Through some amazing stroke of family pity we are being allowed to venture out for what look to be our last event of the 08 year. What better an event to end the year on than a 2 day mutli-series championship event put of by the great guys over at Formula RallyX.

The car ran awesome at Johnson Valley, and by awesome I mean to say… NO FIRE!!! woohoo. The drivers didn’t run so great, but Jake did manage to give Mike a run for his money.

With points from JV Kevin is back in the running for the FRX championship, but he certainly has his work cut out for him. It looks like a 2 day sweep is the only hope for the top podium spot, but stranger things have happened, so don’t stop cheerin’.

See ya all up @ Ridgecrest
Kevin & Jake

April 20th, 2008 marked the Glen Helen II rallycross just north of the City of San Bernardino, CA. It was a beautiful day for racing and the turnout of competitors was noticeably higher as a result. Mike Malsed and the FRX group ran a characteristically smooth event with stretches of high speed (We have a third gear?!? Who knew.), a deceptive shamrock and a slip-and-slide element from the frequent water truck runs.

While not the best Team event to date, WayTooFast Racing had tons of fun, met some folks new to rallycross and are looking forward to GH III in a few weeks. Some highlights include Kevin’s 112.96 (4th fastest second lap overall), another close call on an engine fire due to the same ol’ powersteering Glen Helen curse, and spending more time sideways than straight. (LFB FTW!)

Full results can be found here.

-WTF Racing

After much scrambling and a few sleepless nights, the WayTooFast Racing Team finally got the car back together…well as much as it needed to be for this year’s 1^st RallyX! Between the installation of some new toys…err race equipment, to the last minute CRS registration, they couldn’t have cut it any closer. Thanks to a mixture of excited anticipation and sleep deprivation, the guys managed to drive right past the Johnson Valley turnoff with only an hour for remaining before the R2 group launched. In the end they made it though and even had a few minutes to jog the courses before lining the car up for the official runs.

Team WTF Racing always greatly enjoy the JV events, as Jason puts on a great show and things always seem to run so incredibly smooth. More often than not, the Team also tends to like the various track layouts and the forgiving JV moonscape. In general, the day’s dual track setup provided very long, wide-open lanes, with only two or three tight spots. Right away Kevin and Jake realized it would be a fight to reach a podium finish on these courses for the Team’s little, but valiant, Neon. Most of the other cars in the class tend to have a bit more hp than the WTF Racing car does, which really helps out in the longer stretches of course. With fewer tight turns to make up time, it was up to Kevin and Jake to make fewer mistakes and stay on the gas as much as possible.

RallyX is always a great get-a-way and an awesome competitive testing ground for the Team. This time though, there might have been more last minute car mods than the Team usually tries to cram in. For JV I, these new changes consisted of a tweak to the new FIA over-head bars (roll cage roof) to allow more adjustment room for the driver seat, a new Momo steering wheel to reduce the chance of anything binding between the FIA sidebars and the old, larger steering wheel (”anything” being a wrist!) and finally the introduction of an honest-to-goodness Rally intercom system. Prior to this season, Team WayTooFast Racing was running with a Frankstein’s monster of a setup, cobbled together from FRS radios, computer mics and Radio Shack discount-bin parts.

The overhead bars were an instant success and allowed the Team to move the driver seat into a more comfortable position w/o having to cock heads to one side and slouch in the seat…ya it was pretty much that bad for a while. The Momo wheel presented a bit of a challenge at first, as the tightened radius seemed to snap the car around a lot more than the guys were accustomed to. After each of their initial runs however, Kevin and Jake settled into the new steering setup and decidedly loved the extra grip and snappier turns. The Peltor intercom was immediately praised as 100x better than its FRS counterpart. As the day wore on every attempt was made to rip the intercom from its mount while switching sides in the car, but it held together like a champ and and the Team is sold on the design. The Team does kinda miss the “You made an intercom system out of WHAT?!” aspect of the old unit, but what can you do…

While most if not all RallyX drivers have all done it, Jake finally got his moment in the spotlight for cone-abuse… Thanks in great part to an over zealous Kevin, screaming “Don’t LIFT!!”, Jake managed to plow through the finish line with such fervor that he took something like 9 cones with him, effectively removing himself from any possible podium finish. DOH! Kevin tried his best to kill the same cones a number of times, but in the ends was able to stick the line just tight enough to avoid Jake’s fate.

Jonathan Olschews, in his infamous Tigger suit, out-drove the rest of the R2 pack with a commanding 15 second lead “YIKES!!” and, in the end, Kevin had to settle for 2^nd, followed closely by Jack Szanto (who also decided he didn’t like the placement of the finish line cones, though not to the extent that Jake apparently loathed them..). Jake took fifth in the field of six. The results can be found HERE.

Glen Helen I is up next followed by the first Stage Rally of the season Desert Storm March 14th and 15th! Stay Tuned.

Thanx for another great event in Johnson Valley Jayson!!

-The WayTooFast Racing Team

Before I begin expressing our “glee” over our recent sweep of the Johnson Valley series, I would like to offer thanks from the Patterson family to everyone that recently called to check on us or offer help.  I returned Sunday from the RallyX in JV to find my family under a recommended evacuation due to the fires near our residence.  We have since returned to our home and were amazed to find everything just as we left it. (Well, maybe a little sootier…)

THANK YOU FROM THE PATTERSON FAMILY

On to happier subjects…

After significant repairs to the sub-frame of the Neon, we were ecstatic with the performance the car turned out for us on Sunday.  (Gorman took a lot out of us mentally and physically, not to mention the giant holes in the undercarriage…of the car. Not us.  We were told a number of times, if we could make it through Gorman, we could make it through any Rally out there. We certainly agree now!) 

While Johnson Valley was not a full-fledged, multi-day Rally, it certainly offered us a viable testing ground for our welds/repairs. Everything held up though and we should be set for a while. We tried to over-engineer the “flawed” design of the cross-member mounting bolts and it looks like it worked. Again, many thanks are to due to Kris Marciniak (Team RallyNotes) for all his guidance on this project. The first-hand experience with similar problems or situations really cuts down on the workload and aggravation.

Coming into the weekend, we had a pretty good idea of our standings in the Johnson Valley series.  Up until the last moment we were surveying the registration site, watching for either Mark Anton or Mike Malsed, but neither made it to the event to challenge our scores.  Their absense certainly relieved some of the pressures of pushing the newly repaired car beyond its limits just for a win, though you wouldn’t have known it by the times the two of us were able to turn in.

All-in-all, it was a great day. We both enjoyed the two courses (not too many key-hole, double/triple hairpin loop-d-loops).  Each course was very well laid out for a series championship, with lots of wide open and long butt-draggin’ sweepers.  Props to Jayson for not only the layout, but also for putting together a great event and championship wrap-up.  I think everybody out there had a blast no matter how they fared.

The one-two punch of the WTF Racing team rolled through with a 1st/2nd overall for the JV series. Kevin took first and Jake took second in the series. Not to be outdone for the day, Jake took the fastest lap time on the second course by nearly 2 seconds. Kevin laid the fastest lap time for the first course, on top of a dangerously tight race with the Team’s mentor, Kris Marciniak in his Rallynotes Neon.  By the end of the day, Kevin managed to take second place for JV 5 with the slightest of margins behind Kris…0.7 seconds in a total race range of 300 seconds.

Nippin’ at the heels!!!