Ryan Eversley's RACER Diary: Above it all

Welcome back to my column. I have to admit I’ve skipped a few races but to be honest with the Indy 500 buzz and James Hinchcliffe’s crash, I really didn’t feel that people were interested in what I had to say and I was honestly put on the back foot seeing someone I respect and have admiration for have such a horrific accident. 

So with that in mind, here’s a quick recap of Mosport and Detroit:

Mosport: We drove our butts off and finished 15th and in race 1 and 10th in race 2. Pretty uneventful weekend but I did see a Knight (LEFT).

Detroit: The alternator in my car died about 10 minutes into the race and it turned into an Apollo 13 situation where we had to shut down one system after the next to get the car to finish the race and we luckily finished 10th despite being stuck in fifth gear for the last two laps. It’s worth noting that when I compared the race to Apollo 13, my teammate Peter Cunningham quipped: “The difference is you could’ve just pulled over and those astronauts could’ve been lost in space forever.” Fair point, boss!

We were supposed to have a second race at Detroit but heavy rain prevented the series from allowing us to race which was a shame because we did a warm-up session in the pouring rain without incident and our Acura TLX’s were 1-2 and I was feeling confident we could win.

So now to the most recent race weekend at Road America. Our racing schedule has been so busy this year, and we’ve been in constant travel mode with our team, that we haven’t had the time for any testing. We scheduled a test at Road America the week prior to our race event there and finally got to work on our race setups and PD and I were really confident going into the triple-header race weekend. Before the on track activity started, PD and I were asked to do some media work with the local news and radio channels.

My team, RealTime Racing, is based in Saukville, Wis., so we were definitely the hometown heroes at this event and it was really amazing to see so many RealTime shirts in the paddock and at the autograph session. No pressure right?

My TLX was feeling pretty good for the practice session but prior to qualifying the team discovered an issue inside the drivetrain that meant we would have to change out some parts ASAP. I was told to do three laps of the qualifying session and park it so the boys could get it swapped in the short time period before Race 1 on Friday. I went out on track and drove my heart out and was pretty disappointed to find out that we were 20th. The car felt good, I hit all my marks, managed to brake deeper than I had before into Turn 5…and we were 20th. That meant we were starting 20th on both Friday and Saturday.

The guys found the problem to be a very small part inside the drivetrain and were able to get the entire gearbox out and parts swapped in less than two hours because they’re rock stars, and we made the grid with plenty of time.

On the start I got a great launch and immediately drove toward the grass to get by the cars in front of me, but unfortunately a yellow came out in the midst of our start and I was found to have passed under yellow and given a 5-point penalty post-race. I’ll admit it, but I’ll also admit I was so focused on what was going on around me, I didn’t slow down until my crew chief said, “Full course caution” on the radio. It definitely wasn’t on purpose but when I saw my in-car replay, I said, “Yep, I did it.”

Once we went back to green I was able to pick off a couple guys and steadily worked my way up to seventh place before fading back to ninth. We did get best standing start and hard charger award which was a nice take away but I was hoping for better than a ninth-place finish. 

Saturday was Race 2 and in the morning they gave us a 45-minute warm-up session, in which I was determined to find out where we were losing time to my teammate. Again the car felt really good – I matched my qualifying time (albeit with half tanks of fuel) and knew we were quicker but something still wasn’t right. We traced the lack of speed back to a boost leak and realized that were down on power to where we were supposed to be. The guys scrambled to get the problem sorted but there wasn’t enough time to get it right and we raced essentially the same on Saturday as we had the day before. So much so that we got the standing start award again and the hard charger award for the second day in a row and came home in 10th place.

Once Saturday's race was over the guys tore the entire front end off of my car and got to work on sorting out boost leak issues and in typical RealTime fashion got it all fixed up in plenty of time for the annual Road America chicken roast. We had around 600 people come to the dinner and it was a nice way to connect with some other racers and members of the paddock. 

Sunday morning I was pumped! We had the car sorted out and, having gotten two top-10s without proper power, I was anxious to see where we could end up. On the standing start I had another great launch and as I was moving past an Audi we both saw that a Bentley had stalled and we made contact trying to avoid it. The car felt fine under yellow but soon we realized the contact had broken a cooling line for the turbos and eventually they overheated and we were forced to retire the car.  

An old friend of mine used to say, “That’s why it’s called ‘racing’ and not ‘winning’” and this weekend was definitely a “racing” weekend.

-Ryan