Second race, Second Racecar....Projekt STU

Honestly, Homestead-Miami Speedway, site of this weekend's SCCA double national weekend races, was not a location that Classic BMW Motorsports or Toby Grahovec had circled on the 2012 calendar. It's a very nice location in early January, located a few miles south of Miami and close to the Florida Keys, but as far as the track goes....not so great. It serves as an oval speedway for the Sprint Cup and for the Indy Racing League, but for sports car racing the banked oval is nearly completely removed and replaced with a makeshift track located inside the oval. It is like driving the Daytona 24, with just the front straight. We are here for one reason. To Learn

Our second racecar is another BMW Z4. It is a car that we have owned and raced for several years in the Grand-am series. The car is heavily modified with an elaborate suspension package, enormous brakes and an engine that should generate over 400 horsepower. Should generate because we have been unable to fully develop this car because of serious technical complications. The engine is from 2011 and the operating system is from 2003, (they don't communicate with each other very well.) During the 2012 season we hope to use our racing calendar to develop this car and evolve it into a fully functional, highly advanced, challenger for the National Championship at the Runoffs in September. September is a long time away and I feel we will need all of that time to be competitive.

The complications have been enormous. After we dropped the N55, BMW 6-cylinder, single turbo engine into the Z4 we realized we had a serious problem. With everything connected and supposedly ready to go, the car would only crank, but would not fire the engine. Idea after idea prompted the same conclusion, crank but no fire. BMW was ask to consult with us and after 10 days of working with engineers in New Jersey and Munich they pointed us in the right direction and still the same result. I received a call from a high ranking BMW employee who explained to me that his guys were working on something that they had never seen before and that the time they were spending on this project would not help them regarding normal situations. He advised me that there would be no more assistance from BMW, but wished us luck. The direction that they gave us did indeed help us reach the goal of getting the engine to fire. Actually, within 2 hours of BMW telling me they were done, the engine lit and we were feeling very good about the projekt. We learned quickly that there were more complications ahead. In the future I will detail some of these complications, but for today we launch into a new year of racing and development for the STU BMW Z4 at Homestead-Miami.

We don't expect to win this weekend, we expect to learn. Track time is very valuable and during the next 4 days we plan on spending as much time on the track as possible and will be making adjustments and trying new solutions in order to move this projekt to the next level. Best of luck to Toby and the crew just north of the Keys.