My race weekend in July started ok and ended badly. I had 2 races. In my Saturday race I found out that I had reached the limit of my tires’ competitive life. They just weren’t gripping properly, and it didn’t help that at some point the weekend before I had driven through some gravel and not cleaned them up. Basically the gravel got stuck in the tires and caused a lot of vibration, grinding noises and lousy grip.
So I finished a distant 3rd.
In my Sunday race I switched to my backup tires, some Toyo RA-1s. They weren’t as grippy, but at least it didn’t feel like the car was going to fall apart. However, at the start of the race I got taken off the track by a competitor and had to try to work my way back up the pack. I made it back up to 4th.
Then my wheel fell off.
Basically the rear passenger side hub had built up some fatigue cracks, and it let go very suddenly in the middle of a corner. I was extremely lucky to not end up in the wall, but the car ended up with some pretty bad damage during the spin.
Once again, my dad showed his awesomeness. He got the body damage straightened out, replaced the broken hub (and the one on the other side, just to be sure), got the car aligned and made sure it was ready to go. I bought another set of tires to replace the ones that were done.
For the September race weekend, we were hosting the International Conference of Sports Car Clubs from the US, so I raced in the ITS class instead of my usual IP3. Same car prep, but I’m allowed to run it about 100 lbs lighter. So, out with the ballast.
I ended up winning both of my races. In the first race I was running second to my dad’s neighbor Amir in another GS-R, but he lost compression and had to pull out. Turns out he broke a connecting rod :-(.
The second race was an easy win.
The coolest part of the weekend was probably qualifying for the first race. We were worried that the car might have alignment issues from when it got bent up after the wheel fell off. Turns out there were no problems at all.
In qualifying I was able to turn a 1:17.1 lap. This is fantastically quick for me, almost a second quicker than I had ever gone before. And it’s almost a second quicker than the official lap record for ITS. Unfortunately I don’t get the record because the lap was done in qualifying and not in a race, but it helped me to realize just how much potential my car has.
The October race weekend was the last of the year, and was absolutely insane. A lot of craziness on the track, but I managed to pick up another 1st and a 2nd.
The video shows it a lot better than I can explain:
The crazy October race weekend brought the end of the season. How did things go overall?
Because I got 0 points in 3 races due to my fire and hub failure, I finished 4th in the club championship and 2nd in the IP3 class championship. While this is a worse result than last year on paper, there were a lot of things to be happy about this year.
Even though I finished 4th and 2nd for the season, I was close enough to the winners that if I had finished either of the races where my car broke on me, I would have won both championships.
Out of 12 races that I started this year, I won 7.
Although it’s not an official record, I ran a 1:17.1 lap in qualifying for ITS, almost a full second faster than the official record. And in the IP3 class my best lap during qualifying was a 1:18.06, which is very close to the lap record of 1:18.05.
So overall, I had tons of fun and I was fast. For next year I’m not making any big changes. Just a few tweaks here and there to find some extra speed.