06/15/2025
Finally getting time to sort out stuff from last weekend. Slow n steady wins the race? Sure, but first you gotta build a fast reliable car. June 6-8 The Team heads out for a 16hr Endurance race at Rocky Mountain Motorsport in Carstairs AB
Friday- arrive at track. The event was an open practice/track day so we got some laps in to give our guest drivers a feel for the car and to learn the track in real life instead of just relying on sim laps. The car feels good. We get a tech warning for being too loud . "Fixed" it with a turn-down tail pipe to hopefully change the direction of sound. No one from the officials followed up so we thought it worked....
Saturday-
9am - Green flag drops. There was no qualifiying so we just started P2 out of 16 cars. Within the first 30min. people notice "smoke" detected from the back of the car. Kept running and hoped it would go away after a few laps in- it didn't. We get called into pits for inspection. Nothing serious. It was only water leaking from our cool-shirt system vent under high cornering loads. We overfilled the cool suit box a bit. the cold water was simply steam as it fell through the holes and onto our exhaust. Rejoined the race in P10
1hr - Race officials cited us for being too loud. Still 103db and the race limit was 96db. Noise is measured at this track at multiple places and both sides of the track. They just report your max reading. Wind and berms also affect readings. Back into the pit to change the exhaust tip to the one with baffles. This would limit our power band significantly. 10min lost Rejoined in P16- dead last. Luckily we had the pace to slowly claw our way back to P7 over the next several hours.
5Hrs - Hovering at P7 for most of the day. Scheduled pit stops for driver changes and refuel went smoothly. stop. We were running 2hr stints between refuel/driver change. We lose our in-car video livestream as the GoPro apparently overheats.
6Hr - P6 competition comes in with clutch issues. They lose laps and we assume P6
7Hr - another team retires with gearbox issues.
We notice our newly installed shifter is getting loose. Checked and tighten during scheduled pit. lose a couple minutes but no positions lost.
8hr - Another competitor in our class retires with terminal gearbox issues. Overall, other teams made mistakes with fuel calculations and mechanical issues so we continue to advance despite being 20 laps behind overall leader. At one point we were P3 overall but settled back to P5 after 9hr
Parked the cars overnight. No mechanical/service works allowed until race resumes Sunday
Sunday 10hrs in..another competitor retires- Our friends at BOC blow a motor (full course yellow).
12hr we are in P3 overall and P2 in class. Driver change and refuel and a quick fix to our rearview mirror that was coming loose.
Our shifter continues to plague us...we are essentially stuck in 4th gear..... We lose laps during our second to last pit stop trying to fix the car in the hot pits. Back down to P6.
13Hr another team retires (head gasket) and we move up plus we're running strong laps reeling in our direct competition by 8sec/lap. Also our competition in car #23 come in only for driver change. Gambling that they can run 3hr with the fuel they have...all this time we are stuck in 4th gear.
15.5hr they run out of gas and have to be towed in. We assume P3 in class and P4 overall. We're making 10sec/lap on P3 overall and we tell our last driver to "push" as we figure we can pass them by the end.....Checker drops and we finish P3 in Class....if we only had 2 more laps we would've had 2 trophies. But that always seems to be the story when racing. One can only wonder if our early Saturday issues had been solved, where would we have neded up. But despite all we went through, this felt like a win. We're proud of the team and our efforts to keep fighting til the end. A lot can happen in 16hrs.
The stats: 16hr x burn rate of 9gal/hr = 144gal of fuel consumed. 449 laps x 3.5km/lap = 1571.5km driven. 1571.5 รท 15.75hr (flag to flag) = 99.78kmh average speed including pit stops and yellow flags. Only two full course yellow incidents over the weekend.
Enjoy the pics courtesy of Yarko Petriw, Ron Chan, & Thomas Cheng Photography
