Fastest dry lap time: 02:34.422
The race track we had been most looking forward to visiting all season was Road America. When we got there the first thing we said was, “this is a truly professional facility.” From the timing and race director room to the facilities around the track, including a full restaurant and enormous gift shop, this circuit exuded history and quality. We knew this was an event that would be taken seriously.
This event started the day after Nigel’s birthday, which would make it the second “birthday weekend” that he was able to take the unome racing #96 WRX out on the track. More on this later.
Track battle started on Friday morning and we decided to take it very easy while learning a new track. It was misty, a little foggy, and the track temperature was pretty low, so we were managing the tires for the first two sessions.
Each session we got progressively faster. Kal Fortner and Nigel were going back and forth trading times in Street Mod, looking forward to the possibility of racing each other in the Bracket Battles on Sunday.
Friday night we went over some data and video, focusing on some of the things that 3R Auto and Aaron Povoledo had worked with us on. Saturday morning, we got to the track prepared to push the car a little harder and shave more time off of our personal best.
The first track session Saturday went well. We were consistent in our lap times, and learning braking zones and finding out where we can attack the kerbs. The second session seemed promising, as well, until…
Third gear decided to spin itself off the shaft. We had a bit of an incident on the back half of the track and Nigel threw the car down a gear to get some extra deceleration, and as he exited the corner he only had neutral. Trying to shift into other gears similarly destroyed each one in succession, until he was only able to crawl back to the pits in second gear. (Rewind a few years to the birthday weekend motor loss in this same car, here.)
That ended our weekend, and it seemed our season. No improvement, no new personal best at Road America for day 2, and no Bracket Battles (where we would have been bracketed with Kal, and everyone was looking forward to that fight).
A lot of people put in tremendous effort into the unome racing WRX this season. Money, time, and energy were all spent by friends, family, shops, builders, and everyone in between. We are very grateful for all of the support we received in the first year of unome racing. We finished just behind Sally in the points, which I think is a pretty fair effort for our first season of racing.
Thank you all for everything so far! Here’s to staying safe and reliable next season.