Road America Conti Challenge
 

Time for Americas fastest 4 miles of asphalt... It's race week.
Going into this race for sure the Camaro's and Mustangs are heavily favored .... But another "home track" for us in a way and who knows.
Doran racing was able to get the car back after our first complete outing with all the bumpers and fenders still attached and mechanically in one piece .
With a solid week in the shop we were able to have a good debrief , complete setdown on the chassis... and move forward.
We were able to turn a lot of heads at Mid Ohio and hopefully started some great momentum.
With a couple new tweaks that should help us out a bit and draw us a little closer to staying u front but we shall see.
Test day starts on Wednesday
Practice and quali on Thursday
Final ptc and race on Friday evening
Home

It will be a short week as we then hit Watkins Glenn next week.
Dwnshift

Good luck guys!

Good luck!

Are you guys going to get a second car going soon? Would be nice to see more than single car in field. Wonder what happened to old AM cars? This would be race ready platforms.

Good luck!!!!!!

Good luck B.J. I agree with Shamu. Any ETA on when you guys will be fielding a second car?

AM cars are half apart and in a barn somewhere ....everything was for sale.
This year we are just focusing on a single car.
Running multiple cars out of the box can be one of the biggest kisses of death in this series.
Teams end up spending a fortune and the entire program suffers...next thing ya know everything is for sale.
Seen it happen waaay to many times in this series.
The focus this year is getting the car running upfront on a regular basis with a solid development underneath....which will then hopefully drive some sales for more RCs and other teams to possibly field cars.
2013 is a whooole different story...but we gotta get through t rest of this year first.

PS.... budgets for a single GS car or an entire year are around $450k. Now if a customer comes onboard with the proper funding...thats a different story.
;)

Wish I had a large fortune to... oh you know the joke.

Good luck! It was awesome to see you guys running up front at Mid-Ohio. Wish they ran your races live. :P

dwnshift do you run heads from the HR or the VHR with VVEL?

HR

Dwnshift would you be able to provide a little more information on the heads? Did you guys switch to a 350z ecu to run these? What would I need to do to get rid of the vvel system in my car and run HR cams?

Pretty sure they are running stand alone race ECU just like AM team did. Just takes some big dollars for you to get rid of VVEL and VQ heads. Somone in Fontana CA is building these HR head motors.

When the car brings results on a regular basis..more teams will be look into running them.
Right now it needs to be developed.
i belive there was a nice large picture of the car on the front page of Grand Ams website..........When we qualified P1.
;)
just sayin

This is what I understood you to mean from the beginning. You guys are looking to get one car right first before splitting your attention and resources between cars.

Anyhow, good luck at Road America, bud!

Also how I understood it. Good luck guys :tup:

I hope you're successful, looking forward to more parts development. I love the baffled oil pan I got from AM Perf, too bad they're not making those anymore.

I wish I had bought one when I had the chance. :(

P5 ,P7 and P6 in todays sessions (still on mid ohio rubber)
Very happy with how the car rolled off the truck....which kinda scares me!
;)
Well see how we stack up tmrw when everyone starts getting fancy.
We had two special guests with us today Austin Dillon (current Nationwide series driver) and Mad Max Papis (who drove for Kevin Doran back in the MoMo Ferrari 333 days.
Austin used a some session time to get aquianted with the track as they run race here this weekend as well.
Tomorrow the fun begins!
Dwnshift

PS.... We have an AM oil pan back at the shop that could use a new owner.
We are dry sumped and the part is obsolete for our needs.
If there is an interested buyer drop me a PM.
Dwnshift

I think sig11 is interested.

I vote we keep this on the topic of Road America.

BJ, anything major to report from your test day?

:iagree:

I did a light cleaning in here since all I could see was the same horse getting beat over and over again.

You have PM sir. :tiphat:

I don't suspect I'm ready for all that it entails, but I'd be really curious about your dry sump conversion. What all it requires, etc.

A big thank you for the cleaning!!!!
;)
Back on topic.
Engine wise.... We had to run a 350z engine harness , chassis harness , and 350ecu ( which is exactly what Am ran) Dustin from Am was very helpful in this process by the way. We ended up ditching the OEM chassis harness and making our which cut down a lot of weight.
After Barber.... We converted the car to Grand Am spec Bosch ECU...Being the first team to do so meant a lot of waiting for the harness to get built by Grand Am's supplier.
Per the series rules... If you go to the Bosch ECU ... You HAVE to purchase the engine harness through them ( Sakata)so they can spec it out... it's a pain and expensive...but rules are rules. Once we got the ecu this meant building a map from scratch but gave us very detailed control of the engine mapping.
Today... we shall see as everyone will start playing for real.
The main issue right now is the track condition... Yesterday was record heat for the area and the asphalt patches in turns 5,6,and 8 were breaking up pretty badly.
I'm pretty sure they worked on it all night and we shall see what happens today.
The car was overall solid yesterday as we were top 10 all 3 sessions.
The Camaros are sandbagging for sure...but we have yet to run on new tires as well.
First session starts at 11 am so..... Here we go.

Good luck :tup:

Wow, awesome, go get 'em!!!:excited::excited::excited:

Good Luck !

Is there any place on the internet that practices are timed live ? I don't see anything on the Grand Am site, but I could be blind.

There is a link for live timing and scoring for Conti practice at 12PM EST on the main grand-am page.

As I'm writing this, BJ has the 5th fastest lap. :tup:

GrandAm > LiveTimingScoring

Live timing. About 50 minutes left in the session.

:tup:

Looking good in practice! Times right in there with fast cars.

GrandAm > Schedule/Results > results

A little off pace in P1 but I don't think they got many laps in. Session 2 is in a couple hours I'm sure we'll see guys making some qualifying runs then.

:iagree: just over 12 hours ago, in fact.


back on topic, P2 starting soon. Go Doran!

Hopefully Doran gets some more track time in and can close the gap in P2!

Busy weekend there with the Grand Am classes and the Nascar Nationwide cars.

Doran is expecting to finish in the top 3 once they get their sticky tires on. Apparently the car is running really well and their HP/Weight is working its magic against the heavier cars.

:tup:

Curious where have they settled on 370Z weight? I know last year 370Z teams were lobbying for lower weight. Curious where mustangs, BMW's and Camaros sit as well. Is it a big difference?