Eurotrash Motorsports

Well yesterday was the first event of the season, and the team and I had a great day!

After the initial prepping of the cars that we did a while back, no one had touched the vehicles.  I went to Canadian Tire on Carling Ave. to get the winter tires that Phil found on the festiva rims, but Jeff and Naresh didn’t need to since their car already had winter tires on it.

The day started off being very stressful as we found out thursday evening that the mufflers we ripped/cut off the cars we not legal, and the cars would not pass scutineering without them (due to noise and safety requirements).  So saturday morning, Phil, Jeff, Naresh, and myself went to work on both the festiva and the nx1600 to try and reinstall our systems.  Thankfully, my brother Chris felt motivated the night before and dug the cars of the snowbanks to give us a head start.  Thanks Chris!

For Phil and I, it was a fairly simple job as we were able to reinstall the cat-back exhaust, and then measure out the pipe that we were missing.  It turned out that we needed 54″ of pipe to connect the headers to the cat-back (the catalytic converter was missing, and the pipe had been cut just after the header).  For Jeff and Naresh, it was a bit more complicated because they had to cut their system up to be able to remove it (since all the flanges were rusted together).  It turns out that it wasn’t too bad for them either and after a short trip to Canadian Tire and about an hour of work afterwards, we had both our exhausts done.  On the nx1600 it made a huge difference in sound.  On the festiva, we discovered afterwards that not only were we missing a muffler, but that our manifold was blown out as well.  We also discovered that our battery couldn’t hold it’s charge, so we ended up fitting the battery from the BMW for this race.  Fortunately both cars passed the scrutineering and we were allowed to race!  It turned out that both of our vehicles drew a lot of attention from fellow racers as they aren’t cars that you see everyday.

We were warned that the day would go on a run-by-run basis as the mild temperatures did not bode well for the track.  If the track was too soft, we would risk breaking through the base to solid ground and thus cause serious damage.  Thankfully it wasn’t sunny and the track held up.  The organizers did a great job and intelligently changed the configuration after the first 2 runs to prevent too much damage at the same spots.  All in all, we each had 4 runs – 2 in each configuration.  The timing of the event is cummulative, so the winner is decided based on their total time of the day.

The first configuration was nice and fast.  Phil and I had a blast driving the festiva and we were extremely impressed with how well it performed.  After the first configuration was finished, Phil and I were in 4th and 3rd place respectively, with only 0.13 seconds separating us!!!  Jeff and Naresh ranked a bit lower, in 9th and 10th places, respectively.  The FWD class had 15 drivers, so we were pretty pleased with our results considering it was each of our first events!

The second configuration was a bit more technical and about 20 seconds longer than the first.  It was also way more fun!!!  The results for the second round we a bit more separated:  Phil was in 8th place, Naresh was in 10th place, Jeff was in 11th place, and I was in FIRST! I couldn’t believe it!  Adding up both rounds, here were our results:

Jeff – 10th place – total time: 430.54 -  distance from leader: +37.90

Naresh – 9th place - total time: 426.08 – distance from leader: +33.44

Phil – 6th place – total time: 406.47 (including 1 cone) – distance from leader: +13.83

Shawn – 2nd place – total time: 393.34 – distance from leader: +0.7

I think we were all pretty impressed with how well both of our cars performed, and we all had a great time.  There were a few photographers out there, and as soon as we get a hold of the pictures, we’ll post them!

The next race it scheduled for next sunday, so stay tuned for more results coming up!

EDIT: here are some teasers - We’ll be updating our gallery with new pictures as they come.

Shawn

Naresh and I were able to record some video of our first snow-x event. The video can is posted as the featured video on the homepage and can also be found in the VIDEOS section.

Hopefully next event we’ll be able to share the camera between cars and get some video from all of us.

Cheers!

Jeff