We went to the famous Willow Springs race track last weekend for the first west coast Super Tour event of the season. There were 8 P1 entries so a decent sized field. In a pending compromise with the Club Racing Board, we are going to go back to running a stock throttle body of 64 mm. This will limit our engine power to about 270 hp, down from our best motor of about 285 hp. The stated goal of the CRB was to cut us back to 275-280 hp but the SIR idea that was implemented to attempt this was a total bust.
In our first tests with SIRs on the dyno, the losses were in the 25-30 hp range...way out of line. So that we can get on with the season and prepare for a title defense at Indianapolis, we volunteered to give up all our development work on our ITB program and go back to a race proven reliable 270 hp version of our Honda 2 liter motor that we ran 3 years ago.
Clearly the goal of the CRB is to slow me down so breaking track records is looking like a thing of the past. Until the new rule clarification is issued we volunteered to run at a reduced rpm limit of 8100 and this Willow Springs outing was our first try with it in place.
As expected, our best lap times were about a half second slower than last year so mission accomplished...I guess...for the CRB. However, I'll share a different point of view that happened in impound right after Sunday's race. The Cal Club race director told me he had predicted a new track record for me in the pre-race radio show and wondered what happened. I explained the concerted effort within SCCA to slow me down and his look was incredulous. Enough said...some folks besides just us think it's really cool to go faster than anyone else before. Records are meant to be broken.