tents seems to be the way to go. One person operation for carrying, putting up and taking down.
You can even get the tent material customized to really stand out, like this one from the Hard Motorsports team.

Tent pole material – it’s important

Tent pole or leg material is also an important choice. To be frank, the amount of times you use the tent, as well as how careful you are when setting it up or taking it down will have great effect on the life of the tent and legs. I have found in my experience that for consistent usage, finding a tent brand that uses steel legs and arms is better than aluminum. The aluminum tents are very easy to work with and move, but are quite fragile and the legs and tent arms are easy to bend and break. If you are doing just a handful of days per year, then getting two light weight 10×10 tents will be a good option for you. If you are putting in a full season, then they would be very much light duty for your needs! Again, I like a 10×20 size with a steel frame. Try and see what works for you.

Custom 10×20 tent being used by the Molly Helmuth racing team for Oval racing.

Securing your tent

Securing your EZ ups is an often over looked portion of your paddock set up for the weekend. I have seen dozens of tents fly away, get destroyed, or plain out just collapse because they were not properly addressed prior to something happening. Having something to weigh each leg down is the strongest start to keeping your tent in the trailer for a long time. You can use anything as ballast, but we normally use spare wheels and tires. They are easy to strap to, weigh a good bit, and are easy to move if needed. At night if we are leaving the car out, we will tie the tent to the car to keep it secure during the night. One thing to remember, is that if it gets really windy, as much as you may not want to take shelter down, it could be beneficial to take the the tent down. We have seen tents that are secured to trailers fly away, even lifting the side of a empty trailer in the air because it was acting like such a sail. Needless to say that tent was also destroyed, but it happened to damage that trailer, as well as dent a race car on the other side of the trailer as it flew. So be prepped for that!

Again, there is no right or wrong way to EZ up! You just have to determine what is best for you and your needs. If you are solo and need to be quick on paddock load in and out, then some light weight 10×10 options may be in your cards. If you have a friend to help, or maybe you are part of a team, then going with the bigger/beefier tents will be your call for sure (I would be worried if it was not!). If you are running with the pros… then you are paying for someone to handle this stuff for you! Get out there, get some shade and shelter for your day so you can maximize your enjoyment, and as always, don’t forget to have fun!