Archive for the ‘Andrie’s Blog’ Category

Andrie Blog, preparing for the first race

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

First race of the season is only few days away. I’ve been going over my car and make sure that all the nuts and bolts that we loosen during the off season are tighten again. This includes the nuts behind the wheel. We had very little chance to test, this off season. It is a combination of bad weather and an injury I got from a snowboarding accident on Christmas day. 8 weeks later, and after numerous physical therapy, I’m still nursing my left shoulder. This hasn’t stopped me to visit local indoor kart facility to try to keep myself sharp.
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Andrie Blog, December 22, Off Season

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Firstly, I must apologize for being tardy in updating my blog. We got very busy and it all started in August when we blew up our newly built World Challenge engine. From then on, we had a very tight schedule. With races after races only a week or two weeks apart at most. The preparation had really kicked my ass.

We still wasn’t sure of what the cause of the blew up in August. I do think there is a strong possibility that my 02 sensor was failing during tuning and we’ve been running lean. The pistons was sent to the lab but the result was inconclusive. (more…)

Andrie blog, August 26, Kablamo

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
Cool night picture

Cool night picture

I’m skipping the race report this month as we are not concentrating in Honda Challenge this season, and we are using it to test for World Challenge. The objective of this test, is to try several options that are presented to us and see which one is more advantageous to us. We come fully prepared and brought all our equipments, including setup pads and scales.

All that went to shit really quickly. The first lap on the warm up session the car went kablamo.   We haven’t even got to push it yet, as I was keeping the rev in check until we know for sure everything is ok.  We didn’t bring any spare engine, as this is a brand new engine.  In the effort to make the swap as quickly as we can, we split up duties among the crew.  Wayne heads the engine removal process helped by Ken and Chris.  Me, Jimmy and Jeff went back to RedZone, which is 2.5 hours away to pick up the engine.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to finish in time to make the day race.  Our entire plan for the weekend pretty much went down the drain. (more…)