Siberia Racing & The GT-Jet Project 
Race Report
The Six Hours of Naperville for NITRO GT-Jet Cars

  June 3, 2006

Race day saw four teams ready to go.  Well that might not be exactly correct.  Three teams walked in the door were ready to go.  The fourth team converted a NITRO car to GT-Jet spec during practice.  This is not to say that Team Danger wasn't dangerous.   When the power went on they showed the rest of the field taillights till the power went off twelve segments and six hours later.  But that's just part of the story. 

The race was all about a new idea.  Lexan Bodied T-jets.  There were a lot of questions such as would they hold up, would they be hard to marshal, would they drive differently?  Most of those were answered.  Four teams lined up under the red lights at the start of the race.  The cars and teams were from top to bottom:

STARTING LINE UP

Team "Sgt." Schultz - Rick Fair, Dennis Rutherford, Dave "AutoTech" Stevens (BSRT Porsche 930)

Team Naperville - Milt Surrat, Jim Nagy, John Parker (SkunkWerks Porsche 917K)

 Team Danger - "Danger" Dan Rothwell, Jim Keen, Tony Varadi (SkunkWerks Ford GT40 Mk II)

DTM - John "Zipper" Duda, Larry Thomas and Steve Medanic (Parma Porsche 917K)

When the power came on Team Danger took an early lead on blue. It was a lead they were not to lose.  Team Schultz lost a driver early on when Dennis Rutherford was informed that his wife was rushed to the hospital.  We learned later that she got there in time and her prognosis is good.  They continued bravely one driver down to finish fourth.  This team and team Naperville had the only real car trouble during the event.  Team Schultz struggled with oil related issues and Team Naperville had no luck at all.  They lost several pickups and a motor pinion during the event.  Milt, Jim and John never gave up and kept putting the car back together to take third.  Team DTM was dealing with terminal oversteer that got better as the day progressed.  While losing ground to the leaders they were fast enough to maintain second overall throughout the event with no real issues.  Out in front Danger, Jim and Tony were running a solid 6.0-6.1 pace and had the time to do a pit stop mid race.  While the service might not have been needed it was a stop they could afford to take.  Their pit stop was right after the "night session".  The track was reversed for the two hours associated with the middle four segments.  This configuration had never been raced on before.  About five minutes into the segment the lights above the track were turned off and the two hour night segment began.  There was enough light to drive by but visually the track was totally different.  CRR is as fast in reverse as it is in forward and most, if not all of the teams, enjoyed the reversed layout.  At the end of the two hours of "night racing" the lights came on and it was a run to the finish.  At the end the results were as follows:

Team Danger - 3,290 Laps (+116)

DTM - 3,174 Laps (-116 / +392)

Team Naperville - 2,783 Laps (-508 / +174)

Team "Sgt." Schultz  - 2,608 Laps (-682)

FINISHING ORDER

As indicated at the beginning, the race was all about a new idea.  Lexan Bodied T-jets.  There were a lot of questions such as would the bodies hold up, would they be hard to marshal, would they drive differently?   Post race physical inspection showed no body damage at all.  The above photo of the field at the end of the run shows no visible damage as well.  The spec body mounts worked well.  The cars marshaled well and there were no body related issues whatsoever.  Side by side racing was much improved as there were no wheel within wheel issues.  As expected, the old art of nerfing is back!  While DTM struggled with a car with terminal oversteer  the winning team's car appeared bolted.  Clearly they found something that gave them better rear end grip.  Times were a bit off NITRO times but this was a six hour race and pace as opposed to speed is key.  Team Danger and DTM got into the five second lap times more than just a bit.  Team Danger set the fast lap with a 5.584.  This is a solid 0.1 faster than the best NITRO lap time and right on the National Fray / QCQ Car pace here at CCR.  Team DTM took highest overall segment with 290 Laps turned in a 30 minute segment.

Most of all the race was all about fun.  When the power went off there was cheers, clapping and handshakes all around.  The atmosphere was great and the race was a blast.  Team Danger was a bit surprised when they learned that they each got a wall plaque for finishing first!  The following photo shows the guys with their tin.  

DANGER, JIM and TONY WITH THE "TIN"

Danger, Tony and Jim also got a race box plaque similar to the trophies proclaiming the win.  The rest of the field got participant race box plaques. A big thanks for the race box plaques donated by Jim Nagy's Slot Pro Speedway. 

Slottrack race management system Version 7.12 was used for the Six Hours of Naperville at CRRas it could run the entire twelve segments unattended.  There were some issues as Slottrack 7.12 as first the race started when the countdown came on.  That was my fault as I had "hot start" selected.  Fortunately it only did that for the first segment.  Then Slottrack would not display time remaining when the track was on and time to start during the lane changes.  That forced use of a backup cooking timer to allow us to determine time remaining during the segments,  30 minutes is a LONG time and its nice to know how much time is left in a segment.  Likewise its nice to know when the next segment is going to start as opposed to "surprise".  The Slottrack sounds such as "halfway through the race" also failed during the first few segments.  I was debating going to Trakmate at the two hour mark but then the sound fixed itself and it appeared that the software would make it with no more surprises.  While the sound fixed itself, the lack of time indication was there for the entire event.  Other that those issues it worked well.  The following report, developed automatically by Slotrack (in HTML no less) shows the segment by segment details.

Track: Crystal Rock Raceway
Date: Jun-03-2006			Class: NITRO GT-Jet Cars
Segment Length (min): 30:00			Descr: Six Hours of Naperville at CRR
Segment #1
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Blue	6.243	5.928	6.166	288	1	288	1
DTM	Yellow	6.418	5.865	6.214	280	2	280	2
Team Naperville	White	7.012	6.486	6.801	257	3	257	3
Team Schultz	Red	8.382	6.952	7.676	215	4	215	4
Segment #2
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Yellow	6.500	5.868	6.210	277	1	565	1
DTM	White	7.197	6.319	6.872	250	2	530	2
Team Naperville	Red	8.690	6.674	7.558	206	4	463	3
Team Schultz	Blue	7.697	6.866	7.207	232	3	447	4
Segment #3
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	White	6.374	5.962	6.227	283	1	848	1
DTM	Red	7.004	6.361	6.729	257	2	787	2
Team Naperville	Blue	7.366	6.408	6.926	245	3	708	3
Team Schultz	Yellow	8.706	6.900	7.324	197	4	644	4
Segment #4
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Red	6.758	6.088	6.425	265	1	1113	1
DTM	Blue	6.912	6.207	6.680	259	2	1046	2
Team Naperville	Yellow	7.347	6.330	6.732	242	3	950	3
Team Schultz	White	7.850	7.072	7.472	228	4	872	4
Segment #5
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Blue	6.642	6.055	6.459	271	1	1384	1
DTM	Yellow	6.789	5.976	6.442	265	2	1311	2
Team Naperville	White	7.768	6.629	7.268	232	3	1182	3
Team Schultz	Red	8.802	7.207	7.962	199	4	1071	4
Segment #6
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Yellow	6.668	6.107	6.447	269	1	1653	1
DTM	White	7.299	6.371	6.937	247	2	1558	2
Team Naperville	Red	8.870	6.759	7.121	203	3	1385	3
Team Schultz	Blue	8.209	6.874	7.315	195	4	1266	4
Segment #7
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	White	6.865	5.584	6.415	263	1	1916	1
DTM	Red	7.073	6.455	6.892	254	2	1812	2
Team Naperville	Blue	7.447	6.615	6.903	241	3	1626	3
Team Schultz	Yellow	8.830	6.669	7.544	204	4	1470	4
Segment #8
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Red	6.628	6.170	6.452	270	1	2186	1
DTM	Blue	7.150	6.407	6.860	252	2	2064	2
Team Naperville	Yellow	8.218	6.777	7.614	218	4	1844	3
Team Schultz	White	7.825	5.710	7.328	230	3	1700	4
Segment #9
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Blue	6.377	6.058	6.263	277	2	2463	1
DTM	Yellow	6.202	5.885	6.142	290	1	2354	2
Team Naperville	White	7.659	6.757	7.138	216	4	2060	3
Team Schultz	Red	7.918	6.828	7.383	227	3	1927	4
Segment #10
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Yellow	6.572	5.854	6.254	274	1	2737	1
DTM	White	7.068	6.286	6.628	255	2	2609	2
Team Naperville	Red	7.493	6.493	6.795	241	3	2301	3
Team Schultz	Blue	8.115	6.767	7.489	222	4	2149	4
Segment #11
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	White	6.379	5.987	6.248	282	1	3019	1
DTM	Red	6.497	6.110	6.347	277	2	2886	2
Team Naperville	Blue	7.730	6.604	7.072	233	3	2534	3
Team Schultz	Yellow	7.989	6.795	7.360	225	4	2374	4
Segment #12 / FINAL Standings
Name	Lane	Average Laptime	Fastest Laptime	Median Laptime	Segment Laps	Segment Place	Total Laps	Race Place
Team Danger	Red	6.621	6.153	6.441	271	2	3290	1
DTM	Blue	6.252	5.939	6.122	288	1	3174	2
Team Naperville	Yellow	7.259	6.261	6.810	248	3	2782	3
Team Schultz	White	7.690	6.912	7.374	234	4	2608	4

A few side notes.  CRR is instrumented and track voltage and current is displayed at the race directors station on a pair of LCD displays.  Voltage was rock steady at 18.6VDC for the entire day.  The maximum current draw when all four cars were running was a whopping 1.7 amps!  Guess CRR's nuclear power plants are a bit overkill for T-jets.  The second side note was how well the track and pickups held up. Its a well documented fact that Maxtrack's with stainless steel rails, like CRR, used to be really hard on pickups.  Like last November's Turkey Trot, the teams were cleaning pickups during the breaks between each 30-minute segments out of habit as opposed to needing to.  I know that our team's pickups looked as good at the end of a segment as they did at the beginning and we were cleaning them out of habit and as a preventative measure more than anything else.  I was amazed when, after the race was over, the winning team's "Danger" Dan Rothwell told me that their team did not clean the pickups once during the entire race!  Six hours without touching the pickups.  I inspected the car during post race tech and, while they showed wear,  the pickups looked polished as opposed to being dirty.  There wasn't a spec of dirt on them!  There was a time when you couldn't do three minutes around CRR without cleaning pickups!  Enough said!  

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