Leaving Road Atlanta, we knew we had a car that was competitive this season and we had figured out some of the gremlins that had been chasing us for the last few seasons with our cooling system. We headed to GridLife's biggest event of the year MidWest Festival thinking we had all the pieces of our puzzle figured out and we had high hopes of having a great finish to this event as it's a track I know well and we've had a lot of success at. TrackMod has really grown this season and some of the cars we're competing with are pushing over a 1000WHP so I always feel a little like David vs Goliath, but I think we have the right platform for us to chase after some of these modern high power cars.
The event kicked off pretty good for us with us starting the event in the top 5. The car was driving well, but the track at this event always goes away each session and as the days wore on we just couldn't get our pace back that we had initially out of the gate. To add to that we started to battle some issues with the car on day 2 starting with a broken axle and few other small things and ending on day 3 with a rogue downshift from 3-2 causing a catastrophic chain of failures in the driveline. This was unfortunate as everything had been working so well, especially with our new paddle setup. After getting the car back to the shop we found the culprit to be an issue with the gear position sensor. Luckily the engine was fine, the car just pulled so hard on everything that it broke the rear engine mount, our exhaust and few other things.
I was sad not to make it to the podium sprint at this event as I really had hopes of finishing in the top 5 given our recent pace and my familiarity with this track, but I held my head high knowing that we continued to head in the right direction with the car and knew we'd be fighting for wins soon!
Our next event was Mid-Ohio and it's one of my favourite race tracks we go to, it's such a fun place and it generally suits the car pretty well. We came to the event with a fresh engine after our downshift issue, along with a freshened gearbox and some different control strategies for our shifting, after the first session it was clear we had made a huge step in the right direction, we were sitting just outside of the podium after the first session with lots of progress still to make.
The new shifting strategy had made the car so much easier to drive with buttery smooth shifts and it allowed me to get comfortable with the car right out the gate. I managed to just match our lap record that we set in 2023 with our big areo setup and I was really proud of that accomplishment. Another competitor managed to just squeak by us for the podium by 100th of a second and I wasn't even mad about that as the lap record was really what I was after and I felt like I had hit my goal. Overall I felt like we left this event in a great place and I'm super excited for our next race in a few weeks at Lime Rock Park again another track that suits the car well.
I'm really looking forward to finishing the year strong, we're currently sitting in 5th place in the championship and I feel like with 1 or 2 more good finishes we could really make it to the podium for the 2025 season which would be such an accomplishment given the competition we're facing this year. I'm really looking forward to Lime Rock in 2 weeks, stay tuned for more updates.
