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.

Before the Road America round of Gridlife, we decided to partner up with 3R Racing and run in their Driver and Car Development Test Day, hosted by Bob and Dax Raub, and their professional driver, Aaron Povoledo.

We returned to our home track, High Plains Raceway, to turn some laps and dial in the car setup a little bit, and see how a proven race team spends their time at a track.

If you’re not familiar with 3R Racing, they have quite a strong competition history. In the Pirelli World Challenge, they claimed 40 wins, 47 pole positions, 156 top 5 finishes, and 244 top 10 finishes. They built on varying platforms including the Corvette C5, Porsche GT3, and Volvo S60 and C30. Their efforts led to four driver’s championships and three manufacturer’s championships, among many Crew of the Year awards and driver awards.

With that pedigree, we were excited to be working with them, and from the start, we knew we wouldn’t be disappointed.

The event was limited to a maximum of 20 participants, to keep the classroom time engaging and the traffic on-track to a minimum. The first thing on the schedule was an in-depth track walk with Aaron. We analyzed each corner, discussed varying entry and exit lines, and contemplated how much kerb we could eat. We also looked at how our different levels of comfort and aggression would determine our lines, both throughout the day and a full race weekend.

After the track walk, the track was hot. This is where some of the true value of this development day came into the light. At any time, we could come into the hot pits and request to get readings of tire pressure, tire temperature across the 3 main sections of tire, and our brake temperatures. The whole race crew from 3R was there in the pit lane to provide support. If anyone had an incident or went off, they could self report it and the entire team would look over the car for safety.

The first session was useful for us to get a good baseline time down. We started narrowing down our pressures and temperatures in the morning to get them within a ballpark we were happy with and brought our lap times to a consistent level without pushing. One of the topics covered in the classroom sessions later in the day was something we had already been conscious of since the morning: building speed throughout the day.

After the first track session, we had our first classroom session of four for the day. Aaron broke out the TV and loaded some film taken from one of the corner exits to go over lines. The camera was left to roll for the entire session so he was able to use each of us as an example to show who is using the most of the track, exiting the corner with the best line, and talk about how each different type of car may require different techniques through even this one corner. He extrapolated that concept to several of the corners, and we were tasked with applying the concept across the circuit.

In the second session, that was our goal. We weren’t concerned with lap times, but we wanted to follow the guidelines Aaron set out for us. Even without pushing, but with a new focus on corner exits, we shaved off a few tenths from our previous best time. However, on the back straight, a familiar moment brought back dreadful memories for Nigel. The gauge cluster lit up like a Christmas tree. Unlike before when the motor blew, this time he had no power steering. The combination of that and his effort to find the problem sent him straight off on turn 4.

He brought the car in and the crew immediately made the universal “cut” hand motion. They looked under the hood to find a fairly odd, but serious, issue. The hood prop had been shaken from its holder, dropped down into the engine bay, and ripped the accessory belt off the pulleys.

Nigel’s dad immediately took off down the highway toward the nearest town to find an auto parts store that had a matching accessory belt, skipping the lunch break. He and the 3R team worked through their lunch break to get the car back up and running, allowing Nigel to attend the next classroom session.

While the car was down, we decided to pull the fan shroud from the radiator. This was the only thing we hadn’t tried yet and we were out of answers for the cooling system issues. Lo and behold…

The fan shroud was the issue. The overheating issue was gone and Nigel could hammer out hot lap after hot lap with no concern of overheating. With no radiator fans, coming into the pits and cooling the car off became a small issue, but it was nothing a bit of careful driving and a gentle cooldown lap wouldn’t manage.

After a few more classroom and on-track sessions, we evaluated the data from the day. As the track got hotter, and we should have slowed down, we didn’t. That hints at both driver and car improvement for the day, as we dialed in the perfect pressures for the track evolution.

Now we’re off to Wisconsin and the famed Road America circuit for another Grid Life event!

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!

Now that the car was in better shape to run a full event, it was time to head to what we expected to be our biggest event of the year: Gridlife Midwest Fest at Gingerman Raceway in South Haven, MI.

This was the event in 2018 that triggered our interest in Gridlife. If you haven’t heard of it, imagine Forza Horizon, complete with a music festival and drifting, but in real life. And if you haven’t heard of Forza Horizon, I would give it a try, its mega fun.

We arrived bright and early on the first day of competition and our good friends over at Knottfast Racing were kind enough to save us a paddock spot right amongst the Street Mod Subaru guys. Mike Aumick was next to us and it was a cool sight to have a row of blue Subies together in paddock. 

After a first session trying to learn the circuit layout and decide how aggressively to run the rear wing, the car came in, melting … something. There was no smoke, and nothing from the driver’s seat was prominent enough to cause alarm. However, when we lifted the hood, the intercooler piping had shifted and was vibrating so aggressively that it had worn through the washer fluid reservoir and was resting simultaneously on the fuel lines coming from the fuel filter and the positive side of the battery terminal, threatening to shake its way through those next.

A quick removal of the washer bottle (who needs this on a race track, anyway?) and a giant hose clamp to keep the piping in place solved the issue for the rest of the weekend, and even as of this writing has still been the perfect solution to hold the intercooler piping in place.

The next hurdle to overcome is an overheating motor. In our first two sessions, the car could only do 2 hot laps in a row before the coolant temp was getting near the danger zone. Thankfully, Gingerman had a way of taking care of that issue for us.

While sitting on the grid waiting to run, the skies opened up and there was an enormous but brief downpour. That cooled everything off, but the track wasn’t too wet to get out and attempt to push for an improved lap time. After two laps, though, lightning in the area shut down the track again, and with a much longer break in store, mother nature took that opportunity to dump even more rain, this time soaking the track and leaving several large areas of standing water around the circuit.

When we went out again, in the full wet, the car loved it. Without any overheating issues, we could put in consistent lap times and learn where the water was standing, to get the times down. By the end of the session, we were the fastest car out there.

That was easily the highlight of our weekend and the car’s overall reliability, thanks to Mike at 5250 Performance, allowed us to spend more time watching the drifting and Grid Life Touring Cup events. 

After the racing was done for the evenings on the second and third days of competition the festival opened up and turned the entire venue into one big party. The relaxed and connected vibe of every Grid Life event shone through brightly during the festival, with a video game tent, food trucks, and a massive stage and light show during each artist’s act.

We left on Sunday, looking back at a successful, albeit podium-less, race weekend with more great Grid Life events to come.

Next stop: Illinois for Grid Life at the Autobahn Country Club!

After the disappointment and the scare at Mid-Ohio, we made some changes to our Subaru WRX in preparation for the next Gridlife Track Battle event. Let’s get technical…

Ryan Dussex, another local Time Attack driver in the area, was getting rid of his APR rear wing and we were lucky enough to jump in and purchase it from him; at a cars and coffee meet, no less! In theory, this wing will provide a maximum of 420 (it’s funny because we live in Colorado) pounds of rear downforce at 100mph.

The team over at Flatirons Tuning then helped out and pointed us towards a great solution for racing brakes, getting us away from the factory upgrade 4-pot calipers into a set of Essex Design AP Racing 4-pot calipers with 2-piece rotors and Ferodo DS3.12 pads. For the rears, we upgraded from factory calipers to Brembo 2-pot calipers, DBA slotted rotors and Ferodo DSUNO pads.

Let’s get into a little bit of backstory on the WRX. The first time Nigel ever took it to a track was at High Plains Raceway, in Deer Trail, CO. It had a gutted interior, the rear half of the roll cage was installed, and we installed some ISC coilovers. Apart from that, it was almost entirely stock. The motor had 208k miles on it, so we were keen to shake the car down and find out how it handled without putting too much stress on it. We were lapping in the low 2m20s range, which we felt was on par for the stock car. However…

The motor stuck on the back straight due to a clogged oil passage. His cheap project WRX was now dead. As he was waiting to get hauled back in, Nigel got a nice, stern talking to by the tow truck driver for not having a front tow hook installed. Oh, and did we mention that it was his birthday?

Fast forward several years and we return to High Plains Raceway for the first time since then, but this time with a fully built motor, a practical goal of bedding in our brand new brakes, and quite a bit more experience.

After a few reconnaissance laps to heat up the brakes, we started recording lap times. 2m09s, 2m07s, 2m05s… Nigel got comfortable in the car and the times hovered at 2m05s for about a dozen laps. We called him in to install the rear wing and see if there was a noticeable drop in time.

On his first hot lap, he did a 2m03. Result!

He managed to knock that down to a 2m02 before the track closed for the evening. Overall, we were extremely happy with the shakedown and how it panned out for us. There were no reliability struggles, no incidents on or off track, it was, in reality, a little dull. Which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is exactly how we want our sessions to go.

Next stop: Gingerman Raceway in Michigan for Gridlife Midwest Fest!

The Gridlife Track Battle event at Mid-Ohio was unome racing’s first competition event as a team. We dove headfirst with a rookie driver (Nigel), a rookie team, no big circuit experience, and everything to learn. We went into the weekend full of nerves and excitement, hoping we were ready for what it would throw at us. We were not…

We arrived the night before the event and got a great paddock spot right next to Austin Hertel and his Street class Nissan 370z. It was a very late night, waiting in line to pass tech and get our “annual tech OK” sticker since we planned to attend 5 Gridlife events this season. Everything went well and we got to get a great look around at our competition.

Our car is a bit underpowered compared to most of the other Street Mod competitors, and we’re not pushing the limits of tire width or treadwear. We have a modest build, pushing 320awhp, albeit at ~5,000ft of altitude, into 400 treadwear Dunlop 245/40/17 summer tires. (We have since switched to Bridgestone RE71R tires!)

The first morning of the competition started with a driver’s meeting, and a hearty breakfast cooked by our own team chef/pit crew/hype man/driver coach/everything man, Kevin. Kevin was instrumental in getting us to the event by providing a trailer and co-driving across the country from Colorado, among other things. Our good friends Greg and Jake, who are local to Ohio, came by to provide some race support shortly after the driver’s meeting. Nigel’s father happened to be working remotely in Ohio at the time and was able to make the trip up to the track to provide support, as well.

The first session on-track was great for reconnaissance. It ended a few minutes early with a black flag and we were keen to check on temperatures and how the car was holding up so we skipped the final few minutes. It was uneventful and the car was handling great; we made no setup changes. The second session was broadly similar so we continued on as planned.

Since it was our first time getting the car up to speed, we were hesitant about letting the car get too hot or really push everywhere. Nigel was lifting off the throttle at 120mph on the back straight and braking very gently around most of the circuit, both to learn the way around and preserve the car. He reported the rear-end getting loose at the kink around 120mph, but after getting a good run out of the carousel and feeling the car get loose in the same way at 130mph, he decided it was okay to continue pushing through and increase the speed.

By the end of the first day, the brakes were getting very hot and the pedal feel was slowly growing worse. We decided last-minute to head into town and get some off-the-shelf brake fluid and do a fluid flush at the circuit in the morning. That may have proven to be a mistake.

First thing in the morning, Greg and Jake handled the fluid exchange and Kevin cooked up another delicious batch of breakfast burritos. Nigel took the car for a test drive and reported the brake pedal felt “different.” Not necessarily better, or worse, but not quite the same as the day before. He decided he would be able to drive through the problem… This is where we learned the lesson: “Don’t ever try to drive through a braking problem.”

After consistently improving lap times each session, Nigel set a new Personal Best in the first session of Sunday morning. On the second hot lap of the second session, however, there was a small issue with the brakes. The fluid boiled, causing the calipers to remain in place and not release, superheating them for the entirety of the back straight. On a lap that should have been his new fastest time of the weekend so far, Nigel hit the brakes on the back straight and the pedal went directly to the floor with no deceleration at all.

He tried to downshift and wanted to rotate the car to slow it down, but with the gravel trap coming up, rotating the car could cause it to roll, so he braced for impact with the tire barrier.

After a surprisingly light impact, he was able to drive the car out of the gravel on his own and limp back to the paddock area, but our weekend was over.

Coming soon: New brake package, and some other goodies, to be installed in time for Midwest Fest at Gingerman Raceway.