:. Racing .:. High Plains Raceway "HiPR Hot Regional"
Results: Saturday, Sunday
Dry, With a Chance of Oil Pressure
Just a week after my race at Mid America, it was time to return to High Plains Raceway to continue the regional summer series.
It was somewhat of a return to normalcy, with a lot of the familiar faces back in the saddle, with me, Paul, and Rob Adams (Radical CSR)
coming to play. A pleasant new surprise was Gary Stevens in his newly acquired ex-Chris Farrell WF-1, getting acquainted with his new ride.
Also good fun was Richard Cottrill exchanging the spanner for a helmet, and taking some laps in the Rilltech shop Speads F1000. Newly painted
and freshly rebuilt, the car looked absolutely tremendous. Also present was Mark Felsen in his Pro Mazda, which made fun chasing as well.
For my part, the weekend was about verifying the performance of the new BRD dry sump system that I had thrashed to install in the week between
MAM and HPR.
Friday
We arrived Friday to run some laps at speed and see how it was going to perform at HPR. I had briefly shook down the system at the IMI kart track
on Wednesday to basically verify installation, but that had come to a premature end when my sleep-deprived brain forgot to put the buttons on the left
side of the body, causing it to come adrift and partially bend the rear body support. Oops.
Fortunately, Friday had way less drama, as the car pretty much seemed to operate without any issue. The only slight worry was that cold pressures
were extremely high with the 20-50 oil, which I was running for comparative sake. Earlier in the year, I had run 20-50 in an attempt to try and
band-aid the low oil pressures at HPR, so I thought I'd run the 20-50 with the dry sump as well, in an effort to make sure I had good comparative
numbers. In short, it bumps pressures about 10psi over 10w-40 at normal temp, but you see quite a bit higher pressure when cold.
So, armed with confidence from Friday, we charged forward into Saturday.
Saturday
Saturday was a fairly simple day, if memory serves correctly. With a small field of DSR, I did my usual routine of running brief practice and qualifying
sessions, qualifying on pole with a new personal best 1:44.2 lap, linked above as Saturday's fast lap. Gradually I keep getting this car more and more sorted out, feeling better and
better.
The race would see me on pole, Rob next to me, and Paul, Gary, and Dwight Rider in his FC very closely matched behind us. We came up to the green flag assembled as usual,
and I was caught totally napping by a VERY early green flag. That let Rob get a great jump on me, and it balked Dwight behind me badly enough that Paul was able to
jump him and pull up into third spot behind me. I chased Rob around for the first lap, then got a nice run on him down the highway straight, outbraked him into T4, and
began to pull out a lead. I pulled out several seconds' worth of lead, and Rob faded away. I crossed the line well clear, and took another DSR win.
However, oddity of oddities, I began hearing an odd tickticktick sound around lap 11 or so. Turns out the chain had almost completely disassembled itself. All the o-rings
were gone, and it had gone completely slack, and was flopping around the engine bay. After some drama with finding matching sprockets and chain, I replaced my chain and the rear
sprocket. As it turns out, I should have replaced the front too. Oddly, Paul experienced the same failure, grinding to a halt about 2 laps from the end, having completely rounded
off his rear sprocket. We both scrambled, but the cars ready to for Sunday.
As for the dry sump, pressures remained happily in the 50's for the entire race, with temperatures in the low 230 range. Of particular note was that I was able to close off the
oil cooler inlet duct about 0.5", as the dry sump system evidently runs cooler than does the dry sump. However, looks at the data showed dips coming out of the prarie corkscrew,
indicating that there was not quite enough good quality oil in the system. I added a tiny bit (1/4 of a quart), but that ultimately made no difference for Sunday.
Sunday
Saturday had been a brutally long day for the corner workers, so very understandably, a good portion of them bailed for Sunday, leaving us too shorthanded to run
the full course. So, they cut off the "North Loop" of the track, and we ran just the "West Loop" at HPR for the first time.
As with Saturday, since I had the field pretty well covered, I ran my usual routine of brief practice and qualy sessions in an effort to save the tires somewhat for the race. Again,
I qualified on pole with a 1:21.xx time, video linked above. Since Rob had gone home, Dwight was next to me in the FC, with Paul and Gary behind. This time, I wasn't sleeping at the green flag, and
pulled out to a large lead. The race was still only 14 laps, despite the shortened 1.5 mile track distance, so the race went VERY quickly. However, as I'd experienced at MAM, the car
once again went badly off towards understeer, with the LF tire really giving up the ghost a few laps from the end. So the end of the race actually ended up a bit interesting, with Paul
breathing down my neck relatively hard, as my pace slowed several seconds a lap for the last few laps. However, it ended as it began, with me crossing the line first, and setting
a new DSR record with the new configuration, 1:22.647.
Moving On...
The HPR N/N is in two weeks, and at this point, I am concerned about the car being able to last a full race, both in terms of the chain staying tensioned, and being able to keep the front
tires under it. There has to be some reason for that bad LF tire behavior - setup, driving, or both. On the engine side of the house, the dry sump system is performing very admirably,
with good steady pressure, and low temperatures. The only quibbles I'd throw are those brief dips visible on some of the laps, which may point to needing a different pickup from the
scavenge, or simply a bit more oil in the tank. Getting another 5-10 psi out of the system would be good as well, so we'll continue to monitor the oil system in that regard.
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Saturday: Fast Lap HPR Full, 1:44.20
Sunday: Fast Lap HPR 'West Loop', 1:20.721
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