FFR PDG GTM-Won A Championship-Wrecked The Car

[crash]

Sorry guys, don't have time to go into details right now as we are trying to get the car back together, but short story is that we went into last weekends race down by 15 points, ended up winning the championship in the WERC, but had an incident where a lap traffic car went off the track and as two of us were passing him he shot back across the track and hit the FFR PDG GTM squarely in the left rear. Frame is bent, gear box is punched and the case is cracked, suspension broken,body work torn up, etc. but parts are being located and it is going back together. I am fine although the video shows some pretty violent impacts. More to come, but we have a second championship in the works that we have to go and try and win next weekend at Sonoma, the United States Touring Car Championship, so we are busy. Car was actually supposed to run this weekend as well, but we will not be making that event.

The really good news is that we have found some speed with some things that I have changed on the car in the last month and it is translating to better tire wear and faster lap times. The top three qualifiers this last weekend were all within about a half second of each other and we ran about 2 seconds faster than we usually do at Buttonwillow. The improvements should be even better at a faster track like Thunderhill.

Trying to get video edited, but it is a process.

[Roger Reid]

Thats great news about the championship. Hope things go well with the repairs. Looking forward to the video.

[carbon fiber]

Good thing is no one was hurt. Good luck with getting back on the track.

[kabacj]

Congratulations on the championship!

Glad to hear that no one was hurt in the on track incident. As we know any time you are out on the track it's possible to have an incident. Even when you personally are doing everything right!

Two seconds it quite a bit of time. That's a pretty big improvement.

If history is any guide, if it's at all possible, team PDG will have the car race ready. Hell you guys fix stuff like this in less than 25 hours all the time!

[crash]

Congratulations on the championship!

Glad to hear that no one was hurt in the on track incident. As we know any time you are out on the track it's possible to have an incident. Even when you personally are doing everything right!

Two seconds it quite a bit of time. That's a pretty big improvement.

If history is any guide, if it's at all possible, team PDG will have the car race ready. Hell you guys fix stuff like this in less than 25 hours all the time!

Truthfully the team wanted to replace the suspension and finish the race with a little over an hour left, but the gearbox issue is what stopped us. Too much money in that to roll the dice. We would usually have a spare transaxle as well, but it was down at Mendeola being serviced so it was a no go on making it back out onto the track. With as much stuff that was bent and damaged that we have found here after closer inspection, it was the right call. We had accomplished more than we had hoped to at that point, so the right call was to stop and not try and be heros. We have too much at stake coming up to risk any further major damage just to turn a few laps and say we finished. We have run something like 138 races with this car and had very few major incidents. Since I have been running, starting 6 years ago, this is the first one where I was the pilot and only the second one where the frame being damaged was involved. Pretty outstanding track record for this team. Something like 90% finish record and somewhere in the high 70% podium finish record. Pretty much unheard of for an all volunteer amateur team.

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Repairs are going well. We had a second body at the shop but didn't want to cut it up so Richard pulled a one shot foam mold off the new spare body and made a repair panel. That was glassed in this last weekend and it is coming along...IMG_20151014_222036111.jpgIMG_0940.JPG