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Supreme Being
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This is on our forum, but thought I'd share. We had an absolute BLAST this weekend. The 25 hour drive out there (remember the horrible winds last Thursday?) had us questioning our sanity, but we got on the track 20 minutes after getting there and realized it was worth it! No offs, no breaking, no flats out there. Rest assured we'll be doing more track events. The car is a beast, but it needs about 300 more hp to compete. 
http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6000
Vorshlag Motorsports LLC Successfully Completes Grassroots Motorsports Ultimate Track Car Challenge
We’re just getting back from the GRM UTCC event at Buttonwillow Raceway in Buttonwillow, California. This event is approximately 25 hours from our home base in Dallas, TX.
As with all well laid out schedules, they seldom do go as planned. April and May were set aside to get the car ready for UTCC. Cage work had to be done, new fender flares, and of course a shiny coat of paint for the cameras. Unfortunately the plan didn’t go so smoothly. The cage ended up being done at 2AM the Thursday we were leaving for California. And since the cage had to be done before the paint, you guessed it, no paint. But after all, this is a grassroots event right? The tubes were still hot as we rolled it onto the trailer.
We did an “iron-man” drive straight through to California, getting to Buttonwillow at 3PM on Friday. The event was Sunday. Luckily the track was open for practice so we unloaded the car and headed out to learn the 3.0 mile, #13 “Clockwise” configuration. We were a little tired after the journey but managed to stay out of the way of a few American Iron Extreme beasts, Formula cars and an LS7-powered Morgan.
Our car – our test mule E36 LS1 autocross/track car - felt great right out of the box. Of course we were in no condition to judge handling just getting a few laps in at speed. Best we could both do after a handful of laps each were 2:12 laps, which was certainly not the limit of the car. It was a tricky track that we need to concentrate as much seat time on quickly so Brian was tapped to drive the remainder of the weekend.
Saturday was a different day. The car sailed through tech with only a minor hiccup. We hadn’t done some of the harness-to-cage integration correctly so we adjusted the belts and got stickered. Everyone was rested and Brian ended up turning some 2:05 laps in one of the sessions, getting better. The car worked flawlessly. We did find some loose bolts so we decided to double check everything during one of the practices. The car seemed a little loose so we tightened the front bar a little bit which helped. Saturday was a practice day that ended before noon so that the 6 hour enduro could run. NASA was hosting the weekend which included this endurance race. We hung out and watched the 6 hour race and met lots of locals, which was great. Terry took many pictures we’ll post shortly.
Saturday evening rolled around and all the big UTCC heavy hardware showed up. CalClub regulars that knew the track with their RVs and toterhomes were coming in and setting up their tents. This should be interesting…hmm, a Radical with a V8, a few 700 hp AIX cars, OK, a half dozen Ariel Atoms, yes, don’t forget the Lotus 7s…and the list goes on. There was already a Morgan LS7, Porsche Cup Car, and other AIX cars there, now the list was growing. We turned to each other and said, next year will bring more power, so let’s focus on handling today - that’s it! We came with Hankook R compounds (no slicks), no aero, no turbos, no superchargers, so we were in for a treat!
If you’re not familiar with the format, UTCC is a Time Trial event – it’s all about getting your single fastest lap. There is a qualifying session in the morning to set up the split of competitors into two groups (A&B), then the driver gets three 20 minute sessions, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. The qualifying session determined if you ran in the Group A or Group B session, faster being Group A. We took the car out and it was just loose everywhere managing a 2:04 for qualifying putting us at 15th slot for the fast A group. The cars mentioned above were running mostly 1:50-1:55 sec laps. Our goal was to use our Hankooks to get the car ready and run UTCC on them in the 2 months previous to this event. It appears they didn’t quite make it to Sunday with so much abuse. The rears were completely shot after qualifying. Brian couldn’t accelerate out of any of the corners without considerable restraint. Luckily we thought to bring two Kumho 710s with us. We rolled them over to the tire store, which has the coolest automated tire mounting machine on the planet. It was almost completely “no touch”.
With the fresh rear tires on Brian went out for the morning qualifying session. These runs do count. As the egos flared, the cars began to spin. First lap, there goes the Radical, most of the top cars had “offs” at one point or another. Buttonwillow is all sand, so any off kicks up dust like you wouldn’t believe. It looked like bombs had gone off there was so many clouds of dust.
The Alpha car got exactly what it needed, new rear tires! The car was noticeably faster just coming out of the pits, no more feathering the throttle. Brian drops down to a 2:00 with rears alone. That will teach us the valuable lesson of tires….again. We try to push tires as far as possible, but that’s what you get. 2:00 puts us 12th on the grid. Keep in mind there were two cars between 1:58 and 2:00, the rest were the fast cars down in the 1:47-1:50 range.
At day’s end almost every car with a faster time was damaged in some way, mostly from “offs”, but the Alpha ran flawlessly all weekend. The only glitch: the 15 year old ignition key tumbler got stuck just as Brian was about to head out for one session. After 5 frantic minutes of investigation, Fair put “The Fonz” on it (punched it) and the car started. No lie, it was funny. An easy fix for sure. The car never overheated, never lost brakes, never stalled, and never went off. We ran all the sessions without incident; we just put gas in it. Not bad for a junkyard motor that has never had the valve covers off. As the day got hotter and hotter Brian moved up farther in each session’s standings. While we didn’t improve on our 2:00 morning lap, we moved up to 4th fastest for the last session with a 2:01 in 95 degree heat. Cars that would pass and leave us in earlier sessions weren’t leaving us anymore, or were being passed by the budget built Bimmer. Not bad for a couple of autocrossers from Texas having never driven Buttonwillow. We would have broken the 2 minute barrier if conditions were better, for sure.
If you ever get a chance to go to Buttonwillow, do it! This course is a blast, but you’ll need huge man parts. It is fast. One of the corners is floored at the top of 5th gear, its fast. Did I mention it is fast? Average speed is 90 mph.
We couldn't be more thrilled with the UTCC event outing. Would we like to win? Sure, but our budget didn’t factor in spending $100k on the Alpha. We have about $15,000 in it and we proved we can haul it across the country, unload it, run 3 days and almost break a 2 minute lap at BW without having seen the track. The car is that easy to drive. We have some external video of the car and the event (including a huge spin that happened right in front of Hanchey, that Fair filmed from 50 feet away!) to show - we will post it soon. Of course the in-car camera decides to flake out half way through the weekend. Of course!
Thanks to GRM for hosting the event and taking time to talk to us about the car. Also, kudos to NASA’s CalClub for a smoothly run, fun weekend of events.
Brian Hanchey
vorshlag.comCheck out ast-usa.com
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Supreme Being
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Supreme Being
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Forum Guru
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| Great write up. It sure is an amesome feeling when you can best high dollar cars at 1/10th the cost, you guys must be on cloud 13 or 14. I guess the GRM guys were nice to you? If memory serves they scoffed online at the idea of an LS1 e36 when you conceived it. Great job on the driving duties! This story reminds of when I first moved to Boston a few years ago (gotta self-promo a little). I brought my stock Fiat X1/9 to a Corvette club autocross attended by a bunch of Mafioso - I swear they even had a Godfather. They were expecting to ride the wings of their 400 hosses and kill any non-Vette, but I beat 80% of them. When I had the engine cover up to cool off a few of them starting looking for turbos. They couldn't believe they lost to 80hp and 175/13 tires.
Danny Lewisville, TX
"Gee that's funny, I've never seen garbage eat garbage." - Superman II
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Supreme Being
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Yep, always fun to do more with less...
As a side note, I found the R&T article where the GTR, C6 ZO6 and 911T ran against each other at Buttonwillow on #13 CW (same as what we ran).
ZO6: 2:02
911: 2:02
GTR: 1:56
So the Alpha car beats two outta three out of the box with a 2:00. Not bad for a $15k car. Kinda makes it hard to ever swallow a brand new $70k car. Of course, if you're only using it for the track. Obviously the Alpha car wouldn't do so well as a commuter car. 
Brian Hanchey
vorshlag.comCheck out ast-usa.com
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Supreme Being
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great story! looking forward to seeing you at the TRACK ;-)
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Supreme Being
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Last Login: Today @ 12:41:53 PM
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It will be tough to keep me away now.
Brian Hanchey
vorshlag.comCheck out ast-usa.com
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Forum Newbie
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Congrats! Glad to hear you had a good time and everything came back in 1 piece. Great write up as well.
2006 Lotus Elise
2009 Mini Cooper S (on order)
2000 Honda S2000 (borrowed)
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