THE YEAR 2023 IN REVIEW

It’s been well over a year since I’ve written a post so a lot of ground to cover. Last year’s National Championship race at VIR ended in disappointment when we qualified second and finished fourth after an opening lap lazy spin at Oak Tree on a wet track. The whole field started on sticker slicks and just as we rolled off grid a brief rain shower started at the far end of the track. Given the wet grass and incline, I could not get the car back up the hill and had to wait for a tow truck putting us a lap down. Once we got pulled up the hill and going again, we came into the pits and put rains on. We tore through the field and got back on the lead lap and needed a double yellow to catch back up. Unfortunately, that never came and so we ended fourth after a great make-up drive and distancing ourselves from everyone else. Even the announcers thought we were leading and took a while to realize we were a lap down from the off-track excursion.

So at the start of 2023, I had decided to pass on going back to VIR for the Runoffs. We’d already been back there several times including the Runoffs in 2019 and 2022. It had rained most of the times we’d ever visited and so it just seemed to me like it wasn’t worth the effort and expense this year.

Then slowly the year started to morph into something special when we went to the COTA Super Tour event and had a great weekend racing Chip Romer. We ran strong and recorded a first and second in the two races. Next up Buttonwillow, where we swept both weekend races against Chip...then again at Thunderhill…followed by Portland. This winning streak gave us the national points lead, the Western Conference title, and a shot again at the elusive Super Sweep, the most coveted title of them all for the season. With a Super Sweep potential win on the line, I relented and told Jason let’s do the Runoffs and see if we can finish this off.

Then disaster struck at the June Sprints at Road America when a teammates FE2 went off track at the Kink and ended up blocking the track. For whatever reason, the stewards did not throw a double yellow quickly and when Chip Romer and I came around with the whole field in close pursuit, I ended up with nowhere to go and plowed straight into the parked car driven by Tom Burt. We were both very lucky that neither of us was seriously hurt but both cars suffered major damage. Check out the highlight video below that includes the crash impact.

Now we had another serious decision to make—do we try and fix the car or just park the wounded Elana for the season. As Jason examined the remains and started reaching out to vendors, it looked like there was a chance everything could come together in time to make the Runoffs which were less than three months away. I pondered it for about a week and decided to give it a go and turned Jason loose to do his magic. It took two months for all the parts to show up and then Chris Garcia, Jason’s right hand man, put the car together along with Damian Clinton over a long grueling few days so we could put the car on track at Sonoma on September 5th as a brief test before loading for the Runoffs. Everything seemed to work well and we celebrated Elana’s return to action.

We arrived at VIR full of confidence that all was going to be good with car. In fact, the car ran flawlessly from a mechanical standpoint the whole time we were there. But pace wise, we struggled even though we led the very first test session. After eight on track sessions including three qualifying runs, we had slipped back to a 5th place starting position for the race. The problem was we were fighting a porpoising issue in the car which caused my head to bob up and down and made the car hard to drive. We tried everything in our bag of tricks to fix this and make the car faster. It was a mystery that a set-up we’d run successfully for the better part of two years just wouldn’t work now.

Race start in 5th place.

Entering turn 4 already up to 2nd place in first lap action.

So for us to win the Runoffs, we’d need a little magic to happen. A great start would surely help the cause and I concentrated on getting the brakes and tires as hot as possible on the pace lap so if the opportunity was there for the taking, I’d be ready to pounce on it. Low and behold, the inside lane opened up and I was able to brake late and move from 5th to 2nd by the very first corner. At the end of the back straight, I was firmly in the draft of the leader and poised to try and pass him or at least move alongside him on the outside into turn 14.

Unfortunately, he moved over to squeeze me off the track and I couldn’t back out fast enough and we touched and he spun. I continued on in the lead and had multiple great battles with Lee Alexander and then Chip Romer. Lee broke and parked his car and two laps from the end, Romer hit a curb hard and broke his suspension and retired too. Todd Vanacore, the leader who I’d previously had contact with on lap 1, rallied back after a double yellow condition let him catch the back of the field, and finished 2nd behind me about 9 seconds behind at the checkered flag.

Exiting the famous Oak Tree corner with the lead firmly in hand.

I was elated with our win and especially for being able to celebrate with the whole Bulldog team on pit lane and at the podium ceremony. With all that we’d been through this year, the win was extra sweet and completed our coveted goal of winning the Super Sweep…we thought.

The Chief Stewards then starting reviewing videos of the contact from the live race footage and in-car cameras and decided it was my fault and penalized me one position dropping me to 2nd and promoting Todd Vanacore to 1st, the fellow involved in the incident. I filed a detailed appeal with a lot of help from Tom Burt pleading my case and we thought we had a pretty good shot at getting the decision overturned but at the end of the day, it stood, and we remained in 2nd place. Our solace is that we still won the national points title and, at least for a few hours, accomplished the Super Sweep for the second time and our third Runoffs win. You can watch a replay of the complete live video coverage below.

Celebrating with Jason on pit lane.

Pure Joy.

The best part of all…celebrating with Bulldog Motorsports; Jason, Chris, and Damian.

June Sprints Win Highlight of P1 Super Tour Season So Far

The SCCA Super Tour season is now over except for the Runoffs, and in our quest for the national points title in SCCA’s Prototype 1 class we’ve had some great wins but also some big disappointments. On the plus side, we’ve scored three wins in Super Tour events and none bigger than winning the June Sprints at Road America on Father’s Day, June 19. More on the Sprints win below. Also, we secured the Western Conference Championship in dominating fashion. This sets us up for a shot at the Triple Crown if we win the Runoffs later this year. The Triple Crown is awarded by the Chicago Region SCCA for winning the June Sprints, a conference championship, and the Runoffs in the same year. If we can accomplish this, it would take some of the sting out of falling short in our quest for the national points title.

As it stands right now, we sit second in the national points title chase to Chip Romer, and even if we win the Runoffs and collect 25 points for first place, it will be almost impossible to overcome the 20 point deficit to Chip unless he has a very poor showing at the Runoffs and scores less than 4 points or has a “did not finish” (DNF) in that event. We had two DNF Super Tour races ourselves and scored no points and that cost us as we had to settle then for two 4th place finishes at the VIR spring races as part of our points total. So we still have a very slim mathematical chance at the national points title. We have shown we can be very fast and win if we can keep Elana running to the end of the race. Her next and final outing this year will be at the Runoffs at VIR in late September/early October. The VIR spring races had minimal green flag racing as multiple crashes by others ruined the event and we never got the chance to race hard as we only had a couple of laps at speed and the rest were behind the pace car.

This year was the 67th running of the June Sprints at Road America. The Sprints was the first event held at Road America when it opened in 1956 and it has been held continuously ever since. It has special meaning for me, as I’m the same age as the track, 67 years old. We won the Saturday race back in 2018 and have had a total of 4 podiums since 2017 but have never won the feature race on Sunday. This weekend started out again with many car issues such as random part failures that caused us to lose a lot of track time. We were in the 2nd starting position after Q1 but dropped to 4th after Q2 when a suspension clevis broke early in the session. In race 1 on Saturday, we failed to take the green flag to start the race as an electrical issue showed up on the pace lap. We were starting to think we just can’t catch a break here.

We started Sunday’s feature race in 4th and quickly moved to 3rd at turn 5 with a bold pass on Todd Slusher under braking. Lee Alexander, last year’s Runoffs winner, was next up. I got a run on him on the back straight and then dove inside under braking into Canada corner where I made the pass but couldn’t make it stick as he powered back around me on the outside. The next time around, I repeated the same move and was able to make it work this time so now I was in 2nd. I gapped Lee and Todd and was staying reasonably in touch with the leader, Chip Romer. Eventually Chip stretched the lead out to about 10 seconds and I was ready to settle for 2nd place when on the last lap, Chip had a brake rotor failure that caused him to go off track, get a flat tire, and then limp the car home for the runner up spot. With all the issues we had, it felt really good to get the win and make up for the disappointment of missing the first race as well as past years’ heartbreaks.

My teammate, Tim Day Jr., swept both races in his Prototype 2 car for the fourth year in a row and on the checkered flag cool down lap we were able to go around the track side-by-side and make a memorable video opportunity, and the big crowd loved it. Click here to see the video.

Debut Weekend of Oreca 03

A few weekends ago, I ran my very first race event in the new Oreca 03 LMP2 car that was recently acquired. It was at Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA and put on by Masters Historic Racing. We competed in the Masters Endurance Legends portion of the event which consisted of two 30 minute practice sessions, followed by a 30 minute qualifying session, and then two 40 minute races. As I got more comfortable and familiar with the car, the speeds picked up and the lap times went down and I qualified on pole just slightly faster than Steve Romak in a Pescarolo Morgan LMP2 car.

I won both races leading flag to flag but had Steve on my tail the whole time. In the first race my lead was generally less than one second while in the second race it was a little more comfortable at around 2-4 seconds. I don’t recall ever having that much pressure from the driver behind me over one race, and for sure never over the course of two races. It was great fun and exhausting at the same time. I can only imagine running the car for 24 hours at LeMans where it did compete back in 2011/2012. The acceleration capabilities of the car are far superior to anything else I’ve run in the past. The livery on the car matches the way it ran at LeMans. I’m definitely looking forward to more races in this car.

Season Gets Underway

We’ve completed three race weekends so far and racked up 4 wins running both Elana and Norma. On the downside we’ve also had two DNFs, one in each car. The loss of points with the DNF for Elana hurts but is not insurmountable in our quest for the Super Tour national points title. For sure, we don’t want any more of them. That one was caused by hard racing at Buttonwillow that resulted in contact which damaged Elana and caused us to spin off track. Check out the video here. The Bulldog crew worked into the night to get her repaired and the next day I rewarded the team by jumping from 4th on the grid to 1st by the first corner and leading the rest of the way. Check out the race start here.

Last year after numerous electrical gremlins caused us several DNFs and missed race starts in Norma, we made the decision to totally redo the electrical system. This past weekend we got a chance to try it out in a San Francisco SCCA regional race at Sonoma Raceway where we won our last national championship back in 2018. The test day before the race weekend was fully booked up and we were wait listed but never got the call to come out. So, we had to run immediately in the 1st qualifying session and then the 1st race and, unfortunately, we had a few issues to sort out since Norma hadn’t been run in almost one year. Once everything was sorted out though, Norma ran flawlessly and in race 2 we broke the all-time track record on two successive laps. Check the video out here.

We have four race weekends coming up over the next five and a half weeks now so stay tuned for further updates.

Victory Spoils after Super Tour Win at Buttonwillow

One Step Short of the Mountain Top

The 2021 SCCA National Championship Runoffs at Indy are over and we came up just short of our goal of winning our third title. But if you consider the fact that this was just our third race weekend with the new body work on the car and a whole host of other changes since we got the car and first ran it at the June Sprints in the summer of 2020, then 2nd place is a pretty good outcome. We were consistently fast in official practices and the three qualifying runs leading up to the race, always in the top three and several times at the top of the time sheets. The only issues we fought all week were a failed starter motor and figuring out how to get rid of an aero porpoising effect at high speed. With both of those problems solved, we worked with new driver coaches Dan Clarke and Thomas Merrill in gaining lap time through various corner sequences. Ultimately, we qualified in 2nd position less than a tenth of a second behind the pole sitter, Lee Alexander, after going into the last day of qualifying sitting on provisional pole. We also ran tire warmers for the first time at the Runoffs since one of our main competitors, Chip Romer, runs them and they definitely provide an early advantage in having the tires up to temp early on. I’ve actually petitioned SCCA’s Club Racing Board to try and get tire warmers banned starting next year as they are really an over the top effort for our racing series and are not allowed in almost all other forms of racing except for those at the very top of the racing pyramid in Formula One. We felt we needed to do it this year so as not to be disadvantaged against one of our main rivals.

We got the race start we wanted and passed Lee Alexander by out braking him into the first corner and taking the lead. However, at the start of lap 3, Lee roared past me on the front straight and held off my late braking effort into turn 1 and then proceeded to slowly pull away. We were able to stabilize the gap and eventually start cutting into his lead slightly, but soon his lap times stayed consistently fast and ours starting falling off. Fortunately, we had built a good enough gap to 3rd place runner, Chip Romer, that we hung on for second at the waving checkered flag. Unlike many of the Runoffs races in other classes, our race stayed green for the full 19 lap distance, so we got a real full length race that made it physically challenging with the hot humid conditions.

Jason Hohmann (our crew chief, head mechanic, and owner of Bulldog Motorsports) and Chris Garcia, his lead mechanic, built and maintained Elana in impeccable condition and, fortunately, I had no mishaps driving her except one instance where we got run into from behind, but it thankfully caused only very minor damage that was easily repaired. We are already thinking about next year’s Runoffs that return to Virginia International Raceway and hope to achieve our goal of making that final step again.

I had lots of family support this year at the race as my wife, Sandy, and my nephews, Rich Brusselback and Tyler Reynolds, and their families were in attendance and a good time was had by all.

Elana Makes Her Impressive Debut

In my last post, I thought we’d have the totally rebuilt Elan DP02 on track in May, but alas, the ubiquitous Covid delays made it otherwise. But the delays have resulted in a stunning new car that has now been named Elana as it seemed an appropriate sister name to Norma. Jason and Chris at Bulldog Motorsport have created another great car for me to race. The little things that Jason has come up with to give me the “unfair advantage” are remarkable. He dreams about this stuff. Also kudos go to Mike Devins, owner of Hurley Racing Products, who made the new body kit from the design studio of Zebulon Motorsport Consulting. HRP’s carbon fiber work is first rate.

Jason and Chris built this car up again from parts after disassembling it in its entirety after my big wreck last year. The ability to fabricate parts, fix problem areas, address chassis shortcomings, redesign certain components, etc. and make it all come together flawlessly is what makes Bulldog Motorsport one of the very best prep shops in the country. After an abbreviated first test day and then one solid test day at Buttonwillow, we decided to race it at Laguna Seca this past weekend.

To up the ante, one of my main competitors, Chip Romer, in an identical car with years of experience driving the Elan DP02 chassis, was entered as well. Several other DP02s were also entered as it’s become the dominant chassis in P1 now.

After making some minor chassis adjustments during Friday’s test day, we were able to put the car on pole in Q1 with a time of 1:21.770, or only about half a second behind my all-time best lap in Norma. Chip started next to me and passed me around the outside of turn 2, and then later in lap 1, I made a rare mistake and caught too much of the apex curb in turn 9 and spun the car around. Fortunately, no one hit me and I stayed on track and got it going only losing 3 spots in the process. But the tires were flat spotted which created a big vibration. I fought back one place and was closing on two other cars but then a big wreck happened and the rest of the race was run under double yellow flags behind the pace car and it ended that way. Chip got the overall win.

On Sunday morning, with perfect track conditions, I pushed the envelope some more in probing Elana’s limits in Q2. On the last lap of a 15 minute hectic session with 27 cars on track I snaked through traffic at the end and posted the fastest lap ever run in SCCA competition at Laguna with a 1:20.922 that is about four tenths faster than my pervious best in Norma. Check out the video here.

Just like race 1 though, Chip got by me right away and we raced all the way to the end with a solid green flag for 27 minutes and I finished 2 seconds behind him. So even though we didn’t get either race win, the car ran flawlessly and showed real speed potential. I’m feeling a lot better now about our chances at the national championship Runoffs at Indy two months from now.

Photo courtesy of Justin Trogdon

New Year...New Start...New Look

Like most folks, I’m glad 2020 is behind us and we get to start over with a whole new development challenge ahead. To recap, we bought the Elan DP02 a little over a year ago and finally got it up and running for the June Sprints at Road America. Then we returned there a couple of months later and got our first podium at the ‘Cat in the Kettle’ majors race. A couple of months later we returned for the Runoffs and there that version of the DP02 came to a crashing end in practice before the Runoffs. I dropped the left rear tire off the pavement at the exit of turn 14 coming on to the front straightaway and the car snapped around in an instant into the inside tire wall. It was the biggest impact I’ve ever had but I was absolutely fine as all the safety equipment did its job. The medical/emergency team helped get me out and gave me a concussion check and all was negative (I wasn’t even sore the next day). Fortunately, we brought Norma as a backup plan and Jason got her out of the trailer and warmed up. I went out the next session…kinda like getting back in the saddle after being bucked off.

We finished the rest of the Runoffs with old reliable Norma and she ran well. But she’s now no match for the most current iteration of Elan DP02s plus a few one-off unique cars created for Road America. We qualified 10th and finished there after getting a great start and moving into 6th briefly after turn 1.

In 6th place after the start of the Runoffs race.

So now we prepare for the future and Jason is rebuilding the Elan from the bare tub up addressing many other issues as he goes. We have an entirely new body kit on order that reflects the latest aero designs for the car. We anticipate having the finished ‘new look’ car ready for action on May 1. In the meantime, we will continue running the ol’ gal Norma and see if she can still sneak in a few wins.

Carbon Fiber tub for Elan DP02

Engine, gearbox, and a lot of other parts to be reassembled

Mid Year Update

The coronavirus really put a damper on getting the season underway and our efforts to get the new Elan DP02 up to speed as well as shortening our race season from 16 race weekends down to 10. We were finally able to try our first race weekend in it at the famous June Sprints at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI which is also the site of this year’s national championship Runoffs in October. The Elan DP02 has now become the predominant car in the P1 class so we had plenty of competition to compare it to. How the development of a new car like this comes about is through on track sessions where afterwards I give Jason feedback about what the car is doing near its performance limit in cornering speeds, braking, and acceleration. Then we’ll agree on some adjustments to make to the chassis set up and hope we are going in the right direction and then run it again and repeat the process.

At a big race weekend like the Sprints, track time is limited and we only got 3 sessions before official qualifying started. Fortunately, we were making progress each time out in making the car better, faster, and in lowering our lap times. In Q1, we went our fastest yet turning a 2:05.159 which only placed us 7th in the session. In Q2, we went even faster by turning a 2:03.966 but still only 6th fastest in the session. I was starting to feel quite a bit better about our prospects and had one more rear wing adjustment to do before the races were to start. Alas, it was not meant to be as we discovered a broken fitting on the coolant bleedline that caused an engine overheating condition which ultimately popped the head gasket. So we had to park the car to avoid further engine damage. The engine is out and back at the engine builder for repair now. Here is some onboard video from Q2. I’m following another DP02 driven by John Mcaleer.

June Sprints Road America in our Elan DP02

We are going back to Road America in mid-August for another race weekend in order to get more track time in advance of the Runoffs. We will have a few new performance enhancements on the car that should help us go faster.

Given the problems in getting our DP02 all sorted and ready for serious competition, we’ve continued to improve and work on developing our Norma to its fullest potential. Earlier this year we set a new all-time track record at Buttonwillow. In addition, we went to Portland a few weeks ago and went faster than we’ve ever gone before. Another top national competitor, Chip Romer, was there too in his DP02. I outqualified him in Q1 and sat on pole for race 1 (see pole winning lap here). But Chip’s race pace was way better than ours and he smoked us in race 1 and for the rest of the weekend. See both race starts here to see just what an acceleration advantage the 2.5 liter Mazda engine has over our 2 liter Honda motor. This is why we are switching cars to try and get back on equal footing.

Runoffs Disappointment Leads to New Car Effort for 2020

Holding 3rd in P1 in my Norma as the top two streak away in Elan DP02s…ultimately we finished 5th.

Even though we put in a great effort and finished 5th in P1, the SCCA National Championship Runoffs were a big disappointment this year. We knew we were facing a tall order with the Norma after the spring Super Tour event at Virginia International Raceway where we finished on the podium in 3rd but well behind the fastest cars in lap time…around 2 seconds slower. We tried a lot of things over the summer to try and go faster including adding a new rear low drag wing and changing to Goodyear racing tires after a successful head-to-head tire test against our beloved Avons. And yes we did drop our lap time at VIR by 4 seconds since the spring race, but so did the top competitors so no real gain on them…instead just holding station. For the first time ever, the field was dominated by the Elan DP02 sports racer. This car in spec form ran in the IMSA lites series from about 2006-2018 and many of them have now been upgraded, modernized, and recycled into very good P1 race cars.

In fact, my main competitor over the past few years and this year’s Runoffs winner, Todd Slusher, originally ran his Elan in the IMSA series and then switched over to SCCA P1 class in 2016. He soon started a program of continually improving the car by commissioning engine, chassis, and aero upgrades. Todd’s teammate, Chip Romer, and others were also bringing their Elans to the class so demand was developing for even more upgrades. SCCA’s rules making committee, the Club Racing Board or CRB, gets to be the king maker and as they cut performance from our Norma, they encouraged development of the Elans with a very favorable rules package that was successful in attracting several new top flight competitors to the P1 class. I was also encouraging of this effort by SCCA to give the Elans some development freedom and it has, in fact, helped rejuvenate the class.

I’ll always contend that the CRB clipping our wings immediately after our first Runoffs victory 3 years ago ultimately discouraged others wanting to race CN style cars from joining P1. When the rules are changed that quickly a discouraging signal is sent. So this leads to the most recent signal sent by CRB in regards to the Elan—at the end of each race season after the Runoffs the CRB rules on whether anyone gets penalized, or alternatively, gets a rare performance increase. We lobbied extensively for a give-back to our Norma of some of the performance the CRB had taken away in 2017-18. The CRB ruled against us and all others who requested performance improvements and, more importantly, it did not take away any performance from the class leading Elan DP02s. So for now, the message looks clear that given the strong number of Elans competing at the front of the class, this chassis is the one to have…and ongoing development of it appears to be encouraged.

The effort, time, and cost that it would take to try and make my Norma a front runner again using a whole new approach would be daunting. It would all be focused around aero development, carbon brakes, and going to 4-way adjustable shocks. Plus since we are the only one running a Norma M20FC, it would be very easy for CRB to dial us back again if we succeeded and that would infuriate me to no end. So, at this point it looks much safer to just switch and run an Elan DP02 for now as there is safety in numbers. Until we get the kinks worked out with our Elan program, we will use the Norma as a backup. Ultimately, we have a whole new plan for running the Norma in the ASR class in future events with it in its fastest trim ever.

Amazingly, just as we’d made the decision to switch to the Elan DP02 a freshly rebuilt and modernized one became available from Jim Downing, the co-inventor of the Hans device, and long time racer who after just building it and racing it at the Runoffs decided it was time to semi-retire and drive something a little less demanding now that he was 78 years old. So what a stroke of good luck for us. We hope to get up to speed quickly in it.

Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion

For the first time, I drove in the famous “historic” races held every year at Laguna Seca in Monterey CA. I’ve attended this world class event many times but had never driven before, so a bucket list experience for me. If you go for the whole track experience, you run the weekend before in the Pre-Reunion as well. Since this was only our 4th time out running our 1976 Chevron B36, we ran every session available for both weekends, ultimately turning more laps than any other competitor in our 2-liter race group. The cars look like rolling art work and the shapes and angles are very attractive to the eye. As we found out over the course of the event, some cars are more original, authentic, and period correct than others so we were proud of our results in a truly period correct car that matches the real intent of what vintage racing is supposed to be about. Next year, we may think differently and update certain aspects of the car to be more competitive. Despite our disadvantages, we still finished 5th and 2nd in the two Pre-Reunion races and 5th and 4th in the Reunion races. Originally 27 cars were entered in our 2-liter sports racer group, although usually about 20 cars made it on track each session.

The highlight of the week was having a race long battle for 5th position in Sunday morning’s Reunion race. The race organizers and stewards preach against wheel-to-wheel action as they don’t want any contact to occur which might damage the expensive historic cars, but racers (like me) can’t resist a good challenge so the fight was on from the start with a 1980 Lucchini S280. Time and time again we went at it, with me eventually getting by with just over a lap to go. Afterward the other driver and I had a nice chat about how much fun that was for a vintage race...so be sure and watch the full race video here. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Lucchini was given my normal race number of #23 and we had to run #28, so it was only fitting that we ended up racing for supremacy on track during multiple sessions over the week long event.

Finally, I have to thank my mechanic, Jason Hohmann, for preparing the car and keeping it running perfectly throughout the week long event. These old cars are quite finicky and hard to keep going so bravo to Jason on a job well done.