IT’S OFFICIAL: we lost. In all seriousness though, while that does suck given that it’s a competition, it’s perfectly okay in the end because of the progress and growth that we were able to achieve throughout the season. The experience we gained as a team is invaluable and something that we will undoubtedly carry with us moving forwards. For now though, let’s go over how the final round of the Spec-D Pro Series went down for me, RA Motorsports, and the man himself, Rick Selinske.

For a quick recap, Rick had changed a few things over the winter including so some initial shakedowns were done at both the first round of the Spec-D Grassroots Series as well as the Stratotech Season Opener. With no major issues happening at either event, we were good to go for the main competition. At the first round of the Pro Series, Rick was struggling to get into the grove during both practice and qualifying. We later found out at the end of the day that one of the rear control arms were bent, effectively throwing Rick off his rhythm for the competition. Things were looking promising for the second round at Mission as Rick made steady progress through practice, but being paired but against series runner up Chris Pollard in our first Top 16 battle would cut our weekend short, plus the diff blew up the next day during the Bros Before Pros event. The rear diff was replaced shortly after and the car was then brought out to StratoCross for a shake down, where the newly installed rear diff decided to off itself one week before the final round of competition. To top it off, the engine started to develop a misfire. Woo-hoo. Not one to be deterred by constant failures however, Rick and his wallet persevered and yet another replacement rear diff was sourced and installed in time for competition, and the tune was adjusted with that 1JZ under the hood roaring gloriously. Confident that we have learned from everything we’ve been through together this season, we went into Round 3 rather optimistic. Rick was feeling good, the car was running good, and both myself and Matt are more than familiar with Castrol Raceway having run here ourselves numerous times. All we had to do was put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

The day started off rather relaxing with a bit of A&W breakfast and light drizzle from the sky. While most aren’t too fond of racing in the rain, I was rather looking forward to it despite us not having installed Rick’s new lexan windows yet (sorry Rick). This however is mostly down to the fact that we are down on power compared to the majority of the field, compounded by the fact that we are running a turbocharged car versus pretty much everyone else who is using a naturally aspirated LS (with some even being on nitrous). The rain would level out the playing field for us in terms of the power discrepancy, plus I wouldn’t have to reapply sunscreen 16,000 times throughout the day. While the weather was rather lovely, the rain eventually never really progressed past just some light cupcake sprinkles, so back to being at a power disadvantage compared to everyone else it was. Super. No matter, practice was going fairly well with no issues for us, and we really only had to make a few adjustments to the car throughout the day. Once again, the car was reliable just let Rick get on with the driving.

For those who haven’t been around Castrol Raceway, let me enlighten you on the rumbling strips and curbing around the track: they’re solid concrete, and one too many drops or curb jumps can easily bend a wheel (hi Peter Luu), or in our case, suspension components. Given the layout that the judges wanted for this round, plus Rick’s car being down on power again, carrying a slightly wider line helps the car build and maintain more speed, something that we would certainly need if we were to compete door to door with the upper field. This does however bring the risk of running closer to the track curbs, where dropping a tire into the dirt and then suddenly coming back on course can give the car quite the physical jolt. Parts can only take so much abuse after all and one dirt drop too many inevitably led to a bent rear toe arm for us. It’s also hard to pinpoint which dirt drop specifically caused the bent arm too: there was one during practice, another spectacular one during qualifying, and yet another one during our first Top 16 chase run. To be honest, it was probably all of these incidents combined, but the one during our chase run was no doubt the cherry on top.

After qualifying in tenth place, for the Top 16 tandem battles we were paired up against The French And The Furious himself, Francois Duguay and his LS powered BMW. Despite Francois qualifying higher than us, we were feeling rather good about the matchup and confident about moving on into the Great 8. A game plan was put in order and all Rick had to do was execute it and we would be golden. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, Rick did have another dirt drop during his chase run against Francois. It didn’t look too bad from the outside, but after reviewing the in-car footage, it was a rather violent impact. This more than likely put the finishing touches on our poor rear toe arm, but Rick still managed to mostly keep up with Francois without a big gap opening up between them. For our lead run all Rick had to do was run away just like my dad, and that’s exactly what he did right off the start line. By the time they were entering the second hairpin, a noticeable gap had appeared between the two drivers. It was looking good, and at this point I was sure that victory would be ours…right up until the point where it wasn’t. Mr. Bent Toe Arm decided that it could hold on no more, and just like the Titanic, disaster struck at the very last moment. As Rick transitioned into the final hairpin, he did a half-spin (presumably due to the extra toe-out on the left rear wheel), which ended our day, as well as our season, right then and there.

It sucks, but that’s how motorsports goes sometimes. Looking back at the season however, I am glad to say that we were at least able to make consistent progress through each event. We all went into this with years of combined motorsports experience, however this was a first for all of us to compete as a team together. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we have certainly learned a lot and look forward to competing again in the future, hopefully with a bit more power and bit less bent suspension components (or at least more spares).

Thank you to the team at Spec-D for organizing an exciting and competitive season, for all the fans who came up to us at each event to show your support, to all the other drivers and our friends who offered us advice as we went along, and lastly to all of you who have been following our journey together with Rick Selinske and RA Motorsports as we competed together for the first time.

See you all at StratoBash 4.0 next month!

-brandon.