After our great outing at Gingerman Raceway in Michigan, we took the unome crew out for an adventure in Illinois to the Autobahn Country Club.
The format for this event included two separate track layouts, running on one half of the main circuit for the first two sessions, then moving to the full layout for the final two sessions of day one. The second day was scheduled for the short layout again, but that didn’t quite work out…
Our first session went decently well, although we did miss the initial grid and had to jump out at the beginning of Group C. Thankfully, that meant we had some open track space to play with, and Nigel could dial in and begin to learn the circuit, as unome continued the trend of attending events at tracks that none of the team had been to before.
Nigel was able to get through the first few sessions and learn the layout just in time for the switch to the second circuit format. Because of the continued overheating issue after one hot lap, and the length of the long layout, we soon encountered an issue that was doubly inhibitive for us – other drivers’ car reliability. If there was a local yellow, or even worse, a stranded vehicle, our whole hot lap was thrown off, along with the next as we had to keep the car cool.
This happened on numerous occasions, with other drivers spinning off the track or losing components from mechanical problems. It was so bad that we only recorded 2 hot laps on the full layout – one in each evening session. We weren’t able to acquire many valuable data in the process and never set a representative lap time, effectively putting us out of the hunt for a top 5 finish for the weekend.
On the morning of the second day, however, we were jumping up the order on the short circuit. Even battling the overheating, we were putting in enough laps to lower our times in each consecutive session.
Then the rain came. While on the grid waiting for a car to be removed from the circuit, the sky opened up amazingly. Within fifteen minutes there was more than an inch of rain, not to mention the wind gusts of nearly 60mph. We scrambled to pack up the car, tools, and other gear as the rain hammered down. Along the way, we managed to lock the tow vehicle keys in a toolbox and realized only afterward that the windows had been down the entire time. That was the worst thing that happened all weekend, though, so we can’t be too upset.
We left the circuit immediately, hoping to get a head start on the long drive back to Colorado. In the meantime, the rain had completely stopped and the track went green again for the 6 competitors that had stayed in hopes of sticking out the rain.
We missed our chance at topping the leaderboards again in a rain-affected session, but our new friend Kal Fortner took home that honor and we were stoked for him!
Next stop: Back home to High Plains Raceway for a quick SCCA Time Trials event in Colorado!