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.
