Carmmunity Goes Racing at GridLife Midwest

SOUTH HAVEN, MI - The start of the Gridlife season always comes up too fast, regardless of whether your first event is their first event of the year in April, or the Midwest Festival in June. This year was no exception, with the freshly wrapped #55 Carmmunity Spaz Racing Evo 9 hitting the dyno the night before leaving for the event. With a new engine and completely reworked suspension, what would feel like an entirely new car would roll out of the trailer and onto the tarmac of GingerMan Raceway fully untested, driven by myself.

The first order of business upon arrival was replacing a 2-week-old wheel speed sensor that had already kicked the bucket over the holiday weekend preceding the event. For those unaware, the Evos use the wheel speed sensors not just for ABS, but also for the Active Center Differential. Not having ABS is bad, but not having ACD is even worse; the center diff stays open, resulting in the power inconsistently going wherever it wants. One corner you’re mostly FWD, the next you’re mostly RWD, and it makes the car near impossible to drive at the limit. Thankfully we have friends in Michigan and were able to overnight the part to one of them, who was able to arrange for it to meet us at the track.

The car felt good in practice with all the changes and new parts, but we immediately noticed some issues. A clunking from the rear end turned out to be the trailing arms contacting the wheels under hard cornering, and after a few attempts at clearancing the arms with a grinder, we were confident that we wouldn’t be surprised by the Enkeis permanently becoming a 2-piece wheel. Huge props to Enkei quality though, the flow-formed wheels took little to no damage during their attempted self-clearancing of the OEM suspension arms.

From there, we turned our attention to the smoke our crew was observing from under the car while on track. Initially only noticed in the corners, we felt like some light tire rubbing was likely the cause… Until we noticed oil under the car. Over the next two days of competition, we’d go on to chase multiple oil leaks, blow the dipstick out of the crankcase on track (almost starting the car on fire in the process), and go through 8 cans of brake cleaner to keep oil from building up in the engine bay and oiling down the track or becoming a fire risk.

By the time we’d finished our third and final qualifying session, we were placed 5th, just barely making the cut for our final session; what Gridlife calls the Podium Sprint. At Gridlife festival events, the format runs a little differently than traditional time attack to make it both easier for them to broadcast, easier for viewers to digest, and all around better for those finishing the weekend near the tip of the spear in their classes to put on a show with no other distractions. After qualifying is complete, the top 5 drivers each get two laps alone on the track to set the fastest time they can. Now here’s the kicker: only those two laps count for podium placement. Have a mechanical failure, put all four wheels off the track, or just turn bad laps, and all the work leading up to that moment will be a waste. Both you and the car have to deliver under pressure.

So when we seeded last in the Podium Sprint, there was only one option: Put forth our best effort to steal a podium and secure however many championship points we could. The track was in awful shape from the drifters and heat, but with the changes to the suspension for the year, neither the car nor the tires would bother to care. As the fifth seed, the #55 was first in line, so we had no idea what kind of lap times we’d need to move up the standings. There was only one option: Flat out.

Beginning his first hot lap, I attacked the final corner and charged down the front straight, finding the brakes at near perfect temperatures, but as the evo rounded Turn 1, the rear tires weren’t quite there yet. The result was an uninspiring mid-1:40 lap time as the car slid through the exits of multiple corners. Undiscouraged, I attacked harder for lap two, finding a tenth of a second here and there until the predictive lap timer showed me well down into the 1:39s. Corner after corner, a lap worthy of the podium was coming together…until the back straight. Clutched in, reached for 5th gear, and instead grabbed a handful of synchros. Then re-clutched and tried again, and again was denied the shift. Third time being the charm, we were able to engage the gear, but the lap was all but over. With 6 tenths of second lost to a double mis-shift, and only one corner left, we put it all on the table and sent the car in. The result reclaimed 2 of those tenths, and a final time of a 1:40 flat. It was going to take a miracle to podium.

And that miracle came. The 4th seed, Mike Coons, found himself unable to set a competitive lap in the poor track conditions, and the 3rd seed, Tony Barber, experienced a brake by wire fault in his Tesla Model 3 entering Turn 1, sending him off track. With a spot on the podium secured, which step he would stand on was down to the 2nd and 1st seeds; Luca Barberis and Joe Mielke. Luca took to the track and set a solid first lap in the low 1:37s, but experienced a sensor bug that triggered his ECU safeties and shut down the car shortly into his second lap. One Ctrl+Alt+Del later and the car was driving back to pit lane under its own power. However, by that time, Joe was on a charge and hunting for the top spot. But try as he might, he only put down a low 1:38, placing him in second, leaving Luca in the top spot and myself in third.

So while the team would undoubtedly chalk up the overall events of the weekend as yet another frustrating experience for the Spaz Racing program, a podium at Gridlife Midwest (which is always the most stacked event of the year) was finally achievable again after 4 years of hard luck and struggles to perform. If nothing else, it proved to be a step in the right direction, a start for the Carmmunity Motorsports Program and with the bugs in the car worked out, should result in a competitive push for the remainder of the season. But for now, we will be preparing for Gridlife’s exhibition event at Road America with NASCAR on July 27-29th, 2023.