2018 Official The Frozen Rotors Grand Prix at Road America

[Guest E. Tyler Pedersen]

Everyone should be thawed out by now. Please share your stories on track, off track and even on the go kart track. 

 

Pictures and videos welcomed especially those from Saturday. 

 

Results from My laps

 

Saturday: https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Sessions/5154062?user=MYLAPS-GA-0eae60b446754211b660733512501d68

 

Sunday: https://speedhive.mylaps.com/Sessions/5154063?user=MYLAPS-GA-0eae60b446754211b660733512501d68

 

Race Recap by Doc Waldrop:
https://champcar.org/mainweb/uncategorized/2018-frozen-rotors-winter-classic-double-8-at-road-america-race-recap/

 

 

[Racer28173]

As always, the safety crew was incredible. A splitter is sitting on the track on one side and a nose is barely off track on the other. They are in a location that is 120+ mph, with a slight bend and a hill that makes it hard to see approaching cars and hard for cars to see what is on or beside the track.  Oh, and there are concrete walls on both sides with a somewhat narrow strip of grass, particularly on one side.   Full course yellow?   Heck no!  Gone in two laps with just a couple of local yellows.  Those guys are AWESOME!!!!

[Andrew D Johnson]

Thank you champ staff and volunteers for putting on such a fun event. The karting was fun, and the entire event was well run and a blast to be part of.

 

Thanks Denny Morgan for putting together the raffle, those prize packs looked epic.

 

Thank you @Jer for putting up with us as pit mates, and for the great battle on Sunday. 

 

Thanks to blue shells for help getting into the track Thursday night.

 

Thanks 90racing.com for the the help as always.

[Andrew D Johnson]

1 minute ago, Racer28173 said:

As always, the safety crew was incredible. A splitter is sitting on the track on one side and a nose is barely off track on the other. They are in a location that is 120+ mph, with a slight bend and a hill that makes it hard to see approaching cars and hard for cars to see what is on or beside the track.  Oh, and there are concrete walls on both sides with a somewhat narrow strip of grass, particularly on one side.   Full course yellow?   Heck no!  Gone in two laps with just a couple of local yellows.  Those guys are AWESOME!!!!

 

The Road America team is the best in the business, it’s always a privilege to race at these great tracks.

[Zauskycop]

I wonder if Ben will put his NSFW video on....???

[NigelStu]

3 minutes ago, Zauskycop said:

I wonder if Ben will put his NSFW video on....???

no.

 

 

at least not all of it.

 

 

 

 

Weekend  bookend recap:  Swapped a b ad bearing Friday night.  Had fun on the RS4s in the cold wet until I didn't.  Broke a tail light and tried to give myself carbon monoxide poisoning.   Team fixed it.  Dropped to 54th or something.  Team worked our way up to 16th.   Went and had dinner.  Woke up.  Scrapped ice off windshield.  Put RE71Rs on.  Found out we could go 1:50 full tilt.  Ran last 2 stints in major fuel save mode.  Brought her home in 4th, breaking the RA curse and giving Ana the first awesome finish.  Drove home, having to stop twice in the 7.5 hours to take a couple of naps.  Hit 75% remains of a deer that bent a few things on the trailer (axles are not supposed to be curved, are they?), lost trailer brakes.  Rolled in at 5:15, took pants off and fell asleep.  Texted boss in groggy state at 9:30 am to tell him I'd come in after lunch, went back to sleep.  Woke up at 11 and contemplated if I could package and sell the jerky stuck to the trailer.  Started up the car and drove it into garage (a FIRST this year for after a race!!!!)

 

Have to give props to Tracy, my brother and dad for racing well and helping us finally make it back into impound.  Its been a while.

 

Also came home with some delicious cheese and meats! woo hoo!

[tneker]

As always, big kudos for yet another well run RA event.

 

#55 Udder Chaos Neon was having a pretty good start to Saturday when a 4 wheel off at the bend put a large amount of sand into a wheel causing a major vibration, and weirdly enough seemed to maybe start some ECU woes. Lost a bit of time in the paddock making sure the sand in the wheel was root cause for the vibration issue and confirming ECU was seemingly happy again.  RS4's were not great, but seemed much better than a previous cold rainy race day where we may might has well been on ball bearings.  We have them head cycled at tire rack now and I suspect that may help cold performance some???  Anyways we made back some of the lost positions  during the worst of the rain and flurries, probably in part due to FWD.  Unfortunately last driver out on Saturday missed a shift , throwing off the alternator belt and soon after experiencing a fried ECU.  Still trying to determine cause, but net result was car on trailer Saturday night.  First time in 12 or so race weekends we weren't at least on track the second day, so that kind of stung.  After hitting the track Sunday morning as spectators, envious of all those racing in the sunshine, we headed back to the shop and pulled the engine for tear down over the winter and stuffed everything else in storage.  Looking forward to April 2019.

[Chris Shay]

Ludicrous Speed took our first overall win in six years with the series!  Damn happy to finally take the overall on Sunday!  I did three stints, one, three, and five while Chris Krumrai took second stint and my father Bob took the fourth. We can’t go two hours on fuel so we had to make up for the extra stop. Traffic early on was more aggressive thank I wanted to deal with. I hung behind the Mueller Motorsports BMW and let them lead through traffic till the field spread out. By the six hour mark it looked like both JSK and Cone Crushers were going to come out in front by about one minute after pit rotations with Crank Yankers also in the hunt. I’m not sure what happened but none of the leaders were able to go full tilt to the end. We managed the gap to JSK pushing only as hard as we needed to.  After training for and completing a ten hour mountain bike race a few weeks ago, the five hours that I spend in the car was comfortable. It was great cross training. 

 

Saturday was an exposition by Mother Nature. That was wicked!  Seemed like the RE4s were hard to handle, the RE71Rs were manageable and the continentals were the tire to have and the only tires working ok.

 

Big thanks to Chris Harvey from tire rack for helping us get some new skinny tires for the rain. Um, I mean snow.  Eric and Bob were our two drivers on Saturday and they did a great job keeping the car on track with just a couple bobbles. 

 

The Road America safety crew is always impressive!  Big thanks to those guys!  

 

Can we we do this again next weekend?

 

Chris Shay 

[Andrew D Johnson]

9 hours ago, Chris Shay said:

Ludicrous Speed took our first overall win in six years with the series!  Damn happy to finally take the overall on Sunday!  I did three stints, one, three, and five while Chris Krumrai took second stint and my father Bob took the fourth. We can’t go two hours on fuel so we had to make up for the extra stop. Traffic early on was more aggressive thank I wanted to deal with. I hung behind the Mueller Motorsports BMW and let them lead through traffic till the field spread out. By the six hour mark it looked like both JSK and Cone Crushers were going to come out in front by about one minute after pit rotations with Crank Yankers also in the hunt. I’m not sure what happened but none of the leaders were able to go full tilt to the end. We managed the gap to JSK pushing only as hard as we needed to.  After training for and completing a ten hour mountain bike race a few weeks ago, the five hours that I spend in the car was comfortable. It was great cross training. 

  

Saturday was an exposition by Mother Nature. That was wicked!  Seemed like the RE4s were hard to handle, the RE71Rs were manageable and the continentals were the tire to have and the only tires working ok.

 

Big thanks to Chris Harvey from tire rack for helping us get some new skinny tires for the rain. Um, I mean snow.  Eric and Bob were our two drivers on Saturday and they did a great job keeping the car on track with just a couple bobbles. 

 

The Road America safety crew is always impressive!  Big thanks to those guys!  

 

Can we we do this again next weekend?

 

Chris Shay 

 

Your team is without a doubt the fastest in the series, congrats on the first win. 

[LX Sport]

Motorcrap had an interesting time.  This is the first weekend we finally ran on something other then our crappy budget tires, and I dont think we can go back.  We put on a new set of RS4's and found out our car can turn a bit better then we ever expected.  I started Saturday, and was having an absolute blast that first 45 or so minutes before the weather.  Ran with the Ludicrous MR2 for awhile in that stint (was thrilled to see you guys win on sunday, Ive always really liked that car) and was able to put some decent laps down in traffic. 

 

Then the weather.....oh man.  I was happy to have the RS4's cause they were still better then our other tires.  But believe me, driving a torquey Mustang with RS4's in the rain/snow is no ones idea of fun.  It pushes off power and as soon as you think about hitting the gas it'll start to come around.  It takes a very light and careful touch to get it around track without it breaking lose around every slight bend.  In the past, we would park the car in the wet cause its just not fun and (with the old tires) slightly dangerous.  But this weekend we decided to atleast try to keep turning (very slow) laps.  Which we managed to do.  And our poor renter, his first stint ever in our car was in the rain/snow...I couldnt think of a worse time to put a first timer in the car.  But we managed to keep it going and finished 3rd in class on Saturday.

 

Sunday, everything started great, but about half way thru our second stint, the car was down on power.  Way down.  I ran a 2.52 the day before in traffic, and I know there's atleast a 2.50 in it and was hoping to prove that with some clean/open track on Sunday, but the car was so down on power the best I could fight out of it was a 2.59, and it seemed to be getting slower.  But it stayed together and we tried a few quick fixes but nothing seemed to matter.  We kept going and managed a 2nd in class.  Props to Dirtguys for winning D both days, that's another car I've always loved seeing out there and glad to see them find success!

[TRM-BobK]

I am still decompressing and recoverying from the weekend.
 

Saturday we started ~67/76.  Chris got the car up to in P4 in his stint with the rain / snow / sleet starting in the last ~30 min of his stint.  JSKRacing pitted the same time we did and almost put a lap on us.  They had a longer pit stop, so we managed to not get lapped.

I took over in the worsen conditions, but I like Road America in the wet.  For the next 90 mins, I did my "rain dance" and chipped away at the ~2:45 lead JSKRacing had on us.  I eventually caught and passed them for the lead.  I think I stretched out the lead to 0:40? ~ 1:00 by the end of my stint.

 

JoeW got in for the 3rd stint.  We thought the snow was going to stop and things were going to clear up.  JSKRacing took the lead back.  Another heavy snow squall..... and we had a tank slapper coming out of T3, spun 360+?, and hit the left wall about 3/4rd of the way to the Sargento Cheese bridge.  Left front hit.... hard enough to pull the shift linkage apart and break the trans mounts.  We were done.

 

We managed to strip off all the broken parts and get the car running by the end of the race Saturday, but we did not do any more laps.

 

Sunday, I drove the first stint on Sunday to shake the car down.  We were doing pace laps just to finish to try to finish a race at Road America.  Unfortunately, I got caught out in the oil from T1 exit thru T3 and hit the Acura that spun.  I tried to avoid it... thought he was still rolling and going backwards... I picked the inside, and did not make it.   1 more foot and I would have missed him.

 

Awesome job by ChampCar and the Road America safety team.  Those guys are top notch!

Congrats to Ludicrous Speed and a big thank you also to them and Team Spartan for the thumbs up and wave on Sunday when we were limping around doing our pace laps in a badly wounded car.

 

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by TRM-BobK

[NigelStu]

1 hour ago, LX Sport said:

Motorcrap had an interesting time. 

 Incredibly special THANK YOU shout out to your driver on Sunday at ~11:07ish am for having quick hands and the right reaction.  This is the Non-contact-contact that we got called in for.  Looking at the video (I'll post it eventually, this computer doesn't have the software), looks like your driver was giving space inside/went too deep on brakes/was out in the marbles/didn't want to drive all the way over the rumble strips or some combination and had the back end slide out a bit, which of course angles the car back across the track.  Perfect timing on the catch, you can see the counter steer happening in the 3rd pic.  I'd give it barely mirror width between the cars at the closest....    But no contact!   

 

[LX Sport]

Ha, I heard from some friends/family that they saw what they believed was contact in turn 5 during that stint.  That was our renter, who had an hour of dry track on Saturday and then this stint, so he was fairly new to the car.  Very happy he was able to avoid contact, as I'm sure he is as well!  We should have video (another team member has the gopro) of that, but I'd love to see it from your car!

[skierman64]

A big thanks to Tyler Pederson for inviting me to drive with the Crank Yankers team for my second race of the season with them.  I drove first on Saturday and worked our way up to 8th early and eventually settled into 11th.  I could see the weather coming in from the west and it finally started raining about an hour into the stint.  Once the track got damp, i experimented until I learned the rain line.  I knew I wasn't getting passed but because i couldn't hear the radio (the car is crazy loud and the volume was set too low) I had no idea where we were.  I found out after the stint, that I moved up from 11th to 3rd in the first 12 or so laps in the wet.  The car was a lot of fun in the wet even on RS4s, it was a balancing act at every corner on the edge of adhesion.  The climb out of Canada corner seemed to be the most difficult place to find traction.  I was having a blast tip toeing around the track.  The racing Gods were not smiling on us however as we got into the wall on the next stint, bending the front and rear suspension.  

Tyler, Thomas, Rob and Brian did a great job fixing the car Saturday night so we could race on Sunday.  A new front right suspension and a new rear subframe later we were ready to go about 11pm Saturday eve.  Sunday, I drove second stint.  Rob did a great job of moving us up to fifth in the first stint.  I got in and was able to do 2:55s without pushing too hard and while saving a bit of gas.  There wasn't a lot of drama on this stint except the Miata that decided to unintentionally brake check me due to a standing yellow flag halfway down the Kettle Bottoms straight while I was 15 feet off his bumper.  BRAKING IS NOT REQUIRED/NECESSARY/SMART FOR YELLOW FLAGS.  At least check your mirrors first.   

Tyler and Rob drove after me and at the end we slotted into a pretty firm third place behind Ludicrous Speed and JSK.  We were pushing them until we ran out of brake pads with 15 minutes to go.  We still finished only 20 seconds behind JSK and 70 seconds behind the MR2.  It was a great day of driving and crewing for the CYR team.  

On a personal note, this now my 6th consecutive season with a podium finish in endurance racing (WRL/CCES/AER).  Thanks to Tyler for the opportunity.  

 

PS:  Thanks to Doc for the mention on Champcar Live on Saturday.  

 

Edited October 24, 2018 by skierman64

[Jer]

Interesting weekend for Ergolab Miata.  I get there Friday and immediately got to work building a new splitter.  I'm sure the Blue Shell guys were thinking WTF as I whipped out a circular saw and made a huge mess.  Sorry guys.  But it was done, you can stand on it, fantastic.  Then race day Saturday.  The car is still fairly new, it was built and raced the first time last December so we're still sorting it.  Saturday our first driver reports we are running hot-245 if he gets on it at all.  Also, it was stumbling up high-appeared to be in limp mode.  Funny how problems crop up out of the blue after a spectacular test day the Friday before.  Anyway, rather than burn up another motor, we brought it in.  No one was too excited to run in the snow anyway, so we took our time to get the car right.  Figuring a missing O2 sensor had it running lean, we had to wait until Advanced got one in from Milwaukee.  At this point it was a total test and tune day.  Replaced it.  Car still stumbled.  Replaced ECU.  Car still stumbled.  Replaced the plugs, coilpacks, cleaned the MAF and VOILA! car was running like a champ.  But it was still getting hot.  SO we boxed in the radiator really well and that fixed the overheating issues.  On Sunday it never got above 215.  

 

Sunday we ran almost all day, using older RS4s which probably was a bad idea, but the car was good.  Troy ran to a 2:55, which met my expectations, but then a couple of slower teammates later I got in and ran 2:53s and there was definitely more in the car.  It was a blast!  Having never run my own car at RA before, I was using Hawk HP+ pads.  Bad idea.  We ran out of pad 90 minutes before the finish and have to replace a caliper as a result.  We also had our exhaust can explode apart, and were black flagged for it.  We were able to take the checkers and Troy was ticking off quick lap times at the end.  

 

The good news is the car is now sorted and quick.  I was one more blown motor away from parting it out and being done with car ownership, but it lives on now.  I have to fix the exhaust (easy) and get better pads.  Enjoyed the hell out of RA, more than I remembered, and would love to come back in the future.  So many great people, it was super fun racing Andrew in Premium Dudes, and the car with the monkey hanging out the back.  Great people in the midwest, love you guys.  Thanks Champcar for a great event, maybe next time the weather will be better.  

[skierman64]

1 hour ago, Jer said:

 

 

Jerry, somehow I missed you this weekend.  See ya next time.  

 

[wvumtnbkr]

57 minutes ago, skierman64 said:

 

Jerry, somehow I missed you this weekend.  See ya next time.  

 

Didnt miss much....

[Jer]

4 minutes ago, wvumtnbkr said:

Didnt miss much....

True, I've lost a lot of weight unlike Rob haha

 

[Jer]

19 hours ago, Racer28173 said:

As always, the safety crew was incredible. A splitter is sitting on the track on one side and a nose is barely off track on the other. They are in a location that is 120+ mph, with a slight bend and a hill that makes it hard to see approaching cars and hard for cars to see what is on or beside the track.  Oh, and there are concrete walls on both sides with a somewhat narrow strip of grass, particularly on one side.   Full course yellow?   Heck no!  Gone in two laps with just a couple of local yellows.  Those guys are AWESOME!!!!

When I took the track about noon on Sunday, there were five dead cars littering every other corner.  RA had them all out in a few laps, amazing.  I've been at well known tracks that would have taken an hour to do that.  All corner yellows haha  gotta love it.

 

Edited October 23, 2018 by Jer

[Jer]

I was sick all weekend and now I know why.  Emergency appendectomy tonight.  Towed17 hours home with this.  Dang.  And no I’ll miss AMP this weekend.  Frack. 

[ABR-Glen]

[55mini]

6 hours ago, Jer said:

Emergency appendectomy tonight

Sorry to hear about that! Get well soon so you can get back to racing!

[Andrew D Johnson]

2 hours ago, ABR-Glen said:

[enginerd]

Epic event for sure.

Our e30 has never run better, thanks in part to ECU changes by SSSquid Tuning. I took (I think) 3 seconds off my previous fastest lap on this track and we took 3rd on Saturday and 5th on Sunday.

 

Legendary reliability continued as we didn’t even touch a wrench all weekend (#BMW)! We also managed to walk away without a single new dent or scratch (amazing given how slick it was Saturday). 

 

I will post some clips later because my GoPro caught at least two crashes Saturday.

 

 

[Silverbeast]

Where is all that video at!!!!????  There has to be some good ones from this crazy event in the Rain and snow!