2025 VIR Full Course

Late to post the recap but here it is…

Going into the weekend we could not wait to get to VIR. We have always loved the facility but have never had the chance to run the full course layout. We have ran North Course multiple times over the years but were really looking forward to running the full course for the first time.

VIR Track Map

Car Updates from Previous Event:

Updates to the car were fairly limited for this race since it was a tight turn around from AMP. The only real new addition to the car was a homemade cool suit box. With as hot as the summer has been some driver cooling couldn’t hurt. The system uses a small refrigeration unit to cool water rather than ice. That cooled water then gets pumped through a shirt with cooling tubes on the driver. We wanted to use a system that did not require us to add ice throughout the day. With just two drivers and always trying to pack as much fuel in as possible we did not want to spend time worrying about adding ice to the cool suit unit. There are off-the-shelf systems available but they are pricey so we took a stab at making our own. Other than a small hiccup with a relay burning out Saturday morning, the system ran all weekend and was a big help keeping cool!

Prototype Cool Suit Unit Installed For the Weekend

Race ReCap:

Onto the race…

Saturday morning practice/qualifying fired off and the learning began. It was an extended practice so each driver had about 25mins to get familiar with the track. The S’s took a minute to get comfortable with but was fun to drive each lap. Oak tree was a tough one to figure out and braking into roller coaster always felt like you could of been more aggressive. There were lots of cautions through out qualifying so not a lot of people were able to click off a clean lap. Ryan was able to put down a lap that ended up bumping us up a class to A. We had a our work cutout for us as we were off pace compared to the top A class cars.

Cars went to grid for the race and Ryan lined up to take the green flag for the race in the 23rd position. He had a clean 1hr stint (shortened from standard 2hr due to heat) and drove up to 10th before coming in for a driver change. There was a red flag right around the 1hr mark that played in our favor as we were able to avoid the mass congestion on pit road. After everyone pit we cycled up to 4th overall but it was short lived. About 20min into the stint the outer CV joint on the RS half shaft decided to come apart. We got towed back in and went to work. Got the half shaft swapped out for a new one and went back out on track many of laps down. Still wanted to get our seat time in as both of us were still learning the track. The car however had other plans…. the RS half shaft decided to come apart again after 40mins!! At this point we knew the root cause as we have seen this story before.

At CMP a couple years ago our rear anti-roll bar broke which allowed too much droop on the inside rear tire and was killing the outer CV joint. The increased droop was putting too much misalignment in the outer joint causing the failure. Knowing this we got to work on inspecting the rear anti-roll bar. Everything checked out there so not a broken part issue this time. Next question was if we had more lateral accel from our wider tires causing more roll. This was only our 2nd event running the wider tires so still a learning curve. Had to try something so time to make some droop limiters! A quick Lowes run for some chain and we were ready for Sunday. We attached the chain from the chassis to the lower control arm to set the maximum amount of droop allowed and prevent the half shaft from getting a large amount of misalignment.

Fired off Sunday with the hopes of keeping it together all day. Made it through one stint after another largely issue free. Only had one off track incident right after the upper S’s due to someone putting down oil and us being the 2nd car to find it… other than that things were looking good. After 7hrs and only one pit stop to go we were running 6th overall out of 61 cars that took the green. And then the train came off the tracks… or the connecting rod off the crank. Tomato, Tomahto… The day was over with a viewing port in the side of the block.

That is not supposed to be visible…

Time for an unexpected engine rebuild prior to CMP in September. Hopefully we can put it all together there to get our first win!