Boersma Racing Fighting It Out In TrackMod!

Posted on September 27, 2019September 27, 2019 by Konig Gfx

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.

Boersma Racing Returns To GridLife MidWest Festival!

Posted on June 14, 2019June 14, 2019 by Konig Gfx

Boersma Racing Returns To GridLife MidWest Festival!

The 2019 season continues with the team making a stop at GridLife Midwest Festival. This event has become one of the premier motorsports events of the season and the team came in with a slew of improvements to the car hoping for good results.

Taking everything they learned from Road Atlanta, the team spent the few weeks between events addressing some of the issues they encountered. The biggest issue was to figure out how to keep the aero off the ground and get rid of the suspension undulation at high speeds. The team threw a bunch of changes at the car in hopes of getting everything resolved and just finished everything before having to leave for the event.

The first day of the event starts later in the afternoon so the team had time to button up a few last minute items before heading out on the track. The first session the team wanted to focus on ensuring the changes they made had fixed the suspension issues, so the power was turned down, final checks made and Chris headed out on the track. Immediately Chris was on the radio, giving the team positive feedback that the handling was much better in the car and after turning 5 laps he brought the car in to review data and debrief. It seemed like the issue was fixed, a great success for the team! The team spent the next 2 sessions on Thursday testing out a few other changes on the car, preparing for Friday and Saturday.

Friday kicked off and the team was ready to start attacking. The car’s power was turned up and the first session saw Chris start to improve on his times, but the team was still way off the pace compared to years past. With the power increased the car became difficult to drive and increasingly pushy. The team worked to go through the data after the first session and decided some changes to boost delivery in lower gears and some traction control changes would help.

Chris headed out in the second session with the changes and reported a definite improvement to the car and he managed to knock 2 seconds off his previous best time. Unfortunately, they were still 1 second off the rest of the field’s pace, but the team was happy with the results as it showed they were heading the right direction.

The last session of the day saw Chris improve his times again with some more changes to the car. Chris said, “I’m really starting to get comfortable in the car and understand more what it’s going to do. This car is so different from anything I’ve driven in years past and it’s taking me time to figure out exactly how to drive it. We started off with a rocky relationship, but we’re starting to figure each other out and get on the same page!”

The final day of competition saw some rain, but also dry sessions. The team was focused on making small improvements to the car and Chris’s driving to improve the lap times. With these changes Chris was able to run his fastest time of the weekend a 1:35.2, however, the rest of the field was still moving faster and that put him squarely in 5th place. As the day went on another car managed to push Chris into 6th position, as the team wasn’t able to improve on their lap time.

The team was happy with the results for the weekend. They wanted a record for sure but knew based on the issues they had faced at Atlanta that just getting the car headed in the right direction was more important than anything and they achieved that goal. GridLife Midwest was another spectacular event with tons of fans, media, competition and things to see. The team was happy to be part of this amazing festival again this year and can’t wait to return in 2020 to reset their record!

Boersma is running Konig Hypergram in 18×11 et 15 front and 18×9.5 et 35 rear. The Konig Hypergram is Flow Formed.

Boersma Racing Back on Track for 2019! (GTA Road Atlanta Recap)

Posted on May 15, 2019May 28, 2019 by Konig Gfx

Boersma Racing Back On Track for 2019!

Welcome to the 2019 race season, the team at Boersma Racing finally unveiled the new 2019 Time Attack car this past weekend at Global Time Attack Road Atlanta. After spending the offseason completely rebuilding the car from the ground up the team was excited to introduce the car to the world and showcase all the changes they had worked so diligently on.

With all the changes to the car, the team knew they were going to have some figuring out to do. Basically, every part had changed from the previous season. The team had focused on improving every aspect of the car, power, aerodynamics, grip, suspension, and handling, electronics, pretty much everything!

The Thursday of the event is an open test day so the team used this to shake the car down and ensure that everything was functioning as expected, there were a few issues the team had to work through but for it being the first time the car had been on track everything was pretty minor.

The team spent the evening preparing the car for the first day of competition, doing a nut and bolt check, pulling logs from the Link Thunder ECU, making changes to the traction control profiles and changing wheels/tires to be ready to attack the first session on Friday.

Friday kicked off with the threat of rain that never really materialized. The first session out for the car did not go as planned as starting his first timed lap Chris had the car unload through turn 2 which sent the car off track damaging the splitter. The team worked hard to fix the splitter and also raise and re-align the car to ensure this wouldn’t happen again. The team worked so quickly that they were able to make it back on track for the 2nd session of the day. With the car fixed for the 2nd session Chris headed back on track, only to find that there was a vibration in the car above 160km/h, the car was back in the pits and the team decided to change the tires out for the next session to see if that was the culprit.

The 3rd and final session of the day, the car headed out on track on new tires and the vibration issue was fixed. However, a new problem appeared, with the car starting to become uncontrollable at higher speeds from oscillation in the suspension, likely due to the new aero on the car. Chris managed to push through and complete a timed lap, but had to keep his speed under 200km/h in order to keep control of the car. At the end of the first day, the team was still sitting on the podium in 3rd place, not too bad considering the issues they had.

Day 3, the final day of competition again saw the threat of rain that never materialized. The team worked throughout the night trying to make changes to the suspension in hopes that they could control the oscillations that were occurring. Unfortunately, the 1st session saw no improvement. The team worked again between sessions to try and get the issue rectified but saw no improvement throughout the rest of the sessions for the day. Chris did manage to get 1 lap in, again limiting his speed to keep the car in control and still managed to crack off a 1:34.097 lap time on the cars lowest boost setting. Unfortunately, this time was just shy of getting the team on the podium but they still wound up in 4th place out of a 20 car field.

Overall the team was happy with the results given how new of a car they had brought to the track and the amount of data they were able to gather has definitely set the team up for more success in the future. The team is going to continue working and testing the car before the next event GridLife MidWest to ensure that they can put their best foot forward for this highly competitive series

Boersma is running Konig Hypergram in 18×11 et 15 front and 18×9.5 et 35 rear. The Konig Hypergram is Flow Formed.

Boersma Racing’s Whirlwind Season Finale!

Posted on October 10, 2018 by Konig Gfx

Boersma Racing’s Whirlwind Season Finale!

Chris Boersma and the K-Tuned Honda Civic team headed to Toronto Motorsports Park for Round 5 of the CSCS season its final event. Chris and team headed into this event confident they would be able to break the record they had previously set closing the gap between Super Street and the Unlimited records.

The weather for this event was perfect for breaking records with no rain in sight, a nice change from all the other events this year. The team worked hard to prepare the car for this event, making some small aero changes and working to address an oil pressure related issue they had been dealing with all season.

The car performed flawlessly in qualifying with Chris setting the 2nd fastest time in class after hitting some traffic in his qualifying run. After looking at the data from the car it was clear that they were on pace to break their record finally getting into the 1:13 lap time range. With the data gathered, the team worked to prep the car for the final timed runs where Chris would put it all on the line.

The final timed runs started and Chris set his safe first lap and started on his second flyer. He was attacking every corner as hard as he could, the predictive lap time on the dash was showing a 1:12 lap time when Chris caught the car in front of him. This isn’t supposed to happen as the cars gape when they are sent out, the car in front had broken and decided to parade around the track rather than get off. Chris attempted to pass but was blocked. Chris was given an extra lap to try and repeat, however, the car began to overheat and the temperature protections kicked in and robbed him of another great lap.

Without his flyer laps, Chris had to settle for 2nd place, finishing behind the car that had ultimately blocked him on track. It was an unfortunate end to their CSCS season, “After working so hard to lose in this manner was one of the most disappointing things I’ve ever experienced in Time Attack” Chris said.

Leaving the event the team re-focused on getting the car ready for the SpeedRing event the following weekend, trying to think of the positives. The car was working better than ever and that means they had a real shot at doing well at that event. Chris’s dad put it best “Onward and upwards!”

Boersma is running Konig Ultraform in 18×10.5 et 25 front and 17×8 et 35 rear. The Konig Ultraform is Flow Formed.

Boersma Racing Back To Their Winning Ways!!!

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Konig Gfx

Boersma Racing Back To Their Winning Ways!

Chris Boersma and the K-Tuned Honda Civic team headed to Shannonville Motorsports Park for Round 4 of the CSCS season. This is the second year CSCS has come to this famous track, with Chris and team taking the overall Super Street record at the inaugural event last year. The team had been hard at work with changes to try and see if they could break their record again this year.

The weather for this event was perfect for breaking records with no rain in sight, a nice change from all the other events this year. The team had spent the downtime between events, building a new engine and getting it in the car between events. The team has been fighting issues with oil drain back which has forced Chris to only turn 1 or 2 laps before running low on oil. Changes were made in the new engine that would hopefully solve the problem once and for all. The team would use this event as a test as they were immediately leaving for GridLife South Festival after this event.

The car performed flawlessly with the new engine and Chris managed to break his previous Super Street record running a 1:51.357 right off the bat. “The car is just so easy to drive this year, it’s so consistent and predictable which makes my job a lot easier” Chris commented after the record-breaking run. Chris went on to say “The braking in this car this season is unbelievable, I’ve consistently moved my braking points back at every event we’ve run and still feel like there’s more to go. Every time I step on the pedal the car does exactly what I want and I feel like that’s been a huge part of the gains we’ve seen this year in times.” The team managed to see over 2Gs under braking at this event and Chris really felt like that was a big part of what contributed to the new record time.

The team was very happy with the results from this event, other then a bath the car doesn’t need anything before leaving for GridLife South, where Chris and team hope to break the TrackMod FWD record and put a better foot forward than when they were there for the GTA event in May.

Boersma is running Konig Ultraform in 18×10.5 et 25 front and 17×8 et 35 rear. The Konig Ultraform is Flow Formed.

Boersma takes a win at GRIDLIFE MIDWEST!!!

Posted on June 13, 2018 by Konig Gfx

BACK TO OUR RECORD BREAKING WAYS

After a difficult start to the season Chris Boersma and the K-Tuned Honda Civic team headed to Gingerman Raceway in South Haven for GridLife MidWest Festival. The team worked diligently to address the issues they had encountered in Atlanta and were hoping for a much smoother event at Gingerman.

Chris was fast right off the bat on Thursday in the Time Attack sessions, getting very close to his overall record last year. The team worked overnight to make some setup changes including a bump stop change to dial the car in for the Friday morning session and the team reviewed data looking for every bit of time that was out there. On Friday morning, in the very first session Chris shattered his previous record by over a second running a 1:33.493. With more 3 more sessions in the day, the team was confident that they’d be able to go faster.

Unfortunately the racing gods had some other plans. Chris attacked a little too hard in his second session going off track, luckily with only minor consequences. In the third session he was on a tear when the car caught on fire. Chris got the car off track safely and managed to extinguish the fire with a handheld extinguisher. The fire was quite small, resulting in very little damage to the car.

With that the time attack event was over and Chris had secured the TrackMod FWD record besting his previous record. The team prepared for the Bracket Battle on Saturday where Chris would run against the other top 8 time attack cars from TrackMod. Rain in the morning made for an interesting bracket battle that started out wet, eventually leading to a dry track. Chris and the team decided to switch their setup to a full rain setup just in case the weather returned.

In his first battle, Chris faced off against Mike Lee in his potent S14 on a damp track and managed to win his lead battle and the follow battle advancing to the quarter finals where he faced off against Michael Puglisi in Mitsubishi Evolution. Chris won the first round as the lead car, but Michael took the second round meaning both cars had to battle it out in a one-more-time final shootout. Unfortunately with the now completely dry track Chris’s rain setup was out gunned and Michael managed to squeak out a win the finals. This left Chris in the 3rd place position in the Track Battle.

Chris and team were very happy with the results taking 1st Place in Time Attack event, breaking their own record and securing a 3rd place finish in the Track Battle event on the Saturday.

The next event for the K-Tuned Honda Civic team will be the second round of the Canadian Sport Compact Series at Toronto Motorsport Park in Cayuga, ON, on the 24th of June.

Boersma is running Konig Ultraform in 18×10.5 et 25 front and 17×8 et 35 rear. The Konig Ultraform is Flow Formed.

James Houghton Sends It at Gridlife Track Battle Round 1!

Posted on April 19, 2018April 23, 2018 by Konig Gfx

JAMES HOUGTON AT GRIDLIFE TRACK BATTLE ROUND 1

2018 GRIDLIFE MID-OHIO | APR 14TH & 15TH

The weekend of April 14/15 saw the K-Tuned Time Attack Integra head South for the opening round of the 2018 Gridlife Track Battle series. As last year, the season opener was at the famed Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

But it was not an easy 2018 debut as James noted, “It was a very busy offseason for the K-Tuned Time Attack Integra. We always try to accomplish a lot of modifications for both speed and reliability but this winter/spring was definitely one to remember. We set many records in 2017 so we largely focused on improvements in reliability for 2018. With the many improvements were made to both our engine package, our wiring and electronics we were very excited to get out to our first event, even though it would be without the benefit of a track test beforehand.”

Mid-Ohio saw James once again compete in the Unlimited FWD class where he set the record in 2017 on his first visit to the track. Watching the weather forecast on the week leading up to the event the Kitchener, ON based team came prepared with rain tires as well as full complement of slicks just in case the called for rain did not arrive. After tech inspection, the weather radar was forecasting a dry first session and maybe the second. As this could be the session that would decide the whole event, the team discussed the options and agreed to go for it on slicks.

The slicks were mounted on the car and got in the zone for the first session. Although he didn’t beat his record from 2017 James put down a solid lap time of 1.28.9 which held up for fastest in class (Unlimited FWD) as well as Fastest Overall for the event.

Later that day the Gridlife team announced that they would start keeping track of wet track records as well as regular dry records in 2018. As the team had brought their rain tires they mounted them as the rain fell before the second session. James ran one of the fastest wet times of the weekend with a 2.00.0 and the fastest wet time in Unlimited FWD by a large margin! Houghton was excited after seeing photos of the K-Tuned Time Attack Integra in the wet, “I would never have believed the rooster tails that were coming off the car. We could see on the pit straight and from various photos taken all around the track that our aero was really working. I have to thank the guys at Professional Awesome for their input and my team for their execution of the Professional Awesome’s ideas!”

James continued by saying, “With all of our improvements to the car working well at Gridlife Track Battle 1 we can focus on more small changes leading up to the Global Time Attack event at Road Atlanta next month. To that end, we will be testing at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park in a little over a week to help further dial in the suspension and aero package. Thank you very much for the support in the 2018 season, we definitely couldn’t do it without you! James”.

The team was very excited the Monday after the event when the newly announced Gridlife partnership with Autoweek published the first event report online with the team’s Acura Type R as the lead photo. View the article using the link below.

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James Houghton is running the Flow Formed Konig Dekagram in 18×10.5 front and 17×9 rear w/ et40mm offset. The Konig Dekagram is Flow Formed.

Make sure to follow James on INSTAGRAM!