[Author's note: This race report is long overdue, but better late than never!]

August 2025:

With only three weeks between our previous race at Road America, the Condor team hauler stayed in storage up north before the Lime Rock Park Circuit Legends event. Thankfully, both cars had returned to reliability, and we didn't have to do much upon arriving in the scenic mountains of Connecticut.

Carlos opted to participate in the Thursday test day, while I elected to sit it out again to reduce expenses and time away. Carlos was looking mighty fast on Thursday, but he was careful to caution me about how high commitment this track is and how severe the consequences can be when you make a mistake.

As at Road America, my car felt good on the new spring setup at Lime Rock, and I was immediately faster in practice than the year prior. However, any similarity in lap times between Carlos and me at Road America had disappeared.

Carlos was running a solid 1.5-2 seconds faster than me at Lime Rock, on a track that is less than half the distance and laptime (sub-1 minute at LRP, mid-2:30s at RA).

Video Commentary

Race Report: My First Incident

Lime Rock is known for race-start shenanigans, as the front straight is very wide and funnels down into turn 1. Three- and four-cars-wide is a fairly common sight at race starts. My row was 5-wide at the race start for a moment, which turned out okay. However, as Big Bend funnels down even more in the second portion (technically, turn 2), there ended up being some gaps behind and around me that two racers felt the liberty to occupy.

I was on the outside line and did not expect another (third) car to try to come inside. As cars ahead checked up to adjust their line for the second half of the decreasing-radius corner, I moved towards the middle of the track. Unfortunately, two additional cars moved up alongside me at the same time, and the middle car ended up stuck and didn't bail out in time to avoid contact.

The middle car had minor contact with my back bumper, and then over-corrected into the car on its right. This overcorrection sent the right-lane car across the middle car's nose, hitting my back-right wheel and door. The right-lane car then bounced off mine, sending it spinning towards the inside of the track.

The contact only pushed my car to the side a little bit, and I was able to recover on the throttle, same with the car that had been in the middle. We continued our race without any apparent issues. Thankfully, the result was only cosmetic damage to my wheel and scrapes on the bumper and door, and the same for the other two cars.

The worst of the damage to all three cars was this tire donut.

While the middle car was found at fault in the incident, I still spoke with as many people as I could to learn from it. It was, after all, my first-ever car-to-car contact, and it took over 50 race starts to happen, so I was proud of that. [I have almost 50 GLTC races alone under my belt, and have never ended up on the incident report for contact, passing under yellow, or any technical infraction!]

Promising Setup Change

But It Came Too Late

That incident was just about the only excitement over the weekend. Most of the races had fun starts, but once things settled into single file, I was rarely passed and made only a couple of passes for position throughout the weekend, which was a bummer. It was mostly just doing laps.

My car felt too safe and stable, and was lacking the ability to pivot and rotate well. I chased the setup around for the first three races, finally swinging for the fences with multiple large setup changes in race 4, because I felt like I had nothing to lose.

The setup change that finally made a breakthrough was increasing the rear rake by about 1/4" (4 turns), a change that I had contemplated for a while, but was hesitant to try. I was truly shocked to feel how much the rake transformed the car. Not only was it rotating better, but the rear end felt more communicative and alive. I could feel what it was doing more than ever before, which allowed me to push and drive it more confidently.

I'm not really sure whether the rake itself was the difference, or if the multi-link rear suspension was too low before, causing other knock-on effects possibly related to toe and/or camber change, or a poor roll center.

In any case, the car was the fastest in race 4, in what everyone would agree was the worst conditions and slowest track of the weekend. It didn't amount to much of a difference in lap time or finishing position, but I was happy I had tried this change and that it had worked out for the better.

Weekend Result

Qualified: P26 (1:00.8)
Race 1: P22 (started P26)
Race 2: P19 (started P22)
Race 3: P22 (started P30)
Race 4: P23 (started P22)

(The race 3 re-sort based on lap times moved me back A LOT. Race 2 result was mainly due to a full course caution where I made a couple passes on the restart)

Summary & Future Outlook

I left the weekend pretty frustrated with my performance and the car, though the improvement in race 4 with the rake change was encouraging. In hindsight, Carlos was correct when reminding me how high-stakes the track is, and I think that lived in my subconscious, tempering how much I was willing to push.

Never are the metal crash barriers as apparent as they are at LRP. Particularly in Uphill, where the fastest line is to get as close to the barriers as possible.

We had planned to finish off the GLTC season at PittRace in October, but between frustrations with the rules and burnout from the crazy amount of work travel, we decided to call it a season.

In hindsight, with the news of PittRace's impending closure, and deeper introspection about the future of GLTC and my ability to continue showing up for full seasons (or lack thereof), I do regret that we didn't attend the PittRace finale.

Concluding the 2025 season, we sincerely thank the entire Condor Speed Shop race team, ROWE Motor Oils, HRE Wheels, Motorsport Hardware, TortSport, and CRC Brakleen for graciously supporting our 2025 race program.