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Rodger!! Awesome updates. A lot of trial and tribulation to get you into this upcoming race but I love seeing you guys stay after it and making the best of it. I can't believe how good that bottom end looks after 80k miles... Good guy Toyota - am I right? Best of luck - I'll be rooting for you guys!
Update from latest race. We ran in the national championship at Ozark International Raceway. It's a recently built track southeast of Kansas City 100 miles or so. This is a 4 mile crazy elevation change track. Scary as hell. The race was 2 day 8 hour races. We didn't have the pace of the front runners but decided to take chances on pit under cautions. It just didn't work the first day and we ended up finishing 15th out of about 65 cars. The second day, we decided to run the same strategy, and it worked most of the day. We were looking at sneaking out a top 10 and maybe even a top 5. We were running 7th with less than an hour to go and the in tank fuel pump went out and ended our day. The last pump I installed was a cheap RockAuto one and was intended to be temporary and I just never got around to swapping it back out. That's on me, I'll get it swapped and be ready to go again. We finished tied for 12th in the final championship points. Here are a couple of my laps.
The new engine performed great, it just doesn't seem to have the power we had hoped for. The new brake system worked great as well, made them a bit more sensitive over the old LS calipers. But the pads are thicker, less expensive, and the rotor/caliper weight is less so the set up is definitely an improvement we can stick with.
We have to find speed somehow with this car. Maybe more weight reduction, this series does not have a minimum weight requirement so it's probably our next path if we decide to keep running the car. We were just so outpaced I am not sure what we are going to do. Car is great in all other aspects, handles well, good reliability, easy to drive on track. I drive a lot of other team's cars in this same series and nothing is as forgiving and easy to drive as the Lexus. We just need more power. We'll spend the next month or two figuring out the next move.
I know other than an update on the engine build on track performance and the brakes this wasn't much of a build update, just trying to keep it up to date. Thanks for reading.
Wow, love the in-car footage, and that track looks completely insane in the way it flows and moves up and down. Sorry to hear that the fuel pump was your Achilles heel this time around, but we are always cheering you on!
Wow, love the in-car footage, and that track looks completely insane in the way it flows and moves up and down. Sorry to hear that the fuel pump was your Achilles heel this time around, but we are always cheering you on!
As can be seen in the video there is no straight section of track in any of the 4 miles, other than the “rollercoaster” area which is difficult to describe as straight.
Absolutely love this Rodger! Awesome footage and I can't ever get enough of hearing about your guys' racing adventures. I hope I can get to a point in my life where I can put the time and effort into campaigning a car like this. Keep on havin fun and kickin *** out there!
Not much of a build update, but we did take the car to the national championship for our race series that was held at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin last weekend. For some reason that I will have to find over the next month or so we were down on power. The car ran flawlessly all weekend which consisted of an 8 hour race on Saturday and a 7 hour race on Sunday. The championship is scored by adding your two finishes together and lowest number wins and places are determined with increasing numbers.
We had a 9th place finish on Saturday, followed it up with a 7th on Sunday and due to our consistency and our competitors having issues we finished 4th in the championship. Not bad considering we were the slowest laptime car among the championship contenders. We just kept plugging away and we'll take the 4th happily considering the loss of engine power. This engine is one we installed in a hurry a little over a year ago, purchased and installed overnight before a race a year ago February. It might just be tired, but just not sure until we can dig into it a bit.
This car has sat for a year and a half either in the trailer or in my garage. I did not post an update after it's last race in October of 2022 just because it was a disappointment in reliability and race pace. I had a lot of other priorities otherwise in life since then so this car had to take a back seat. But, we decided to bring it back out for a 14 hour race at Road Atlanta on Feb 3rd. We did almost zero prep for the race just because again too many other irons in the fire. Lack of prep for an endurance race typically adds up to a short day for one reason or another, I have said many times in the past races are won in the weeks leading up to them in the level of prep. But, we wanted to get back out so we said let's go and just have fun and see how far the old girl will take us. There was a field of around 60 cars that took the green flag that morning at 8am with everyone wanting to be there for the checkered flag at 10pm. This car is usually a 6 stop/7 stint car because it can easily go 2 hours on the stock 20.7 gallons of fuel. Our series rules require a mandatory stop at 2 hours to swap drivers. If you take fuel, you are required to be in the pits 5 minutes minimum. However, we decided we would work the cautions and try to do something different than the leaders and see if we could gain some type of advantage. We started near the back of the pack and over the first few hours we found ourselves around 20th. We took a couple of stops during off cycle cautions. Mid day we were bumping in and out of top 10. By late afternoon we had worked up to 5th to 8th depending on stops simply working the stops and attrition of cars in front of us. By nightfall we were solidly top 5. With 2 hours to go we were up to 3rd. I made a dumb move speeding under caution and we dropped to 4th. With 10 minutes to go, 3rd place ran short of fuel and had to come in so we took the checkered in P3.
This car has been in many races since building it in late 2015 to 2016. I think we have 5 overall wins, several 2nd's, a few 3rds and 4ths. I am always amazed at the reliability, it just chugs out the laps over and over. It is never the fastest, this race was particularly so as our fastest lap was 28th among the other cars fastest laps. Tortoise /hare kind of thing going on I guess. Our lap times under green were standard deviation of 0.8 to 1.2 seconds so all three of us driving it hard and consistent pays off over the long haul. The last time in this race, 4 years ago I think it was, we finished 4th so the car is well suited for this track even though the overall pace is slower than others. 14 hours is a long race, so the consistency and reliability pays off.
I don't really have a build update since we really did nothing to the car except clean out the cobwebs, freshen the fluids, slap on some used tires and throw it out there. This may inspire us to get back on the optimization and development of the car and try to catch up to some of the faster cars. But for now we are enjoying this result.
This is the link to in-car livestream recording from the car. It’s pretty poor quality I guess due to limited bandwidth at the track but I wanted to link it here mostly for future reference.
Congratulations to you and your crew for pulling this off. What an achievement, this is fantastic and Good Luck for the rest of the season. Keep us abreast of the balance of the season.
Bill
Congratulations to you and your crew for pulling this off. What an achievement, this is fantastic and Good Luck for the rest of the season. Keep us abreast of the balance of the season.
Bill
Thanks Bill. Remember, give me a shout whenever you come through McCalla. I will show you some of my SC collection.
Good evening Roger,
It was great to read the exploits of you, your team, and that fantastic race car.
I have been trying to visit you since Christmas believe it or not. Since Christmas I have had a couple of falls and then the dog gone flu. A friend did some work on my car for me and found a worn left outer tie rod which he installed. Took it to a another friend for an alignment and found a bad lower ball joint and a bad arm on the rear. Anyway as soon as I get my car straightened out I am going to drop by on the way to Birmingham. I am very much looking forward to that trip.
Hopefully I will see you soon,
Bill
04-11-22, 10:37 AM
