Tough Weekend at Buttonwillow (Redline Season Opener)
We had a difficult weekend at Buttonwillow, ultimately resulting in a 12th place finish (2nd from last). No worries though - it was still a moral victory
. (...at least we won practice!!!
)
Anyway, where to start. On Thursday we were back at SP Engineering to finish the tuning on the STI. Things went pretty well and we were able to make a lot of power. We slowly increased the boost from 15psi to 25psi. However, while we were on the dyno we noticed a little bit of coolant bubbling out of the overflow. This was odd because our new cooling system was working fantastically - we never saw temps over 185F even after consecutive pulls. During our test session two days earlier, we never saw over 180F.
We packed the car and headed to Buttonwillow to get our race on. Friday was the first test day and we were excited to see how the car would perform at our favorite track. But on the very first lap our small bubbling problem turned into a big one and coolant started pumping out of coolant reservoir = HEADGASKET!! AHHH.
We packed it up and drove back to Torrance arriving around 8PM. At 2AM, we fired the car back up after removing the motor and replacing the headgaskets. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty impressed Adan (AQ Motorsports) could replace two headgaskets in 6 hours with minimal assistance!
We finished cleaning the shop and packing everything up at 2AM and took a 3 hour nap before heading back to Buttonwillow. We arrived at the track at 8AM and got the car ready. Unfortunately on the first session we had the EXACT same problem! We decided to wrap it up for the day and save whatever was left for Sunday.
Sunday finally arrived and we were all really nervous about the car. We crossed our fingers and lowered the boost to wastegate pressure (15psi) hoping for the best. We sent the car out for the first qualifier, but we were able to get only hot 1 lap before the car started blowing coolant again. Amazingly, JC managed a 1:54 - the only hot lap we had all weekend and running almost 200whp down, many new systems, new tires, and with no BW testing. This time was the fastest Modified time officially recorded all day, including the winning time! (and we had
LOTS left on the table...)
When the car came back into the pit, we could see the problem had gotten really bad. However, we decided we worked to hard and too long not to at least try, so we sent the car out on the 1st Timeattack session to record a time. We told JC to keep the car out of boost and under 50mph. We would charge the 2nd lap if the head gasket gods came down and gave us a blessing (they didn't...) With some luck, JC was able to get his lap in, a blazing 2:33, but a lap none-the-less. This now brings us to 3 years without a DNF - and while that’s not as good as a podium - at least it’s something.
In the end this was a very challenging event for us, but we are happy we got the car done on time and completely within the rules (Nik was kind enough to visit a week prior and give our car his blessing) We’ve confirmed that we have a very fast car on our hands. The winning car had a time of 1:55, so we were certainly in the ball-park. We were targeting Evasive's impressive 1:50 flat (from SLB) and our data tells us that we would have been well below that. Who knows what we had in us with full power and some basic testing and tweeking of our new systems, suspension, brakes, etc.
Check out
Harman Motive Racing for some pictures etc.
Thank you to the following sponsors and the entire crew who worked relentlessly to try and make it all happen:
Harman Motive
AQ Motorsports
MPT Tuning
JRZ suspension
Toyo tires
Enkei wheels
Cosworth
Kaminari
Driveshaft shop
ACT clutch
AEM
EDO Performance
Kognition
Stop Tech
Speedventures
Deatschwerks
Motul
Hose Techniques
Linear Mode
