Click on Year to view all News for that year: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004
Great Shakedown Weekend at Pittrace	Monday, April 29, 2024
We finally got the car out to the track for the first time this year. We haven’t done much of anything to the car since we reassembled the head in the tech sched at the Runoffs at VIR. I did install the new FlagTronics system and the new Race Keeper camera. I have spent most of my time this Spring building and timing the new CORA engine with block 5 and head 1 with the new cams. Kevin and Carrie came to the shop on Wednesday to bring food for the weekend and to do setup on the car. While they were there, Kev & I did a CC job of the new engine to make sure our compression ratio was good, and then I reassembled the head to make sure there were no interference with the valves. While there Kevin started up the car and ran it up to temp to make sure it was OK for the upcoming race weekend. I also un-winterized the RV and filled the water tank, but I couldn’t get the water pump to pressure up even though it was running. I thought I would work on it at that track. On Friday I took the RV out for the first time of the year to fill the LPG tank and to top off the diesel. We have not put LPG in the RV since Nov of 2021 and even still it only was half empty (14 gallons). We left for the track on Friday about 2:00pm and arrived at the track about 5:30pm. We filled out the on-line waivers with our phones when we got to the guard shack. It was pretty nice weather so we got set up in spot #19, then took the car down to tech for our annual safety inspection. We had some great food that Carrie sent along for us. Our first session was qualifying at 8:30 Saturday morning. It was threatening rain so we didn’t know what tires to put on the car until it started raining pretty good. We put on the new rains and took her down to grid. Just then they announced a delay because of lighting. About a half hour later it mostly stopped but we didn’t bother changing the tires because the track was so wet. We went out and did only 3 laps so we didn’t overwork the new rains, but that was enough to put us in second behind Charley Campbell. Our race was at 11:30 am and it was dry and sunny but still cool. Kevin fell back a few spots due to a bad shift from 2nd into 3rd with the dog box. He quickly recovered and followed Charley for a lap before he passed him for the lead. After 7 laps he felt the car handling getting worse and the brakes went very soft and eventually were pretty much gone. He let Charley, Max Gee, Ed Hosni all pass him so he could slow down and figure out what was happening. At one point the car got loose and went off the track which allowed Strittmatter to get past him as well. Kevin managed to keep it from hitting anything but the splitter was pretty much destroyed. He followed those guys for the rest of the race. On the last lap, Hosni and Campbell contacted one another and went off. That left Strittmatter in the lead and Kevin in second. On the cool down lap Strittmatter’s car had a problem with the crank shaft which put him out – after he took the checker flag. At the scales we showed 12 pounds under weight because our splitter was dragging on the ground. They let us pass due to that issue. We put the car up on stands and inspected everything. We found no issues with the brakes, so we just rotated the front pads and then replaced all of the fluid. We bolted on a set of new Hoosier fronts so we could temper them in the second qualifying session at 330 that afternoon. We took the car out, without a splitter and tempered the tires. The brakes seemed fine and handling was fine. We only did 3 hot laps but one had a faster top speed that we saw early that day when the splitter was on. Saturday evening, we added lots of fuel, nearly 12 gallons to get the weight up to make up for no splitter. We put the Yamaha cart and everything else in the trailer. After that we passed on the cold pizza and beer provided by the Steel City’s region of SCCA, and had some more food sent by Carrie. It was quite warm that evening and Sunday was very nice. We used a tempered set of Hoosiers for the front and an old set for the rear and went out for the race where we started behind Gee and in front of Campbell. Hosni and Strittmatter did not start due to damage. Kevin passed Gee for the overall lead and held it for 7 laps. At that time Campbell was way back so Kevin backed off and let Gee pass him for the lead. The car ran very well with no brake issues and it handled well. The new Race Keeper filmed front and rear from inside the car. We never turned on the Flagtronics as Pittrace was not set up to run it just yet. Again we were surprised to see that we had hit three laps at 123 and one at 124 without the splitter, when our fastest with the splitter was 120mph.