The year is about 1/3 done and at this point we’ve competed in all 3 cars (Norma, FE2, & Chevron) and I can comment on the challenges ahead for the rest of the season. I’m running the open wheel FE2 in mostly regional competition to try and get a great chassis set-up figured out for the new Hoosier tire we now run. This tire has more grip than the old spec tire so track records are being set every time out. If all goes well, we plan to give the Runoffs another try in this car. Since the FE2 and the Norma usually run together in the same run group, we have to run the cars on alternate weekends.
We’ve already made the long trek back to Virginia International Raceway for the spring Super Tour race that acted as a big preview of the Runoffs for P1. The pole sitter at the Sonoma Runoffs, Todd Slusher, got the big Sunday win in the feature race. We made the podium in 3rd but have a lot of work to do to get up to speed and be a big factor. The loss of horsepower is really evident on a very high speed track like VIR or Road America, the site of the 2020 Runoffs. Our large frontal area, the largest of all P1 cars, works against top speed on the straights giving us a big disadvantage to overcome. We will be trying various changes throughout the season to see if we can do better. Check out the VIR race 2 highlights here.
To that end, we tried some new things on our Norma at the Buttonwillow Super Tour race weekend and had some success although competition was limited and none of our top competitors were there. Nonetheless, we did sweep the weekend for fastest lap every time out, plus pole position and two wins, as well as lowering our all-time track record that we set 4 years ago. Check out the highlight videos here:
Q2 fastest laps : Race 2 start : Race 2 all-time track record
Links to post race interviews for Buttonwillow Super Tour are here:
https://www.scca.com/videos/2036580 : https://www.scca.com/videos/2036599
We got accepted to run in the Monterey Historic Races in August in our vintage Chevron B36 so we’re pretty excited about that. This past weekend we ran it at Thunderhill in the spring CSRG event. The car is challenging to drive consistently fast as you have to be smooth, precise, and spot on when it comes to shifting the Hewland tranny with heel-toe braking/blipping required. Running a whole session without making any mistakes (ie. grinding the gears) is a big deal. Check out a 10 lap race run with good pace throughout and no missed shifts here. The sound the car puts out is amazing.