July 2022 at the Utah Motorsports Complex
A full weekend of racing with two races each in ST4 & ST5 and a 6hr WERC Enduro in E1 & E2.
We are now halfway through our season! In NASA SoCal, Palomar Racing has a strong grasp of the ST5 region-al points lead. In NASA WERC, Palomar Racing has won all 3 of the previous endurance races in E2 class. Now we will travel over 700 miles to Utah and to add to the challenge, we are now campaigning 2 cars.
In early June at Auto Club Speedway, we brought the new #24 car to the track for the first time, however due to a few teething issues it wasn’t able to compete. A few weeks later we took the team to Sonoma to again attempt to get a handle on the new car. Team mechanic Kevin had worked out the kinks and we were able to explore the potential of the new chassis. While Sonoma was a successful test, we also learned that if we wanted the ST4 program to be successful we’d have to make some changes. The #24 is inherently a bit heavier than the #25, so we decided to swap their classes: #24 in ST5, since it is already just about at the right power to weight, and #25 to ST4 where its lighter chassis would get us closer to the class limit…with the ballast and restrictor plate removed, that is. We cannot fully exploit the ST4 rules because we will be returning the car to ST5 trim after Nationals in September, so the setup is a bit of a compromise. Our cars are built primarily to ST5 specs, much of the reason we have dominated the class so far. While we believe the #24 should be ultra competitive in ST5, the ability of the #25 to compete against true ST4 cars is still unknown.
Due to the nature of a 6 hour enduro (the longest race of our NASA WERC season thus far), this will also be the first time we run with 6 drivers. We are building the team in order to get ready for the NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill in early December. We will need as many as 8 drivers for that ultimate test of en-durance, and now is a good time to start understanding the difficulties of running a 2-car team with mul-tiple driver lineups. We will still lean on our primary drivers Nik Romano and Matt Million, with each of them taking a stint in both cars, but in addition we will have 4 more drivers join us for Utah. Sonny Watanasirisuk, who joined Romano and Million during the June NASA WERC victory in E2 at Auto Club Speedway will return again, also joined by Ryan Keeley. Both Sonny and Ryan are accomplished enduro drivers and have been a part of various winning endurance efforts. New to the team is Ryan Bittner, front-running SoCal SE46 driver who we know well as he is chasing us in the SoCal ST5 points fight. Our final driver will be Lucas Weisenberg, a young gun who is currently leading the NASA SoCal Spec E46 points. All 6 are top drivers in their classes; our enduro team is not one of compromises. Once again, we are building an unfair advantage.
Five Laps? Shortly after the pit stop while checking our track position on Race Hero, got a sudden and detrimental surprise: we had been penalized 5 laps! This seemed excessive, it was barely more than a dribble, certainly not a flagrant and dangerous mistake that resulted in injury. Our team principal Andy began petitioning for a more reasonable penalty with the pit marshals. Meanwhile, Matt was told to keep digging. We were shown in 5th place, though our physical track position was 1st – Matt had already passed the two cars that got by us during the fuel stop – and hoped that luck and speed could get us to the podium. For more than an hour, Andy continued petitioning the pit marshals to no avail. Finally, with barely any time left and still down 4 laps, he went up to the tower to take one more shot at the decision-maker him-self: the Race Director. Armed with just a picture of the spill, the case was made. Unbelievably, without hesitation the penalty was not just reduced, it was completely overturned. We were back in the lead! With only 15 minutes left in the race, Palomar Racing #25 found themselves in the lead over a very solid Team EDGE #37 in the E1 class. Matt received word of the news, and was quickly brought in for a splash of fuel so he could comfortably make it to the end. The petitioning and Matt’s quick laps over the final stint made the difference. Our first race in E1, and we crossed the line to win! Not only that, but we had beaten all other touring cars including all E0 class competitors. Finishing in 6th overall with a total of 151 laps, only an ESR Prototype, an ES Porsche GT3 Cup car and 3 ES GT4 cars were able to cover more miles than us.
