June 12, 2022 – Race Recap

/ Riley Martin / Leave a comment

To start this off, I’ll start by saying that air temperatures were nearly 15 degrees higher than at the last race, and pretty much the entire field was 1-2 seconds slower. The entire week before the race it looked like it was going to rain, but we never had enough rain to affect the racetrack and give us and our AWD an advantage. Also, we did end up ordering drilled brake rotors to try, but they sent 2 left side rotors. So this weekend is still on the stock rotors and track pads. They still held up great.

Practice and Qualifying

Practice and qualifying both went smoothly! Dad and I did a practice session the wednesday before, and other than being a bit slower, the car felt good. No surprises with how it felt, and no surprise trips into the gravel! In qualifying I went Outlap – Hotlap – slow lap to get a gap again – hotlap – inlap. I qualified over a second slower than last weekend. Video Below. I qualified 18th.

Race 1

After the starting few laps in race 1, I spent the rest of the race attempting to get past Wayne good in the martini BMW. My car was much faster under braking and in the corners, but every time i got past him, he just powered back past me after the corner. This video is a good example of how we apparently need a little more power in the car! I tried literally EVERYTHING to get past this guy! Inside of corners, outside of corners, slow corners, fast corners, you name it! Watch the video for some frustration! My fastest lap was 1.5 seconds faster than his, and when we were battling, we were lapping 4-5 seconds slower than my qualifying lap. I had way more pace, I just couldn’t make the pass stick.

The upside to this long battle is that it is more incredibly valuable experience for me driving incredibly close to competitors. I was pretty much literally on this guys bumper nearly the entire race. This is a skill I was worried about before starting this season, and I get very comfortable with driving incredibly close over the course of this race. I also got a lot of practice attempting and making overtakes, even if they didn’t stick. So I was still happy with how the race went.

And as a bonus, the black BMW was penalized for not leaving enough space for me on the last lap at the finish line, where I had to put 2 wheels on the dirt. So he was demoted to last and I finished ahead of him after all!

Race 1 result: 16th – 7 Championship points

Race 2

Race 2 went great. I actually had a bad start, and after a missed shift at the end of lap 1, I was briefly last. But then I made 3 passes in the next two laps, including getting back past the black BMW that I couldn’t pass in race 1. I made the pass stick, then I got started to just put in qualifying lap after qualifying lap. Race 2 was 2 laps longer than race 1, but I was 20 seconds closer to the leader than in race 1. So that goes to show how much faster I was once I was lapping at my own pace in clear air. Lapping as fast as I could, even though I was on my own, proved to be well worth it. When a porsche spun out in front of me, I was close enough that I could pass him once he re entered the track. If i was even a couple seconds behind my actual position, he wouldve stayed in front of me. A couple other competitors retired with broken cars, and I was able to keep the porsche behind me (even though he qualified ahead of me!) and I ended up finishing 12th! That’s our best finish yet! Video Below. The race starts at about 4 minutes in as the start was aborted and a second pace lap was needed.

Race 2 Result: 12th – 11 championship points

For the Next Race:

Dad is working on a more substantial exhaust improvement – it should flow better, and weigh a fair bit less. So hopefully that gives a small boost in power so we aren’t just passed back after I make a good overtake in the corners or braking. we also won 2 free tires in a door prize! I don’t think they’ll get delivered before next race as they’re back ordered, but at some point we will get those on. Until then we will be using the spare set. Dad is also going to move the 15 pound fire extinguisher to the rear of the car – it’s currently in the passenger seat area. This has 2 benefits, it’ll move 15 pounds further back to aid our weight distribution, and it’ll free up the passenger space for a second seat! We don’t have enough to buy another race seat + harness + bracket right now, but it’s in the plan. Then we can take our sponsors as passengers!

Also: Hurrah! I’ve completed my first 6 races as a novice without incident or being called to the stewards over a driving infraction! I can now apply for my full racing license and get rid of my novice license!

Next race weekend is August 6 & 7, mark it in your calendars!

Full size Image gallery for download:

May 8, 2022 – Race Recap

/ Riley Martin / Leave a comment

Back again with only good news after our second race weekend (so our 3rd and 4th races) of the year.

Updates to the Car for this Race Weekend:
between last race weekend and this one we took the whole front end apart. We removed 61 pounds directly off the front axle – this was mostly in the form of the A/C compressor, heater core, all related piping and wiring, and all our windshield washer fluid tanks and headlight machine washers. We also replaced our rear windscreen with a 3mm thick lexan rear windscreen, with no defrost equipment. That was a further 15 pound weight reduction, all high center of gravity weight, so even though 15lbs isn’t much, it was removed from a good place. We also added camber plates on the front to increase negative camber – with another alignment, negative camber on the front wheels was increased from less than 1 degree to about 2.5. We also had to replace one tire as one was severely damaged after the first race weekend. It wasn’t normal wear, we aren’t sure what caused it. Probably ran over some debris. We also got better cameras in there to get better footage. We also got proper decals for our car numbers and driver and mechanic names, as well as a KSWLawyers.ca decal for the videos.

Dad had the front completely off in order to remove the final A/C and Heater core components.
I guess in the photo it just looks like a regular rear windshield. But no defrost equipment and made of lexan is a nice improvement.
It might be kind of tough to tell, but with the camber kits in and another alignment, we are at about 2.6 degrees of negative camber on the front, so the front wheel is angled much more than before. This helped with front grip and made the car treat it’s tires a lot better over the course of several laps.
Munday Media and Design got us some more official number decals so we didn’t have to use electrical tape this time.

Practice & Qualifying

We weren’t able to get the car on track to practice with the changes before the race weekend, so practice was the first time I drove it with the further weight reduction and setup changes. It was a very busy practice because I got put out right in the middle of the pack instead of the back. So I couldn’t really practice my corner drills at my own pace to figure it out. To add to that, 2 cars broke down during practice, so the session was cut short so the track workers could retrieve the cars parked along the circuit. The balance of the handling was changed drastically, but I didn’t get to really practice with it before qualifying.

This is under hard braking before T14 (the last section of the track around pit entry). Even with our stiff suspension the rear comes up a fair bit. We are making adjustments there.

For qualifying, my plan was again to go for 2 hot laps. I would just set a baseline time on the first one so I had something on the board, then go harder the second lap. For my first hotlap, I made 3-4 fairly significant mistakes, but still managed to do a 2:30.1, which was 1.3 seconds faster than my qualifying for the last race weekend. That was good enough for 13th! I significantly outqualified the other Audi TT there and there is still opportunity to do much better. So that felt good. I went harder the second hotlap, and I found the cars limit on the fastest corner on the track. I had a massive oversteer moment, caught the slide and brought it back under control, then it immediately oversteered again, I caught it again, but by that time I was on a trajectory right off the track. I went way into the dirt. After that I just did a cool down lap and brought it into the pits so dad could double check the car for damage. Luckily it was fine!

Here is the video of the outlap/hotlap/mistake + inlap:

Race 1
This is my last race where I start from the back because I was a novice! So I was due to start 19th. Two cars were late to the pre-grid and got penalized, so I was promoted to start 17th. Those cars qualified in the top 5, so I knew they would get past the back half of the grid without much issue. Both got past me in the first corner, they were much more experienced and nailed the start. The yellow car made an absolutely insane pass on the grass on the main straight – keep an eye out for that in the video. After that there was several other spins, where I made up a few places, then the spinners passed me back, then I made a couple actual overtakes under braking and around the outside. There was one grey BMW that was having rear brake issues and had absolutely no traction. He spun 3 times all together, the last time being right in front of me! That was on the last lap. I finished in P15 in the end.

Result: P15, 9 Championship points

Here is the video of race 1 in its entirety. For some reason I cant get the video here to start at the beginning. Slide it back to the start to watch the race start! Close call with the spinning BMW at 19:20.

Race 2
This time I got to start from P15 because my 3 races of starting from the back were over. I got overtaken by 1 car at the start to move back to P16. It was the same BMW that I got stuck behind last race weekend. in both races. This entire race I was in a pack of 5 cars all duking it out the entire race – all from P11 to P15 (one person ahead of us retired). For several laps I stuck around the back of this group of 5 and just watched and waited for an opportunity to strike. The opportunity finally came on lap 9 of 10, where I overtook 2 cars in 4 corners! One of those cars was the BMW I couldn’t pass last race weekend, so that was very satisfying. I also made it happen right around where I went off the track in qualifying, so I redeemed myself that way too. The second car I passed got me back on the last lap, and in the final few turns I almost passed the other audi TT for 13th, but couldn’t quite get it done. I finished within 0.2 seconds of him at the line! The red car that passed me back made an overtake on the grass at the line to make up one final position at the finish. Watch out for that too.

Result: P14, 10 Championship points

Here is the video for Race 2 in its entirety:
Highlight: 21:00 minutes (lap 9) where I make 2 passes in 4 corners! and the lap after that where I almost pass the other TT.

For Next Race:
– New lighter rims for the spare tire set. Currently our spare rims are 32 pounds heavier all together than our main set of rims.
– Lowering it a little, small adjustments to suspension to help improve balance further
– Better, drilled front brake rotors. I get a little bit of brake fade at the end of the races with this set up. It’s manageable and minor, but nothing needs repairing on the car so it’s a good time to make small upgrades. The current brakes have lots of life left so they will be spares.
– small weight losses and improvements under the car
– new spark plugs (we finally got a couple audi specific tools for the job, we couldn’t do it before now)

NEXT RACES: The weekend of June 11-12!

April 17, 2022 – Race Recap

/ Riley Martin / Leave a comment

Tech
We were scurrying the last couple weeks to get the major performance parts and reliability maintenance done, and it proved to be hard work well worth it when it came time to get the car through tech inspection. The car passed tech with flying colours, the only change we needed to make was that we forgot to also put our race number on the hood of the car, as just on the doors wasn’t enough.

The car going on the scale at tech inspection. With me in it, it weighed 3040 pounds. That was less than expected, considering we still have more weight to take out of it.
For our car number, we chose #40g, the same number my Grandpa Bill used when he raced his self-built car in the 1950s.

Practice
Having done some testing earlier in the week, we knew that the car performed decently enough, so I spent the practice session doing about 6 laps of specific corner drills. My best lap was a 2:34.4.

There was 25 entrants in the GT27 races last weekend, but only 20 made it to the start line for the race. So practice and qualifying were still spaced out enough to be able to focus on my own driving and practice without fretting too much about getting in anyone’s way or finding clear space.

Qualifying
I kept qualifying to just two hot laps where I aimed to put the corner drills together for my best time yet. The first lap I pushed a little too hard and overshot a couple braking points, and got a mid-2:32. On my second lap I didn’t make the same mistakes, and though it still wasn’t a perfect lap, it was much smoother and I was much happier. I finished qualifying with a 2:31.446, which was good enough for 15th, and it was .1 of a second faster than the other Audi TT in that series. Quite the feat considering how much more experience he has had with that car! For reference, that is over 10 seconds faster than our best time last October during testing (that was on stock tires/brakes/suspension/seats). So dad and I were very very happy.

I didn’t have enough time to get out of the car in between the sessions, so I had to check the qualifying results on my phone from the driver’s seat.

Race #1: 8 Laps
Because I am brand new to the series, I only have a novice race license and because of that, my first 3 races are starting from the very back with the other novices, regardless of how well my qualifying went. There was one other novice on the track though, and I out qualified him, so I was due to start 19th. Someone else was very late to pre-grid, and was penalized for that by starting at the back, so I started 18th.

Pre-grid: where the GT27 competitors line up in the pits so when we enter the track before the race, we are already in the correct order.

Perhaps in my only real mistake of the weekend, I was far too conservative during my race start and in turn 1. Any contact is a serious penalty, especially for novice licenses, so I wanted to avoid an incident at all costs. I don’t regret my decision there, because I came out the other end of Turn 1 without issue, but I got overtaken by both the cars behind me. That was a good lesson for me on how to manage the rolling starts.

After that, it was nothing but a great race. On lap 2 or 3, I made an all power overtake on the long straight between T1 and T2. The audi had more speed on the straights than another competitor in a mini cooper and I moved back up to P19. Over the next few laps, there was several incidents and retirements involving other drivers, and I moved up 3 positions to P16 because others spun off track or retired their car. One of the spinners was a much faster car and caught up and passed me back leaving my P17. I caught up to the pack in front of me after that, and fought hard with a BMW for P16, but I couldn’t quite make an overtake. I was faster under braking and cornering, but he had a bit more power and each straight, he would pull far enough ahead that I couldn’t make a move in the corners.

Finishing position: 17th, 6 championship points

This was taken as I was passing a car that spun off. This is the car (a porsche 944) that eventually caught back up and overtook me.

Race #2: 10 Laps

I started race 2 in dead last, which was now P19 as one car couldn’t make it to start the second race, and the other novice driver had completed their 3 races and was no longer a novice, so they started in their qualifying position in P17. I did a better job on the start this time, and stuck close to the pack. after one lap, I made my first ever overtake under braking into T1. I got a better exit on the last corner in lap 1, and moved to the inside, braked later, and left room on the outside for the mini cooper. It was a clean move and it stuck! Then I was P18. Over the course of the race, 3 other cars retired or crashed, moving me up to P15. After that, I was back in a battle with the BMW driver for P14. For several laps I pressured him in the corners and braking, and sometimes he made mistakes, but nothing bad enough that I could capitalize. A more experienced driver might’ve been able to get past, but for my first race weekend, I was happy enough to be conservative on overtake attempts and gain experience getting close racing with a competitor. I finished the race in that position.

Finishing position: P15, 8 Championship points

This is the BMW that I had such a long and great battle with. He is a respectful and smart driver.

Summary

First off, the car performed beautifully. Dad did a great job preparing it. The brakes were strong enough and held on for all 8 and 10 laps (though we do have to bleed them again), it didn’t overheat, the tires held on well enough to continue to fight with the competitors right until the very end, and there were no new reliability concerns after checking the car after the races. I never made any contact with anyone or had any incidents, and I made actual, on-track passes in each race. Considering those points, It’s hard to say how our first race weekend could have been any better!

Total Championship points: 15

Our next steps on the car:
We have camber plates in the mail as we need to add camber on the front wheels to aid cornering ability. Our camber is set for street use, and adding more is a better idea for the racetrack. We also still have to remove the AC and Heater core and piping etc from under the hood. Dad presumes this is about 70 pounds, and it will pretty much all come off of the front axle, meaning we will improve our weight distribution. Right now, the car is very front biased, so taking weight off the front will improve balance. We also have a lexan rear windshield to install, that will reduce another 20+ lbs from the middle-rear of the car. Dad is also going to investigate the intake and see if we can get the engine breathing a little more freely. So if all goes well, for the May 8 Races our car should corner better, be lighter and better balanced, and perhaps have a little boost in power.

Tired after a long day of racing.
Enjoying the benefits of our post-race sponsorship at the Firehall Brewery in Oliver 🙂

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