TRIPLE PODIUM FINISH FOR RTI!

COUNTRY ROADS took us home to West Virginia where we made our strongest showing yet in AER. A solid team of fast drivers put us on pole of the entire grid and produced the fastest lap in each race. The team that never quits persisted through replacing a broken throw-out bearing in the first race to climb back to P3 in class.

We started the second race even stronger and overcame the loss of the synchro gear to remain P1 in class and overall at the checkers. Combined points produced P2 overall for the weekend and rounded out the first triple podium finish for RTI! We hope the Cicada Crush Fest of 2021 was the start of many more good things to come!

Watkins Glen May 5-7, 2021!

After qualifying well in Class 4, we started Race 1 in the rain and fog. Dancing around this notorious track led to two incidents, ultimately knocking us out of that race. Undaunted and never accepting failure, the intrepid team replaced both motor mounts, straightened bent bits and talked a Monro Auto Service Center into aligning the car to our race specs. Tested on the public roads of Elmira, the Tadpole was back in the game for Race 2 until we quickly learned that the VVEL brain was damaged and put one bank of cylinders in limp mode. We can’t wait for the new engine build with a Motec harness!

PITTRACE 2021!

We started losing power at the end of race 1. I was running P2 in class, P3 overall and fell back in the field. I was running 28 laps ahead of P4, so we retired the car a little early to finish P3 in class, P5 overall. We decided not to run on Sun in order to get the car on the dyno at the tuner to figure out what went wrong. We’re thinking either too high temps in the air intake or the fuel return, either way causing the car to go into limp mode. We hope to sort it out for Watkins Glen.

14-HOUR RACE AT NJMP 2020!

The Tadpole entered the “Knight Rider” 14-hour race at NJMP – our longest and first night race – testing its own endurance and that of our team. We brought along our friend, Johan Schwartz, for inspiration and guidance and he promptly showed us that the Tadpole could lap Thunderbolt seconds faster than we were willing to push. We qualified on the pole in Class 4 – another first – and ran strongly into the night. Six hours in, we realized we still had a full AER race to go! The duration proved too much, though, and the fuel pump disintegrated at about 10 hours. The lessons learned have us rebuilding the Tadpole with external and redundant fuel pumps for next season when her sister car joins the lineup.

GREETINGS FROM MID-OHIO 2020!

After the rear end was rearranged on Saturday, the RTI Racing team (rti-racing.com) refused to give up. We innovated and renovated, getting the car back on track in record time. We endured another set back when a CV joint disintegrated but we were still undaunted. We swapped the part with another race team and proudly finished the race. We fixed up the rear bumper cover and Frankenzilla was on track for day two. She ran strong all day and the drivers were resilient, relentless and persistent. We pulled off a fun weekend with a great team. Now we just have to replace the entire rear end of the car for the night race in NJ…

During Saturday’s race at Summit Point, we fried a brake piston and if not for the benevolence of another team…a DIRECT competitor and the only other lunatic that’s crazy enough to run a Nissan in a sea of German cars… we wouldn’t have raced on Sunday. We brought new drivers to the team and finished 7^th on Saturday and 6^th on Sunday, only once (guiltily) out-braking the donor Nissan!