Another week, another race. It could feel that way, if the race weekend the Life’s Good Racing!TM team were entering wasn’t Auto Club Speedway (Cal Speedway, for the nostalgic) in Fontana, California, a race track that requires particular preparation and attention to detail.
Cal Speedway, a track that was run by NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series just a few weeks back, is a unique track for us, presenting some interesting challenges and opportunities. For those who are not familiar with this track, it is a two mile “D shaped” oval run by NASCAR and has 14 degrees of banking in the turns and even 11 degrees of banking on the front straight-away.
The course we run in NASA is called the “Roval” (combination road course/along with the NASCAR oval) and is a 2.8 mile long, 21 turn course that combines parts of the banked oval with a road course that is run in the infield of the oval, It is challenging in that we will be hitting speeds in CMC2 upwards of 145mph through NASCAR turns one and two, and then have to haul ourselves down from that speed quickly to 35mph in order to navigate a sharp (90 degree) left-hander, followed by another 90-degree right-hander. Thrilling, to say the least!
As mentioned above, this track is full of unique facets given the speed and the high banking, which means that the set-up of the car must be absolutely correct to take advantage of the speed potential that can be generated on that portion of the track. Optimizing for it is critical since so much of the “Roval” course is spent on that high speed portion of the track.
As a team,Life’s Good Racing!TM takes advantage of the testing day prior to the race weekend to work on chassis set-up so that we can squeeze every last bit of handling and speed possible out of our platform. We look at all the opportunities for fine tuning including springs, sway bars, tire pressures, etc, etc, in order to squeeze even a fraction of a mph out of any portion of the track. It is all part of the process of competitive preparation–and with anything import–requires attention to detail.
We are loading up for our eight hour transport to Southern California as we are approaching our second race weekend of an eight event season, and look forward to not only great competition but also an opportunity to spend some time with representatives from some of our sponsors, Hawk Performance, AIP Electronics, and ClutchMasters. Come out, join us, meet our team members, and we will introduce you to the all important components providers to our winning team. Our warm-ups each day this weekend are at 8:20, with qualifying at 10:45, and the race at 1:55.
Karl Chicca, Campbell, CA