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.