The second round of the Rally America championship brought teams to Salem, MO area featuring beautiful scenery and fast flowing gravel roads.
FY Racing was in attendance with their Subaru STi featuring a new engine package, sequential gearbox and a host of small upgrades. Motorsport Wiring Supply had John Reed on location to provide MoTeC systems and technical support for the team. In addition to the existing MoTeC systems in the car, we debuted the new MoTeC mini color display in the car, and it got a lot of positive attention and reviews from those that saw it, and performed flawlessly during the entire event.
Tuesday and Wednesday were testing and shakedown. Weather was cool but sunny and clear, things went smoothly and the car was quickly all dialed in and ready to rock and roll.
Getting the car unloaded and ready for shakedown:
A quick video from testing, featuring GoPro footage from FY Racing and MoTeC data sync and overlay by John Reed:
Thursday brought recce for the crews, but more dramatically it brought a storm dropping ice and snow on the region. Teams scrambled to get snow setups together (and some teams were unable to even get to the area on time due to the weather). Just getting around the stages in normal cars for recce proved to be challenging enough.
View outside our workshop on Thursday:
Friday morning brought the start of competition, with the roads being mostly snow and ice reminiscent of SnoDrift Rally. Adam and Jordan of FY Racing got off to a slower than expected start due to a lack of boost. It was traced to a hole in a intercooler pipe coupler in the first service, but not before taking its toll on the stage times and leaving them on the wrong end of the top ten. Once the Subaru was back to full song, the guys started taking back time in chunks, working their way into the top five in the difficult road conditions.
FY Racing Friday Recap Video:
Saturday brought sunny but cold conditions, with road conditions similar to Friday. Snow setups were still the way to go, and Adam and Jordan continued on with a trouble free run and good pace to be running as high as 4th overall. As the day progressed gravel started to show on some of the repeat stages, causing a high rate of wear on the snow tires. With all the snow tires heavily worn, the team made the gamble at the last service to fit gravel tires to the car in the hope that there would be more gravel than snow. Unfortunately the temperature dropped quicker than expected once night hit, and there ended up being a lot of ice and snow remaining on the last stages. The loss of grip caused a backwards slide through the field and we ended up finishing 8th overall. Not the result the team hoped for, but sometimes to make gains gambles are taken and you can't win them all.
FY Racing Saturday Recap Video:
Overall the Rally in the 100 Acre Wood was good for the team. The car performed well with Adam and Jordan setting some solid stage times. Everyone is looking forward to round 3, Oregon Trail Rally in hopes of a pure gravel event, one which the team has performed well at in the past.
Motorsport Wiring Supply is pleased to be hosting FY Racing at our home event. Be on the look out for some special deals as this event draws closer! See you in May!
No comments:
Post a Comment