The Boersma Racing team headed to the infamous Road America in Wisconsin to wrap up the GridLife season. This track is known for its high speeds and at 4miles long it would be the longest track the team had raced on yet, putting tons of stress on everything in the car. The Saturday of the event would be run as a traditional Time Attack event, with the Sunday being reserved for bracket battles. With the recent success of the car, the team was feeling very confident heading into the weekend that they could take 1st place in the Time Attack and possibly secure the championship win.
The 1st session of the day was catastrophic as fellow competitor William Au-Yeung had a failure heading up the front straight which resulted in the car hitting the wall multiple times. Chris was the 3rd car through the wreck and saw that luckily Will was OK, but the session was red flagged, and the cars were brought back into the pits. The track went cold for almost an hour while the track workers cleaned up the debris and oil which put the event a little behind.
Heading into the second session you could tell most of the competitors were a bit nervous, Chris worked up to pace and managed to crack off a respectable 1st lap. Some of his competitors had been running the day prior which gave them a definite advantage on such a high-risk track. Chris’s lap time of 2:21.8 put him squarely in 4th place and he knew he’d have some work to do if he wanted to be the fastest of the day. Chris was fighting 2 seriously quick Corvettes and the points leader Luke McGrew in his Viper ACR.
The team prepared for the 3rd session of the day, they reviewed data and formulated a plan of attack to find some time. Chris headed out and started his first hot lap, the lap started out perfectly and he was seconds up on his previous best time, as he came through the kink though he heard a familiar sound and he knew that the intercooler piping had blown apart. He had to abort the lap and come into the pits, a quick look in the hot pits confirmed that the hot side piping had come apart. The team had worked to fix this issue which happened at New Jersey, but it had reared its ugly head again. As the team looked at the data from the session Chris was definitely way up on the lap but it just wasn’t meant to be. The team worked hard to put the car back together for the final session, but the same thing happened again towards the end of the lap the piping blew apart again. This meant Chris did not improve on his time and he’d have to settle for a 4th place finish in the Time Attack battle.
Chris and the team spent the rest of the day and evening trying their best to come up with a solution to keeping the piping together. They used everything they had in the trailer to come up with a solution and planned to keep the power turned down for the track battles to try and keep things together for longer. The Track Battles weren’t using the entire course and eliminated 2 of the 3 straightaways. The format has a lead follow type of approach with both cars trying to pull away or close the gap to the other car.
The first battle Chris had was against a Miata, Chris headed out as the follow car to start and managed to close the gap, in the second run with Chris leading he was able to stretch the gap out and take the overall win. This put him up against a familiar competitor Joel from Nine Lives Racing in his turbocharged S2000. Chris knew he was going to have his work cut out against Joel. The team decided to up turn the boost setting up to 5 to ensure that Chris had the power he needed. Chris was the lead car in the first run and managed to pull away from Joel, in the chase lap he got a bad start, but still managed to close the gap up by the end of the lap securing the win and moving on the next round.
This round would be the hardest of them all, with Chris facing off against Jeremy Swenson in his Corvette. Jeremy had run the fastest time of the event so far and the team knew they were going to have their work cut out to beat him. They turned the boost up to setting 6 and hoped that the boost piping would stay together. Chris had the lead for the first run, he got a good run at the beginning of the lap and felt like he was pulling away from Jeremey as they came into Canada Corner, however the boost coupler decided to let go again and that was the end of the battle.
All was not lost though, the team worked as quickly as they could to try and fix the issue as Chris would be facing off with another Corvette for the 3rd place. They managed to get everything fixed and decided to leave the car on boost setting 6 as they knew they’d need everything they had to beat this very fast vette. Chris had the lead run to start and managed to secure the win, on the follow lap Chris got a terrible start to the lap and the vette was pulling away from him, as he came into Canada Corner he noticed that vette had made a mistake and he closed up right onto its bumper crossing the line as the winner.
The win was bittersweet as they team really felt like they had the pace to do better that weekend but taking a 3rd place with the competition level in TrackMod wasn’t bad either. Chris said “I really enjoyed the track the facilities were unbelievable, and the track really suited the car quite well. I know we had more pace then we showed and I can’t wait to come back next year and really put the car through its paces!”
Boersma is running Konig Hypergram in 18×11 et 15 front and 18×9.5 et 35 rear. The Konig Hypergram is Flow Formed.
