New Year, New Rules Battle, What Else is New?

Well the infamous Club Racing Board (CRB) acted swiftly and punishingly and changed the rules which effectively bans me from P1 competition unless I am willing to spend a lot of time and money to modify my Norma again.  This is really getting old that every year starts off with a big rules battle.  They are writing rules that only really affect me at the end of the day.  I guess I should take it as the ultimate compliment that since our racing program has been so successful, other drivers think they have to get the rules changed to slow us down.

In anticipation of being hassled again by the CRB, Jason and I have added some other race cars to the fleet and plan to run them as well this year.  Our primary emphasis will be in running a Formula Enterprise (FE) which is an open wheel formula style race car.  I raced one of these for several years back when I started.  What's making it more compelling this year is that a big upgrade is in the works that swaps out both the transmission and engine and rebrands the car from FE to FE2.  Jason and I are looking forward to the conversion and developing the FE2 into a very fun affordable (and rentable) race car to drive.  In addition, a new race series has been created just for FE and FE2 and it is called GP4.

First races of the season for GP4 in my FE at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX

Another race car we plan to run is a vintage sports racer from 1976, a Chevron B36.  It is a beautiful race car from the golden era and runs a 2 liter Hart 420R race engine.  In essence, it is a 40 year old version of my Norma.  This car will be raced in a few vintage events and, hopefully, the Monterey Historic Reunion event which is one of the best vintage events in the world.  Jason and I have been busy getting the Chevron ready, including making a custom bead seat and head surround.  This car was just freshly restored by the previous owner but we'll need to get it all sorted out and running just right.

1976 Chevron B36

The One that got away

My ten day Indy Runoff's experience was filled with extraordinary highs and lows.  Just soaking in the history of the place was pretty cool.  Jason and Chris made the cross country trek in the Bulldog Motorsport caravan without incident and right out of the trailer we were immediately the fastest P1 car there and remained so throughout the entire event.

The Bulldog toter

Almost 1000 cars, an all-time Runoffs record, were entered this year and they were spread over 28 classes.  Due to the large overall field, some classes were grouped together creating mixed class racing for the first time.  A highlight of past Runoffs has always been getting your own run group so only your direct competitors were on-track with you in the key qualifying sessions and the race.  My class, P1, was paired with the open wheeled formula 1000 aka FB cars.

This proved problematic in the first day of testing when I was hit and knocked off track into the gravel trap by an FB competitor.  Fortunately, my car was undamaged but it took two hours for the crew to get all the gravel out of the car.  A feared repeat of this incident would later cost me the race.

The condition of the track surface itself was unlike anything we had ever seen.  It was super smooth and had lots of grip which allowed us to lower the car and create extra aero downforce and therefor faster cornering speeds.  The higher g loads ultimately took their toll and after 4 years of no problems, my arthritic neck finally cried uncle and stiffened after 6 days.  The last 4 days were spent trying to keep my neck from totally locking up on me and preventing me from making the race...but yet still wanting to try for the elusive fastest lap of all.  Pride goeth before...the fall. Proverbs 16:18.

The famous yard of bricks at the start/finish line

After setting a blistering time of 1:30.794 in Q2, the fastest time of the day out of the entire field of 1000 cars, we concentrated on trying to better that in O3 and Q4 to capture the overall fastest time with our only competition being two formula atlantic drivers running in FA.  Ultimately, we were unable to improve on that time as we could never get any clean unimpeded laps in the final two sessions due to being paired with the FB's.  In hindsight, I should have let my neck rest as my Q2 time easily put me on pole for the P1 class.

In Q4, I ran flat out thinking my neck was feeling pretty good and about half way through the session, my neck popped and forced me to let my head rest, as best I could, against the head surround.  I gutted it out and with adrenalin flowing soldiered on looking for the one clean lap.  Finally, lap 12, the last lap, looked to be clean and off to a purple start but then I started to run out of gas and that was that.  Jason makes me do my own fuel calcs so I take the blame for cutting it too close trying to keep the weight down.

List of winners on back side of podium

Needless to say, when I got out of the car and the adrenalin stopped flowing my neck hurt immediately and was really stiff and sore.  I went ahead and enjoyed, as best I could, the pole award ceremonies that took place on the big podium.  It was a real honor to get called out front and see all the past winners' names engraved on the back side of the podium.   And, of course, I gave a big shout out to Bulldog.  But privately, Jason and I felt just a bit disappointed that we couldn't really show our stuff.

Jason, Roy, Chris and Chris, the best crew at the Runoffs

Then the unthinkable happened, our Norma was impounded and locked away, under a mechanical protest from a fellow P1 competitor asserting our car had non-conforming bodywork under the FIA CN rule book.  This process then took on a life of its own.  So I went to my room for the night pretty discouraged.

Then Tracey, my wonderful wife, arrived and lifted my spirits, gave me joy, and love and maybe just as important this one time...left over medications from back spasms she had earlier this year.  I took them, she kissed me good night, and I prayed for relief.  And I knew others were praying too.

Friday morning, I woke up feeling remarkably better and it was a day off from driving but I still had to deal with the protest.  The SCCA has quite the formal process for dealing with a serious accusation like this.  Statements are taken, multiple inspections are performed etc. etc.  An actual deliberation is conducted and then, finally, a decision is rendered.  So 24 hours after the protest was filed, it was thrown out and the car was released.  However, we elected to keep it locked up as now we were uncertain as to what depths the competition might go to sabotage us.

My first experience with cupping

Race day was near perfect weather, sunny and a cool 70 degrees.  I got my third acupuncture treatment and this time she cupped me too.  I felt good and ready for the race ahead.  Check out the full race video here.

Tim Day Jr. comes around the outside from row 2 to take the lead into turn 1 at the start.

I take the lead back by lap 3.

For the first 10 laps everything went according to plan and I led after an early challenge from Tim Day Jr.  Then on lap 11 entering turn 12, as I'm trying to lap the #18 FB car around the outside, the driver starts running wider and wider as we enter the brake zone and pinches me a little tight to the wall.  My in-car video shows my eyes looking at him and trying to make sure he doesn't hit me.  When I focus back forward, I've gone too deep and missed my braking point.

Then I really make a mess of trying to get the car off the grass and running again by spinning and making multiple efforts at restarting the car.  Finally, I get rolling again and the chase is on.  I reel off some quick laps including the fastest lap of the race at a 1:31.499 on lap 14.  Then entering turn 1 on lap 16, I catch and pass the 3rd place car and am back on the podium.  I also catch the #18 FB car entering turn 6 and proceed to drive around it and then in turn 6a, the #49 losses control and starts spinning just as I'm passing it.  Fortunately for me, I got around him on the outside and then the #49 gets t-boned by the #94.

I complete lap 16 and double yellows are now out for the big wreck.  As I catch the pace car near the end of lap 17, red flags are flying and all cars are stopped on track.  Then they checker the race 3 laps early and with over 10 minutes left on the clock and it's all over.  Disappointed, but at least feeling somewhat redeemed by fighting back to make the podium, we put on a game face and celebrate on the podium and go through the post race interviews and hours long tech process.

Five cars entering turn 6 and then all hell breaks loose in 6a.  I skillfully (ok maybe with some luck thrown in) navigate through it all. 

This is the podium celebration that never happened according to the final results that dropped me to 4th due to a strange quirk in the rules regarding a red flag race stoppage.

The next morning I find out that we've been dropped back to 4th place in the official standings and I inquire and am told that due to the red flag situation they revert to the previously completed lap by the entire field.  I know we almost completed 17 laps so it would seem lap 16 would be the one counted and I was clearly in 3rd already.  Then it gets really weird in that timing and scoring say the red flag was caused not by the wreck but by the whole track communications system going down.  And that normally they would not throw the red flag until they knew all cars still on the lead lap had crossed the start finish line so as to keep the race order intact.  And that, in fact, the two slow cars still on the lead lap did cross start/finish completing lap 16, but the officials ruled they really should have stopped earlier.  So alas, lap 15 was deemed the race finish and we were in 4th at that time just seconds from passing for 3rd.

The final irony was that the official 3rd place car #94 was involved in the big wreck and would have been out of the race had the race been scored on lap 16 or later.  The driver of the #49 car, who was hit by the #94, sustained a broken leg in the crash but was otherwise unhurt.  Interestingly, he was the driver that protested my bodywork.

My wife, Tracey, has a great saying, "anytime you finish the race unhurt and with your car intact, you've won."  And you know, she's right.  We got to go compete at the most storied race track in the world and almost pulled off the repeat.  It just wasn't meant to be this year but what a story behind it all.

Ready for Indy Runoffs

We just finished a double race weekend at Laguna in the Norma.  This was our first event running Norma since the June Sprints.  We've been thinking about how best to compete at Indy given the horsepower loss imposed on us by the SCCA's rule's making committee, the infamous CRB.  Jason and I decided to try something different in our car set-up this time.

Normally you can count on reasonable weather conditions at Laguna with temperatures between 65 and 80 degrees.  Not this time, temperatures were over 100 degrees on the first two days making grip levels on the super hot black pavement way lower than usual.  So even though our set-up seemed to work well, you couldn't tell it by the stopwatch.

Finally, on Sunday, the heat wave broke a little bit and temperatures came down about 10 degrees and some cloud cover kept the track from getting too hot.  So we put on some better tires and went out to see just how well we could do in late morning qualifying.  The car and grip levels were quite good and we broke our own track record by a few tenths getting down to 1:21.297.  Then in the afternoon race, we ran flat out for 30 minutes and laid down 22 really good laps and crushed the field by lapping everyone at least once and many several times.

We are going to roll out of the trailer at Indy with this set up and see how it works there.  Hopefully, it's really good there too.  Our race is on Saturday, September 30, at 4:45 pm eastern time (so 1:45 pm west coast time).  It will be broadcast live at SCCA.COM so follow along and see if we can repeat.  Not sure if this is a jinx or not, but Sports Car magazine predicted us to do so but posted an incorrect picture...oh well.

http://www.sportscarmag-digital.com/sportscar/october_2017?pg=44#pg44

Brand new floor going on Norma.

Final preparation underway for Indy Runoffs.

Expanding our racing horizons by going back to our roots.

Since my last post, a lot has happened.  We've started racing again in Spec Racer Ford Gen 3, the latest specification version of the class I started in 10 years ago.  On top of that, we purchased another Formula Enterprise open wheel car which I also used to run.  This time it is mostly for developmental purposes and in coordination with Jason.  The FE car is about to have a major upgrade package offered as a way to rejuvenate the class.  Jason and I are going to be a part of the process to convert our car over (only the 2nd one) and help prove its viability and new performance level and rent it out to other FE drivers to allow them to sample the goods, so to speak.  And finally, I've also purchased one of my dream race cars--a 1976 Chevron B36 2 liter sports racer.  More on this later.

We've still been racing Norma and plan to continue to do so, however, the CRB action to cut our horsepower opened my eyes to just how SCCA works in putting a target on you and dialing your performance back.  So going in several different directions now to expand our horizons and marketing reach.  Going forward, we plan to run Norma in major SCCA events only, including the Runoffs.

P1 & P2 Champs going at it.

At Portland, I had a great battle all weekend long with Jeff Shafer, the reigning P2 champion, and the driver considered one of the best in all of SCCA...a true benchmark driver.  I out qualified him in my Norma and won race 2, but he beat me in race 1 with a daring high speed outside pass coming off a double yellow restart on cold tires.  Jeff's a great guy and a kindred spirit with Jason as he runs a prep shop too.  He raced in Europe as a young man and had a promising career that was stopped by a lack of funding as is typical in a sport with big financial demands.  Check out some great racing action here and a post race joint interview here.  In theory, a P2 car should not be able to run with me, but Jeff proved that wrong.

On Father's Day weekend, we raced at the longest running event in SCCA history called the June Sprints.  It has been held every year since 1956 and this was the 62nd version with every race having been held at Road America in Elkhart Lake, WI.  The very first event was run on opening day at the track and, now, what a facility it has become.  The track is 4 miles long and runs through natural terrain with good elevation changes.  It has 3 long straightaways that test the acceleration and top speed capabilities of all the cars.  This season it also had the biggest, deepest field of the year with 13 P1 cars entered on top of 18 Formula Atlantics in our run group.  It would be a great test of our competitiveness with our neutered motor.

I'd run RA on my simulator so at least knew where the track went and got up to decent speed right away.  However, it is a track unlike any other I'd ever run with the long straightaways requiring perfect entries to maximize your speed at the other end.  It also had several high speed flat out corners that tested your nerve.  Finally, with coaching from Eric Purcell, my race engineer, I put it all together in Q1 and had the provisional pole with a 2:05.xx.  However, the next day we got bumped to 2nd in Q2 by the home town boy, Jason Miller, running a 6 cylinder two stroke engine.  He was consistently the fastest car accelerating down the straights normally reaching about 156 mph.  By comparison we normally reached about 149 mph.  So we were faster around the corners and under braking but got killed on the straights, not only by this car but a couple of the motorcycle powered lightweight Stohrs.

So at the start of race 1, I got passed immediately by Tim Day Jr. in his Stohr and shortly thereafter by another one.  Our horsepower loss was really stinging now.  The rest of the race was me catching these guys in the twisty stuff and them running away on the straights.  Amazingly, a caught a couple of breaks as Jason Miller broke during the race and I was able to get around one of the Stohrs when it spun in front of me on the last lap.  So a 2nd place finish was salvaged.  My fellow Bulldog teammate, Tim Day Jr., won the race.  The day was made more special as Bobby Rahal greeted us for the podium celebration.

Todd Slusher 3rd. Jim Devenport 2nd, Bobby Rahal, Tim Day Jr. 1st (l to r)

My transmission had been giving us an intermittent problem ever since we arrived at RA and on the last lap it acted up again which culminated in it locking into 5th gear on the cool down lap.  Despite a late night effort by Jason and Chris, they didn't have the right parts to fix it and we scratched out of the Sunday race.  Still, the event history, the track, and the whole experience made it a bucket list item to repeat next year.

Real Competition...First Loss...Then A Gratifying Win

Well the winning streak finally ended and I'm loving it.  A young gun named Parker Nicklin, who started racing cars at 15 and made it up a couple of steps on the Road to Indy ladder system before the money ran out at 18 years old, came out at the ripe old age of 20 in a Stohr WF1 one liter light-weight motorcycle powered car and gave me a whipping in race 1 at the Buttonwillow Super Tour event last weekend.

The best part is I got to return the favor in race 2 and gave him a spanking right back.  Final tally is I qualified on pole with a blistering lap of 1:36.32 which is the all-time fastest lap ever run in SCCA competition at Buttonwillow for configuration #25CW.  However, Parker had the fastest laps in both races and of course we split the victories.  I talked to Parker and his dad, Steve, quite a bit and hope they continue to come out and race.

In the meantime, enjoy some great racing action:  Race 1 video highlights  /  Race 2 video highlights.  Also check out the post race 2 interview here.

Success on the Track and with CRB

This past weekend we competed at the Thunderhill Majors event and swept the weekend keeping our win streak going at 27.  This will be our last run with the individual throttle body set-up Jason developed.  He did a magnificent job of integrating it into our car and it performed flawlessly for the last two years.  Maybe someday we'll get to run it again.

Why...well just today we got notice that the Club Racing Board (CRB) has approved our proposed rule change to limit our horsepower by means of using the stock throttle body of 64 mm versus the aborted SIR path previously reported.  It will be installed on the car and run from this point forward.

As a tribute to all the success we've had with this ITB pioneering effort, here's one last video of a new SCCA all-time track record run at Thunderhill in Saturday morning's qualifying effort.

It will be interesting to see how this significant power loss affects our future performance.  When Formula 1 and Indy car are both going for record setting performances this year, it really makes SCCA seem way out of touch in their heavy handed approach to slowing us down.  Despite this setback, we are still striving to match last years haul of major hardware.

Willow Springs Super Tour Success

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.

World Premier of Hooked For Life Documentary

Today, the documentary film, Hooked For Life, was shown for the first time in public in front of a very eager and excited group of 22 kindergartners as part of Read Across America Day.  I arrived in full race gear with my helmet on and promptly launched into reading a book about cars.  Then after a question and answer period, the movie began.  The kids could hardly believe they were in the same room with someone starring in a movie being shown on the big screen before them.  They all cheered loudly at the end.  After the movie was over, they all got a chance to color in the outlines of my car and I autographed each one creating a truly memorable experience for the budding car enthusiasts.

In all seriousness, though, the movie is a real winner and I highly recommend you get a copy of it.  It's 30 minutes long, full of action, and covers the story of two guys (Jason and I) chasing a dream over the past decade.  Send me an email at jdevenport@cranbrookgroup.com with your name and address and we'll send you a complimentary copy.

There are two people who deserve almost all the credit for making this documentary, Trey Broaddus and Robert Carpenter.  Trey conceived and developed the whole idea, narrated it, edited it, and provided the sound mixing as well.  Robert shot a good share of the video and pictures used in making the film and always has something good to add to the whole process.  I will be forever grateful to both of them for the efforts they put forth in this endeavor and want to acknowledge the vision, skill, and patience it took to pull this off.  Bravo! 

2017 - New Year and New Challenges

After last years near perfect season, it will be hard to top that in 2017...and doubly so now that the SCCA's rules making committee, the infamous CRB, has given us an intake restrictor that will cut our power output from the engine.  In the stroke of a pen, the CRB has undone all of our hard work in gaining a few extra horsepower from the motor and as of now we don't even know how bad the hit will be.  The new rule becomes effective March 1.  The new device, called a single inlet restrictor or SIR, essentially chokes the air intake down to a hole the size of 30.5 millimeters or about 1.2 inches.

Jason is having to figure out how to make the SIR and install it in our airbox and then our engine builder, Tony Manzer of Comptech, will have to try and tune the new setup as best he can.  This is a classic move by the SCCA to slow down the leaders under the guise of equalizing the competition when in reality it panders to protecting the interests of the status quo.  It is disheartening to Jason and I, and we are evaluating our alternative places to race the Norma going forward.

Our 2017 race schedule was created before this hit to our program, so it may change as a result of this SIR rule change.  In the meantime, the first event of the year has been concluded and we started right where we left off last year with two wins at Auto Club Speedway.  Our undefeated streak is still intact for now.

National Champs

Have to admit, it's got a nice sound to it.  After all our planning, hard work, and effort that started 3 years ago, we finally won the Gold Medal, The Tire Rack Pole award, and the Super Sweep at this year's Runoffs.  The whole season has just been magical as we've pretty much dominated every event we finished by winning the pole and every race.  The Runoffs were no different but they still had some high drama and a strong challenge from last year's champ.

As soon as we rolled off the trailer and put the new Norma on-track at MidO, we were the fastest P1 from the get-go.  We had always heard that track conditions could vary greatly at MidO and we finally witnessed it first hand.  On the first day of testing, we tried a new set of sticker tires in the second session out and we turned a 1:17.3 which was 3.5 seconds faster than our theoretical "Fastest Lap...Interrupted" from 6 weeks earlier.  This turned heads right-a-way.

Then over most of the next week we could never get anywhere near that time again, until the 4th and final qualifying event.  That day brought an ideal 9:20 am start time and the track was fast.  After we'd been leading every session all week long, last year's national champ, Gianpaolo Ciancimino, bumped us from pole with 5 minutes left by laying down a 1:18 lap time.  Jason came on the radio and said it's now or never, so I put my head down and banged off three clean laps in a row, all in the 17s, and re-took pole.  That was a great moment.  Watch the pole winning lap below.

Q4 5-minutes to go.

So now we knew he had a real race ahead, as Gianpaolo, or JP for short, was quickly getting his new Swift 014 Toyota sorted after a slow start the week before.  Strangely, I went to bed the night before the race and had the best night's sleep since I'd come back to Ohio.

Race day had perfect weather again and our race started on schedule at 9:55 am.  When the green flag fell, this would be our first time in a side-by-side drag race down the back straight.  Lucky for me, I caught JP napping when the flag flew and I had no pressure at the first turn.  But after two laps, we got our first double yellow, and then on the restart, JP made a bold move and got by me.  Now the race was on as we quickly distanced ourselves from the rest of the field.  Watch the opening laps in the video below.

Great early battle between JD & JP.

Unfortunately, JP developed a shifting issue just as the battle was heating up and fell back.  The rest of the race for me was all about staying focused and running clean fast laps and not taking unnecessary risks.  As more attrition happened and three cars were stalled around the track, another double yellow period ensued with only a few laps left and that is how the race ended.  Although I would have preferred to finish under green flag conditions, I was still relieved when I saw the checkered flag as our large lead was now gone and a late restart on cold tires can always be problematic.

Finally, I have to thank the Bulldog Motorsport's crew of Jason Hohmann, Chris Garcia, and Javier Garcia for working hard all season long and setting the standard for professionalism, preparation, and thoroughness.  I get to do the easy and fun part which is driving the car.  These guys do the heavy lifting.  This has truly been a dream season and one to remember.