Jungle Motor Sports: May 2018

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

World Racing League @ Road America 5-5 & 5-6

I rented a seat from Rodney, the team owner of Burnt Ends Racing out of Kansas, driving an first generation Miata. I haven't been to Road America in over 5 years, it was nice to be back for two 8 hour long endurance races with World Racing League.

Road America is located in eastern Wisconsin, very, very fast, our little Miata would reach speeds north of 100mph 3x each lap. It is a world class track rich with history, and resides on many people's bucket list.

During Friday's practice a Porsche Boxtser met it's demise at "the Kink". Later than day another Boxster from the same team lost a motor. That night the car that lost its motor got a transplant out of the one that hit the wall.

Saturday 52 cars took the green flag. On the very first lap, another Boxster hit the wall in turn 5. Later on in the day another Boxster dumped oil all over the track, causing a red flag condition and sending all of the cars back into the hot pits. I am told 160 bags of oil dry were used to clean up the mess, as it started on one side of the track and stopped at the opposite side. Again all of the Boxster drama was from the same team! Later in the day, a tree fell down! It fell over the fence and blocked part of the track. One of the cars actually lost his side view mirror and broke a windshield from it.

If you look at this video, and go to 16:45 you can see it on drivers' right side. I am not driving, but it is from our car.

Very, very strange, never before have I seen the race get red flagged twice. First time ever even hearing of a tree falling on the racing surface! Jokes about have swarms of locus and raining blood started being tossed around. Because of the interruptions to the race, that was originally susposed to be 8 hours long, it ended up being closer to 6. Saturday we finished 4th in class GP3, 16th over all. I believe we were one lap down from the 3rd place car after something like 6 hours of racing.

Sunday about 41 cars took to the track. About half way through the race we had a wheel bearing failure, driver side rear. Kinda strange, when the car came to a stop in the pits, one of the lug nuts with the wheel stud just fell off, two of the lug nuts where loose, and that bearing was toast.

Due to some interesting strategies, it was chosen to run our last driver extra long, and on fuel savings load. We had two laps up on the 3rd place car, and knew that they had to make an extra pit stop. We hoped that long stinting the car and running 10 seconds a lap off of our pace we could still take a podium finish. We were able finish 2nd in class.

I will continue to add pictures and video as they come up...

I felt bad for these guys, they lost a motor, swapped it, had mechanical issues all weekend, then later on Sunday they got ran into by another car who made a poor decision.

This Mustang was fast as heck. However it was painfully slow in the corners, lack of talent I assume. Notice the rear end being smacked up? It wasn't like that the start of the race on Saturday.