North East GT – Round 1 at Thompson Speedway in Thompson CT June 1st/ 2nd 2024
First event was a big ask of both cars and ourselves. We didn’t get a chance to do any testing on either car and other than some industrial park driving, most of the team had zero seat time in the cars ever. Adding to the excitement was getting one driver though the NEGT school in-between testing and qualifying on Saturday.
By noon Ethan had finished the school and we had an 1hr 40min to prep the cars for the first race. E30 needed to have its rear tires swapped, a bit of fender clearance addressed on the drivers rear and a general once over. The Corrado however had lost its brake pedal and needed at minimum a bleed and ideally would have had its exhaust addressed as we found a lot of fumes making there way into the car. Unfortunately we ran short on time for the exhaust and the second car made it to grid at 1:39pm.
Driver order was also changed as some gear was being shared and Jarod was out on a parts run so Cameron started in the E30 and Ethan in the Corrado. While in grid we did get to have the, half joking talk of “don’t hit the other car” (Yes Nick I know they shouldn’t hit anything)
Green flag dropped and the first NEGT race was under way, we qualified 10th in the E30 and 15th in the Corrado, both in GT14 class. Whole field had a clean start and we were under way.
E30 came in a bit early as it had a claimed misfire. Wires were wiggled, found a suspect #6 plug wire and it was sent back out. I think we did a drivers swap at that point as well and Rob jumped in. Ethan stayed out for 1hr 15min before coming in and ironically running out of gas (we will work on that).
Before realizing it was out of gas we had Jarod in the car and once strapped in the car would fire. Wasn’t until we pushed it off the pit lane we realized we had no fuel pressure, there was no pressure because the tank was empty. Easy fix in hind sight, were still not sure if we inherited excessive fuel consumption or don’t know how to count gallons into a car.
Jarod went out in the Corrado and started turning laps. He drove for a while (i lost track of exact time) and unfortunately the engine came apart in the braking zone for T1. Watching the video you can hear it start to decelerate and it just let go. No money shift, over rev, etc. It just had enough.
Before the end of Rob’s stint the E30 came back, more miss-firing or a studder. Whatever it was it made cornering exciting as Rob explained he would get a surprisingly extra amount of rotation of of the car as it all but locked the rear tires, occasionally mid-corner. We chalked it up to everything getting hot, or a fuel/ignition issue drastically cutting power. After poking around and letting the car cool Jacob jumped in for 20 or so min before the problem came back and we decided to park the car.
At that point we decided to call the weekend as we had no idea what the issue was with the E30 and hadn’t built spare packages for the Corrado and its weekend was done no matter what.
As of typing this we haven’t dug into the Corrado but have a number of engines coming this week and have all intentions of making Palmer. The E30 was found to have a bad idle control valve that randomly opens which explains the random ‘extra’ throttle and a loose connection on a junction that ties the main relay board into the car which explains the complete power loss. So long we don’t discover anything else the E30 will return for round 2 as well.
E30 race video | Corrado race video.
For more information on North East GT and it’s rules and schedule visit https://www.northeast-gt.com/