More than a Shell (SRRT at Homestead)

When you look at Subaru Road Racing Team's #35 WRX STI Sedan, you might think that it's a shell -- not an STI at all. In other types of racing, you might be right. The skin is made to look like one make of car or another, and those shells cover similar -- if not identical -- tube frames, engine, and chassis components.

That's not the case for cars that race in the GRAND-AM Grand Sport class with #35. Rather than a shell with an indeterminate running gear, #35 WRX STI has everything that is the heart of the original car. The race car is all that makes a WRX STI a WRX STI. The engine, transmission (with DCCD and SI-DRIVE), and the basics of the suspension are there, with some modifications. It may not be showroom stock, but it's still an STI!

The GRAND-AM GS and Street Tuner classes consist of race cars that still have their brand essences. So the heart and soul of a WRX STI competes with its equivalent Mustang, Camaro, BMW, Porsche, and so on. What you see is real, and so is the racing.

Last weekend, SRRT's WRX STI was driven against a field of 29 other GS Class cars in the GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge at Homestead Miami Speedway in Homestead, Florida. On the final score sheet, #35 did not finish. Despite that, SRRT had a solid weekend. Practice times showed Bret Spaude and Andrew Aquilante to be well in the top half of the cars in the GS class. Their 11th starting spot edged the top third.

Early in the race, SRRT brought #35 into the pits for small tweaks during the many full-course yellows for small adjustments. Despite falling back, Spaude and Aquilante brought back #35. They charged forward enough to promise a top-10 finish.

Then, with about an hour remaining in the 2.5-hour race, a transmission problem ended #35's day.

SRRT Performance in the 2011 GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Grand Sport Class
Event	Date/Location	Drivers	Finishing Position	Driver Standings	Team Standings
Round 1: GRAND-AM 200 Daytona International Speedway	January 28 Daytona Beach, FL	Andrew Aquilante/ Bret Spaude	13	25/25 (tie)	13
Round 2: Kia 200 Homestead Miami Speedway	March 5 Homestead, FL	Andrew Aquilante/ Bret Spaude	DNF1	38/38 (tie)	20

 ¹ Transmission

Every race demands hours and hours of preparation. That ritual is already under way for the next competition four weeks away. A racing team never sits still, especially between races. The car is not a static piece -- it's never finished. Rather, it's an evolution based on information derived from what has gone well and what has gone badly in previous events. As a result of applying what the team has learned from trying a new piece here, an altered setting there, a mistake in judgment, a previously unused test procedure, the application of computer analysis, and many more other lessons, the car matures. It becomes increasingly better.

This is a lot like the course of action set out by Mark Donohue in the book The Unfair Advantage, which was published in the mid-1970s. If you're a race fan, this book is a must-read!

-- Ric Hawthorne