SCCA Pacific Coast Road Racing Championship – Auto Club Speedway
Fontana, CA – As a team we went to Auto Club Speedway (ACS) with the hopes of finishing out the 2015 season with a win. We had a number of things to look forward to; Jim Devenport was bring his P1 Norma from Northern CA, so we could fire up the battle that started in Daytona, and we were closing out our run for the SCCA Southern Pacific Divisional P1 Title. Additionally, we were returning to Auto Club Speedway, where we started our season and raced the Stohr WF-1 for the first time, so we wanted to ascertain how much additional speed we could engineer out of the car and gauge our progress.
This is racing, and as is so often the case, not everything goes as planned. To begin with we had the “Daytona set-up” on the Stohr, and the car didn’t feel right. At Daytona we went way out on limb trying to find as much speed as possible for the ridiculously long straightaways. In a sense, Daytona is an aberration; it has no similarities to any other track. So the car set-up for Daytona is unlikely to apply to other tracks. More specifically, the car seemed to exhibit a real lack of mechanical grip in the slow tight corners at ACS. If I attempted to attack the corners, the car would go into a premature slide, like the tires were completely worn out. This was very apparent applying power exiting the corners; the back end kept stepping out. At times it felt like the tail end of the car wanted to pass the front end on entrance to the corner; not much fun. I’ve raced ill-handling cars before, and it just goes from bad to worse as the tires get over heated and the car’s handling continues to deteriorate. The race weekend was only two days, so we had very limited time to resolve these issues. Although the team worked tirelessly to resolve the handling issues of the car, we never got on top of it and really didn’t show our potential.
Speed – we actually went faster at ACS then our initial visit in January 2015. I know, you’re thinking why did he just write a lengthy paragraph complaining about his car’s handling. Reality, we weren’t incredible fast in January, it was our first time in the car and I wasn’t completely comfortable. I believe that last weekend we found a little more speed because I know the track and was braking much later for the corners. In January we put the car on pole with a respectable 1:36:8, on Sunday morning on used tires we managed a 1:35:2. However, the competition ran a 1:34:7 in qualifying. The SCCA track record for Prototype 1 is 1:34:3.
Saturday’s qualifying race turned out to be a nice little battle with pole sitter Jim Devenport in his French built Norma. Watch and enjoy:
The rest of the weekend was a mixed bag; mechanical issues force half the P1 field to retire. Devenport had an engine miss that the team was unable to resolve, and new comer Scott McPherson’s Hayabusa motor let go in his Stohr WF1. So the big showdown on Sunday didn’t materialize, we’ll have to wait until 2016.
We were on a mission: finish the season with a win, and win we did!!
2015 Race Season Recap
- Seven race weekends – 12 Races
- 9 Race Wins
- 11 Podiums
- Finished 2nd in the 2015 Nationwide Point Standings
- Captured the Southern Pacific P1 Divisional Title