[REVVING ENGINE]
[INSTRUMENTAL COUNTRY MUSIC]
LEO PARENTE: Hi, we just got here at Elkhart Lake Road
America, in Wisconsin.
Going to tell you a story about racing.
And all the stories don't happen on the racetrack.
This one, however, started there.
One of our Porsche IMSA GT3 Cup Challenge drivers, Bryce
Miller, he won the last two races.
Early in the session, had a little incident, damaged three
of the four corners oh his Porsche GT3 car.
And here's where the story starts.
It's not about driver.
It's not about car.
We're going to watch, via time lapse, the team to go to work
and support his driver and this program by time lapsing
putting this car back together to get him ready for
qualifying, and the next two races of the weekend.
Like I said, all the action doesn't always
happen on the track.
Watch this team go to work.
[FAST-PACED INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]
LEO PARENTE: Hunter Wright, you're the team engineer for
both cars here in the Effort racing, Michael Mills's and
Bryce Millers's car, right?
HUNTER WRIGHT: Yes, that's correct.
LEO PARENTE: OK, so I don't want to take a lot of your
time, because you're in the midst of
rebuilding this car here.
What's the big challenge going on as they're raising this
motor into the car?
What do they have to align?
What's so sensitive?
HUNTER WRIGHT: Right now as they're aligning the motor and
the transmission assembly-- it's both together.
And so, really, the motor is held in by an engine plate,
which is really only two bolts.
And then the front of the transmission is held up by
about four bolts.
So those bolts are obviously very precise
about where they go.
And everything is very, very rigid.
So getting it all perfectly lined up the chassis is the
tricky part.
You've got to make sure that it's all right where you need
it to be, because it's all so rigid that there's really no
room for flex.
LEO PARENTE: And then once it's in, it's plugged in.
And you can start putting in the half shafts and that class
member underneath.
HUNTER WRIGHT: Yep, exactly.
We tie in the bottom of the subframe once
we get it in there.
And then basically it's plugging all the hoses and
wires and all that stuff back up to it.
LEO PARENTE: So not to bust his chops, but Bryce left you
a lot of work here, because front, back of the car.
So what does the crew have to do?
It looks like a lot of teamwork, but a lot of pieces.
HUNTER WRIGHT: There's definitely a lot of teamwork
that comes into play in situations like this.
And we all have our strengths and our weaknesses.
And in a moment like this, we really [INAUDIBLE] on some of
the guys that have the strength on the
front end of the car.
Some guys are better with the motor.
Some guys are better with the suspension, and so we really
try to play off of all that and get everybody working as
efficiently as possible.
That's one of the things is when we come to a
situation like this.
It's try to be as efficient as you can with
everything you're doing.
LEO PARENTE: How do you do that?
I mean, do you, in effect, practice for things like that?
Or you know who's responsible for what, and
then it's go time?
How does it happen?
HUNTER WRIGHT: A lot of it is--
you'd like to say that you practice it, but a lot of it
is, this is practice.
We're kind of figuring it out as we go, right here, and so
it's a little difficult.
But we also have done a lot this.
It's just not all that you do it always all at once.
You'll do one corner, one radiator, but now it's all
three radiators, it's all four corners, and so all of it just
happens a little bit quicker.
You're doing it all at once.
LEO PARENTE: And it sounds like there's a lot of chatting
back and forth.
You guys really are working as a team here
to pull this together.
HUNTER WRIGHT: Yeah, it's definitely a team effort.
It takes everybody.
When something like this happens, it takes everybody to
join together and really pull for the common goal, to get
this thing to be able to do be successful when you put it
back out there.
LEO PARENTE: First time it's back on track is, what, 11
something tomorrow?
LEO PARENTE: Right, 11:15 for qualifying.
LEO PARENTE: And once you put all the parts
in, we're not done.
Then what happens?
HUNTER WRIGHT: Right.
After we put everything back together so it's mechanically
sound, we'll go back through the setup.
We're definitely going to nail down the setup and make sure
we get it about as close as we can with the little bit of
track time that we had.
And then we're going to go through a whole list of checks
and procedures.
We'll run it, and we'll test all the gears, do as much as
we can before it hits the tracks.
So that hopefully when it gets on track, everything is 100
ready to go.
LEO PARENTE: So I'm assuming after Bryce has done the
apology to the team for putting you to work, he's
supposed to clear his mind, just go back to work.
HUNTER WRIGHT: Right, exactly.
That's one of the deals.
This is where that short-term driver memory comes in very,
very handy.
Because that's part of it.
It's just one of those things.
This is part of the industry.
It's a very tough part to get your head around when you
haven't been around it.
But things happen, and you have to be able to forget it
and overcome.
And that's his job, is to get 100% focused
on the task at hand.
And right now his task at hand is to go out there and qualify
the car and then put us in a good position for the race.
LEO PARENTE: And your team is professionals to
forgive stuff like this.
HUNTER WRIGHT: Exactly, exactly.
This is part of our job.
This is why we're here, stuff like this.
When things are going fine, it's not a hard job,
anybody can do it.
So when things go wrong, that's what we really get to
earn our chops.
[FAST-PACED INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC CONTINUES]
LEO PARENTE: So not to sell it short, Bryce's accident was
pretty big.
This is a hell of a way to count the parts that make up a
Porsche GT3 race car, but got a lot of stuff going on here.
Knocked out an eye, the bumper, and here's
the back of the car.
The wing's really just made of foam.
Insulation from the engine, more body work, more parts,
suspension.
No one should be asking the Porsche guy what the bill on
this stuff is, but lot of carnage
for, really, one accident.
[SUBDUED INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC]
[INSTRUMENTAL COUNTRY MUSIC]
LEO PARENTE: I'm standing on the setup pad
here at Effort Racing.
Because there are two other parts to this story,
reassembling the car for Bryce Miller.
It's one of teamwork.
In the neighborhood is the other
competitive team, Kelly Moss.
And they took the tub back to their shop and put it on the
frame straightening jig to get the frame true and straight,
so they could build a good race car.
Then that frame got reassembled by Effort Racing,
and put on their setup pad.
What they found is Kelly Moss's work was
really, really good.
The car's very, very true.
And the setup is very precise.
So Bryce is going to have a good race car.
Teamwork.
Setup worked, and the bottom line, it's the morning after.
We weren't here all night to watch the hard work.
Half the crew stayed here all night to get it done.
But the bottom line, got a race car ready to go.
Bryce has a car he can qualify, and
it's back to racing.
[INSTRUMENTAL COUNTRY MUSIC]