Bmwivan > Bmwivan's Blog Posts > 2007 MOTO-ST 8-hour Race Report

October 26, 2007 15:46

Team Motorrad has been competing in the SunTrust MOTO-ST Endurance race series for the entire 2007 season. The saga continues….

We arrived in Daytona on Thursday morning after a long drive down from Greenville, SC. After securing our credentials we headed in and set up our garage in the Nextel area, with Aprilia USA on one side of us and San Jose BMW on the other. James Chance III had driven down on his own from Savannah on Wednesday night, and he came over to our garage as soon we got there. The remainder of the day Thursday was spent putting the finishing touches on a few odds and ends. I’d rather not work on the bike at the track if possible, as there are so many other things to do with meetings and pit setup and such that the time can get away from you rather quickly.

Working on the bike at the track was forced upon me by some issues we found the Saturday prior to leaving for Daytona. I finally received some new fuel injection parts and took the bike down to The DucShop to have some fine tuning done on their dyno. Mark Sutton, the owner, is a great tuner. Since he helps the other Touring Sport team and has some BMW tuning experience, we decided to have him help with the R1200S too. We got the fuel mapped great, but discovered a problem. The bike was only making 102hp! I left the DucShop in Atlanta and drove straight to Touring Sport that afternoon. Barry Crowe and I put the bike on the lift at Touring Sport as soon as I got there. We discovered that the compression on the left side was much lower than the right. I pulled off the left side cylinder and head and took it over to Ed Johnson, who does all of my head work. He found a burnt exhaust valve, and fixed it along with cleaning up everything else in the head. We threw some new rings at the left side cylinder for good measure. I didn’t have all of the gaskets and seals to put it back together, so we had to express order them, and they wouldn’t be available until Tuesday. Since we were leaving midday Wednesday this was cutting it pretty close, but I got it back together in time to leave. Of course this left a bunch of other little things unfinished that still needed doing, and so Thursday afternoon was spent doing those.

On Friday it was go time. We arrived at the track as soon as they would let us in, 7am, and proceeded to finish a few things. We met up with Brad Hendry, as he was already at the track preparing to sprint race his Foothills BMW R1200S. Our first event of the weekend was coming up at Noon, the CCS Team Challenge Race. We use this as extra practice, since MOTO-ST practice is a little limited. The race started well, with Brad Hendry on the bike. He liked the setup and proclaimed it ready to race. James Chance III rode the bike next, and he also did some decent lap times. I left my crew chief Gary Walker in charge as I had a MOTO-ST team owner meeting to attend, so I didn’t get to see the last 30 minutes of the race. It turns out we finished second in the GTU class, and that was with extra pit stops to make some minor adjustments. Unfortunately, a team pitted down from us had a fire while they were refueling their bike about 40 minutes into the race. The rider and the bike were both on fire and everyone in their pit area was in a panic. I saw it happening and grabbed our 10lb. fire bottle and sprinted the 50 or so yards down to where they were. I was the first one to the rider with a fire bottle, and he was not in good shape. After I finished putting him out I put out his bike too. Exciting, but not fun. The ambulance took him away and he was airlifted to a burn center in Orlando.

The next event on Friday was MOTO-ST practice at 5pm. We were running out of time, since there was another meeting after the Team Owner meeting, and it ran long. We got the bike through MOTO-ST tech and just had time to make the starting grid for the practice session. We didn’t have time to get to the dyno, so it would have to wait until the morning. Practice went okay, but we were clearly being left behind the other SST class bikes on the banking. Something was still not right. After practice we had a quick debriefing to see what the riders had to say. Brad seemed to think it was sluggish and James had a complaint about the bike losing power momentarily a few times. We took the bike back to the garage and started to service it, but we wouldn’t get everything done until the next morning, since at Daytona the officials only give you and hour to clean up after the final practice session is over, and then they kick you out. We drained the oil and secured a few things, and left the valve adjustment for the next morning.

We arrived early again on Saturday so that we could finish the service work before the one and only 10 minute practice we would get. As luck would have it rain was falling, and the practice turned out to be wet. I decided to take the bike out myself, since we had such a short time and I figured eliminating the middle man might help me diagnose the problem faster. We threw on some rain tires and I headed out. Sure enough the bike was cutting out; basically acting like the quickshifter was engaging even when you weren’t pushing on it. I came in and unplugged the quickshifter to see if that would fix it, but when I went back out to do another lap, the session had just been given the checkered flag and they wouldn’t let me back on track! I only got three laps and we didn’t find out much, since I wasn’t able to go back out and verify if I had fixed the problem.

The next stop was the dyno. I was really curious to see how the air-fuel ratio looked, and when he did the run it looked good. The problem was the bike was still only making about 100hp. I was shocked and dejected, as I though we had fixed this with the head work. I decided to remove all of the fuel injection controls and just put it back to stock to see what would happen. We did all this and now it was only making 98hp. This class horsepower limit is 118. San Jose ran on the dyno right after us, and they were trying to find was to bring their horsepower down to the limit because they were over it. Clearly we still had a problem and we were running out of time fast. Gary called BMW Daytona to see if they would be willing to hook it up to their diagnostic computer and they agreed. We loaded the bike and I headed straight over to their shop. They hooked it up right away, and the problem became clear. The control systems on the bike were not responding and they were not communicating with each other. They tried to reset everything, but it wouldn’t take the reset. By now it was 11:30am, I still had to drive back to the track, and we had to be on the pre-grid for the race at 12:30! I decided I better get back, and that racing with 100hp was better than not making the race. I got back to the track, the team threw the bodywork and new tires on, and we were off to the pre-grid for the sighting laps and the start of the race.

Our grid position was on the outside of the third row based on our points so far from the season, as we were currently sixth in points. Brad started the race and we fell back about 5 positions initially due to our power deficit, but we managed to stay in 11th overall through our first pit stop. James was circulating well, and I was optimistic that we could move up the order through our fast pit stops and good strategy. James’ radio plug did not see things my way, as it broke while he was out on track, and when it was time for us to call him in for his pit stop he couldn’t hear us. The bike will run 20 laps on a tank of fuel at Daytona, about 40 minutes. 21 laps is cutting it close, and 22 is not advised. James ran out on lap 23 of his stint, as our futile attempts to call him were met with deaf ears.

The crash truck brought him back to the paddock, way in the back corner of the garage area, not to the pit lane. They do this to everyone, so it’s not unfair, but it’s a long way away. The officials told us where they were taking him, so we loaded up the team golf cart with the quick fuel can, the extinguisher, and me in my leathers and helmet ready to jump on the bike and get back on track as soon as we could. It took what seemed like forever for them to bring James back to the garage area, and when he finally arrived we refueled and I jumped on and headed back to the hot pit. The MOTO-ST marshals signaled that I could go out and I was on my way. During all of this we lost 6 or 7 laps and fell from 11th back to 33rd position on track.

Over the next 6 hours everything went smoothly. I came in from my stint on the bike and Brad went back out. We slowly made our way back up the standings until we were on the leader board again. Fast and accurate pit stops from the crew and consistent lap times from the riders made this happen. Strategy played a role too, as I was able make a pit stop under caution right behind Brian Parriott and the San Jose team.

The caution had just come out while I was in the final laps of my stint on the bike at around the 6th hour. As luck would have it Brian had just passed me and I was doing my best to keep him in sight on our underpowered bike when I saw the yellow. I radioed Gary that the caution lights were on, and he told me it looked like San Jose was going to pit. I came in behind Parriott, we did our stop, and left pit lane with Brad on the bike right on Parriott’s tail. This put us third behind the pace car and helped us gain back almost a full lap! Brad handed the bike over to James, and near the end of James’ stint we got word that the track was about to go full course caution. Looking at the stop watch we knew James was back near the chicane. We radioed him to come in, (we had fixed his plug while Brad was on the bike earlier in the race) Brad got ready quickly, and we were the first bike onto pit lane. When Brad went back out we had gained almost another lap, putting us about 6th behind the pace car for the restart. This was the final stint, and in three short stops we went from 13th to 9th overall, finishing the race in the top ten and 8th in the SST class.

Team Motorrad raced in every MOTO-ST race this year. We had some ups and downs, but in was an exciting and educational season. We finished 7th overall in the championship against some great competitors, and we couldn’t have done it without the support or our sponsors and our volunteer crew, as well as some great riding from Frank Shockley, Brad Hendry, and James Chance III.

Thanks to Gary and Kim Walker, Melissa Drennan, Brad Phillips, Mark Boucher, Dwayne Palmer, Terry Bailey, Jim Blakeney, Rick Tannenbaum, Earl Tottman, Randy Walker, Ed Johnson, Mike Hendry, Barry Crowe, Gina’s BMW, all the Touring Sport employees, and all my friends and family and anyone who helped that I’m forgetting!

Support was given by BMW North America, Touring Sport BMW, BMW Santa Cruz, Wunderlich, Cee Bailey’s Aircraft Plastics, Rock Oil, Shock Doctor, RaceHost.com, Pinlock USA, Carbone Lorraine Brakes, Cogent Dynamics, and MachineArt Moto.

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