News

Round 2 – March Madness at VIR with Performance Autosport

Story by: Kevin Adolf at PAS

After a very humbling start to the season the entire PAS Racing crew knew we had some homework to do and needed to come back strong in March to prove we were going to put this car back out front. Between the damage we sustained and the ABS issue that we were scratching our heads on, the month between the Feb and March event flew by extremely fast.

The next thing we knew it was a few days away from the event and we were running out of time. While at the body shop we took this time to convert the car form it’s original 2011 body work to the more updated 2013 body and we think it turned out absolutely great. We have a full livery planned for this and will be debuting it in a few weeks, so the look for this race was 100% temporary to carry us through the weekend.

Time was tight for what we needed to get done between events and without nailing down the fix for sure on the ABS we decided to go the safe route and installed a strut style Cortex Precision Racing Technology Xtreme-Grip Track front end. With putting the stock engine cradle back in the car we returned the front hubs and ABS system back to stock and it worked perfectly. The custom JRi double adjustable front shocks performed great and complimented the CorteX Watts link out back very well.

When we arrived on Friday we wanted to shake the car out for some test laps since we just had replaced the entire front suspension and still needed to test the ABS system at speed. Everything worked out great and every little change we made to the car made it go faster. So fast in fact that during our last test session driver Chris Cobetto clicked off a 2:05.347, the fastest this car has ever lapped around VIR! The car was happy and we were really looking forward to a full weekend of racing.

Saturday morning was cold, but dry. The track was fast and packed with cars for qualifying. Without getting a full clear lap we qualified 2nd behind Steven Kent. As the green dropped the Thunder group got bunched up with an AI-X car getting a wild ride through the grass. This race proved to be an exciting one with the front 3 cars going nose to tail down the front stretch drafting going into turn 1.

Sunday was a flash back from the February event with weather starting with rain, then sleet, then snow, and back to a mix of all 3 every few minutes. It was absolutely freezing…literally..and the track conditions were horrible. The goal was to stay on track and during qualifying we managed another 2nd place starting position behind Steven Kent. The race was actually quite close as Steven Kent was driving absolutely amazingly in the rain staying out front for many laps until getting into a big slide going up the uphill esses allowing Cobetto to get a run on him going down the back stretch. From there Cobetto stayed out front for the remainder of the race clinching our 2nd win of the weekend!

Huge thanks to Filip at CorteX Precision Racing Technology who scrambled all month long to make sure we got what we needed to get back on track and put the PAS Mustang RTR back up front. And the work isn’t done just yet. The ABS fix is IN and the SLA front suspension will be going back on the car for April at Summit Point which we are really looking forward to. The tight and more technical Summit Point will be a great test for the new suspension.