On Friday we decided to take the Evo to VS Motorsports in Buffalo Grove, IL for an allignment in the early afternoon and then make it to the track Friday evening to get a decent paddock spot picked out for the weekend. On the way to the shop we had some excitement when one of the tires on the trailer blew and left us standed on the side of the road. Thankfully we had a spare and all the tools needed to change the tire and be back on the road in a matter of minutes. Thankfully no damaged was done the trailer. Hopefully this was not a sign of how the weekend would go for us.
Once we reached the shop things were back to normal and seemed to go smoothly. The car was now ready to be droped at the track and things prepared for the next 2 days of racing. Due to NHRA events that were also going on in Joliet that weekend we had to stay at a motel further away from the track than usual.
Saturday morning the first session went well and the Evo felt good. The first session was fast enough to secure a 5th place grid position out of the 30 or so cars in TT that day. I was gridded right beside two other Evo's which made for some great pictures in the second session with the three of us running nose to tail. It was great to see three Evo's in the top grouping of cars. Hopefully this will be a continuing trend for the remainder of the season. Second session was ran as a 1:33.9 which was the best competition lap time the VS Motorsports Evo has recorded at Autobahn South. Since the last visit there in the spring several changes had been made to the car which seemed to have helped. Changes include softer front springs, splitter, and rear wing set to new height with extensions. It seemed that the new changes were helping and the car was getting faster. There were still a few corners however that some improvement could be made.
The third session of the day was immediately after lunch and the track was starting to get slick from the hot sun beating down on it. Track conditions the remainder of the day slowly got worse and the 1:33.9 turned out to be the best time for the day. Third place out of six copmetitors in TTS was the ending result for Saturday.
Sunday was forecasted to be even warmer than Saturday had been in the upper 80's. The morning was quite muggy and definately not an ideal day for turbo cars. The best bet was to get the best lap times in early in the day before the track became lousy once again in the afternoon with all the race classes laying down tons of rubber. In the first session a time of 1:33.538 was ran. This was slightly better than Saturday's time and was good enough for 4th place on grid. The Evo's had taken positions 1,2 and 4 on grid!
In the second session some minor changes were made to tire pressures and a time of 1:33.155 was ran. This was a new personal best at this track and was ran under some hot conditions.
The remainder of the day's session ended up being just slightly slower and no improvement over the second session time was made. Once again it was a third place finish in the class behind the same two cars as Saturday.
Final thoughts: the softer springs on the front seemed to help the car from skipping around so much on the bumpy surface at this track and helped the car turn in better and hold the line to apex. Only down side is that in corner 1 the rear inside tire is lifting quite a bit and forcing the car to slide around the corner more than it should. Some time could be gained in this corner if that were not happening...something to work on.
Thanks to all my family who came out to this event to support me and help with the racing duties. Thanks to VS Motorsports for a consistent car that keeps getting faster every time at this track.
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