We went into the month of August feeling excited for two reasons. First, our K24 swap was finally complete on the Lotus and after a solid shakedown at Laguna Seca in late July by Graham and Tom -- it was finally ready for wheel-to-wheel action. Second, we would have 2 race weekends take place relatively close to each other, August 1st and 2nd at Thunderhill and then August 22nd and 23rd at Sonoma.
Weekend One: Friday July 31st Test with Track Masters
This was the perfect opportunity to do some more testing with the newly built car. We showed up to Thunderhill Raceway on that Friday, along with many other NASA racers so that I could get familiar with the new set up (different brakes, tires, and drivetrain). There was a lot to take in for a first outing but right away, I noticed how much more low end and mid range power the new motor had. The sound of the Honda engine with the short ratio gearbox made it much more exciting to drive. It was a little over 100 degrees and all the engine temps were stable, which we were happy to see.
Saturday at Thunderhill
This would be my first ST4 race with the Lotus and 4th NASA race in total. My goal was to complete my provisional license, which meant that the priority was to finish the race and keep clean of any contact.
Before qualifying on Saturday, we had to take the car to MCE for a compliance dyno. We were surprised to see that it made 15 more horsepower than it did during tuning. Luckily, we were able to make adjustments to the drive-by-wire map to bring it back down to an average of 178hp.
I qualified 13th out of a field of 17 cars and finished P9, which isn’t too terrible considering I was one of the two rookies racing this weekend in ST4.
Tom qualified in 12th and finished 10th. Ride along with him here:
Sunday at Thunderhill
On Sunday, I struggled with some electrical gremlins (caused by what I would later discover as a frayed drive belt making contact with the crank position sensor wires and damaging them). I decided to not race because I didn’t want to risk further damage to the car.
Tom did much better, qualifying 8th for the race and setting a new ST4 PB time of 1:57.4. Ride along with him for that lap here:
There was a ton of drama during the race, but in the end Tom grabbed a Top 5 finish as part of the official results. See that action here:
We left Thunderhill knowing what we would need to improve on the Lotus, and also on the E36 (oil temps were rather high but good to see the new CSF radiator was working well to manage ECT).
Weekend Two: Friday test at Sonoma
The test day schedule was four one-hour sessions, so the goal was to get as much driving and tweaking done to the car as possible. Unfortunately, in the first session, I went a little too wide before turn 2 and ran over a small ditch right before the outside berm. Luckily, the only damage was only one bent wheel and we had spare Enkei PF01s in the trailer.
Sonoma has some bumpy braking zones, which the ABS was not too happy about. There were some sections on the track where the car would go into “ice mode”. We couldn’t do much about this aside from disabling the ABS completely, so we decided to manage it and be a little more cautious in those sections of the track.
We made some adjustments to the JRZ RS PRO 3 dampers because we increased the spring rates since the last race. We also made some alignment changes in the paddock, thanks to the Wunder Aligner. Eventually, we got the car pretty well dialed-in.
Meanwhile, Tom was also running into the same ABS issues in T11, but doing his best to manage too. He was actually on track to hit a new PB time of 1:47.30 when he accidentally ran low on fuel and had to coast the rest of the lap back into the pits. Tom had been focusing on a few areas where he knew there was room for improvement (T1-T2, T3-T4, and T8-T9). He ended the day happy with his driving, and excited for the race weekend ahead.
Saturday TT4 & ST4 Race
Since this was only my third time driving Sonoma and first time in the Lotus, I decided to let my teammate, Graham Downey race ST4 (super touring) while I drove in TT4 (time trials). I wanted to prioritize the ST4 schedule, so I only went out in one of the four TT sessions. Here’s my best lap, which ended up being the fastest TT4 time of the day.
Graham qualified P1 in class with a 1:46.55. The top 3 were within a few tenths of a second from each other, so we knew it was going to be a good race! We only had one set of tires for practice, qualifying, TT and the race, so we had to make them last. Check out his best qualifying lap with a nice drift around turn 2.
Graham led the first half of the race, but as the old Toyo RRs started to fall off, he just couldn’t keep the lead. He did an amazing job nonetheless and it made for some exciting in-car video. Watch him and Andy Kitowski battle for first place.
After the race, the race director decided to compliance check the top 3 finishers. After everything was said and done, 3rd place was over by +14 average wheel horsepower, 2nd place was over by +12, and our Lotus was over by +3. This was likely due to dyno tolerances and weather, but nonetheless all 3 cars were DQ’d for being over on power. Rules are rules!
Unfortunately, Tom had a much rougher day. He qualified P9 and 3 laps into the race, had a massive brake failure in T11; resulting in a pretty epic crash. At the very least, we’ll need to replace the headlight housing, the corner light, the bumper, fender, splitter and brackets, LCA, and tie rod. Doh.
While damage is always a bummer, we are just glad that Tom is okay and optimistic about getting the car back to 100% soon. Tom was really happy that he recovered his passenger side mirror, just look at that smile.
Sunday ST3 Race and TT in the GT3
Yes, ST3. Since the top 3 ST4 finishers were DQ’d on Saturday, they decided to race in ST3 to avoid from getting DQ’d again. We decided to borrow some used Hankook Z214s from the Supertech S2000 (for the rear) and the Wunder Aligner Civic (for the front).
In the meantime, Tom decided to drive his street car (a 991 GT3) in Time Trials because he was unable to race the E36.
Ride along with Graham for an action-packed race where he ended up winning not only ST3 class, but overall in Group C.
Since the race was at 5pm on Sunday, the team was pretty tired and loaded up as quickly as possible in order to get back to the shop. We have our work cut out for us to repair the E36 before our final race weekend of the year (since the 25 Hours of Thunderhill has been officially canceled).
We’ll be going to Buttonwillow Raceway for the season finale Western Endurance Racing Championships (WERC) 3 hour enduro on Friday, October 9th; followed by two days of Super Touring sprint racing on Saturday, October 10th and Sunday, October 11th.
