- 02/02/2017
- 4 Min Read
- By: Michael Hurczyn
AER Race #3 - NJMP | Our BMW E30 Surpassed 42 Hours of Racing This Year
Round 3 of American Endurance Racing was held at New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville NJ. South Jersey in the middle of July is a sauna. Add in wearing a 3 layer nomex suit, a 120*F cockpit, and a non-functioning coolsuit, it makes for some challenging conditions to compete in an endurance race, but that's only half the story. First we had to get there!
The last race at Palmer Motorsports Park left us with an injured BMW 325i. Besides the body damage, we had a bent wheel, a bent trailing arm, tweaked rear subframe, and dust that still keeps falling out of every little crevasse.
Since the break between races was only 4 weeks, we had to move fast if we wanted to make it to NJMP in time. We sourced a used rear subframe assembly and front fender which fit nicely into Nate Vincent's X3 -
Since the new subframe we acquired had sat outside for a bit, we had it sandblasted and repainted it a light grey to be able to better see any cracks and damage.
The bodywork needs plenty of attention, but there wasn't enough time for a body shop to fix it so we did the best we could with 2x4's and hammers. It didn't come out too bad for a quick and dirty job, and the vinyl covered up the rest nicely.
While it may look like things went smoothly from the outside, I would estimate Nate and I put in somewhere between 200-250 hours into preparing the car before the race. Some of the prep looked like this:
...and some of the prep looked like this thanks to my brother who recently opened FTBR Garage in Rocky Hill, CT.
The Race Weekend
All AER weekends consist of practice and qualifying from 9:00 am - 6:00 pm on Friday, and a 9-hour race from 9am-6pm on Saturday, and we do it all over again on Sunday from 9:00 am - 6:00 pm. Since the tow for us from Connecticut would be about five hours we planned on leaving around noon and arriving at dinner time. Well, the best laid plans... and we ended up getting to the track after 11:00 pm.
After we got set-up, it was time to head to the Red Carpet Inn in Bridgeton, NJ. We were exhausted at this point and I didn't look close enough at the map as to which exit we took out of the track and missed a right turn. So our night took an additional 30 minute detour. When we arrived at the hotel at 3:38am in the middle of nowhere, I realized I had left my wallet back at the track. We pleaded with the clerk to give us our room. I had the confirmation emails on my phone, he even called me earlier around midnight to confirm we are still coming and I showed him the call. In the end his lack of compassion, decency, and hospitality won out and we traveled 30 minutes back to the track, and then 30 minutes back to the hotel. It's now 4:30 am and we need to be up at 6:30am.
There is our first 2 hours of sleep for the weekend.
Fridays at the track we are always buttoning up some last minute things. It's not because we don't want to be prepared, it's just that there are always more things to do than there are hours or bodies to do them. We got to the track a little after 7:00am to meet our other two drivers for the weekend, Boston Chapter BMWCCA Instructors and seasoned AER racers, Neil Halin and Dan Chadwick. They were getting familiar with the car, and we were getting acquainted with them as drivers.
After installing one of their cool suit boxes, fiddling with the radio set-up, installing the passenger seat harness, we decided we should just get out on track for Nate and I to learn the Track, and for Neil and Dan to learn the car.
I took the first laps so I could make sure the car was driving fine, but I took Neil with me since I had never driven the track before. The car ran well and I was quickly picking up the simple track layout, until we heard a bad shuttering from the rear of the car. I decided to take it easy and bring it in to the paddock. When we got back to the paddock and took the wheel off, we noticed one of the carrier brackets was missing a bolt, and the other was loose. I hate mental mistakes. New bolts were sourced, Loctite was applied and we were ready to go again for qualifying.
We qualified in Class 2 for a third race in a row, but this time we were the slowest car in Class 2. We had our work cut out for us on Saturday.
We enjoyed the traditional AER pot-luck dinner on Friday night, and got the car up in the air to check everything over before the morning. Since Nate and I were working on 2 hours of sleep, we decided to head to Walmart to get some supplies, and then get to the hotel early and get some sleep. What ever small items were still on the to-do list, we could tackle in the morning. Noah and Rob, our crew for the weekend were coming in from Philly at around 11:30 pm. Extra hands in the morning was a reassuring and welcome notion. My head hit the pillow around midnight, and I think I was instantly sleeping.
This 6 hours plus the first 2 equal 8 total hours of sleep.
Race Day - Saturday
We got our to-do list done- bled the brakes, made sure the cool suit is working and strapped in, wiped the bugs off the front, etc...
We made it to the grid with Neil starting the race. The rotation would be Neil, Dan, Nate, Neil, Dan, Me.
The race was pretty uneventful compared to Palmer only a few weeks back. We didn't hit anything and didn't get hit. Nate Vincent turned his first ever race laps and did really well. He stayed out of trouble and turned in some fast, consistent laps!
The key to endurance racing is not to be the outright fastest, but to be consistently fast and stay out of the paddock. It is almost impossible to make up time lost in the paddock while out on track. If you could run two seconds a lap faster than you normally run (which is a lot), it would take 450 laps to make up a short 15 minute paddock visit. Considering we only ran 339 laps in 9 hours, that would be tough to overcome. That's what killed us in Palmer, but the car and the drivers did well to stay out on track
The next order of business is pit stops. I installed a quick disconnect wheel and a seat slider to help with ingress and egress, but we still need to get better with pitstops. AER mandates five 3-minute pitstops We had some stops that were 3:44, 3:25, etc... This is what the hectic three minutes looks like:
Something happened during the last pitstop when I was getting in the car and somehow the plug for the cool suit got knocked out. So at 4:30 pm, in 90*F heat, I needed to drive the last stint in a 3-layer nomex suit without a cool suit. The heat was almost unbearable, but I was still able to turn the fastest laps of the day. I had some interesting moments passing cars since the car was hot, the tires were hot, and I was hot. Here is a great clip of passing two cars down the front straight and took a tight line into turn one, which combined with taking too much curb caused a little 75mph drift. Check it out!
We ended the day 6th in class and 16th overall out of 54 cars! Not a bad little Saturday! Here is the team with our celebratory IPA's.
Well, just because the race is over, doesn't mean the work is done! We still have another 9 hours to go on Sunday! The car goes up into the air, and we need to top off all the fluids, check over all the nuts and bolts to make sure nothing came loose, and swap out anything that needs swapping. The front brake rotors have about 35 hours of racing on them, and were showing a decent amount of stress cracking so, those will be going back to FCP Euro, and a new set was installed.
We actually finished at a reasonable time, so we gather the troops and went to dinner at a little after 10:00pm. We swung by the Walmart that closes at Midnight with 10 minutes to spare to get some last minute items, and headed back to the hotel for another 6 hours of sleep.
We are up to 14 hours of sleep now.
Race Day - Sunday
We quickly changed brake rotors and bled the brakes again. There were a few teams that asked us to help them with their car. The #8 Legendary Racing e30 was cooking coils due to overcharging, so Nate jumped in and lended a hand. On Saturday, Noah and Rob helped Team Zima run a leak down test on their e30. They had 70% leakage on one cylinder, so their weekend was done. That's the beauty of racing and this series in particular. Pretty much everyone is willing to lend a hand to help their competitors make it out onto the track.
The race went smoothly again. We stayed out of the paddock and on the track. It is hard work and the 90*F+ heat all weekend didn't help. Here is Nate sneaking in some ZZZ's with loud race cars buzzing by 100 feet away-
We finished 4th in class and 13th overall on Sunday! It was a great team effort and our E30 ran flawlessly for 18 straight hours. Well, except for the bottom of the exhaust blowing out making it pretty loud inside the car! But who are we to complain?
A big thanks to Bimmerworld for our 4th Place Finish $75 contingency prize!
After a few hours of packing, it was time to hit the road. NJMP provided for some nice scenery when we were leaving. I have to also thank my parents who came and helped with food, timing pitstops, and they even stayed to help pack! We got home at 3:30am and Nate needed to be up for work by 6:30 am.
For those of you still keeping track, that's a total of 17 hours of sleep from Thursday through Monday, and 18 hours of racing! And we'd do ity again in a heartbeat!;
If you'd like to see some in-car video's of the action, they are being uploaded to our YouTube Channel so make sure to subscribe to get notified when thewy are ready.
Looking back at the season so far, I realized our car has surpassed 42 hours of racing this year, not counting all of the testing, practice, and qualifying. That's a pretty cool feat considering the car is 25 years old, but BMW made a special vehicle in the e30, and FCP's support and lifetime replacement promise has kept us going. Only 36 more hours to go!
The next race is September 16-18 at Summit Point Motorsports Park in West Virginia. The car just needs some TLC in the form of a rear main seal, transmission output shaft seal, and differential flange seal. (sigh...) I think BMW designed it to be self-rust-proofing! Oh well, we'll have some good write-ups coming soon!
