[AaronPfadt]

Our Pfadt C6Z has only been underdevelopment for a few months and it's proving to be as amazing as we hoped. This weekend is NASA Nationals here at Miller (it was really nice to not have to tow to Mid-Ohio this year) and Danny Popp and I are co-driving. I did not have enough events to qualify for the TT championship, so I invited Danny to go after the title. I am competing in the ST1 wheel to wheel championship.

Here is Rob going through our pre-grid checklist



On our car we've focused on chassis set up to this point. You'll see in the photos that we're working on aero development and we've done brakes and American Racing Headers. It's got our full cage. The engine is stock. We keep joking that it still has the original spark plugs. :smilielol5:

The car is running our delrin mounted Original Pfadt Coilovers, Pfadt sway bars, Pfadt Carbon Drive Shaft, and Pfadt Spherical control arm bearings. With our chassis development and stock engine we are seeing fabulous results.

Danny is currently leading time trial by a tenth of a second. His main competitor is a Comp Coup Viper. Danny ran a 1:57:2 yesterday afternoon. We've been working on some overheating issues and have had to be careful with our run sessions. Last night we added two air to oil coolers and changed out the factory fan for an aftermarket one.

My ST1 Championship race it today at 3:00, so it will be hot. If we can keep the car cool it will be a helluva race with the Viper.

Here are some photos from grid yesterday

Danny preparing for TT. I ran the radio with split times and to communicate about the temps. It's surprisingly hard to watch someone else rip around the track in your car! :thumbsup:





Danny has a time trial session this morning at 9:45. The cool air should provide some amazing lap times. Danny will be aiming to keep the TT lead. My 40 minute ST1 Championship race is this afternoon at 3:00.

More later

-Aaron

 

[Capt. Nemo]

Looks sweet. Good Luck in the race today :cheers:

 

[BUBBA]

Any more photos of the beast in action! Congrats on your so far success, keep it up guys!

 

[wayback]

Give em hell. Good luck.:cheers:

 

[Beach bum]

:sm_party: :sm_party: :sm_party:

 

[Sharkbite]

Let's see some more photos! Keep it rocking Pfadt!

 

[TheDrakester]

Sweet! Keep the info coming!

 

[bigblock427]

Nice update on your progress.

Good luck and have some fun.

 

[iBlue]

Car looks like it's ready for business, keep us informed on how you all are making out! :sm_party:

 

[C6KID]

Look at the rear diffuser on that thing! :sm_party:

 

[WingMan]

So??? How did the rest of the races go? :beerbang:

 

[Mr. Hyde]

So??? How did the rest of the races go? :beerbang:

Hope you took it to that Viper!

 

[David Farley]

:thumbsup3: Thanks for sharing :coffeetime:

 

[jimmymack]

Pfadt is where it's at!!!!:burnout: :cheers:

 

[AaronPfadt]

Race Report

Race Report : NASA Nationals 2009 Miller Motorsports Park, Tooele, UT.

This year as most of you know we have developed our C6Z into the new Pfadt ST1/TTU car. There are several threads on the forum detailing the build of the car and the philosophy of the build.

I did not run enough TT events this season to qualify for the TTU National event so I invited Danny Popp to co-drive the car in TTU. I drove in ST1 wheel to wheel.

The car has been working well (this is only it's third race weekend!) but we still had some bugs to get out. The weather has been warm and cooling has been plaguing us. For TT that did not turn out to be an issue because the sessions are short and the fast laps come early. Heat soaking on the engine and traffic conspire to make the later laps less productive.

In the ST1 races, the heating turned out to be formidable. The format for the racing was this. We ran a qualifying race on Thursday, a qualifying race on Friday and the final race on Sunday. The finishing positions of the two qualifying races determined my starting position for the final race.

On the Thursday race, I had qualified on the pole (in fact I had the best qualifying lap of anyone in our run group). Things went well in the early stages of the race. I beat Tom Glenn in the Viper (who turned out to be Danny and mine's best competition all weekend) at the start and led the first 5 laps of the race. My Z then started to overheat and I had to back off and let Tom by. It went even worse from there, I pushed out enough coolant to get an air pocket in the system. The temp spiked and sent the car into limp mode, shutting off half the cylinders. I pulled off just before the last lap and watched the race end from the hot pits. I was disappointed to say the least. The car was clearly the fastest in the field and I DNF'd because of cooling.

Danny had better luck on Thursday and threw down a blistering 1:57.8 lap setting the tone for TTU.

We worked on the cooling and changed a bunch of things on Thursday night to be ready for Friday. We decided to keep the car out of TT for Friday in order to concentrate on the cooling issues. On Friday warmup and qualifying, the car stayed cool and we thought that the issues might be behind us.

Unfortunately, the race was pretty much a repeat of Thursday's race and I started from the pole and led until I overheated and let Tom in the Viper by. This time I stayed out and fought the 'limp mode' and brought the car in to a second place finish just barely holding off the second (red) Viper driven by Mark Alger. It was quite a challenge, I had to key off the car on the straights and restart it to get out of limp mode. On top of that each time I had to hold down the active handling button for 10 seconds with my right hand to disable Active Handling/Traction Control. I did that like 5 times. Try shifting, steering, restarting, disabling AH/TC all while holding off a Viper. It was not pretty!

Saturday was a day for Danny to recapture the TT lead (Tom in the Viper had put down a 1:57.5) in one of the sessions. We had an issue with the Tire Pressure Monitoring System in the first run session of the morning and that cost Danny a session in the cool (read as fast) time of the day. Neither of us were happy. I am absolutely furious with GM for not offering a real fix for that system for racing. I am not willing to put sensors in all 5 of my sets of wheels. What happened is that the battery got disconnected and the system lost the sensors and was in 'Flat Tire Mode'. We have a battery cut in the car to be legal for ST1 and if you shut it off, the TPMS goes nuts. It is insane to deal with. In 'Flat Tire Mode' the car will not go into AH/TC disable and the car is un-driveable on the track. Rant off.

We also worked hard on the cooling system on Saturday because we knew we had to change things to win on Sunday. I do not mind being beat in a fair race, but I do not want to go out with a cooling problem. This time we removed the GM fan shroud and installed the Spal fan from my C5. We also added two more oil coolers (air to oil) to the nose and cut big holes in the nose to match. During all of this, Danny was able to put down a 1:57.4 edging out Tom in the Viper in TTU by .01 second for the overall lead.

Sunday morning brought cooler temperatures and some clouds in the sky. That is good for our cooling system, but we still had not tested all of our mods in a real race. Warmup went well and the cooling system worked for a 20 minute hard run. That was not conclusive though, because in the previous mornings it had worked for 20 minutes also. The heat of the day would be the test, and that would be the race.

I was gridded 4th in ST1 and we ran a combined start with SU/ST1 and ST2. We were ordered by class, but we all took the same green flag. I was about 10th on the grid overall. My main competition Tom was 4 spots ahead.

The video will tell the story better than I can, but I'll give some highlights. I did OK on the start, but could not better the Viper and was behind him. We had two successive full course yellows for a total of about 4 laps that ate up much of our race time. On the second restart I followed the Viper for a couple laps and then was able to pass him for the lead. That lasted for a few laps and he passed me back. He was turning very fast laps in there and the both of our cars were great. Nearing the end, we got caught by two ASC cars (different class) and they got into the mix because our lap times were very close. At that time the Viper seemed to lose some speed and we bunched up. On the last lap I was on Tom's bumper and he went wide in a turn. I went under him in a clean pass and he went off the outside of the track. When I was next to him, he spun and hit me very hard (the video shows this well). That put me off and into the gravel trap where I was stuck and lost the race. Had I been able to stay out of the gravel I could have finished and maybe even still won (we were quite far ahead of the next ST1 cars). I got pulled from the gravel and then drove the car in after the race was over.

It was disappointing to have the race in hand and be taken out on the last lap. That said, out car was very fast and I can not be disappointed with that. We won TTU (thanks again Danny!) and showed that a stock motor Z06 can be competitive in ST1. You can see in the video that my advantage over the Viper was certainly not motor We'll be back next year and we'll give 'em hell again.



Start:

Middle:

End:

Enjoy!

-Aaron

 

[AaronPfadt]

On the Dyno after Danny's TTU winning 1:57.4 run



Adding brake cooling on Sunday morning



Big oil coolers



Danny running TTU Sunday Morning



On the grid before Sunday's Final Race



The aftermath

 

[giblets1812]

Dude, that sucks!!! I'm sure that the fans loved the last lap drama, but to have that happen...

Still, it seems that your car is up for it. Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

Excellent writing by the way.

 

[RedZone5]

Awwww man that just sucks! Sorry to see about the damage! Always next time guys! :sm_party:

 

[nyvette]

OUCH!!!! Nothing you could have done on that crash, man and I thought you were going to get back on the track.

Keep the video coming! I really enjoy watching this stuff :sm_party:

 

[The Don]

Awesome video! Car sounds so good.

Then the end was a little surprise, d*mn Vipers!

Good driving Pfadt :sm_party: