Finally the time has come to really get the Stohr on track for the first time this year. After a little bit of a false start two weekends ago when unfortunately work kept me from the track its time to get rolling and head down the Milwaukee Region SCCA National race at Blackhawk farms. Depending on weather I’ll be running the test day on Friday as I have never been to the track before and then heading out for quali at 8:45am on Saturday for the first of my two sessions. It’s been a long winter getting a lot of things sorted back out on the car after a crappy weekend at Autobahn last year but we’re ready to roll and I am looking forward to this weekend like no other. Got the new wing mounted, various body parts upgraded and ready to roll and hopefully have a lot better camera mount than last year so you don’t just see my melon wobbling around through the whole video. Videos, pictures and results to follow next Monday.
Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr Blackhawk Farms, F1000, Stohr
Here is my video from what ended up being a very short race last year at Autobahn Country Club as I struggled around the track with what ended up being a broken a-arm. You know its never good when you show up and set your best time by over a second in the very first practice session and then have things go to hell in a hand basket and are never able to get back within a second of that time. In any regard this race capped off the season as I just got to busy at work to make anything after Autobahn. It was a fun track that I am going to miss going back to since the whole central division SCCA schedule revolves around Road America.
F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr Autobahn Country Club, F1000, SCCA, Stohr
Finally got all the schedule figured out for this year and REALLY looking forward to getting the car back on track! Now that February is here its time to get the car ready (hope that gas that has been in there since August didn’t gum crap up) and need to get the new front wing and a-arm on the car. More as that unfolds here. I am going to be committed to updating this page at least twice a week from here until the season ends folks so keep checking back. 
2009 Trackpedia Racing F1000 Schedule
3/28/2009 - St. Louis Gateway National - With Billy
5/2/2009 - HPT Double National
5/16/2009 - Blackhawk Farms National
5/31/2009 - Mid-America America National - With Billy
6/19/2009 - June Sprints Road America
7/24/2009 - Cat National
8/16/2009 - Mid-America National - With Billy
8/29/2009 - Kettle Moraine National
Should be a hell of busy year. As always I am sure I won’t make all the races with my travels for work and other junk but one can only hope.
Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr F1000, Gateway, Heartland Park, Mid America, Road America, SCCA, Stohr
Here are some of the videos from last summer posted on Youtube (I plan on using vimeo in the future just because its a little clearer for all the videos that I have seen) so you can check out what my first year of learning was like in the F1000. These are videos from the June Sprints and from the Cat National at Road America in June/July 2008. I’ll add an Autobahn video when I get a chance here to get it uploaded over the next few days.
Cat National
June Sprints
Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr F1000, in car video, June Sprints, Road America, Stohr
As you can tell the blog is getting spiffed up and ready for the 2009 racing season just like me. I am sorry for anyone reading that got “page not founds” over the past few days as I have been trying to migrate at night to the new software I will use from here on out. (Looks a lot spiffier huh?)
Hopefully tonight I can get all the pictures links back in working order below.
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So since I promised updates on all the races over the summer I figured I would go in order starting with the biggest event of the year the June Sprints at Road America and shoot through August before I get to the winter projects and other miscellaneous ramblings over the winter here. 
So here we go recapping of one of the first times out running the F1000 after a ton of work from the guys helping me get it together.
First and foremost I gotta thank my friends and family for busting their asses all weekend with me chasing the car all over Wisconsin trying to get it close to working the way I wanted it too (finally figured out something by the race and actually had grip!) and all the FB guys I talked to for being awesome and helpful as all hell and most importantly coming out. A HUGE thanks to Jeff Dinges for helping me sort and work through issues with my car that I was battling all weekend dealing with temps in my car following the same path as Mike B’s as well as figuring out how to get the car balanced aero wise as it was tricky for a newbie and his team. Overall as i was heading to impound I was thinking “damn the weekend after the race felt not to shabby for the sixth race of the career and whopping second in the car.” Whole weekend was a fricking blast and really what racing is all about.
But the bad news is that both Kyle and I got bumped down to 5th and 6th respectively (behind all running cars at the end of the race) for having our rear wings be 4mm to wide. Yep thats right 4mm to wide. 95.4cm versus 95cm per the GCR. It was a kick in the nuts to end a hard weekend that had turned around massively and finally during the race. We had to sit in impound for fricking 2 hours waiting for a decision and that sort of drove the thorn deeper into my side as most of us had long tows home and needed to get on the road. After two hours we got informed we could pay a nice 100 dollars to appeal the decision (how the f can I possibly want to pay 100 bucks to argue with the fact that 95.4 > 95) and then go on to the SOM and appeal a crap ton of more times. What pisses me off most is that according to my crew they measured the wings after quali one and didn’t say a fricking word to us about it. It sure as **** didn’t change size in the time between then and the race for btoh Kyle and I. In the end both Kyle and I just accepted it and moved on. Hopefully karma returns the favor to us.
Thanks guys for all coming out and making the sprints a lot of fun. I know we all didnt have much time for hanging out and BSing but next year when we all have our cars sorted and are whipping up on the Atlantics like Coop and Kyle were we’ll look back and laugh.
More pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/scca.june.sprints.2008.b/RoadAmericaSCCAJuneSprints2008
Me in the Stohr F1000 at Road America Turn 13 - 2008 June Sprints
Cars, F1000, Racing, Stohr F1000, June Sprints, Road America, SCCA, Stohr
Yep that’s right check it out. First real snow of the year just touched down and the race car is all tucked away and winterized dreaming of next spring. While all the other F1000’s are racing at the ARRC down at Road Atlanta (well 9 of them) I am heading to Barcelona for a conference for work. I have lots of winter projects with the race car that need to get done from replacing the upper a-arms I broke at Autobahn, moving the dash from the steering wheel onto a solid mount, making an access panel under the car to get the engine, etc etc. I’ll have lots of time cause for some reason I have a feeling this is only scratching the surface.
Damn you folks that live in the South…damn you.
General Minnesota, winter
So the short summer unfortunately here in the midwest is over way to quickly and I apologize greatly for not even updating my blog here once. I promise in the future (yes I knew I swore before) that I will make sure I keep this page dealing with my racing more updated. I also have a job related blog coming so I’ll have double the work to keep articles flowing up here. I wish I could just think it and the page would update…maybe someone should invent that.
I have spent a busy summer racing F1000 and working as well as spending time with my lovely family. What is F1000 you may ask? Well its basically the same car I burned up before except in open wheel flavor. Net is in the SCCA its called Formula B or FB and is an open wheel single seat race car powered by a motor cycle engine. If any of you out there have ridden a late model liter bike you know the power these babies put down and let me tell you its not that much slower in a 1000lb car.
Here’s some pictures of the new girl with more details about the races this summer that I ran in complete with videos coming over the next few days here.
F1000 in Turn 8 at Autobahn. John Stecher Rochester Minnesota driver.
Cars, F1000, Racing, SCCA Club Racing, Stohr Autobahn, F1000, SCCA, Stohr
God what have I been doing since I last posted. Well my time can be broken down into three main areas. One is work…this summer has probably been the most intensive year I have spent working at IBM. I have enjoyed it all, as always however still playing the lottery, but it was a lot of work! My second main area of time spent was figuring out what the hell car to buy and race next. Let’s just say this area will be touched upon in my next post. My last area of time spent was on the track baby!!
First we started off at Road America for the PCA HPDE event where my buddy Rob and I shared driving his brand new 1987 Porsche 924. While she had been prepped with a cage and stripped interior that was about all she had. We liked to call her the leaning tower of Rochester as we pushed her around one of the greatest tracks in North America. Overall the 2-day event was a blast and it was great to get back in the car.
A little picture of the 924 leaning tower.
Rob Wisniewski's Porsche 924 SP1 chasing Billy Newports SP1 at Road America
Next up was a combined Skip Barber lapping day at Road America followed by a one day PCA HPDE event at Blackhawk Farms once again in the now newly race ready 924 of Rob complete with a full suspension setup, corner balance and real 7 inch wide phone dial wheels instead of the 6 inch ones she was rolling on before. First up was the Skippy Lapping day. Personally the lapping day to me was a bust…yeah it was fun to get the instruction but jesus we only probably got max an hour of track time for nearly 1k. Hindsight being 20/20 I would have just held off and done the 2-day school (which I plan to do this spring if the cash tree in my back yard grows). The PCA event at Blackhawk was a lot of fun as well but the weather sucked. We met up with Mark Repka in the morning after driving down from Milwaukee and that’s when the clouds opened up. It rained pretty much the whole day and learning a new track in the wet was a royal pain. It sucked even worse to not get to test out the new suspension that we invested so much time (not to mention eBay profits from our dead Porsche 914 project) in. But at least I have some knowledge of the track for racing down there next year.
With these days out of the way it was on to Road America for the SCCA Chicago Regions Kettle Moraine Double Regional Race which was going to let me keep my racing license. Once again I was behind the wheel of Rob’s 924 SP1 completely outmatched in ITS with my 135 rear wheel horse power versus the 200+ in some other ITS cars. More to come in my next update…
Cars, Porsche SP1, Racing, Racing School, SCCA Club Racing Blackhawk Farms, Porsche SP1, Road America, SCCA, Skip Barber
Ok I know its been way to long since I updated my blog and I promise thats going to change…I think thats what smart people call rededicating ones self Anyway the end of summer and fall were excellent and I actually did get some racing in due mainly to excellent friends. I’ll be posting complete details here over the next few days complete with video…yep you can watch me struggle in all my glory.
Anyway over the next few days I am going to be putting my real updates together into this baby. I apologize for being a loser and not blogging after my car burned up. Just call it depression, call it laziness, call it my day job chaining me to a chair but no matter what its my fault. It will change.
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