Check out Motor Trend Magazine’s recap of the exciting finish of the 2021 Superlap Battle USA event at Circuit of the Americas. This is the premiere time attack event in North America and it was an honor to be a part of a great team and winning effort.
Super Lap Battle Time Attack vs. Circuit of the Americas 2021 (motortrend.com)
As mentioned in the article, the whole team put in an epic effort to get the car to the race, only to suffer a repeat driveshaft failure. What they didn’t mention, is due to COVID restrictions preventing the team from entering the shop we used to make repairs, Dan Noji of Satoru Speed and I worked on the car through the night by ourselves to relocate exhaust parts just far enough from the carbon fiber driveshaft for the car to put in a single lap on Sunday. It was a bizarre turn of events as the Lyfe Motorsport team is always eager to put in whatever effort is required to repair the car. On the tuning side, I took some rather unique measures to reduce wastegate flow and exhaust heat to help make a lap possible.
It turned out Dan’s masterful temporary fix lasted long enough for 1.95 laps with the 0.95 of a lap being the one that broke the track record and driver Cole Powelson won the event as the car coasted down the front straight and across the finish line. After the event, data review showed 2 seconds were lost when the driveshaft failed. That combined with time possible from running full power, show there’s room for the team to come back and re-set their record again in the future.
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