Quebec Touring - race 1 report.


Photo from Autocourse.ca

May 8th, St-Eustache, Quebec

Well, after trying out various series since I got my license in 2002, this is the first year I where I would commit to a full season of racing in Quebec. I was supposed to do this championship last year but I totaled my race car before the first event. It took me most of last summer to build a new car and I ran it at one event in the fall where it overheated badly.

Over the winter, I changed the head gasket which solved the problem. It didn’t take too much other work to make the car ready for the series. Quebec’s Touring series is modeled after the World Challenge Touring car series. It’s starting to really show, as more and more ex-World Challenge cars are showing up at the events (six or seven at last count). There are more and more of these high-dollar cars and the series is taking off, in part due to a new promoter taking over last year. The series will comprise of 7 events on 7 different tracks, including Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve and Tremblant. The races will even air on TV on RDS, the French language sport network (several month delay though).

The car I built is eligible for the series in that it is less than 12 years old and it’s not a V8. In fact, Hondas are quite popular, as one can put together a pretty fast car economically. All swaps are permitted as long as you keep the same engine location and it’s under 2.8 liters. The minimum weight is calculated based on the engine you have. Last year, if you chose to run a 1.6 Honda, you could weigh 200 pounds less than a 1.8, which was pretty fair. However, after some 1.8’s did really well, the rule was changed and the difference is now 400 pounds. In a way, that sucks for me because I have a 1.8. However, the good part is that my car is already at the minimum weight, despite being street legal and having power windows, a heater, etc. That means that the lightest 1.8’s are not any lighter than me, although they can have the ballast where they want it.

The other issue is that my 1.8 is not the strongest. It only makes 140 hp at the wheels and the power falls off big time after 6700 rpm. I couldn’t get any dyno time before the first event, but I wasn’t too worried. The track used for the first event is not a power track, and the engine was making good torque. I decided I would shift around 8000 and just keep in in the meat of the torque.

My friend and racing partner Carl Wener (BBQMan) would be driving the car in the GTU class (a catch-all class for cars under 3.0 liters). This meant we would have to swap tires between every session on Sunday since I had to run a spec street tire (Hankook K104) and he could run any tire. He chose to run some Hankook Z211’s that I had picked up last season and which were about 50% worn. We saw that about half of the GT cars were running slicks and Carl knew he would have his work cut out for him. There is no minimum weight in GTU, so most cars had more power, less weight and more tire than Carl.

The whole event was to be run on Sunday, with each of us getting practice, a short qualifying race (8 laps) and then the feature. We had attended the test and tune the day before and all seemed to be going well. We were still burning a lot of oil but it was manageable. We started replacing my 20w50 with Motul’s 20w60 Endurance oil whenever we added more oil. We tried out a new prototype brake pad that Carl was testing for a supplier and decided that it was good enough to use for the race. Carl only got one 15-minute session on Saturday as he was managing Trac Racing’s open house on the same day. Trac Racing is located at the track where the event was being held, so he was running around all day.

I went out first for my practice session and, as expected, I was well off the pace of the fast cars. I was giving up over 60 hp to the Tiburons, BMW’s and a couple of the Hondas. However, I was not a “moving chicane”, as I could hold my own in the esses and nobody could outbrake me at the end of the back straight before the bus-stop (probably because I could brake very late with my lower top speed). There were about 25 cars in the practice. I was hoping to score a top 10 as this was shaping up to be the race with the lowest attendance of the season, since many of the 39 cars signed up for the championship were not ready yet.. One of the Tiburons, in fact the 2004 champion’s, had some sort of suspension failure right behind me and lost a wheel. The session was red-flagged for a while as a result of this. As the practice session went on, I realized that the top 10 was not realistic unless a few cars DNF’d I also realized that I was being too courteous with the other driver in letting them pass. I vowed to be more aggressive in the qualifying race.

Carl’s practice was uneventful. However, we were surprised to see that there was not really anyone passing him. We were also surprised to see that he was passing quite a few cars… in fact, almost all of them. We realized that Carl was pushing a lot more than the other guys. There was a quick looking first generation RX-7 (wide-body, slicks) that seemed like it was sand-bagging. However, we surmised that Carl could easily end up in the top half of the finishing order. In theory, my car should be less competitive in GTU but in practice, most of the big-money teams are gravitating towards Touring these days. In fact, the 2004 GTU champion was driving a Touring car. Basically, the fast Touring cars are as fast as the GTU cars.

For our qualifier, they had selected the starting order randomly, which was fair enough. I believe that later in the season, they will use championship standing to determine starting order for the qualifying race. I was starting 18th out of 25 cars. This was fine with me. I figured that if they had transponders, that’s about where I would have been anyways and I was relieved to know there would not be a ton of really fast guys having to get around me in only 8 laps. 8 laps is not a lot of laps to sort everyone out. On the grid, I was lined up beside an ex-World-Challenge Jetta VR6 and behind a fast Kensai Racing RSX. When the green dropped, I anticipated it well and managed to stick to the tail of the RSX despite the power disadvantage. I went through the esses off-line but at reduced speed because we were all jammed together. I managed to get ahead of the Jetta who had started 17th right from the beginning and by the time we reached the Carousel, there was nowhere to go but slow. I saw Yves Bedard, a front runner, bump drafting the other Kensai car who seemed to be holding things up. As I had predicted, I could brake later than most for the bus stop and I was able to relax in that area , knowing it was unlikely someone would try to pass me off-line in the braking zone. Things sorted themselves out in the first two or three laps. I was holding my own. I came up on a 240 SX that had been very fast in previous years but had recently found a new owner. I managed to pass him under braking for the hairpin before the front straight and eventually, the Jetta passed him too. The Jetta was always there, but never close enough to make a move on me. The car in front of me was one of the ex-factory Tiburon’s driven by JP Papineau, a guy with some open-wheel experience who I believe is exchanging seat-time for wrenching. He was slowly pulling away, probably about a half-second per lap. I figured that our relative positions would not change and I was right. There had been 2 DNF’s. I was scored as finishing 13th. I was happy because I had made a couple of passes and no one had passed me. Also, I noticed that I was gaining on some cars as I could see them from a distance near the end of the race whereas I hadn’t seen them in the previous laps.

After yet another tire change and oil top-up, we were ready for Carl’s qualifying race. He had drawn 8th position out of 14 cars. His start was also uneventful and he seemed to be doing well, picking off some semi-tube framed car on slicks once in a while with the field spreading out. At that point, my parents arrived at the track and I was talking with them for a bit. When I turned back to the action, my friends pointed out to me that Carl was already running in 4th! There was no way he would catch the cars in front of him: the RX7, a BMW Touring car (which won some Touring races in 2004) on slicks and a 1990 Civic with 230 hp at the wheels. He managed to hold onto 4th and was even gaining on 3rd by the time the checker fell. Carl was going to be starting his race in 4th.

After lunch, it was time for my race. Since it was the first race of the season, they had us park all the cars at an angle on the track, like an old Le Mans start, and pose in front of the cars. The announcer then came by and said a few words to or about each driver. When he came to some drivers, including myself, he would say “And here we have… what’s your name?”, and then we would say our name. He knew a good number of the drivers, but I have never raced in any of the FAQ series in Quebec. I found it a little insulting when he got to the next guy (Papineau) and said “Ah, here we are, now we’re starting to get to some of the well-known drivers.” We finally got back into the cars and my crew headed back behind the pit wall (although they were mostly there for moral support, I hadn’t even brought a spare tire with me…). I lined up with the Jetta right behind me and the Tiburon beside me. He was on the “good” side. Actually, I don’t really know how we ended up that way, since 12th and 13th are not supposed to be on the same row… Any way, I again got a decent start, as the green fell very late and no one up front jumped the gun. I was beside Papineau and we went through the first turn, the braking point, the 3 turns of the esses, the Carousel and the back straight, all side-by-side. I can’t believe we found room everywhere that far off the line because we weren’t going that slow. I finally passed him in the Carousel or on the straight and he was right behind me after that. We settled in that way. The Kensai ITR, driven by Valerie Limoges who did Fran-Am last year, missed the braking zone for the bus stop and weight straight through. The instructions in the driver’s meeting had been crystal clear: if you put four wheels off there or go straight through, you have to enter the pits at the end of that same lap for a stop-and-go. If you wait until the next lap, it’s an extra 10 seconds in the pits and if you wait longer than that, you’re disqualified. Not long after that, I came across Etienne Borgeat in an E36 BMW facing the wrong way in the hairpin, but it was easy to avoid him as it’s a slow corner getting onto the oval and there’s lots of asphalt on either side. The race went on and I was eventually caught and passed by both the penalized ITR and the BMW which had spun. I caught and passed a Mercedes C280 that seemed to be running off the pace. I don’t know if that was a pass for position or if I was lapping him. The car was getting more and more loose and I hade some nice tail-out action a couple of times, which I caught by standing on the gas. On about lap 18, I came upon three back markers, a Geo Storm, a Neon and one of the Echo Cup cars. I lost some time passing the Storm and a lot more time with the Neon. I definitely have to learn to be more assertive when lapping traffic (a situation which I hadn’t expected…) because Papineau was right on my tail after this. He had done a better job lapping the back markers. I passed the Echo aggressively, but the Tiburon was filling my mirrors as he had followed me by. The Echo was driven by an experienced and fast driver who knew how not to interrupt a battle for position. The Tiburon was right on my *** all the way down the straight and I was determined to brake as late as possible as I saw him pulling up beside me. That’s basically when I choked and blew the corner. I braked a little later than usual, locked it up a couple of times in the straight and was headed straight for the “penalty area” beyond the cones that would force me to take a stop-and-go penalty at the end of the lap. Somehow, I got the car stopped before the cones (just before them!) and mad the turn, but Papineau managed to drove right around me and even pull away a bit. At least I only lost the one position. I never got close enough to him to try another pass and even if I had, it would have been extremely tough. Those cars have excellent power from their 2.7’s and Papineau was driving with more confidence after he had righted the wrong of losing out to me on the first lap. I ended up 13th and I’m satisfied with the result, especially since there was not a single DNF in the race. Basically, I must have passed 3 cars for position (the ITR, the E36 and the Tiburon) and was re-passed by the same 3 cars. My only regret is choking at the bus-stop and losing out to the Tiburon, but that’s a mistake I can live with. The race was won by an E36 BMW followed by the 2004 Champion Gravel in his Tiburon and Yves Bedard’s 20v Golf III.


Papineau's Tiburon - Photo from Autocourse.ca

Carl’s race was next. He started 4th and was holding his position. I was in the pits with my fiancée and Bruno, the “one-man-crew”. Carl seemed to be doing OK, but at one point, he didn’t come around. We were worried, but he finally showed up… in last place, by a wide margin. The car seemed to be in one piece and I timed his next lap. Everything seemed to be in order, so we assumed he had some type of little off. It didn’t take him long to catch the second-to-last placed car. He started to pick off the back markers, but could not manage to pass a tube-framed CRX. It seemed he was struggling with the car late in the race. He ended up 8th and in the post-race debriefing, he described how he had spun early on in some spilled coolant and how the car would simply not turn at the end of the race. We had never run the Z211’s hard for 30 minutes like that and in yesterday’s race, they could not handle it. The race was won by the RX7 after a long battle with the E36, which eventually broke down with a flat tire or suspension issue. Second was a wide-body Golf VR6 on slicks and 3rd was the 1990 Civic.

I’m quite satisfied with the day we had. The car didn’t miss a beat and I was proud to load it up and drive it back home, passing trailered cars on the way home. I really feel that except for the mistake that cost me one position, I ran as high as one could expect with the car I had. All weekend we saw other cars changing springs for different rates and adjusting things while we sort of laughed, since nothing is adjustable on my car except ride hide. Carl seems to think we need a rear sway bar to make the car rotate better and we both agreed that it’s easy and fun to drive the way it is. I ended up top rookie and will receive a 100$ Motul voucher. It looks like I may be in the hunt for rookie of the year if I can keep this up.. we’ll see.

The car performed reliably and we both had a great time. I was happy to have my fiancée and my parents on hand to see the race and I benefited from an excellent crew. Thanks Tom, Bruno and Rob, you did a great job with the 5 tire changes! I also have to thank Trac Racing for including me in their team and letting me use their tent, and Motul, Progress and TK Race Heads for helping put the car together and keep it running. I’m also glad I’m sharing the car with a guy like Carl, who seems to always have the feedback (and parts!) we need to have fun out there.

Vincent Basile















All photos are from autocourse.ca


Modified by Civic44 at 2:58 PM 5/9/2005

 

Nice report. Car looks good too.

 

Good work Vince, .

 

heyyy this is you ! nice I was just beside you in the paddock. Formula Ford number 12 and 21 ( Mathieu Audette ). I won the race in my class.

Good job and good write up too !!!

This picture is really nice !!

 

Nice job Vince. Too bad Carl had an off, sounds like he was out-driving the field by a good margin.

I havent been following the Quebec RR series that much but I am starting to take a peek now and then. And it seems, to me anyways, that there are basically two classes: big dollar ex WC cars, and a runwhatyabrung GTU and GTO classes where no car is prepped to the limit and strangely enough is the door through which most beginners go through.

IMO, from my limited knowledge of the local series (and it's politics), it would seem to me what Quebec really needs is something like Improved Touring. Of course there are no IT cars here now, so it wouldnt be obvious to field a class, but it doesnt take long and not a lot of $$ to build one, or better yet bring one up from south of the border...

Just thinking out loud.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by jsi &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
IMO, from my limited knowledge of the local series (and it's politics), it would seem to me what Quebec really needs is something like Improved Touring. Of course there are no IT cars here now, so it wouldnt be obvious to field a class, but it doesnt take long and not a lot of $$ to build one, or better yet bring one up from south of the border...

Just thinking out loud.</TD></TR></TABLE>

For that matter for the number of Honda's that run in guebec we could make easy a 10 car field for a Honda Challange type event and for sure more would follow.

 

Wow. So you are saying that it might be tough for me to beat you again at the Glen this year?!? LOL!

Good job guys!

 

Nice write up Vincent

 

I think the Glen is not a track where you will not have trouble beating me... come to St-Eustache though, and I'm not so sure.

 

Those are some hot cars!

 

wish we had a series here where the cars looked that good... everything is all beat to hell or cheap fixed.. those cars look professional and well kept!

sweet pics

 

Will you be at the Fall Classic at Tremblant Vince?
We are planning on being at that race.

 

Yeah, we'll be there, it's on our schedule. What car will you be bringing?

 

We will be back with the Corvette again, with brakes on it this time!

 

Is the Benz and auto or a manual? I assume its manual, but wondering... Thanks!

 

The Mercedes is a manual. I think it's got real "motorsports" parts from Germany.