The Mustang Forum for Track & Racing Enthusiasts

Taking your Mustang to an open track/HPDE event for the first time? Do you race competitively? This forum is for you! Log in to remove most ads.

  • Welcome to the Ford Mustang forum built for owners of the Mustang GT350, BOSS 302, GT500, and all other S550, S197, SN95, Fox Body and older Mustangs set up for open track days, road racing, and/or autocross. Join our forum, interact with others, share your build, and help us strengthen this community!

Some racing action in the Pirelli World Challenge GTS/GT #12 Race, Mid Ohio

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
As some of you know, I work in the Pirelli World Challenge as a mechanic / telemetry data analyst / chassis setup tech (Gopher Generalist). I work for the #01 RS Werkes Audi TTRS driven by Don Istook (I know, not a Boss 302R or S team, for shame). We've always been towards the back of the pack with this car as its been under development for the last year, but we've finally made some strides to work our way up! This weekend we were able to outpace most of the mustangs, and even one of the astons in qualifying, and despite a technical foul (late to grid!) and last place start for race1, we finished 16th in class!

For race2 on Sunday at Mud-Ohio, we started 16th, had a fantastic start, but our newfound speed was countered by some sheared mounts (I believe we may have sheared one mount on the start, and then lost the dogbone about 2/3 into the race). This is sidelining the team until Houston on Oct 4-6th, but we plan to bounce back from this.

I do have some video to share from our race start on Race2 (with data courtesy of Autosport Lab's RaceCapture/Pro, a very powerful low cost datalogging/real time telemetry system we've been working with):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poZvGmiRcl4[/youtube]

We had some good battles with the mustangs in the TTRS, especially Alec Udell and whoever was in the whodat/green car.

Unfortunately still a lot of work for me to do. The car has some serious turn-in snap oversteer followed by washout push, and I'm just not enough of a chassis engineer to diagnose it all out besides to ask the driver to ease up on his inputs a bit.
 

mcmmotorsports

Resident Mental Patient
Brad Adams is in the green Whodat Mustang. Met him at Miller Motorsports Park in 2010 at the Mustang Challenge Season/Series finale. Nice guy!

Great video too!
 
blacksheep-1 said:
So I'm looking at the back of the mustang and all I could think of was "I wonder if he's running an 18mm rear sway bar?".
LOL

That was a great start and glad to see your team progressing. So you're not going to be at Sonoma in two weeks then? I was just planning my day as I'm going to stop at Sonoma on my way to LS for the Do The Screw In Your 302 on the 25th.
 

captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
NFSBOSS said:
LOL

That was a great start and glad to see your team progressing. So you're not going to be at Sonoma in two weeks then? I was just planning my day as I'm going to stop at Sonoma on my way to LS for the Do The Screw In Your 302 on the 25th.

I'll be there to host our sponsors, but the car isn't anywhere near being able to race. We're short on cash, sponsors, and time to get it fixed up. Houston is probable at this point.
 
Thanks for the report!

I can't remember if I ever mentioned this before, but Don Istook is who taught me high-performance driving back in 2000. It was my first HPDE and he asked me about my goals. I told him that I had already done some motorcycle racing and that I didn't want any limits. I was fully committed. So, he taught me all the race lines and we were very aggressive on track. When I went to get my check-ride with the head instructor, he was apoplectic. He expected a nice designated HPDE line, but Don had taught me the race lines and quattro lines and every other damn thing. Lots of yelling followed. A helmet might have been thrown. Good times. ;)

Don is an awesome guy and I run into him every couple of years or so. He might need a memory jog, but he knows me by name. Here is a photo I took of him last year at Miller:

wc_11.jpg
 

TMO Supporting Vendors

Top