The Projekt Continues...

1360 miles from home, Classic BMW Motorsports and driver Toby Grahovec started the big projekt for 2012, development of our BMW Z4 roadster with the n55, single turbocharger engine for the STU class of SCCA. Seems like a long way to travel in order to gain data in the hopes that a cure to our mechanical ailments can be discovered. Track time is enormously valuable in determining the competitiveness of your race car. The track at Homestead allows for an excellent range of situations. It has a very long, high speed section where speeds can reach in excess of 140 miles per hour. With high speeds comes very aggressive braking zones where the decrease in speed and the ability to have grip while braking determines your handling abilities. Low speed and high speed corners also allow for determination of how well the car can handle. These play into factoring how well this car will react to similar situations as we race this car at various tracks around America.

Practice emphasized the difficulties that we have ahead. The complications that have plagued us continued. The power of the BMW 6-cylinder engine is amazing, when it is not in the failure mode, called "limp mode." During practice we saw times when everything was operating flawlessly, but only for a few moments. Most of the time the car was signaling to the crew that something was wrong. Practice saw Toby run lap times in the 1:35 range and a knowledge that the quicker cars would be more than 4 seconds a lap faster than the Z4. Attempts were made to alter the faults, but none held for very long. As we set the car up for qualifying the hopes were there that the faultless Z4 would appear and she did. Until we have time to analyze the data we won't know exactly why things went right, but for a short amount of time---they did. Qualifying 3rd was an achievement, the only real achievement of the weekend for the projekt as the race found the gremlins in control again. Toby did complete the race and we did accumulate an enormous amount of data from the track time that we were able to experience. Hopefully in the time ahead we will trap the gremlins and fedex them to Mongolia...sorry Mongolians.