- We're at Highlands today for the second round of the South Island Endurance Series.
We've made a few changes to the car between rounds.
Brandon has been really busy, he's made us a front splitter, he's mounted a rear spoiler
to try and get a little bit more downforce.
We felt a little left out, the rest of the field all have big wings and we don't, so, fixed.
I'm just getting used to the car with those aero changes on the Hankooks,
then we're going to change to some Michelins which should give us more grip,
hopefully that results in some really consistent lap times.
- So just had a quick session there and mixed bag actually.
Just getting an idea of whether the aero's working and it really is and it's kind of
taking a bit of time to get some confidence with it.
Particularly in, there's a very fast sweeping left hander coming into the hairpin and
you can pretty well stay flat through it, I think once I get a bit more confidence
in the aero, I will be able to.
Never used to be able to do that before so holding a lot more speed through
that section of the track.
Did my fastest time by 4/10ths on a pretty shitty lap where I caught
traffic that I had to pass so pretty promising already.
Also that's on some old tyres.
But then I ended up with the engine dropping down onto seven cylinders which we had
yesterday in testing, took it back to the workshop, put it on the dyno and it was
perfect so that's a little frustrating.
We're just swapping a coil out, we're pretty sure it's number six cylinder just based
on what we've seen.
So we're going to send Ben out, see how that goes, I'm going to finish my breakfast.
- So on the menu today we've got some turkish rolls, some hummus, mango slices,
just trying to keep a bit of a mix there, come have a look.
Gone for the chili hummus which is hot as fuck.
The old seaweed crisps, again spicy, just trying to keep the bowels moving.
But yeah, no sleep packed in there, maybe tomorrow.
- The last round we felt that our pitstop strategy could be a lot better.
We'd never practised the pitstop before and we also pitstopped halfway through
the race and there was no safety car out.
The rest of the field pitted during a safety car so we lost a bunch of track position.
The pitstop was kind of good but not as good as it could be so Andre and I have
been practising getting our belts on and off, making the car ready for the next
person who's going to jump in and making sure we can get that as fast as possible.
It's really nice sharing the drive with Andre, he has a lot of knowledge obviously about
racing a car and he's also not a bad peddler, so I'm constantly trying to get his lap time,
trying to chase his lap time.
This round we've got our telemetry system from MoTeC so he's able to look at the
data in real time, overlay it against his reference lap and then he relays that
information to me over the radio and gives me a corner to work on or two corners to
work on as I'm going around and around in practice.
And that type of information for me as a novice driver is pretty great and really
helpful at getting the most out of the car.
- So finished with our practice day here and it's been a pretty busy day.
We've had pretty successful results with the car.
Ben I think ran a 1:48.1 and I got down to a 1:47.3.
It's hard to really get a clean lap here though so both of our laps, there's a lot more time
in it but we did have a lot of trouble actually chasing a handling issue.
Coming from Teretonga in the last round, everything was really good and we made
a really big step forward at Teretonga getting grip out of some of the slower
corners by removing the rear sway bar.
And that gave us a lot better drive out of the corners which equated to better lap
speed and running that same setup here interestingly we're suffering from really
bad understeer despite our new aero modifications.
So we made the call to go back to running the rear bar, put the rear bar back on it.
Also because the car's been apart, back together, apart, back together with all of
our axle and CV issues at the back, I found out that our wheel alignment wasn't
where we had set it up so we scrambled around, did a very quick dirty wheel
alignment here at the track.
Got our wheel alignment back to where it should be, headed back out on a fresh
set of Michelin tyres and the car is really handling well now.
So we've got qualifying in the morning, looking forward to seeing what it can
do on a clear lap, hopefully we get a clear lap, let's see what happens.
But yeah I think the worrying thing would be if it was like this 'cause the slicks will
be like driving on ice but at the same time if you put the wets on it, you'd be searching
out patches of water to stop them from overheating.
And there is just a sample of what we're looking forward to today.
But we want the thing pretty well topped off to the point it's leaking out to start with.
Don't film that.
Hey do we need to get fuel?
- Yeah.
- OK how much fuel is down there?
- We didn't bring the fuel containers, turn around.
Alright round two of the South Island Endurance Series and we're
at Highlands today.
This morning we were off to a rough start, we forgot fuel, had to turn around,
made us a bit late starting this morning.
Rained quite a large amount last night, track was saturated when we arrived
this morning but with a lot of cars running on it this morning, it's still not very warm
but the track has dried out considerably.
Just before qualifying we did a couple of tyre swaps.
For a couple of seconds there it looked like it was going to be better to go out on
the wets but then we decided to switch to slicks which seemed like the right decision.
Andre has qualified second in class which is pretty good, a fair way behind the next
competitor but second's not a bad place to start the race.
- So we've got, we were getting a low fuel pressure warning on the dash so because
we had that issue with the fuel pressure sensor at Teretonga, just trying to figure
out if that's actually real or whether it's another dud sensor.
The other problem I had was the drive by wire throttle went into fault while I
was out on the track which was on a really good lap as well which sucks.
So when that happens it kind of goes into a limp home mode and you've got no power.
So obviously we don't want that happening in the race so it's a case of trying to figure
out why that happened so I can fix it.
So we're busy, let's get that happening.
While we thought we had fixed all of our problems, as soon as Ben left the pits on
his formation lap for the race, it was apparent that they weren't fixed.
He was reporting problems with low fuel pressure warnings on the dash and the car
was almost undrivable.
We made the tough call to pit Ben during that formation lap and try and fix it.
The first decision we made was to unplug the fuel pressure sensor in the engine bay
and this should have defaulted the ECU to four bar, it should have fixed it.
Unfortunately it didn't fix it and we decided that we'd need to pit him again.
This time when Ben came into the pits, I jumped in and plugged in my laptop.
It should be sweet man, it's defaulted to four bar.
- It's definitely, it feels real, like it feels like the fuel is going away and I've got nothing.
Every time I put like more than 50% throttle.
- Everything looks OK Ben.
- I'll go out and do another lap and you just keep on looking for solutions OK.
- Yep sweet.
With the opportunity to have a look on the laptop, we could see that the fuel pressure
had defaulted to four bar like it should have.
So everything was fine from that perspective, we had no option but to send Ben back out
and on exiting the pits, this time the car was faultless and remained so for the
rest of the race.
I'm really interested to know what's broken in the rear though.
Like you get off and on the throttle and it's just like donk, like a big clunk.
- Oh OK yeah that's, I was on the radio, said at the very beginning, I'm like there's
a big bang when I'm aggressively on and off the throttle.
- Yeah it feels like the diff has got maybe bolts in it or something like that and it's
going like this.
Oh I stayed flat through the left hander on that last lap.
- Nice - Did ya!?
- I was like f**k it, man up.
It just gets like a little squirrely, like you ahhh, get it straight, stop it.
- I was there last time you did in the 350.
- Yeah it didn't work, it goes a lot slower than this.
- So we just finished the race here at Highlands and a lot of issues have risen.
There's a lot of banging and rattling coming out of it.
We don't know exactly is it the diff or the gearbox yet, we'll take it back and put
it on the hoist and confirm what is wrong.
Other than that, the new driveshafts held up, no imbalance in the main driveshaft,
the axles are perfect, new CVs, all held up, no loosening of bolts so that's a plus
for this one.
- Went out, qualified the car, had a heap of trouble that we ended up going through,
so fuel pressure issues which followed us into the race and also a drive by wire throttle
issue which was pretty easy to resolve, it was actually just the throttle pedal
mapping or throttle pedal travel I should say, just over travelling a little bit so sorted
all of that out, qualified I think first in class which was quite helpful.
Ben went out and started the race and we straight away even on the formation lap
were having massive fuel pressure issue problems again and this is kind of what
followed up from Teretonga.
We thought that was a dead sensor, replaced the sensor, everything seemed
happy on the dyno.
However it looks like we've actually got an issue with the connector to the sensor.
And so we did an unscheduled pitstop, sorted that out, Ben went out,
well we thought we'd sorted that out, hadn't sorted it out, came back in,
plugged the sensor back in, that fixed it for Ben's stint and of course we were at
that stage two laps down so kind of a case of what could have been.
I got in about halfway through, did our driver change, fuelled the car,
headed out, two laps later had a safety car, circulated under that for about three or
four laps and then got back into it.
Basically by the time we got into it, we had five laps left to go.
Really good battles at the end of the race although unfortunately at that stage,
two laps down, wasn't really for position, but all good fun there as well.
Really impressive though the new tyres that we're running, they're Michelin, we were
on a Hankook.
We're not sponsored by anyone so we can say whatever the hell we want.
But really impressive with the Michelins, they got better and better.
They were pretty good during qualifying but of course the track was really really cold
and still a bit damp.
At the end of that race, the last lap of the race, I did a 1:45.1 so probably two
seconds clear of my previous best time so really impressed.
A lot more in the car as well so stoked with how that all went.
However now we've got a few mechanical problems to fix, we've got something going
on in the rear diff and a vibration that we need to chase, so that's motorsport,
always something to fix.
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