RRT Test Weekend at VIR

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Press Release from March 27-29 weekend:

RRT VIR Testing and Rain Race Vid

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Over the weekend, RRT Racing conducted an initial shakedown of their 2009 328i built for the Grand-Am Koni Challenge. As part of the NASA race weekend, the new race car turned its 300th mile on the race track. RRT Racing spent the majority of the past month building and preparing this vehicle for competition.

On Friday’s test day, the car was unloaded and headed out to track. Almost immediately a fuel issue was discovered and caused time consuming repairs. Due to the poor weather the car did not make it back out to track on Friday. The following day the poor conditions continued, but the car qualified well in GTS3 with Barry Battle at the wheel. The race would also occur in heavy rain. Within a lap of the start, Barry had took the overall lead in the GTS field only to retire a couple laps later due to lack of visibility. Further shakedown continued through the weekend with Michael Dayton at the wheel on Sunday.

This same weekend the E36 325i GTS-2 car was also raced by James Muskopf on Saturday and Adam Roy on Sunday. James’ first NASA race and qualifying would be in the rain. James’ ended up putting down the fastest lap in the Stinger Race Group and qualified on pole. He would go on to drive a very clean race for the overall win by nearly a minute over the second place GTS-2 car. A highlight video from that race in the rain can be seen here:

High Res (76 MB)
Low Res (8 MB)

On Sunday, Adam would qualify on a wet track with slicks so his starting position was not as favorable as James’. In the race, he would jump to the front of the pack and battle back and forth for several laps for the overall lead with an e36 M3. An incident on lap 8 would cause his retirement.

Overall it was a productive weekend with clean testing of the new car and more success with the GTS-2 car. The E90 chassis proved to be quick out of the box and the weekend provided a list of areas for improvements. The car was reliable under track conditions and appears to be well suited for endurance racing.