Sept 18 Race 1

Sorry that I don’t have a full write-up for each session for this race weekend, I forgot to get to it right away and the camera didn’t work in the heat for all sessions except the first race, which was WILD!

It was also a very hot weekend and during practice we also got tire pressures wrong and we were worried we would have the same issues as the August weekend where we performed poorly. But on my Dad’s advice we lowered the pressures and qualifying went 3 seconds faster than our best time in practice. We were happy to find that improvement.

The first 3 laps of the race were crazy. I was stuck in the middle of 3 wide going into turn 2 on both lap 1 and lap 2. This is a product of us being a bit down on power (updates on that are further down this page).

On lap 1, a car to my left collided with me. I left him enough space and he outbraked himself and he ran his front right tire into my drivers door. There was no real damage and both of us continued fine. It was the black BMW – he passed me after that, and later in the lap we had a great fight. He was kind of a dirty racer that day, and he tried to squeeze me on the left hand kink at Turn 13 on lap 1 – you will see in the video, he left me no space on the inside. I was able to barely avoid contact. I passed him on the outside of turn 16 on lap 1 and never let him get me back.

After the first few laps, things calmed down a bit. I finished a solid 14th in Race 1.

Heres the video!

Post Race

After the last two races, awards were given out, and I won Rookie of the Year! I also won a set of 4 free tires for the race car.

Here is a photo showing the car’s new scar from the race 1 lap 1 contact:

Small dents and tire marks. I will have to replace that yellow vinyl in the spring and give the KSW Lawyers logo a good scrub!

2022 GT27 SEASON RESULTS

I ended up in 16th place out of 30 entrants! Dad and I are both very proud of that. The chart below really shows the value of consistent finishes and car reliability. We didn’t score a ton of points each race, but so many people had car breakdowns, crashes, or didn’t have the car prepared for each race, so we gained a ton of ground that way!

Preparation for next season

We are targeting top 10 finishes next season! We believe this is possible because we will be adding power to the car for next season:

Dad improved the air intake to go through the headlight. The car breathes much better this way and on October 30th, we tested it out with only this change, and we went 3 seconds faster than I ever have before! I was going 5-6 kph faster on every single straight, even the shorter ones. That’s according to our race telemetry, not just me looking at the speedo. It felt great. Hopefully this means I don’t get swallowed whole on the straight stretches like I did last season.

Because we didn’t have crash repairs or breakdowns to eat at our race budget, we could afford some new exhaust headers for our car! Headers for our VR6 engine are only made by one company in Italy, and are expensive, so we waited a while to do this. Dad currently has the car taken apart to install these. It’s a big job! This should add power and make the car sound even better.

We have a total of 8 tires ready to go for next season: 6 front tires @ 255 wide, and 2 rear tires @ 225 wide. We are changing to a setup that is much wider in the fron than rear. This will help us greatly reduce understeer for next season.

Race Dates for Next Season!

Mark your calendars!

April 22/23
May 20/21
June 17/18
August 19/20
Sept 16/17