GST Motorsports 2011 Time Attack recap Part Two!

With the dust settling from our recent trip to New Jersey the thoughts came around to if we could get out to run the Chicago event, Christian Rado kindly offered to transport the L there and back (although he did mention something about sabotage!) so all we needed to do was find the coin to get us all out there and pay for a hotel room and some food. Fortunately for us we have some kick ass sponsors, Wheeldude/Rota and Kognition came through, thanks guys!

Upon arriving in Chicago we first went for a bite to eat with the folks from GTA, World Racing and UMS Tuning, Tony from UMS and I hung for a little while after everyone left and had a couple of beers. As Tony and I pulled into the hotel (around midnight) we were greeted by the World Racing crew and Nad’s heading out the door as the rig had just arrived at the track, we both decided it would be a good idea to go and lend a hand seeing as both of our cars were being transported by them!

It turns out that offering to help after closing a bar is probably not the best thing I could have done, first Mr. Ace Videoographer Adam Rehmeier saved my ass from eating shit as I nearly fell of a step ladder trying to assist with the rig orning then I stall both UMS’s and our race cars while trying to unload them off the stacker (I’m scared of heights so what the hell are they thinking having the drunk vertically challenged Brit do such a thing!)

Something very cool about that night was realizing that Christian Rado would be leaving his dogs at the track in the motorhome, the hotel is like 45 minutes away and it’s 3am so I asked if he minded if I crashed in the motorhome with the dogs which he didn’t! SCORE I get 1.5 hours sleep more than everyone else and have two kick ass dogs using me as a sleep surface!!! Significant when you think we had to be at the track at 7am anyway!

With the car all set and Jeff ready to go our plan was to basically drive around the track for a few laps and check it out, Neither the car nor Jeff had been to this track before so we needed to give him a few recon laps. With 3 laps under his belt just toddling around the track Jeff came in. “Wow this track makes Buttonwillow look smooth” stated Jeff to Earl and I (Actually that’s my PC version of what he said but I don’t want to further tarnish his image!) With that said Jeff wanted the car softened up prior to the next session so Earl set to work on that while I…. well I did something just not altogether sure what it was!

With car headed out on track for our second session the plan was for Jeff to do two slow paced laps then one hot lap and bring the car back in, as Jeff completed his last slow paced lap it was obvious he now had the hammer down as his pace looked ridiculous compared to that previously. As Jeff came around and past start finish he stopped the watch at 1:23.594 some 3 seconds faster than the previous overall track record time “Wow wait till tomorrow and real boost and RPM I thought to myself!”

Jeff still thought the cars setup was a little stiff for the track but based on the fact if we wanted to change spring rates we’d have to steal them from somewhere there was little we could do, Jeff used the remaining sessions to get more aquainted with the track as the track fell off in the two remaining afternoon sessions.

Jeff, Earl and I all agreed the plan would be to put on some fresh rubber and hit the track hard first thing in the morning so with that said everyone packed up and headed out to Gordon Biersch for dinner, Dinner was fun although everyone was beat from the previous night of unloading but even with that we had the great company of the GTA Crew, Belle-One crew and none other than Trent “I Let Westphal Shit in my house!” Choi from Insane Speed. This was in all honesty one of the more subdued nights out and everyone retired early looking forward to Sunday’s racing!

The alarm goes off in the hotel room at 6am and Earl and I are busting at the chops to get to the track to see what we can lay down with fresh rubber and more power, the excitement lasted right up until we walked out of the hotel door to wait outside for Tony, Are you kidding me! It’s pissing down with rain!

The rained lasted and held for the entire day, we did send Jeff out on a set of rain tires to have some fun for one session but that was about it really. It would seem we would have to settle for our 1:23.594 from the previous day, still an overall record but not what we had hoped for!

As always there is a little BTA action upon closing the event and Chicago was no different, I would bore you all with the tales regarding the early morning hotel hot tub woodpile (Sorry Mandy but 8 or so dudes and one lady don’t make for another statement!) but I honestly don’t want to incriminate myself and my kids might read this. I also know nothing about two team members not waking up for the ride to the airport only to hitch a ride in a town car and beat their driver there where he met them “We’re in the first bar on the right after security!”

For pictures of the Chicago event please click here, for our In car video from this event please click here.

Now before I get to the season Finale event for GTA which was the Infineon event I feel it’s important to include a short morning session we did at Buttonwillow between the two GTA events. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love that desolate shithole in the middle of the I5 so you can understand my longing to go to the place we notoriously break our shit at with a car that had been great to us all year prior to probably our most important event of the year (Our home track, with our families, friends and customers what could be more important right!)

Yea I know I said it earlier but by now it has to be apparent, I really am not that smart! I think I had sound reasoning though, we’d developed the car all year and it was working well and we knew as a small business we simply could not shut the shop for a whole week to do both the Super Lap Battle event and the GTA event. The choice of which event to do was simple, it had to be GTA as it would not only be at our home track but also the folks at GTA had been fantastic to us all year and honestly without their support we could not have been out there so we more than owe them the little support we can give by attending their events! So a chance to run Buttonwillow four weeks prior to GTA was worth a shot to see how the car could do.

We rolled the car out of the trailer pretty much just as she had been for Chicago and sent Jeff out on track, Jeff turned a couple of recon laps before putting the hammer down for one hot lap, the hot lap was a 1:43.2. Not too shabby really considering we had not been at BW since our 5 ill-fated out laps prior to the season opener. Jeff asked for small wing change and we swapped tires and out he went again. One out lap and then a hot lap this time Jeff went 1:42.5.

We made a couple more changes to the car and Jeff went out again this time on his hot lap he went 1:41.817, as we got Jeff out of the car to discuss some changes he reported that the motor felt soft. Pulling and looking at the data the longditude acceleration certainly supported that as it showed we were down roughly 18% from the previous hot lap so we called it a day.

You have to love Buttonwillow, as our luck would have it we split our end tank on the previous lap but hey it wouldn’t be Buttonwillow if we managed to run the car at 100% right!

For the in-car of the final hot lap please click here