Eurotrash Motorsports

Last sunday was the second last leg of the MCO snowcross series.  Similarly to the week before, it was a skating rink!  Somewhat fotunately, saturday we had received a bit of snow however it wasn’t enough to stick to the track.  With th solid ice base, a few runs and any accumulation that was left on the track had been pushed away.  It was a bit grippier than the week before though, since there had been some wind and the snowbanks had blown over a bit.  This allowed for more grip on the edges of the track than their was at the 3rd event.

Since it was Valentine’s Day, we were expecting a smaller turnout but there was still 35 drivers that had registered.  We also [finally!] had a full show for Eurotrash Motorsports, with both Jeff and Naresh (as well as a friend from AutoX, Jamie) driving the NX1600, and Phil and myself driving the festiva.  My brother Chris had also recently picked up a 1995 Subaru Legacy that he raced, co-driven with my dad, Pierre (this was turning into a family event!).  Unfortunately, none of us took pictures, but the NX1600 had an assortment of Go-Pro video cameras on and in it so I’m sure we will be seeing some videos soon!

As I had previously mentionned, the track was extremely icy again last weekend.  It was evident that everyone was trying to squeeze out those last few seconds as there was a constant stream of DNFs throughout the day with drivers plowing through the stopbox.  Out of the 20 drivers in the FWD class, only 6 had a clean day with no DNFs at all (Jeff and I being two of them!).  Given that, consistency was extremely important, and we were rewarded at the end of the day.  I really enjoyed the course design – the morning course involved using the whole track and included some slower, tighter sections, and some high-speed straights (although slowing down was an issue on the ice).  The afternoon track was the same configuration that the MCO will be holding their head-to-head ice race on February 28th.  Jeff, Naresh and Jamie will be driving the NX1600, and Chris, my dad Pierre, and myself will be driving the Legacy for that event.  Phil is still unsure whether he will be able to make it, but if so, he will drive the festiva.

The positioning for last weekend was as follows:

For FWD:

Jamie (#444) – 20th place – total time: 659.14

Phil (#188) - 18th place - total time: 585.79

Naresh (#7) – 15th place – total time: 580.41

Jeff (#33) - 11th place – total time: 560.75

Shawn (#915) - 5th place – total time: 533.76

For AWD (13 competitors total):

Chris (#49) – 12th place – total time: 631.15

Pierre (#179) - 11th place - total time: 582.05

All in all it was another great weekend, and we can’t wait to get out again soon.  The next race will be a night event on the 27th, with the ice race the next day, so it will be a busy weekend in two weeks!

Shawn

Last Sunday was the third event in the MCO’s snowcross series, with 22 drivers in the FWD class.  As always, we were scheduled to run one track in the morning, and a second in the afternoon.  Once again, neither of our co-drivers could make it, so Jeff invited is Dad, Michel, to join him, and my brother Chris raced with me again.

Despite all the rain we had last week, the track did pretty well.  However, pretty well for the track, means pretty icy for us.  It was a skating rink!!!  There were only a few straight where we could get some speed, but the corners were shear ice which made slowing down very interesting.  On my first run, I came around a corner very slowly but I wasn’t pointed the right way.  Because of that, I drifted sideways into an icebank with a cone (resulting in a 4 second penalty).  I didn’t even go in – it was solid!  I bounced off and finished my run.  After my brother’s run, we noticed that the front tire was losing air.  It seemed as though I separated the bead from the rim.  Luckily, we were able to reset it and continue on with the day.

Jeff had a similar issue with that same corner – except he went in nose first!  Luckily, there was no damage to his car.  Unfortunately, he had to reverse to get out and received a DNF for that run (which counts as his slowest run + 15 seconds).

DNFs were being passed out frequently because of the conditions and both Chris and Michel received one by the end of the morning.  After the first track, Chris was trailing me by 4 seconds, and Michel was trailing Jeff by 4 seconds!  We were close!

The second configuration was tough as well.  On the last straight, we could get lots of speed but an S-bend with a 90 degree corner into the stop box made it treacherous. Since we were so close, I new that any mistake I made would put my brother in the lead (and we all know I can’t let that happen!).  On one run, that last corner got the best of me, but luckily I had past the timing cone so my run was over before I reversed (that was close!).  Jeff and Michel both had similar misfortunes, but theirs were during their runs, so the DNFs counted.  My brother took the smart approach and went slow and steady with his runs and ended up with fairly consistant times, but not quite enough to best me.

Here’s how we finished:

Michel(#331) – 22nd place – total time: 813.62

Jeff (#33) - 21st place - total time: 770.40

Chris (#91) - 17th place – total time: 706.00

Shawn (#915) - 11th place – total time: 685.07

As for the championship so far, Jeff is in 12th place overall, and myself in 5th.  My brother’s friend had a camera today, and I will update when I get the pictures posted!

Shawn

Last weekend was the second MCO snowcross event and is was quite a day.  Since Phil is in Florida on vacation, he donated his spot in the Festiva to my brother, Chris.  There was also a new driver in the Nissan – one of Jeff’s friends, Bobby, was racing as well.  They had planned on having three drivers, but unfortunately Naresh was sick and couldn’t make the event.  The event turnout was great – there were over 45 drivers, with 22 in FWD category.  It was also nice to see some more familiar faces from the summer Autocross series joining us.

Once again, the track was run in two configurations.  We were able to do three runs on the shorter morning configuration and 2 on the longer afternoon confiiguration.  Because of the colder temperatures all week and the lack of new snow, the track was much icier than last weekend.  Regardless, we all had a blast.

In the Festiva, it was sibling rivalry to the max!  Both my (younger) brother and I were competing (with me having more to prove of course, since I’m older!).  Since the times aren’t posted until after the track is changed, we can only guess how we did.  On my third lap in the morning, I pushed way too hard.  I was expecting the grip to be similar to my first two runs, but with all the other drivers brushing off the snow, there was more ice than expected.  With that, my lines were off and I carried to much speed in more than one corner (resulting in a few snowbank grazings).  After looking at the times, it turned out that Chris and I were neck-in-neck for the first two runs, but my last put him ahead by about 5 seconds. Crap!  Now I definitely had to step up my game!  After a freshly groomed track over lunch, I was one of the first cars out on the second track.  I was again expecting grip levels to be high, so I decided to push hard again.  The entire run was great!  Well, almost.  The last section of the track involved a long straight, then back-to-back tight right and left corners into the stopbox.  The car reacted perfectly to the first right corner, but I overestimated the speed I could carry into the left and I didn’t quite make it.  I ended up inches from a snowbank and having to reverse to get into the stopbox.  Since reversing is not allowed on course, I new my time wouldn’t count, and that I was out of the running for beating Chris.  At the end of the day when we compared times, there was a shocking surprise.  It turns out that my run had ended before I reversed – which means it was legal!  So with a huge upset, I ended up beating Chris by about 5 seconds!  Between my last 2 runs I was able to make up the time (that was close!).

In the Nissan, Jeff and Bobby were also competing hard.  Bobby, having never raced before, was just trying to stay alive, and he did so very well.  On his second morning run, he was faster than Jeff, but Jeff was faster on the other two.  It seemed as though Jeff was really getting used to the car and enjoyed the afternoon configuration, since he was 9-10 seconds faster than Bobby in both his afternoon runs.

Here is a summary of our times:

Bobby (#126) – 20th place – total time: 567.78

Jeff (#33) – 19th place - total time: 547.28

Chris (#91) - 10th place – total time: 496.43

Shawn (#915) - 9th place – total time: 491.11

The larger turnout brought a fiercer competition, and it was evident in our classing.  Our goal for the series is to get some seat time and to have fun, and in that, we were all tied for first!

We were also lucky to have tons of pictures and some videos from the event, so make sure to checkout the snowcross gallery and the videos section!  We also would like to extend a special thank you to the photographers from www.ottawaphotos.ca who were at the event and allowed us to post their pictures on our site.  Thanks guys!

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