[Non-MQB] ChampCar 12hr Race at VIR South: Mar 2023
So wheel to wheel racing is pretty awesome
Some friends of mine with with the Team Pist’n’Broke #358 SVT Focus had been trying to get me to try out endurance racing for a while.
To say I was nervous was an understatement. I don’t think I’ve ever been more stressed in my life pulling out onto the track in a relatively unfamiliar car, with a little over 40 other cars on the small 1.65mi VIR South Course (which I have never driven fully).
At this point I have had lots of days on track on the Full Course, but never on the South Course. Below are some track maps courtesy of www.VIRnow.com for reference.
Here's the full in-car video from the race (start time is when I got in at about 11am for the second 2hr stint, and drove until about 1pm):
>>> Pist'n'Broke Racing VIR 12hr Enduro - Ford Focus SVT <<<
My nervousness slowly went away within a few laps as I got comfortable with how the car felt, and was getting used to the massive convex rearview mirror (and lack of side mirrors). My eyes stayed glued to the mirrors any time I was even thinking about moving my relative position laterally across the track. My biggest take-away was that any time you're getting ready to turn in or move over etc... you have to check your mirrors religiously.
Multi class racing was a LOT of fun, I probably spent at least 40% of the race looking at my mirrors. I feel like I did pretty good. There was one instance where a Miata passed me cresting the hill at 3A... I knew he was there but I did not expect him to try and make the pass there (at the 3hr 27min mark).
To skip to some of the notable parts: here are some shorter clips with a few highlights (and a lowlight) of my time piloting the car:
Contact with a MK4 GTI - Was absolutely not proud of this. In the moment it looked like he turned in and was leaving space, and then turned in further... In hindsight now looking back: I was in his "vortex of danger", and given the Focus SVT’s lack of grunt out of corners, even if I had gotten fully on his inside and in the clear, he would have pulled away and been a car length ahead by the time we reached South Bend anyway. The rest of my team told me to chalk it up as a racing incident and learn from it. This was about 30 min into my stint. I dialed it back after this.
Two wide through South Bend was another notable experience.
Using faster traffic to finally pass the diesel Golf after several laps was by far the highlight of my day. The clip is cut short for those with short attention, but I was trying to plan a pass to get around the diesel Golf for several laps prior to this. I pointed by some faster traffic and was able to follow them closely into the braking zone of T1, while the Golf was stuck behind slower traffic being lapped on the outside.
I had a friggin blast! Doing W2W may have just ruined any desire to do eventually do Time Trials again to get my competitive fix. TT is fun, but I really enjoyed the behind-the-scenes strategy involved:
Scheduling pit stops
Planning for fuel
Managing tires and brakes
Using slower lapped traffic to make moves on cars in your class
Adjusting your strategy constantly based on full course cautions
Riding that fine line between driving as fast as possible while preserving the car to make it to the end
So how about the results?
We were definitely a low budget team, mostly out there having fun. I paid much less than what it generally costs to buy an arrive-and-drive seat with a really competitive ChampCar team. We ran in the “B” class and finished 4th out of 9 [and 23 out of 49, not including the Exhibition Class] despite several (avoidable) setbacks
Spare rear brake pads were apparently left at home, requiring 1hr of down time to get some from a parts store
Exhaust was not secured the best. One of the rear hangers allowed the side-exit pipe to drag on the ground partway through the day which required fixing in paddock, we suspect this also led to the final nail in the coffin:
The exhaust header flex pipe broke completely at the 11hr mark. At this point, we were solidly in 4th place, I believe more than 50+ laps ahead of 5th, and were nearly an equal amount behind 3rd place. Even if we were able to fix the car in time, it would not have gained us any positions, and were so far ahead of 5th that NOT fixing the car wouldn’t lose any positions. So we packed everything up and called it a night.
Parting thoughts
All in all, it was an amazing experience that I’ll never forget. I definitely look forward to doing some more events in the future (looking at 2024, since most of this year is already planned around other obligations). The seat time per $$ couldn’t be beat. I had an absolute blast even just helping with our other driver pit stops, keeping an eye on what other teams were doing, and being a part of the team as we strategized our next moves throughout the day. I think that with some more thorough preparation that the #358 car has some real potential to win in class.
