RTA Round 2 at Firebird Raceway: Another Victory! Another Track Record!
Results:
- Street Class RWD Win: 1:07:364 sec.
- Overall Street Class Win!
- New Firebird Raceway record for Street Class Overall and RWD! Broke the old record by almost 6 seconds!
Round 2 of the Redline Pro Time Attack had us going on a road trip to Phoenix, Arizona. The 7 hour drive to Phoenix was quite uneventful except for an incident with an SUV at 1:00am. We were speeding down interstate 10 at 85mph (we were late like always) in the service truck with the Time Attack 135i in tow. We were tired as hell from the long drive and falling asleep. All of a sudden flashes go off and kept going off. Everyone woke up as we though we were getting pulled over by the highway patrol. Finally realized the flashes were from a SUV pacing right next to us, with all occupants sticking their heads out the window, taking pictures. That felt great! Thanks for the compliments whoever you guys were in the SUV and thanks for waking our sleepy driver!
Saturday morning saw rain. Lots of it, cold and misearble. Enough to postpone the entire event. 7 hour drive to get rained out. Great! Everyone huddled into the service truck and slept. Finally in the late afternoon the sky cleared and the rain stopped. First and only practice session was called. This was not good for us. First of all RWD and rain don't mix. Second, our driver Dieterhas never driven this track and was unfamiliar with the layout. Third, this being his second time in the car, he was still learning how to control her. While most of the field opted to stay off the wet track to play it safe, we pull our 135i out on the track. First hot lap, 1:10.8xx. The crew stood in the hot pits in disbelief. We broke the old class track record (1:12:9xx) by 2 seconds on the first lap on a wet track with a driver who's never driven the track! Next lap 1:09:5xx. Wow he's getting faster! The seconds kept clicking down. By the end of the practice session, we had pulled a 1:07:535, beating the old record by 5.4 seconds!
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Rain in Phoenix. Lots of it, cold and miserable. |
Sunday saw clear skies. The track for the most part had dried up with small wet spots in certain areas. No problem. Due to the rain the previous day, we were offered 1 more practice session before the actual competition begins. Again, we go out and run consistent 1:07s. Competition starts. Fresh, new Hankook RS3s go on. We clock a 1:07:364, easily securing a Street RWD Class victory as well as a Street Overall Victory. We now have a streak of three 1st place Street RWD and Street Overall victories! Our Time Attack 135i now officially hold 2 track records, Willow Springs and Firebird Raceway!
MotoIQ Pacific Touring Car Championship
The MotoIQ Pacific Touring Car Championship (PTCC) is a new door to door racing series started this year that run in conjunction with our Redline Pro Time Attack series. Unfortunately, due to possibly the location (Phoenix), only 2 MotoIQ PTCC competitors showed up. Since the field was so small, Redline organizers asked the Time Attack class winners to join the MotoIQ PTCC as an exhibition only entry (we would not score points or make the podium regardless where we finished in this race). We were given strict instructions not to interfere with the 2 MotoIQ PTCC cars (Berk Technology 135i and Road Race Engineering Eclipse) that were actually fighting for points. Also, we were not allowed to pass in corners. That pretty much left us only the front straight to make a pass. We were to start at the back of the grid as well. Per MotoIQ PTCC rules, tires were open, meaning you could run any tire, including slicks. Berk Technology's 135i was running Hankook C51 slicks. Road Race Engineering's Eclipse was running on R compound tires. Unfortunately, since we did not anticipate running the MotoIQ PTCC and was there to run the Redline Time Attack Street Tire Class, we only had our Hankook RS3's street tires. Safe to say we were pretty handicapped for the race. However, since our friendly arch rival, Berk Technology's 135i was running, why not! Let's race!
The race went as well as expected. We pulled into 3rd place from the start behind Berk's 135i and the RRE Eclipse on the front straight but going into turn 1, we had to yield to the Eclipse as the race was still close and we could not interfere with the actual competitors (Berk and RRE). Also, we weren't allowed to pass in a turn. Therefore, we got stuck behind the slower Eclipse for the first 2 laps. We finally was able to pass the Eclipse on the front straight (the driver waved us by) but by then Berk had gained a 12 second lead. In a 1 minute track with 8 laps to go, it wasn't going to happen. No way to catch them. We managed to get the lead down to 6 seconds but a slight off track mishap due to our brakes fading dropped us back to 8 seconds.
Congratulations to Berk Technology for the win! We'll get you next time! 
(with slicks and a non exhibition run for us). Our fastest lap in the MotoIQ PTCC race was 1:07:041, which was the fastest out of all the competitors including Berk's 135i and RRE's Eclipse. This was with street tires! It was even faster than our Time Attack official run but unfortunately does not count as an official record.
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1st Lap |
Stuck behind the RRE Eclipse! =( |
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