crash
08-06-2018, 10:19 AM
We ran a nice little 6 hour race this weekend with the FFR PDG Mendeola GTM with driving duties being handled by myself, Carl Rydquist, and Beau Borders.
We were the overall fast qualifier, won our class, and finished 4th overall, but that is just part of the story...
First off is that the competition in Utah is VERY high. Add to that the fact that the Continnetal Tire series is racing there this weekend coming up and we had quite a few professional teams there to practice and get track time before this weekends event, which made the competition doubly difficult.
To out qualify two Lamborghini Huracans, an Audi R8, and a bunch of Porsche GT3/GT4 Cup cars and BMWs was pretty overwhelming.
We had run with the Lambos before which are factory delivered to run in the Trofeo Racing Series and they are REALLY fast. I am actually not sure how we out qualified them. We figure it must have been our luck with traffic and getting a clear lap during qualifying.
So the race starts with us on the pole and Beau does a great job. We run a lot of fuel, so it really wasn't a shocker that we had dropped down to 7th place after a few laps. The longer the races, the more they end up playing to the strength that we have of having a large fuel tank, and this race was a great example of that.
We simply ran our own pace and race and then waited for the other competitors to either have problems, or simply have to come in and refuel and change tires before we did.
When Beau came in to turn the car over to me, we were running 2nd overall and 1st in class.
I got in and just couldn't make the car go fast. We hadn't changed tires and I thought that had something to do with it, but I just wasn't getting the job done as I was also recovering from an illness. We had been discussing it on the radio and decided to bring me in early in order to change tires and put Carl in the car. We were in 3rd place overall and 1st in class when we did this.
Carl did make the car go faster, but was still about 6-8 seconds a lap off what we qualified at. Something was definitely not right with the car.
We finished the race in 4th overall and 1st in class, but were kinda down that we could not have done better in the race. The car came in and I was looking it over and things started to make some sense.
We had been experiencing a left front tire lockup since early in the race. The tires that came off the car when I got out had a ton of buildup on the left front. There were reports by other racers that we were throwing sparks on the track, and I had reported in that the frame was hitting in two spots on the track. We had put softer springs on the car and were speculating that this was the reason for the frame hitting...but it wasn't.
It turns out that very early on in the race, about lap 44 by looking at the data, we partially broke a Corvette right rear lower control arm and ran for almost 5 hours with this suspension arm broken! To say that we got lucky that something catastrophic did not happen is about the least we can say. How this arm stayed together is beyond me, and the fact that we ran the lap times we did with this issue on the most critical corner of the car really says something for our drivers and for the strength of these factory GM parts.
Since we have gone to a stiffer shock and spring about 2 years ago, we have constantly been looking for things like cracks in the frame, suspension, etc. We had seen nothing until this failure here. Obviously we will address this going forward with a redesign of the shock mount, but, again, the strength of these components can not be understated. The GM suspension parts are STRONG.
So given everything that happened, and that the team was near flawless on pit stops and strategy, we feel the 4th overall is a great finish.
Special thanks to all our friends in Utah that helped us out with RVs, meals, pit crewing, etc. Without the support of the local Utah FFR community, we could not have done this race...THANK YOU!!!
We were the overall fast qualifier, won our class, and finished 4th overall, but that is just part of the story...
First off is that the competition in Utah is VERY high. Add to that the fact that the Continnetal Tire series is racing there this weekend coming up and we had quite a few professional teams there to practice and get track time before this weekends event, which made the competition doubly difficult.
To out qualify two Lamborghini Huracans, an Audi R8, and a bunch of Porsche GT3/GT4 Cup cars and BMWs was pretty overwhelming.
We had run with the Lambos before which are factory delivered to run in the Trofeo Racing Series and they are REALLY fast. I am actually not sure how we out qualified them. We figure it must have been our luck with traffic and getting a clear lap during qualifying.
So the race starts with us on the pole and Beau does a great job. We run a lot of fuel, so it really wasn't a shocker that we had dropped down to 7th place after a few laps. The longer the races, the more they end up playing to the strength that we have of having a large fuel tank, and this race was a great example of that.
We simply ran our own pace and race and then waited for the other competitors to either have problems, or simply have to come in and refuel and change tires before we did.
When Beau came in to turn the car over to me, we were running 2nd overall and 1st in class.
I got in and just couldn't make the car go fast. We hadn't changed tires and I thought that had something to do with it, but I just wasn't getting the job done as I was also recovering from an illness. We had been discussing it on the radio and decided to bring me in early in order to change tires and put Carl in the car. We were in 3rd place overall and 1st in class when we did this.
Carl did make the car go faster, but was still about 6-8 seconds a lap off what we qualified at. Something was definitely not right with the car.
We finished the race in 4th overall and 1st in class, but were kinda down that we could not have done better in the race. The car came in and I was looking it over and things started to make some sense.
We had been experiencing a left front tire lockup since early in the race. The tires that came off the car when I got out had a ton of buildup on the left front. There were reports by other racers that we were throwing sparks on the track, and I had reported in that the frame was hitting in two spots on the track. We had put softer springs on the car and were speculating that this was the reason for the frame hitting...but it wasn't.
It turns out that very early on in the race, about lap 44 by looking at the data, we partially broke a Corvette right rear lower control arm and ran for almost 5 hours with this suspension arm broken! To say that we got lucky that something catastrophic did not happen is about the least we can say. How this arm stayed together is beyond me, and the fact that we ran the lap times we did with this issue on the most critical corner of the car really says something for our drivers and for the strength of these factory GM parts.
Since we have gone to a stiffer shock and spring about 2 years ago, we have constantly been looking for things like cracks in the frame, suspension, etc. We had seen nothing until this failure here. Obviously we will address this going forward with a redesign of the shock mount, but, again, the strength of these components can not be understated. The GM suspension parts are STRONG.
So given everything that happened, and that the team was near flawless on pit stops and strategy, we feel the 4th overall is a great finish.
Special thanks to all our friends in Utah that helped us out with RVs, meals, pit crewing, etc. Without the support of the local Utah FFR community, we could not have done this race...THANK YOU!!!