Melting pistons to even the odds
Imagine if the car was done and ready. What if it was sitting under a car cover, waiting for us to dust it off in the spring, take it out and run around the country without blinking an eye? The first problem is that nobody would believe us. It obviously isn’t our style to be ready to race without some drama. The second problem is that it just wouldn’t be fair to everybody else for us to be so prepared. The other teams wouldn’t know how to react if we were actually on our game.
In order to make it fair for all of the other teams to be able to get their own cars ready we have gone and blown up our motor. Actually, we melted a piston to be more precise, but things always sound more impressive when you say “blown up” when talking about motors.
Now before you get all misty eyed and concerned all of this happened way back in October and we have been scheming a lot since then. It is actually a good story, which I will write up soon. It involves cakes made out of smurfs, more bananas in new tailpipes and some really epic ride alongs with people in the Evo X. You know, before we blew it up.
The good news is that we are sponsored and supported by the best engine builder in the industry. So we have been working with Magnus to ensure we will not be pulling a Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble maneuver for One Lap 2012. It is fair to say that the motor may be slightly, possibly, perhaps a little better than what we had with a factory motor. Any time you have Magnus build a race motor, the end result is nothing but engineering excellence. Actually, we are a little giddy to be able to run a Magnus engine in the car.
For now I will share the fallout damage of what happens when you run lean going up the esses at Watkins Glen. Put this under the category of “don’t do this” unless you want to rebuild your motor. What you are looking at is the melted piston of cylinder one and the wall damage to cylinder one that happened when the motor let go.
