“To finish first, first you must finish.” The team assembled Friday afternoon at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan for the 14 hour endurance race. The car rolled off the trailer and went through a brief technical inspection, then a check of the alignment. Team members started unloading the tools, spares, pit equipment, and walking the track, while others went to gather nearly 80 gallons of fuel for the race. Walking or riding bicycles, along with studying video is critical for events like MIS, where there is no practicing. After eating dinner at a local restaurant, the team turned in, tomorrow was going to be a long day. 6:30am came early, but the team gathered and prepared before sunrise. 7:30am all teams assembled in the Michigan Room for the drivers meeting, details including new FIA-style curbing, staying off the apron and restart procedures, amongst other things. 7:45am all cars are gridding up for the 8:00am green flag. Per usual, the Ambulance is late, no racing until the bus gets here. Kleman finally takes the green flag at 8:37am in P4. Because there was no practice, everyone eagerly waited for the field to come around to start/finish and see how their cars’ speed compared against others. As we suspected, many of the cars were pulling us hard on the long front stretch, if our strategy was going to work, we wouldn’t really know until after all of the cars cycled through the pit stops. Kleman finished up and handed off to Mishoulam in first place, during a flawless pitstop. Another clean stint and flawless pitstop as the car was turned over to Schaut. The experienced hot shoe extended the lead and set the fastest time for the team. Next the car was turned over to Thulin with another perfect pit stop. A testament to Spartan drivers is the delta between fastest lap times, only 2.1 seconds separated the drivers. Denton hops in for the next stint, after four laps he radios the back to the pit that the car just went DOWN on power. Missing terribly, sounds like three cylinders. Car comes into the pit for emergency diagnosis. The team smells fuel, so they start working on spark. A new coil was immediately installed, no change. A new plug wire was installed, no change. New spark plug, no change. They scramble to borrow a compression gauge- hoping to see the needle jump as they crank… nothing, zero compression on cylinder three. After leading the race for 9 hours, in the lead by 10 laps, disaster struck. Endurance racing is a roller coaster of highs and lows, and Spartan Racing in not immune to fluke accidents. All the preparations could not have anticipated the single exhaust valve problem. However, the team will rebound from this DNF, taking pride in a well fought fight and knowing that they have what it takes to compete for the top step of the podium. Thank you to all of our Friends, Family and Sponsors including AKG Motorsport, Optima Batteries, and FastTech Limited.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 13:57:30 +0000