New Jersey Motorsports Park, 5/2018
Saturday's 9 Hour Race
"Please don't rain, mommy"
The one picture that basically describes this entire day:
We qualified 17th overall with a 1:59.8xx which was FINALLY good for class 4 (Reminder, we don't want to be in class 5, which is the fastest class and what we always end up in). All it took was a sh!t ton of rain! That lap time is basically 30 seconds slower than a proper dry lap in our car.
So all this time we've been gambling on the weather and just hoping that it would never rain on us. Well, the hope finally wore off. With no 'real' rain setup, our car was a handful in the wet stuff. And by handful, I mean scary AF. By the time we realized we'd be screwed with rain, it was too late to make any significant setup changes (softer springs, small tire, better tire, etc..). Combine that with human foot ABS and traction control (unlike some of the fancy teams that are gracing AER with their presence) and it's a recipe of butt puckering. The only thing we did was add lighting to make sure people would see us.
I took out front camber (down to -2.5), removed gas pressure from the shock reservoirs, and went to almost max soft on compression and rebound damping. It was also somewhat cool out so I took out some tire pressure in an effort to get the tire to squirm some more heat into the carcass. To top it off, RS4's are not good in cool, wet conditions, which we can definitely confirm! The track was insanely slick on the dry line, to the point where it literally felt like driving on ice when crossing over it then finally getting grip in the rain line.
Heading out for the parade laps through monster puddles:
In hindsight, not so sure that was the best idea (low tire pressure) in the type of rain on this day. It was a lot, and hence there was a bunch of standing water. Higher tire pressures are better for hydroplaning resistance, which became the more important factor in many parts of the track.
Green Flag! Hey look, at least the lights are working well...
So the goal of this day was not to crash and not get crashed into, and we were successful. 2 drivers had significant off road excursions and luckily were able to come back on track. We were also almost successful scoring a 3rd place podium finish as well. But, the Race Gods just weren't having it. Using a window squeegee to defog the windshield while going 100mph down the straight just wasn't enough for the Race Gods.
(some video from the live stream to give you a moving pictures idea of the poor visibility)
About 30 minutes out from the finish, in 3rd place with no more stops to go, I got a flat tire. Looks like a rivet from a piece of body work that was ripped off from the deep puddles did us in:
Would've been an amazing ending to a terrifyingly fun day.
Not surprisingly, a turbocharged FWD car (Chevy Cobalt) won class 4 for the day.
Team fastest lap: 2:03.2
Overall fastest lap: 1:53.7 (IMSA driver Al Carter in a worked E46 M3)
(Some good "racing in the rain" reading material from Grassroots Motorsports Magazine:
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/ar...ing-race-rain/)