2021 Sonoma endurance race

[RR46]

Last weekend we kicked off the 2021 endurance season with Richard and Yvonne's PDG4 GTM. It was in the NASA WERC Series which is just getting more and more enjoyable, and this race was 2h 30min long, a true sprint enduro.

Margins were tight in qualifying and we started from 4th. A 10sec/lap quicker Ligier LMP3 had pole, an AMG GT3 with a pair of open wheel racers sharing the driving duties lined up alongside the Ligier on front row.
Second row inside line was taken by our eternal "nemesis" and good racing friends running their PMG Awareness Porsche 991 GT3 with us on the outside. In fifth a Norma M20FC sports prototype. Further back was a Praga R1 as well in our class.

We haven't yet located any photos from the racetrack but will update if they come. At the bottom I have linked an onboard video that we were livestreaming during the race.

Richard had done a very solid pre-race polishing after noticing that the alignment was exactly on spec from last race.

File_002(1).jpg

The race kicked off early Sun morning and only one pacelap (barely) was done making tire warming a true challenge, basically not possible. But it's not the first time we go on cold slicks and we expected our Hankook F200 slicks to be the winning edge in this race, as they have been so many times before. They hold on for almost 2h 30min at full clip and most of our competitors' tires start to fade much sooner than that. We also saw an opportunity to complete the race without a pitstop, while others would definitely have to stop for fuel except may the Norma could go as many laps as us between fuelling.

So after allowing our harder tires to warm in the cold opening laps it was time to attack and it felt like we were about to stick the fork into both the Porsche and Norma when the rear tires mysteriously started to fall off already 30-35 laps into the race. After 65 laps they were worse than what we normally experience after 125 laps. There wasn't much fight we could put up under those circumstances. The race went without any safety car intervention which also meant full fuel burn and we did a quick stop (30-60 sec quicker than our competitors). However with the slipping rear tires we had to settle for 5th place, at least in one piece and with an important share of championship points.

We noticed oil under the car and later found stripped threads at the front of the transaxle where it meets the bellhousing - oil had pushed out there. Those damaged threads are probably a result of many many engine and transaxle swaps over many many years of racing where these bolts have come off and been put back over and over and over. Normally on a streetcar, you bolt in once and that's it so this is very unique to our use case.
File_001(3).jpg

Perhaps some of this oil made it onto the rear tires? Perhaps the tires had been exposed to elements at the tire supplier they came from. We've never had a new set of F200 tires drop grip that way since we started running F200 in 2016.

Other than that, the car ran fantastic as usual and we had a lot of fun together with the volunteer crew who executed a great pitstop. Also the series is attracting new cars and drivers which makes it even more enjoyable.

Until next time!

Onboard video from the livestream; pit roll out starts around 8min 30sec. You'll see how cold the tires are, barely able to keep up with the pacecar.
https://fb.watch/4JxrJh9ZF2/

[crash]

As some of you may know, we have not run in the endurance racing series the last couple of years and focused on stretching our legs a little by running in the Trans Am series. While we were away some serious cars have showed up and the cars that were there previously have had to up their games as well. In short the NASA endurance racing series is heating up and has become a much more competitive venue. A lot of this seems to be because of cars from other series showing up. GT3 and GT4 cup cars are running more with NASA and the older Le Mans Prototype cars are also filtering down into NASA team shops. This has brought the competition level up and also made the series a ton more fun. That said, it appears we will also need to up our game a bit as we are clearly out horse powered. Not to blame the 5th place finish all on lack of horsepower as we clearly had some handling issues as well, but we do need to look at the engine output as well if we want to keep up with these other extremely fast cars/teams. More to come.

[beeman]

Great stuff Mike, you continue to make GTM owners proud.
Random question- what are you using for ABS on the PDG GTM?

[crash]

The FFR PDG GTM-currently- uses the drivers brain and skill to avoid tire lockup under braking. Same as it does for traction control and vehicle dynamic stability control! LOL!

Carl is testing a system on his street/track day GTM that may find its way into the FFR PDG GTM, but it must be proven first and the biggest factor is, we need to be able to turn the system off "on the fly" and still retain what would amount to the current level of control of the car.

As is always the case with the FFR PDG program, many things are being looked at and evaluated but few make them onto the car for actual endurance races because our primary goal is to make sure we do not lower our completion rate of races attempted, which is now in the 90+% range. Almost unheard of for any race team over a 10 year period of frequent racing...especially endurance racing.

[Shoeless]

I really enjoy seeing and hearing updates about your guys efforts. Its truly does make us GTM owners very proud!!!