Drivers Club Festival - New Track New Record!
During the 9th-10th of August the team headed to Ljungbyhed and the Drivers Club Festival weekend. A completly new track for us and with a action packed weekend with Radical races, historic racing, drifting and time attack there was only 6 heats during the entire race weekend to get it done (the record that is).
The last weeks up until the race was a real race against the clock to get the car back repaired after the engine failure at Mantorp some weeks prior to the event. A lot of one of prototype parts had to manufactured that was destroyed, and the engine put back together and back into the car. Mikael and Adam did some really long days to get the car ready and with half a day to go it was loaded onto the trailer and ready for the weekend.
So on Friday it was unloaded and the last adjustments and checks performed before the car was fired back up and we headed out for heat 1.
Heat 1 was just a system check test to see that the engine was running good and that everything on the car was OK after the rebuild since this was the first we ran the car after tearing it all apart.
All system seemed to be working fine except the gear cut issue from Mantorp that still hadn't been fixed due to it could only be seen while running the car (issue was after the race weekend found to be a broken connector inside the ECU box and not related to the gearlever)
Heat 2, the boost was set back up to "normal levels" and the car sent back out on track, right away the engine was running rough and the car returned back to the pits. No issues could be found in the ignition system so 4 new spark plugs was mounted for heat 3.
Heat 3 the car was now working good and we could start to hunt some laptimes, The overall track record stood at 49,1 sec and with only 2 heats left for the day and rain forecasted for Saturday there was no waiting around. After 3 attack laps the new record was 47,9 but there was more in it for sure only running a very limited amounts of laps on the track.
Heat 4, Since the chances for dry weather looked slim for Saturday we put on a brand new set of Yokohama Tire raised the boost and sent the car out. The car ran like a god on this tight track and after a few attack laps the new lap record was 47,3 sec (1,8 sec down on previous track record)
Saturday: The last day of competition had the 5th heat and then the 3 lap final for top 3 fastest cars, coming out to the track it was still dry weather and the forecast was now dry for the rest of the day.
Heat 5, with the tires not brand new anymore we did a few attack laps to get a better feel for the track prior to the final but no improvements of the times where done.
The final, 3 laps, 3 cars a big crowd watching and no fresh rubber, so what do you do? Raise the boost to "race" setting and just give it all you got of course. First lap was a 47,7 but tires where not fully up to temperature going out onto the 2nd lap we got it all together and even though not running fresh tires we managed to improved the lap record with 0,2 tenths to 47,1.
Perfect end to a near perfect weekend where the car ran like a god from the first lap after we got the spark plug issue sorted). Super proud of the team to get the car fixed in time and kept it running perfect throughout the weekend and to have such an event with a good crowd and top it of with a record in the final, perfect!!
As usual this would not be possible without the support from Mikael, Adam and the rest of the team, our sponsors and families.