I saw that some people from the forums were at Watkins this past weekend for the Koni race. Some people might be interested to know that Car and Driver fielded a 350z in grand sport but did very poorly. I think they finished though.

I was curious if anyone from that team could clue in what happened.

 

Sorry to let you guys down!

The car is faster, but we had a number of things not go our way. Handling is good, brakes gave us some grief and strategy was't executed well.

We're deciding right now if we bring the car back and do more performance improvements to the car or if we leave it on the east coast and do the next race.

-Rich

 

Hey Rich, we were over with the Sahlen's crew, you might have seen the Z and G there on Friday. Just curious if you were there.

We stopped by for a bit. I was rootin' for you guys but got kinda bummed to see it not work out. Hey, at least you guys finished the race!!

 

http://www.theracesite.com/client_im...ums/3968_9.jpg

 

Rich, who cares how fast it wasn't, she looks freaking badass dude!

 

Look at the mini in the background

Rich, has there been any fall-out yet from the "driving" of the i-moto team. It sounded like those guys roughed a lot of people up.

 

http://www.theracesite.com/index.cfm...m=37&mag_cat=5 Rich can you tell a difference with the new bodywork/wing etc.?

 

the only thing I noticed was that there were some other teams grossly ignoring safety regulations - the team in the pit stall near us spilled more fuel into the trunk of the neon than made it into the fuel cell (methinks they flipped vent/fuel hoses on the rig). Rich and Billy were hustling the car around nicely but things just didn't go their way - that's racing, you can have a quick car, good setup, good strategy but the Fit can still hit the Shan ...

 

You guys are awesome. Thanks for the kind words guys.

We had a bunch of new guys crewing, David included, that really come through for us and made the weekend go so much better. I've got to give a big thanks to David, Chris, Bernie and Micheal.

We didn't hear about the i-Moto guys and luckily we didn't get tangled up in anyone's poor judgement. The great thing about being out in the races is seeing how the car does. Each time we go out we learn more about the car that makes it go faster.

I have some business commitments that may keep us out of the Barber race this weekend. I was scheduled to be on a TV tomorrow AM, but it got pushed out to later in the week. If that gets re-booked, I'll need to bail on Barber. Making money trumps spending it, unfortunately...

Regardless, we'll be bringing the car back to California for more testing and optimizing and getting it ready for it's next race.

 

Yes. The car hunkers down much more nicely. At high speeds, it used to get light and wander a bit. At Daytona, where we were getting over 150 MPH it made the car unstable. The added downforce may take of some top end, but it will be much better in the corners.

-Rich

 

^ Cool. Is VIR still in your plans? Both Barber & VIR should be good 350Z tracks. I was at Barber a few years ago spotting for the 350Evo team when they took 2nd place in the race.