TopSpeed Motorsports

Well our afternoon win didn’t come without its troubles this time.  Leh and the GT2 were able to hang on to the fast time for the day but not by much.   During the race Leh said the car felt a little funny in hindsight, but he just drove through it.  When he came back into the pits a corner worker ran up to us and handed us a piece of rubber saying “This fell off your Porsche”  :-)   At first glance I knew what it was….part of the axle boot.

A quick inspection of the car revealed the source of the problem, one of the endlink perches had snapped in two pieces leaving the endlink dangling and not connected to the shock.   Leh and I are pretty confident from the looks of it that it snapped during the drag race yesterday, and we just didn’t catch it till after both of today’s sessions.  Leh was complaining about the rear grip after the first session, and honestly I should have checked over the car then.  But not thinking it was a mechanical issue and running on only 3 hours of sleep I opted to make a compression change on the rear shocks to give him more grip instead. Turns out that sloppy feel was the complete lack of a rear swaybar!  Thankfully that didn’t hinder Leh and the GT2 from pulling out P1 for both events.

After making some phone calls and with some support from back at TopSpeed we found that you can’t purchase factory mounts for the GT2 without buying the whole shock, and there are none of those on the US.   So, it’s off to a buddy’s shop in Ohio to use his welder to fix the perch.  The guys back at TopSpeed have overnighted us a care package of parts to Mid Ohio so we can do a proper axle/boot service between the morning and afternoon sessions.   For now however we have taped and zip tied the boot back together….slapped it full of grease and we are off to Ohio with the rear swaybar disconnected for now

I will update in the morning with pictures of the evening’s events.  Our ETA is midnight at the shop to fix the car then head back down south to the race track….it’s gonna be a long night!  Anyone have stock in redbull?

Here are some bad cell phone pictures of the damage.

Ok, another day of success for the TopSpeed team. We swept both sessions at Mid America continuing our winning streak. The car is working very very well and we are very happy about that. The team is in high spirits and enjoying every minute of the event. I will have an update from Leh and Doug later.

After the morning session they did make a small ride height adjustment to the front of the car. The car was having a little issue with braking and turn-in feedback, so the small adjustment will hopefully help that. Leh said the car feels almost perfect on track! I can’t say enough about the team that put this car together.

Here are the results from Mid America, and a few pictures for you guys! Thanks for following.

Pictures & Results

Sun May 02 15:31:24 2010 

Mid-America Motorplex #1 - Time Trial      - Results sorted by position Page 1
Pos Car # Vehicle                          Class            Time      Points

 1     3 Porsche          GT2              SSGT1 BB        4:54.354   340
         Douglas Wilks, Leh Keen
 2     4 Nissan           GT-R             SSGT1 BB        5:01.400   335
         Catesby Jones, Jose Collado
 3     5 Chevrolet        Corvette         SSGT1 BB        5:04.180   330
         Jeremy Herzberg, Danny Popp, Todd Rumpke
 4     6 Subaru           WRX STI          MidPri Sed      5:06.957   325
         Michael Lattos, Erik Van Cleef
 5    25 Chevrolet        Z06 Corvette     SSGT1 BB        5:08.167   320
         Dan Corcoran, Kyle Corcoran
 6    39 BMW              325is            SSGT2 SB        5:11.390   315
         Anthony Magagnoli, Kevin Kreisa
 7    55 Honda            Civic            Econo Car       5:21.120   310
         Andy Hollis, Ann Hollis
 8   124 MAZDA            MAZDA 5          S U V           5:22.924   305
         RICHARD FISHER, JASON SAINI
 9     8 Porsche          911 GT3 RS       SSGT1 BB        5:23.691   300
         Geoffrey Bond,
10    15 Mitsubishi       Evolution X      MidPri Sed      5:24.029   295
         Chris Wirth, Sean Caron
 

Sun May 02 15:31:24 2010

Mid-America Motorplex #2 - Time Trial      - Results sorted by position Page 1
Pos Car # Vehicle                          Class            Time      Points

 1     3 Porsche          GT2              SSGT1 BB        4:54.905   340
         Douglas Wilks, Leh Keen
 2     4 Nissan           GT-R             SSGT1 BB        4:58.590   335
         Catesby Jones, Jose Collado
 3     5 Chevrolet        Corvette         SSGT1 BB        5:00.654   330
         Jeremy Herzberg, Danny Popp, Todd Rumpke
 4    25 Chevrolet        Z06 Corvette     SSGT1 BB        5:02.548   325
         Dan Corcoran, Kyle Corcoran
 5     6 Subaru           WRX STI          MidPri Sed      5:07.236   320
         Michael Lattos, Erik Van Cleef
 6    39 BMW              325is            SSGT2 SB        5:10.522   315
         Anthony Magagnoli, Kevin Kreisa
 7    15 Mitsubishi       Evolution X      MidPri Sed      5:15.789   310
         Chris Wirth, Sean Caron
 8    55 Honda            Civic            Econo Car       5:17.423   305
         Andy Hollis, Ann Hollis
 9    17 Ultima           GTR              SSGT1 BB        5:19.122   300
         Carl Warren, sam kimberley-bryant
10     9 Porsche           997 Turbo       SSGT1 BB        5:19.965   295
         Rene von Richthofen, Hugh D. Bate

Here are the top ten results from the first event at TireRack. We are sitting 8th which we are very happy with.

We feel that the wet skid is going to be one of our worst events. Can’t wait to see what happens at Road America tomorrow.

STAY TUNED!

Fri Apr 30 19:55:51 2010

Tire Rack - Wet Skid Pad - Results sorted by position Page 1
Pos Car # Vehicle                          Class            Gs        Points

 1     1 Nissan           GT-R             SSGT1 BB          0.962 G   340
         William Taylor, Steven Rankins, Jon Krolewicz
 2     4 Nissan           GT-R             SSGT1 BB          0.911 G   335
         Catesby Jones, Jose Collado
 3    54 Honda            Civic Si         Econo Car         0.885 G   330
         Jonathan Weir, William Chan
 4   124 MAZDA            MAZDA 5          S U V             0.861 G   325
         RICHARD FISHER, JASON SAINI
 5    20 Porsche          Panamera         Luxury Sed        0.860 G   320
         Bill Treffert, Todd Treffert

 6     9 Porsche           997 Turbo       SSGT1 BB          0.856 G   315
         Rene von Richthofen, Hugh D. Bate
 7    12 Cheverolet Corv  ZO6              SSGT1 BB          0.854 G   310
         Carmine Dell Aquila, John Sigismondi
 8     3 Porsche          GT2              SSGT1 BB          0.853 G   305
         Douglas Wilks, Leh Keen
 9    14 Mitsubishi       Galant VR4       MidPri Sed        0.847 G   300
         Timothy Harper, Steve Burke
10     8 Porsche          911 GT3 RS       SSGT1 BB          0.845 G   295
         Geoffrey Bond,

As we progress with the GT2 we are getting more and more excited to see what she can do. Today we had a test day at Roebling Road in GA, and are very happy with the progress we made. The car has picked up almost 4 seconds from where it was at first! With Leh Keen behind the wheel and our race bred tech Adam in the pits along with suspension engineer Bryan Hise from JRZ.. let’s just say we feel we have a winning team.

Here are a few pictures from the day at Roebling.