07/24/19 It was supposed to be the easiest Pikes Peak yet for us but turned out quite the opposite. The most intense and emotional. The unified blog below reconstructs key milestones of the event. Eventually I will also create a separate blog for the D2EV because there is more that these two (yes two) cars are supposed to do. Anyway, here goes.

06/21/19 The crazy week of preparation is over. Tomorrow early AM we leave for Colorado. In the last few days a number of things were designed, molds fabricated, parts made and installed. Yes a week ago some of this didn't exist even conceptually.

Canopy mounts, doors and windows. I cheated a bit on the driver door by leaving the window glass out and putting a temporary button latch on top, but it will work for the race.

The 'barge boards' - from molds to parts.

Rear spoiler.

Rear wing mount.

Car 2 chassis assembly. We didn't get it running in time (wasn't needed anyway), but it's a full set of spares and the plan is to display it at Fan Fest. Our partners and sponsors, Cascadia Motion, will transport it with their own van and trailer that are identical to ours (and will be used to transport the finished car when they take possession of it).

Finally, Friday, half hour before our self-imposed deadline, Car 1 is ready to load for the trip. It's a huge sense of relief and accomplishment for the team. As well as anxiety about all that still lies ahead. A big milestone in the race to the starting line.

06/24/19 The two-day trip was uneventful - the new van and trailer are awesome! Comfortably cruising 75 including up and down long grades. Perfectly stable even in gusty crosswinds. It did look pretty iffy weather-wise through parts of Wyoming, but on arrival in Colorado Springs the weather looked considerably better.

Today is tech inspection, which we pass. Our original plan was to paint the car white (which is the color it will be eventually). It then became the plan to vinyl-wrap it white later in the week. But upon arriving at tech we confirmed our suspicion that we have to go through with the car as it's going to race. So primer grey it is. Doesn't look too bad actually.

Next is figuring out how we're going to charge the car at the rental house. We need a 240V 50A circuit. After locating the breaker panel and looking at the fuses, the best one is for the kitchen stove. So we pull it out, go to Home Depot to get the right plugs and cable to build an adapter, and we're in business.

Finally some testing at PPIR because we haven't run the car at all since we've made massive changes to it, and the Mountain is not the ideal place to shake things down. It goes pretty well, although the car is unstable over a big high speed bump. We make a few software tweaks and we're ready for the top section test tomorrow.

6/25/19 The first test of the new car on the Mountain, and the harshest being on the bumpy upper section. We are told the bumps are the worst they've been yet. It is the heaviest (unfortunately) car we've ever built. At nearly 3,500 lbs with driver it's more than 1,000 lbs heavier than anything we've run before. The suspension is all new and experimental, especially the third shock. I had made some educated guesses at the settings and the valving, but the behavior over bumps in ORP testing has left some concerns. Ideally we'd have another month to sort everything out, but we don't.

Greg completes one run, gets out and tells me the car is undrivable over the bumps. Turns out he had spun but managed to keep it on the road somehow (in the video linked at the end of the blog, look for skid marks at around 9:28 - those are ours from testing). Unless I come up with some fixes by race day the car is too dangerous to run - Greg says that if he drove slow enough to be safe there's no point to even bother. This is coming from the guy who in 2012 crashed his Ducati in practice, broke a leg and a vertebra, raced anyway and became the first rider to get under 10 minutes. He is not one to give up easily so I have to take this very seriously.

OK, I've got a problem to solve, away from the shop, and we won't be testing up here again. Tomorrow is qualifying on the lower section which is much smoother, so we will still do that while I try to come up with a fix.

6/26/19 Qualifying day on the lower section. Given that on race day weather moves in by early afternoon, qualifying well is a prerequisite for having a good run. The pavement is smoother down here so this helps. But our tires are too hard in compound (S100 is all that's available from Hoosier in our sizes, which is an endurance tire). Tire warmers help but only just.

Greg does three runs with a best of 4:18. This puts us 9th today so I'm guessing 15-20th on race day after everyone else qualifies (ended up 17th). Not great. The suspension is too stiff and bouncy even over the smaller bumps. Greg spun on one of the runs after Engineer's Corner. None of this helps confidence.

The good part is that we have plenty of power, as this launch demonstrates. As a demo for the capabilities of Cascadia electric drivetrain components, the car is awesome. Just need to work on the rest.

I now have a plan for the suspension. First is making adjustments to shift bellcranks to a softer spot on the progression curve. This will soften up the overall effective rates at rideheight. The second is more radical - I'm going to overnight the third shocks to Penske for a revalve and they will overnight them back so I'll have them friday. We can still test at PPIR before race day. Of course I'm still guessing here but it's the only shot we have. This is where having the whole car's worth of spares helps - I send off the spare shocks and we can keep running on the ones we have.

Also, talked to Bruce Foss from Hoosier and he's going to overnight us a set of A7s which are softer than the slicks we have. Yes we'll end up running on DOT tires but with the sizes we have and the timeline this is the only available option. Tomorrow is middle section testing, at least we'll see what effect the geometry changes have.

6/27/19 Middle section testing. Some positive progress, as the suspension changes are a good step in the right direction. We are the third (or even second?) fastest among the cars present, so that's encouraging.

We are back at the house by 10 am. Shortly after the tires show up. We get them mounted and head to PPIR for more testing. We also make some alignment changes to fight the understeer. Turns out that when I moved the steering rack forward to clear the front diff, I killed Ackerman geometry. On a car that actually uses the inside front tire, this leads the fronts to fight each other. More rubber doesn't help, they just fight each other harder. So we put as much front toe out on it as we dared, and more rear toe in to compensate. It worked to an extent.

Tomorrow is another bottom section test, which will give us a solid comparison of the progress made, and what to expect on race day. Overall Greg is feeling much better about the car.

6/28/19 The last day of testing. This is as good as the car is going to be so the anxiety is high, at least on my part. Fortunately the testing goes well - the stability is massively improved, the tires are much better and Greg is able to take full 10 seconds off our qualifying run. Too bad it doesn't count, would have moved us from 17th to 10th.

The revalved shocks show up and we head out to PPIR again. We do a baseline run, then without them at all, then with new valving. The results are very encouraging - the car is hugely more stable over the big bump with the new valving. Good data. Also a coupe of last-minute software tweaks to regen profile. We'll know how well it works on Sunday.

In the evening is Fan Fest. Starts out hot and ends in pouring rain. Tomorrow we set up in the pits and then the one run that matters.

6/30/19 Today could be anything. Something could go wrong (we only get one shot at this). Or, everything could click and give Greg the confidence and speed we need. Even though the car is heavy due to big battery that was sized for other roles, plagued with understeer and is running on still-too-hard DOT tires, I feel that if we had showed up a week ago with the car in this state we'd have a good shot at the overall today. Now, we'll just have to see.

David Meyer is here too with his twin-turbo D2, hoping to do well if the weather holds.

Bikes go first and immediately there are issues and delays - couple crashes and restarts. We were hoping that cars could start as early as 10am but at 11:30 bikes are still going up. The the last one goes up and we wait for the car start.

Then the news comes that Carlin Dunne, Greg's many time Ducati teammate and close friend, has crashed and had to be lifeflighted out. There is a considerable delay. When the cars do start running, clouds are already starting to form. Some more delays and by the time Greg is on the starting line they tell us there is rain on parts of the course, so that doesn't inspire confidence.

After he took the green flag, the usual longest 10 minutes as we watch the section times. The first one is OK but not great - we're definitely not going to win overall. Next one is better, and the top section is third fastest of all competitors. Looks like the shocks worked and Greg was gaining confidence in the car as he went. Later he told me it was very stable over bumps, despite bottoming out a few times. Definitely great potential, but today we end with a 9:55, second in Unlimited and 9th overall. An emotional rollercoaster for me.

But that was nothing compared to what Greg, his family and friends experienced. As Greg sat at the starting line, there was one thing I did not know yet but he already did. His close friend Carlin Dunne had died less than an hour earlier. At that point the official announcement hadn't been made and only the inner circle of friends had learned the news. I can only imagine what it was like for Greg, on top of all the issues we've had in testing, and the uncertainty of the conditions. I have tremendous respect for his professionalism for taking the start and putting in a great run, finally getting us under 10 minutes. As you watch the video you can see he is pushing hard yet maintaining control. The perfect balance of aggression and prudence - I am honored to have Greg as part of our team.

By the time David Meyer is lined up with his D2 it is pouring rain and he elects to skip it. Not worth the risk when he knows the whole run will be in a downpour.

Eventually the event is over and the cars come down in the rain.

7/1/19 A very emotional awards ceremony, starting with an official announcement and a long standing ovation in Carlin's honor. Pikes Peak is a family and a community, and while I did not know Carlin personally, it is clear that his passing has deeply affected many.

We collected the trophy, our 6th in five years of participating as a team (2016 was a two-car effort). Then started on the long drive home.

There is a huge amount of work ahead. As a next milestone, we're going to Bonneville salt flats for Speed Week early August. That will be a whole new learning curve and another iconic motorsports event to add to our experience. More to come.

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