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Old 01-31-2019, 09:55 PM   #18
gills
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Sunday's 9 Hour Race

In the back of our minds we were all thinking about Sunday as the radar and forecasts were showing a drier and warmer, more humid day. I set the car back up with dry front camber settings, rechecked toe and reverted back to typical dry tire pressures and damping settings Saturday night. We obviously also had to switch back to our set of Falken RT615K tires due to the RS4 flat. We know them well...


Beginning of the day, the track started off wet from the previous day's rain. Took about an hour to get within 4-5 seconds of the car's/track's typical dry pace. The car may be terrible in the rain, but it can certainly haul ass in the dry.


Green Flag (need to build out some fences/fenders for the front tires, eh?):

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Midway through the day it was apparent that we were a favorite to win class 4. We focused on being strategic with pitstops, i.e.-pitting during full course yellows/safety car laps. So much so, that we gambled on bringing in our 3rd driver about 15 minutes earlier than normal to take advantage of a fairly lengthy full course yellow. Based on what we knew of fuel consumption of the car at the time, it seemed like a winning decision. That certainly came to bite us in the ass later....



Dry weather, WOOHOO!:
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BUT, not without something else coming to bite us in the ass first. During the 3rd pitstop, my brother (who was getting in the car to drive) forgot to lower his visor once over the pit wall. All visors must be down and no work can be done on the car during fueling. The stewards saw the violation and handed us a drive through penalty. Even with that drive through penalty, we were still 1st in class.



We thought that perhaps the organizers had something against us since we were handing many BMW's their asses. Then we checked the vid.....caught red handed:





So as much as that sucked, one really cool thing about AER is that they send out team specific and mass text messages throughout the weekend giving you information about violations, pit stop times, number of pit stops, the current driver in the car, general race updates, other teams needing parts, etc. Information about the race is shared instantly in real time and direct. It's very efficient. They are definitely ahead of the game in this regard.



Fast forward to my stint, which started at 2:54pm. Race was ending at 6pm with one required pit stop remaining to do in that time span. With the knowledge that we can squeeze out 1.5 hours per tank, it was cutting it close on paper. I usually do a double stint to finish the day, although it typically ends up being more like ~1.75 stints most races. But, we were being more aggressive with the earlier pit stops this time around.


We obviously wanted to max out my first stint, so fast forward about 1:10 and I'm communicating with pit about when to come in. One curveball that we weren't ready for was that I was starting to get heat exhaustion in the car. I regrettably didn't drink as much water/liquid as I usually do before getting in the car this time around in an effort to not have to piss like a race horse during my stint like I always do. Probably wasn't a good decision. I was also having an issue accessing the camelback during my stint so I also didn't drink enough in the car also.


(Video of me struggling to find camelback)


We've survived all this time without a rain setup and we've also survived without a Coolsuit setup. But, this time, there was no way I was going to be able to do a double stint without one. There wasn't a single yellow flag during my stint and I was in it to win it almost the whole time. Hot and humid southern Jersey that started getting to me this day. I let the team know that someone else needs to get suited up to go in for me.


(I managed not to put 4-off on the previous day's ice rink of a track. But, the heat got to me, and of course, it was while getting pointed by a team that we are very friendly with:

Heat Exhaustion 4-off video clip)


The Volvo team that we always pit next to at New Jersey and who pointed me by in the video:






Inevitably it turned into a scramble in the pits. The driver I wanted to go in wasn't suited up yet as we all thought I had another 15 minutes of fuel in the car and I was ok with going that much more time. As I was insisting on them to all be ready ASAP because I was overheating, I got fuel cut a little before pit in. I immediately made the decision to pit so I didn't run out of fuel on track, which happened to me on Friday practice very shortly after hitting fuel cut. I informed the pit. They were barely ready. I was out on track for a total of 1:24. Not a single full course yellow contributed to this shortened stint. We were in 3rd overall, 1st in class at this point by a comfortable margin.


During the scramble, the driver going in wasn't able to get his ear buds for communications in on time. He informed me of the situation and we were relegated to using pit boards to communicate with him. He went out and we still had 1st in class, dropped down to 4th overall. We had about just under a lap lead over P2 still after this. Because of my surprise early pit stop, it meant we had to bring the last driver in for an extra pit stop for a splash of fuel. He went out at 4:22, which left 1:38 left on a tank of fuel...not going to happen.



What took place from that moment on was riddled with indecision. We had the win in the bag, but it was our race to lose. It should've been simple, but only in hindsight is it ever. The second place car behind us was a 'detuned' E36 S54 swap (#955 Just For Fun Racing) with basically no aero like our car. These guys have been a juggernaut with winning Class 4 for consecutive races. Where we screwed up was not letting our driver know to push as hard as he can to build a larger gap. He was in a more conservative mode to try and stretch the fuel out. That's all he wanted to know when he was out there, whether to push or conserve. We failed at parlaying that information to him.


The next failure was when we pulled him in for the "splash" of fuel. We ended up putting in about 1.5 jugs of fuel where we could've easily have gotten away with 1 jug. Filling that extra 1/2 of jug of fuel eats up about a good 15-20 seconds. Far too long in the instance we were in. While he was going down to pit exit, #955 passed us. We were released back on track about 16 seconds adrift at 5:27.






At that point it was no holds barred. Our driver managed to cut the gap to 7 seconds. He was steadily gaining on #955 and would've passed them...until the unthinkable with about 15 minutes left in the race....RAIN. The heavens opened up with a sporadic downpour that basically vaporized our chance of winning. #955 was already setup with softer springs and smaller tire for the rain from Saturday. There was no chance in catching them at that point. Unfortunately I have no good pictures of that moment when it started down pouring.


#955 took P1.





Core4 Motorsports took P2:





Team Fastest Lap: 1:32.8
Overall Race Fastest Lap: 1:28.7 (Nelson Canache, Mustang BOSS 302R)


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Last edited by gills; 02-01-2019 at 08:27 AM..
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