For 2012, our season start April 21st in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, at the historic race track, Road America. Its over 4 miles of pure awesomeness. After placing 2nd last year, and also crashing, we were hungry for more. But this year the entry list roughly doubled, to 50 cars. With some improvements to the car, long hours working over the winter, and finally some decent weather, we were ready to get racing!
Last year with the colder weather, we ran on 320 treadwear tires, when everyone else stuck with their 200 treadwear Dunlop Star Specs. So we were excited to see how the car handled on the 200TW Falken Azenis RT-615K, along with less weight, and a taller rear gear set out of an SC300.
It turns out the gears really hurt our fuel consumption. We actually had to shift in overdrive down the 3 longest straights, but we did gain a little low end acceleration. We also gained a little extra rear end wiggle, probably now that the rear suspension bushings weren't all seized. But once we got the hang of it, it wasn't too bad, but it definitely was different under braking.
Unfortunately our fuel consumption was even worse then last year. We were barely able to make it an hour and twenty-five minutes, which meant we had to run an extra driver stint. Ideally we'd pit at an hour and forty minutes for the seven hours, and have equal driver time, and the minimum number of pit stops possible. So with an extra 5+ minute pit stop we were at a big disadvantage.
Otherwise the car ran well, we put down some competitive lap times, but just missed the podium on both days. We finished 5th on Saturday and 4th on Sunday. The BMW's in the field were just too fast for us. So its back to work on the car to shed some weight, and on to Brainerd on June 30th. (Yes I know that's soon).
If you look closely, our wheel is actually off the ground here. Nice work Jeremy.
Thanks to Alex Bellus for these photos. Check back in a few days and hopefully I'll have some video up.
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