Well it’s been an interesting year that’s for sure, we’ve again managed to forge new friendships during a rollercoaster season which thinking back on now really deserves me putting some of it on paper for everyone out there that follows, supports, helps, etc. us. Of which we’re eternally grateful.
Ok the problem with this is really where do I start? An intelligent person given the title of this would start with the first event which was Global Time Attack Willow Springs back in May, now obviously those of you reading this know intelligence and Mike Warfield hardly go hand in hand so to that end I am going to start from the beginning of our 2011 season which being the way we are here was actually Sunday 14th of November 2010 at around 9pm!
Sunday 14th November 9pm PST, The GST Motorsports crew is all loaded up (car is in the trailer and everyone else except Earl our DD is loaded!) we’re about 45 minutes out of Fontana following the Redline season finale, Earl’s driving, Keith’s talking and snoring at the same time and I’m about to pass out in the back while bleeding from Dustin at Cobb attacking me with champagne (at least it wasn’t Christian Rado, more on that though later!) Amongst the random thoughts and beer farts the conversation rolled around to what are the off season plans to make the car faster…….
For once after finally nailing the motor program the talk was no longer about making another bazillion horsepower, the short of it was a hair brained scheme to chop the top, drop weight, move the driver as far back as possible, build a real roll cage, add in air jacks and try and add front end aero to improve grip. Wow pretty smart ideas for two drunken fools and a guy driving that falls asleep behind the wheel more than he is awake! Ok now we need a plan, well other than the usual of feeding Keith two twelve packs and spinning him around, handing him a death wheel and pointing him at the car anyway!
The whole of the following week every hour I could spare out of shop time was spent drawing up the battle plan on what became a huge excel spreadsheet! Now we had to get sign off from our driver Jeff Westphal, this will be easy right? I mean after all we’re rebuilding a car improving nearly aspect for him what could he not like about that? WRONG! For those of you who have been around Time Attack and racing you may be able to imagine this issue, getting hold of Jeff is akin to trying to have a personal conversation with Bill Gates! What between coaching drivers, Bending crosses onto Landon Donovan’s head and Calvin Klein underwear commercials Jeff “Beckham” Westphal can be a hard man to obtain! Finally through his PA I managed to get sign off, we’re all set let the thrash commence!
Friday night rolled around and Earl Walks in the shop “I hate people!” this would become an Earl catchphrase through the coming months and anyone that has tried driving from Sacramento to Hayward at 4pm on a Friday probably has far worse things to say! That night (November 19th) I showed Keith and Earl the spreadsheet with the timeline showing what was to be done each weekend and in each evening during the week. After Earl had consumed 3-4 Mountain Dew’s and Keith and I had completed a couple of liquor store runs we all agreed the plan was doable!
Oh shit! It’s 4pm Saturday 20th we’re knee deep in cutting the roll cage out of the car, the roofline is marked for the chop and I suddenly remember it’s my wife’s surprise 40th birthday party, a quick shower and change of cloths, nip to a gift store and slaughter a credit card and I am on my way home!
That night was murder! Well, I mean the party for my wife was awesome; it was great to see her face when everyone surprised her. All of her family and friends were there and we both had a great time. The murder part was the hourly photo text message updates… “Oh WTF! They cut the roof off already!” “Damn what is that? Crap its Earl sitting in what was the cage in the car now out of the car using a Beck’s bottle as a shifter!” Those bastards I thought here I am at a great party for my wife and their, they, are urm well essentially working!
Another instance of note during the build process was the passing of our beloved shop dog Thugly, he passed on February 15th after giving 10 great years to my family, the shop and our friends and is dearly missed to this day. Special thanks goes to Tommy for TIG welding every link in his chain so it could be installed on the L during the build this can be seen here .
I could go on and on with stories during the build instead everyone can have a look here for a fair amount of it, besides I don’t want to bore you with stories of Hilti foam in Keith’s boots, Earl waking up in a strange shop with my dog sat on him, etc., etc., etc. I will close with this; we managed to amass over 1400 labor hours all in evenings and weekends between November and April. I think both Earl and Keith lived here more than at home and I seem to recall at least two occasions where my wife asked if I was having an affair!
With the car built and ready to go… Oh crap no wonder it came in way lighter than our predictions this thing might need an engine huh? In steps the dynamic duo of Tommy and Mert, Poof! An engine is assembled and in the car. Oh there was a couple of last minute TIG welding to be done I seem to remember something about Tommy calling me a complete tool and putting an official ban on me being allowed to EVER operate the plasma again (What are you on about Tommy they were speed holes I’m telling you!)
Now fasting forward to 2 weeks prior to the Season opener for Global Time Attack we’re ready to rock (HAHA yea right!) so we decide to give our hot shoe Jeff “Beckham” Westphal a call and see if he has time to go to our favorite track Buttonwillow to shakedown the car. A day was set and off we head to Buttonwillow. Now for those that know me, know I have a bit of an anxiety issue. “What’s to be nervous about?” Hmm well the fact we engineered a new steering setup with an electric power steering pump I had no idea would work on track (it was great on the dyno, oh wait I didn’t steer on the dyno!) We had moved to a dual master pedal box and they let me do the calculations on master sizing (Doh hello!!) We were now running a dry sump which had not been tested and finally oh yea the whole car had been rebuilt!
Sweet now we have a plan for the pushing oil issue (no it wasn’t Keith’s idea of not putting any oil in the car don’t worry!) Ok we actually had a plan which was to uncap the valve cover breathers and return them to the main oil tank, if that didn’t work plan B was bringing all the hose and AN fittings we had and we’d figure something out (Yup sometimes you have to roll like that!)
Before I get into covering our effort at Global Time Attack’s season opener at Willow Springs Raceway it’s only fair I give the guys at GTA a little love J So last year we ran the Redline Time Attack series and did pretty well winning the overall championship for unlimited AWD as well as setting a couple of track records along the way, given the announced changes to the format for 2011 I felt that the series was going to fail (actually we had a bet here on which month they would fold in, Keith you still owe me $100 you felcher!) Anyway during the close season when we were assholes and elbows in a build that had spiraled from 3 excel sheets to being hand written on toilet roll I heard through the grapevine that none other than John Naderi was going to be setting up a Time Attack series in the US for 2011.
It gets better not only do we have the person responsible for the demise of the Import scene in printed media he was teaming up with Jason Dienhart of Hot Import Night’s fame with support from the fastest wrong wheel driven car bowler none other than Christian Rado. Wow this might not end well huh? OK kidding aside Nad’s is known for his marketing and social networking presence, obviously JD can manage shit and Christian is well… yea Christian, dammit I can’t say anything nice about the guy who gives me more shit than my wife so I’ll stop right there! We knew this is where we needed to be for 2011, I mean with the above three Amigo’s our crew totally fits in right!?
Right show time!, we roll into Willow Springs Raceway on Friday night a little after 9pm we set about our usual rutene of setting up basecamp GST (as well as hotel GST, nothing like the 3 of us sleeping on air mattresses in the trailer! (Did I mention I put a pin hole in Keith’s before we packed hahaha) We wake in the morning to the nice cool 85 degrees of Rosamond at around 6am and start to assemble the car ready for tech and then the first GTA session.
I’d love to write about how the Saturday went great, all the changes worked for Jeff and we smashed a track record but well yup you guessed it I can’t! It turns out that two -8 breathers on the valve cover simply wont get the job done as far as keeping the crankcase pressure down. I also can’t say that plan B worked flawlessly either as with a little brain storming we came to the conclusion we needed either to run -12 back from the vacuum relief fitting or we had to rely on plan G, why G? Well G stands for Gaterade!
As it would happen we were joined by Jeff “Happens” Richardson who is the man responsible for plan G, in a nut shell and out of two gaterade bottles Jeff managed to make a fully baffled catch can rigged with black RTV, Duct tape, a rag and what to this day I still believe to be silly putty! This device had one sole purpose in life, catch and don’t let spill all the oil from one hot lap.
As the L made her way on track for what was to be her first hot lap ever since the makeover (we made 4 outlaps the previous day and puked more oil over the engine than Exxon!) we all waited on the wall preying that plan G would hold up! It sure did Jeff on his very first hot lap in the car managed a 1:19.915. With the car cooling down in our paddock area the guys assessed how plan G was holding up while I spoke to Jeff on how the car felt. The good news was Plan G was working as planned, good for one lap. The bad news was the car while going faster than we had managed the year before was not even close as far as setup goes.
So for the next session Jeff wanted more front end grip (well that was the easiest of what he wanted, what he really wanted would take Keith, Earl and I the next few weekends to sort with more tools than our handy craftsman 123 piece matchbox set can carry) Right simple I thought we’re soften the front sway, oh it’s on full soft and we forgot the softer bar. Ok I’ll drop the spring rates; oh we left the spring box as we needed room for the beer cooler. Damn this sucks oh wait I got it, “Hey Earl drop 20psi out of the front shock can’s mate I am going to drop the nose of the car ¼”” Awesome we’re all set then!
Now here comes my only complaint of the weekend, the next four and a half hours waiting for the final and remaining session where a complete killer! The issue with desert based tracks is for the most part the only time to run a number is before 10:30am as essentially the tracks fall off to complete crap what with the dirt being brought on via numerous off track excursions and the afternoon breeze which in this particular case had kicked up to around a 30mph head wind on the front straight (our data showed 6mph loss on the front straight due to the wind) With the above changes made Jeff went for his final hot lap of the event and even with a track falling off considerably Jeff managed to click off a 1:19.367 good enough to seal a class record and win the event! Needless to say with all the issues and the car being essentially a completely new car with little to no testing the GST Motorsports crew was ecstatic with the outcome!
The award ceremony is a little of a blur to me right now which most would say was due to it being sponsored by Mike Kenney of AFI Turbo but in my defense it also had a little to do with ingesting cheap ass champagne through my pours following compete own age by Christian Rado (Yours is coming Pal!) There may also be a tail of a few teams and crew members being locked in the track at 8:30pm and a certain dinosaur busting out an 18V Dewault cutoff wheel to break everyone out but I honestly cannot say for sure and as the saying goes “No video, No proof!”
For some pictures from GTA Willow Springs click here
Now here’s the point in our season where things get a little interesting, I think that may be a touch of an understatement but anyway here goes. For those of you following our little grassroots effort this past season you’ll undoubtedly be aware we were invited very generously by the guys running the World Time Attack Challenge event in Australia to make up team USA along with the awesome Evo of Sierra Sierra Enterprises. Armed with a fairly tall but doable work list to complete based on our maiden voyage at the GTA season opener we set about making the changes Jeff requested and the fixes the car required (Plan G was cool and all but seriously the car needed to be able to complete more than one hot lap at time).
One of the items we need to get onto the car were some aero louvers on the front end, the team at FXMD were kind enough to give us a set of the ones they use on their badass NSX. Here’s where thrashing and stupidity get the better of me (well one example anyway) 10 days prior to having to load the car onto the container I essentially nearly killed myself with fiberglass in my lungs causing me to miss damn near a week off work, the following weekend still feeling the effects of my ill-fated body work modifying Earl, Keith and myself work straight through the weekend with the culmination point me testing the three maps on the dyno prior to load in at 4am. I did a couple of pulls on low boost first and the car felt great, switch to medium boost and set the dyno to 5,000rpm (I always work up on RPM) and do a quick pull….. The whole dyno room fills with oil smoke, I mean so much I basically instantly couldn’t even see the steering wheel in my hand. It’s now nearing 5am and there is supposed to be a container at GST at 8am and I am faced with a decision based on what looks like I have blown the engine on the dyno.
I have to confess that at this point I am done, my chest hurts from the previous weekend, I have had no more than 2 hours sleep since Friday (it’s now 5am Monday) and I can barely think straight let alone tare into the engine. The decision is made, we’re not going to be able to make it too the event. Needless to say the whole team was gutted! It took me 4 days before I even really bothered to look at the car to see what had broken thankfully on our end we had not taken any of the sponsorship money to run the event although it did leave the World Time Attack guys out of the additional money for a 40’ container when they could have just sprung for a 20’ one which to this day upsets me.
The following week now rested and a little more motivated the car is torn into and the root cause of the issue is found, a jammed oil pressure relief valve had caused the oil pressure to hit the roof. I can’t say with any clarity how high the pressure got as our sensor is only good to 10 bar but it maxed that and had enough pressure to pretty much fill the IC with oil from the turbo center cartridge giving up and pushed the cam seals out of the cam gears. With the mess cleaned up and the oil pump rebuilt it seemed we had dodged a bullet and the engine was fine, ATP Turbo and Garrett generously offered us one of their new GTX series turbos and the car was back in business.
Ok with the car back in business the only issue now is what the hell are we going to do with it, the next event up for GTA was going to be over on the East Coast at New Jersey but we couldn’t really see that happening for a team with little to no budget and it’s going to be damn hard asking sponsors for support at this point after the whole World Time Attack fiasco. A week or so goes by and I receive a call from John Naderi at GTA asking if he arranged a transporter for any west coast teams interested in going to New Jersey would we be interested “Sure I’m interested John but even with you guys subsidizing a portion of it we still need to get some help from sponsors so let me make a few calls”
I spend the best part of every morning before the shop opened calling sponsors; it looked like we might manage enough to scrape by! Awesome we have always wanted to run the car on the East Coast and it looked like this was actually going to happen.
This all basically happened at around 8am on the Friday morning so I spend the next hour or so pissed off trying to get myself into day shop mode when at about 9:30am I get a call from Nad’s who asked me the following “Let’s just say I have a sponsor for you, could you get the car down to us by 8am in the morning tomorrow?” Hmm let me think about this, I have a full workday at the shop on the dyno so I would have to work then load up and drive overnight drop the car in the small hours and be back at the shop no later than 11am to tune a customer car. Yea I think this is about as perfect a plan as was possible these days for us, A quick call to Earl which went down something like this “Hey Earl you still coming by the shop tonight mate?” Earl “Sure we have some work to do right” Me “Kind of, fancy a road trip?” Earl “Where are we going? I’m down!”
Another call to Nad’s which was basically “Sure we’re down, can someone meet us at World Racing at 5am?” and the plan was now set and perfect!
The day and evening actually went fairly smoothly with Earl and I arriving to be greeted by Nad’s around 4:30am then a little later the man himself Christian Rado rolled in at around 5:15am none other than on his birthday as well (I say smoothly but honestly being met by either of the above at those times after driving all night is a fate I don’t think anyone deserves but hey beggars can’t be choosers right!) With the car and all the spares we could carry in it safely parked at World Racing Earl and I headed on our way back to the shop, sweet in 2 weeks we’ll be racing at New Jersey Motorsports Park!
With the typical last minute nature of our flight plans the crew of Jeff, Earl and myself had to bounce around the US a little bit to get to Philly (yes the events in NJ but Philly is actually closer) couple this with one of the legs going through Phoenix which made for an interesting conversation with the stewardess as she said to me “The person down there at the end of the plane wants to buy you a drink” I look up over the seats and who other than Tony Szirka from UMS Tuning is sat down there holding up a beer grinning at me! Oh boy this could be a long flight!
The flight actually went with very little incident other than the Federal warning a couple of Tony’s crew got for bringing on 30 or so shots of vodka, guess you can only consume 30 shots if you buy them on the plane not in the airport terminal prior to take off, learn something new every day!
Armed with a decent night’s sleep Jeff, Earl, myself and Tony jump in Tony’s rented bang bus to head to the track. For those have not been to New Jersey Motorsports Park before the facility offers two separate tracks, the Thunderbolt track and the Lightening track for GTA we would be running on the smaller Lightening track which from our investigation looked to be a very fast track with some very high speed corners. The previous Time Attack track record for this track was set during the 2010 RTA season by none other than Brian Lock in the formidable Cobb Tuning GTR with a lap time of 1:06.768.
We arrived at the track and located our cars which had been unloaded from the transporter the day before with some help from the guys over at Performance Motorsports, with the cars all setup in the GTA paddock area Jeff and I set about our strategy for the first session. Normally this would be fairly simple as usually every track we run on we have some time on at one point or another but seeing as neither of us had been to the New Jersey tracks before this kind of threw a monkey in the works of the usual “go out on wastegate spring do an out lap then put one down and come in so we can see what changes we need to make” plan.
After draining two cups of trackside coffee (much akin to pouring dirt colored warm water down your gullet) I had a plan! “Jeff how about this mate, drive round the track 4 laps or so at about 50-80mph and see what you think of it then put a lap down” I admit that is quite possibly not the best plan ever but at least it was a plan and it did seem to make some form of sense to the pair of us!
With Jeff slowly mossing around the track Earl and I watched fingers crossed that all of the rework we had done to the oiling system would nail the previous issues from Willow Springs, as Jeff set into his fifth lap it was apparent that he was leaning on the car for this lap as the car flew by us on the front straight. As Jeff came around to complete his first and only flier we eagerly watched the stopwatch, first lap was a 1:05.273 wow not bad nailed the track record on the very first hot lap!
For the second session we decided to leave the car alone and run the same setup even the tires which were a used up set from Willow Springs so in less than great shape but Jeff just wanted to get a little more seat time on the track, we decided to do our usual out lap followed by a hot lap and then a in lap. On this session Jeff managed a 1:05.234 reporting back that he had time everywhere especially on fresh tires.
For our third and final session of the day we put on a fresh set of Hankook C91’s and off Jeff went, as Earl and I timed him coming round on his flier we knew the lap was going to be a good one and sure enough it was Jeff managed a 1:03.383 dropping nearly 2 seconds (yes Beckham’s legs may be aging on the soccer field but his car driving skills are as good as they come, in our opinion the best there is!)
Now here’s something interesting that not many people know outside of team GST but anyway here it is, Earl doesn’t drink but sometime ago (I believe during our runs at our nemesis Buttonwillow) a deal was struck where Earl has to drink a beer every time we break a track record. Well we’re all about technicalities here and technically we managed to break three track records (well one and our own twice!) which would mean Earl had to drink three beers!
That evening Tony introduced Earl to Shocktop! I’d love to write up about the Saturday night shenanigans but I’ll be honest I was dead beat and after being forced a couple of shocktops (with floating fruit in them) I passed out in the minivan before sleep walking from the said minivan to my hotel bed!
During the lunch break I decided to pull the data and have a look through it, at this point I realized I had made a mistake on the dash programming (yes I can be a dumbass!) turns out I had limited the rev’s when we were at Willow Springs to keep the oiling issue at bay, with Jeff driving by the shift lights he had been shifting in all the previous settings at 7200rpm. Given the engine makes its peak power at 7800rpm that is not only a large loss in horsepower but also the car is far more drivable through the corners with more rpm!
With the dash lights configured to 8000rpm for the final session all we needed was a tire change to try and put one down on the now near perfect track, OK a tire change would have been good until we discovered we were out of tires. A quick consult with Jeff and it was decided to switch the fronts to the rear and give it a go in the last and final session.
Jeff was out on his out lap following none other than captain chaos himself Christian Rado, as both Christian than Jeff came flying down the front straight on their hot lap I recall thinking to myself “Fuck me that little Scone FWing thing has some balls” it literally pulled us by about 4-5 car lengths which is impressive! Oh yea it also literally flew off the front corner as well, one thing about Christian is he lets it all hang out there and even when suffering all weekend with braking issues he was still game on to take it up to 11!!!
The resultant spin from Christian Rado caused Jeff to abort his first hot lap and cool things off to have another go at it, around he came again flying down the front straight and thru turn one “Game on!” then….. crap he’s backed off did something break? Jeff did this again on his next effort. Ok Jeff now Earl and I are shitting ourselves, me I am thinking damn the tires weren’t the best before he went out they must be near chords by now then out of nowhere Earl tapped me on the shoulder and said “Hey remember we decided to run the car lite on fuel for this run?” Oh shit I thought we must be on vapors! At the moment Jeff come’s flying down the front straight, braking at 170mph into the first turn. Obviously Earl and I were nervous! We could hear the car being rung out all around the track until finally she came down the front straight screaming like a raped ape! 1:02.460 to reset our own record and seal the overall event and new production class car track record!
Oddly enough the event really didn’t end with the track going cold (Go figure right, there has been no mention of BTA yet in this write up!) Earl loaded the L up into the transporter with Tony from UMS Tuning’s car and then we all set about heading back to the hotel room to get cleaned up before dinner. So we’re driving through some hick looking town when Tony yells “Photo Op!” hammers the brakes (we’re doing like 65mph) and flips a U-turn putting the rental shitbox on two wheels while he’s at it. Jeff looks at Earl, I look at Jeff and we’re all wondering WTF is Tony up to. As we come to a screeching holt all was revealed, Tony had spotted none other than David Beckham with one of Melville’s finest street ladies! (BTW if you’re in Melville don’t mess with Nahkehleh Jenkins folks!) For the picture of this click here
I would fill you in on the night’s craziness but honestly I can’t really for a couple of reasons, one being that coupled with it being a long few days and the humidity and heat kicking my and Earl’s asses and the other being that we both grabbed a bite and got an early night. What I can tell you is we woke up in the morning and went to the minivan which basically looked like a crime scene. The van was filled with sand, some guys sock and woman’s top! Add to this that we met David Tabor from UMS Tuning at the front check out who asked us for a ride to the airport because he was running late “How late are you mate!” “Oh about 5 hours, I’ve been laying pipe all night!!” and you get the idea of how everyone’s night went. As we drove to the airport with a rather hungover Tony we found the radio to no longer work, it was revealed that upon entering a parking lot at typical Tony speeds for a nightclub the previous night Tony had brake checked as Nad’s was waking up to the alarm call of “Beer Nad’s” which had sent Nad’s at mach 5 into the radio with his face!
Ok we survived the track and after hours of New Jersey question was could we make it to Chicago??
No comments:
Post a Comment