Prototype Development Group achieves big gains with RSRT & Ridetech [Archive]

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StevenBlakesley

07-18-2016, 03:42 PM

Prototype Development Group achieves big gains with RSRT & Ridetech

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA (July 18, 2016) – California-based Prototype Development Group race team is a three-time Western Endurance Racing Series Champion, currently racing with Carl Rydquist from Sweden at the wheel. Despite their success, the team yearned for more performance out of their Factory Five GTM car. They knew they needed a top level partner for their suspension development. PDG found both with Ridetech and Ron Sutton Race Technology.

The partnership was sparked when PDG reached out to Ridetech for a partnership, with Ridetech's Bret Voelkel accepting the proposal and linking the team to Ridetech partner Ron Sutton. Shortly after signing the partnership, PDG traveled to Buttonwillow Raceway for a test that produced eye-opening results.

"We had customized name brand race shocks and ran into a limit with the shock absorbers ability to control wheel motion," PDG crew chief True Tourtillott said. "I was aware of Ridetech and Ron Sutton's expertise and their commitment to be a market leader. Their product is multiple steps better than anything on the market. I saw the success they were having in Pro-Touring and it sparked my curiosity in Ron and Ridetech to try to take it to a wheel-to-wheel road racing environment."

On May 27th, the team traveled to California's Buttonwillow Raceway to test their new Ridetech and RSRT package. Buttonwillow Raceway is one of the bumpier tracks on the WERC circuit making it the perfect venue to put a suspension package through its paces.

Driver Carl Rydquist was tasked with track testing each shock package the team had brought using one set of tires for an accurate comparison. Rydquist went out and set a baseline time of 1:49.9 with PDG's current shock set-up.

The crew then installed the first set of shocks that Ron Sutton provided them. The Ridetech Triple Adjustable shocks with "Track-Star" valving. The shocks carry the same valving that Sutton has used for clients in the Pro-Touring arena. Carl said the PDG GTM car immediately had more grip with a best lap of 1:46.8, a shocking 3.1 seconds quicker than the baseline package.

"We haven't done of a lot of hardcore, fender-to-fender racing so we were happy to see the results. It was an epic improvement!" Ridetech's Bret Voelkel said. "I would not have predicted that level of improvement. It is almost unheard of and really promising."

Buoyed by the progress PDG moved on to the second set of Ridetech Triple Adjustable shocks that had been provided to them. This set of shocks carried RSRT's "Race-Star" valving and the performance was even more impressive. The car gained another four tenths of a second for a total best lap of 1:46.8. PDG had gained 3.5 seconds a lap in time simply by changing to Ridetech shocks with Ron Sutton valving.

"The Ridetech solution has every bit of the performance of a high end shock at a price impossible to beat for a triple adjustable American-made product. The additional value also comes from the support that Ron provides. We couldn't be more pleased," Tourillot said.

Although Sutton provided the advice and the product, he too was pleasantly surprised by the amount of gains that PDG experienced.

"There are a lot of name brand shocks out there, with long histories, that are simply behind the technology curve," Sutton said. "I knew the Ridetech shocks withmy valving would out perform the brand they had. Buy even I was surprised that the shocks went 3.1 seconds faster in a GT car & on a rough track. People always ask me how much faster these shocks would be. I couldn't quantify it before. Here we had a proven car, with a good set-up and a consistent driver with great feedback. Now we know how much quicker there are."

It was a benchmark day for all parties involved that had them encouraged for their future. Prototype Development Group has a laser sharp focus to go for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill overall win. That victory seems much more within their grasp with the improvements they have seen with Ridetech.

"It was not so much about lap time but that the driver has control of all four tires," Tourillot said. "In endurance racing with multiple classes, the ability to drive anywhere with confidence while passing five to ten cars a lap is huge. It is critical to be able to go off line and off camber."

Voelkel expects the performance from the Buttonwillow test to be attention grabbing and attests the performance to several factors.

"A lot of people see the price and dismiss the product," Voelkel said. "But with our U.S. made product, you can leave the shocks on for years with little to no wear or durability issues. The only way to be comfortable as a driver is if the car performs with consistency. That driver confidence inspires speed."

For more information on Ridetech, visit them online at http://ridetech.com/ or call 812-482-2932

For more information on Ron Sutton Race Technology, visit them online at http://www.ronsuttonracetechnology.com/ or call 916-834-8051

ABOUT RIDETECH
RideTech is celebrating its 20th anniversary by continuing to invent and manufacture innovative suspension and shock absorber solutions for a wide variety of vehicles ranging from street rods, musclecars, and racecars… to advanced air suspensions for military and OEM projects. All products are designed and manufactured in their Jasper, Indiana facility

ABOUT RON SUTTON RACE TECHNOLOGY
Ron Sutton Race Technology is a one-stop resource for winning car building or improving performance for Autocross, Road Course Track Days & Pro Touring Cars. Ron offers suspension, brake & aerodynamic optimization services, complete chassis/suspension designs, cutting edge suspension packages, consulting services, books, workshops & an online store with 600 brands & over 90,000 parts.

bret

07-20-2016, 05:47 AM

SSLance

07-26-2016, 02:06 PM

I have no doubt that my Ridetech shocks with Ron Sutton's AutoX-Star valving are the sole reason my under prepped car can run right with way more prepared cars on both autocross courses and road courses. I've had them on my car for 3 years now and they are still way better than I am as a driver.

It is nice to see a real race team see such solid performance gains by bolting Ron's shocks on their race car as well, not that I needed any validating... I already knew how good they were.

Damn True

08-04-2016, 08:10 PM

Hello everyone.

I didn't realize this had been posted so soon. We've been working hard on improving the PDG Factory Five GTM to take further advantage of these shocks.

.....between us girls....there's been even more gains.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them here. I'll make an effort to check in here more often.

FYI...we're headed to Utah this weekend for our season finale.

33 entrants, 10 cars in our class. 5 factory Porsche Cup cars, 1 Lamborghini Hurrican Super Trofeo (not kidding) a Ginetta LMP3 (really, not kidding) and a handfull of bimmers.

We're in a dead heat with TruSpeed Autosport for the Championship. Winner take all. None of the other fast cars are in contention because they haven't done the whole series so while we don't need to win overall to win the championship (though that's MY goal) a finish ahead of TruSpeed seals it.

.....and FWIW, TrueSpeed is running a Factory Porsche GT3 Cup car...with an enduro fuel kit and a 4.0 that if it were actually racing in the GT3 Cup series would be as legal as a Alex Rodriquez' urine samples. It's a 400k+ factory built race car.....ours was built in a garage in Stockton, CA.

Not sure where the T&S will be posted for this race. When I find out I'll post it here in case anyone wants to follow along online.

Damn True

08-06-2016, 03:44 PM

Timing & scoring is on www.racehero.io

Damn True

03-23-2017, 11:24 AM

First race of the season!!!

Hey all. Here's Carl Rydqvist qualifying the #4 PDG GTM at Willow last weekend. Qualified P2 overall behind a Ginetta LMP3 and ahead of a Norma M20 and a "highly developed" 911 Cup car

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRPyk6VFCN0&feature=youtu.be

Gotta work on the white balance in the image but it's a pretty undramatic lap. 1st race of the year with our new wing, rake and testing some new tire compounds. But a seriously nice showing of speed from the #4 car!!
We've certainly done some things right.

We continue to work with RSRT and are seeing consistent gains in performance!

Ron Sutton

03-23-2017, 12:30 PM

Damn True

04-17-2017, 08:24 PM

Hey everyone...

As mentioned previously, we've had our first race in the NASA WERC (Werstern Endurance Racing Championship) at Willow Springs. The car was really fast and though we didn't have anything for the $650,000 Ginetta LMP3 we had the rest of the field well covered on pace alone thanks to the huge gains we've made with the car since beginning our shock program with RideTech and RSRT. As they say though, "Racing is Easy & Nothing Ever Goes Wrong." ...at just before the 1/2-way point in the race we saw the gearbox temp spike and a lap or two later lost the ability to shift. Turns out that the cage on the 5th gear support bearing decided it had had enough for the day and gave up. Cage material was all over the inside of the gearbox and it jammed the internal shift linkage. No fault of Mendeola, they just got a bad bearing from their supplier. Unfortunately, we hadn't yet completed 1/2 the distance for the race so we wound up with zero points. We've set ourselves up for an uphill battle in the championship in this series.

But enough bad news.......

Yesterday we had our first race of the year with USTCC (United States Touring Car Championship). This is a sprint racing series that mixes Touring and GT cars. Some really great drivers and teams from top-to bottom and some interesting artillery in the rather loosely regulated (except in power to weight ratio) GT class. We faced off against a Jaguar XKR, a nasty M3 Superlight and a Camaro bodied Howe TA2 chassis....and the best part...the race was at one of America's most iconic tracks...Laguna Seca!

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Carl Rydquist is again driving for us in this series as well. He's a test engineer for Mercedes Monday to Friday and on weekends he isn't racing is a SAG precision stunt driver and driving coach. He's got a ton of European endurance experience including wins at Zandevoort, Nurburgring and a bucket-load of Porsche cup type events. In the US, he's done a bit of CTSCC and PWC racing as well.

Our major restriction in this series is power to weight ratio. To be within the rules our partners at Roadrace Engineering developed a custom engine map for our LS 376/525 that caps horsepower at 420...it's not unlike what you see done with the tunes on modern GT3 cars racing in IMSA and PWC. A pretty trick bit of software engineering...that I don't for a second pretend to understand.

139498

The car rolled out of the trailer fast and after our recent spate of mechanicals it was a real treat to be able to spend the weekend tuning the car and extracting the last few 10ths out of it. A few aero tweaks to maximize mid corner speeds and we were close to where we needed to be. The last bit of speed came from...as we've come to expect...our RideTech/RSRT shock package. The extremely precise and predictable adjustments allowed us to pin down the front end of the car in the most critical corners maximizing entry speed and delaying weight transfer. At the rear we were able to soften the car, just enough to ensure that it was supple enough to lay down the power from mid-corner off without giving anything up elsewhere on the track.

Saturday ended with qualifying and Carl was able to lay down a 1:34 (we've gone a bit faster at Laguna (1:32) but we had 100 more horsepower when we did) against the P2 qualifiers best of 1:39.....for comparison...two years ago when we raced in this series we battled head to head with this guy all year long and wound up beating him in points by 20 or so IIRC....and now...he only gets this view of the car.

139499

But Saturday was warm and sunny...Sunday...not so much. Rain was in the forecast and it was supposed to begin according to my meteorological tools in our trailer...about 15min before the Green flag. So Sunday mornings practice sessions were spent putting a setup on the car to optimize it for the wet...but we had to effect the tune in the dry. No small challenge. But having raced at the 2014 25hr in roughly 11hrs of torrential rain we have a pretty good idea of what this car needs to run in the rain. That combined with Carl's experiences in Europe a great set of Hankook Ventus full wets and our RideTech shock package we were pretty confident we'd be able to arrive at a setup that would work for us.

One of the things we learned from Ron when we began our partnership was to make aggressive changes to the car then creep back to ideal. Since we only had two practice sessions this worked out spectacularly. We pulled a bunch of damping out in the first session...and the car was total garbage. Carl brought it in after a few laps and we worked back a bit toward the right setup. We were close at the end of the first session but still not working the front tires hard enough to keep heat in them when the rain came. In the second session we made one more small change to the front and we were dead nuts on that end and another small change to soften the rear just a touch. Then, given that it was Easter Sunday we said a couple of "Our Fathers" and mounted the rain tires and waited to grid.

139501

I hopped on my bike to head up the hill to spot for Carl. I left the trailer and it was dry. By the time I got to my spot above T1 I was soaking wet and you could barely see the bridge between T5-6. The skys opened up on us and turned Laguna Seca into Laguna Mojado. But...the radar indicated that this band was the first....and the second wouldn't come for about 45min. Which means we'd be starting the race on full wets (GOOD) but the track would be drying throughout the race (sub-optimal) but it might (fingers crossed) rain again just before the end.

139502

In USTCC they invert the field for the starts putting the Touring cars up front and the much faster GT cars at the rear in s standing start. In this case, they put the TC's on the grid all the way up at the flag stand and gridded the GTs all the way back as close as they could get us to turn T-11. When the green flag dropped Carl took off like a shot and was 4-5 cars deep into the Touring Car field before getting to T-2. At the end of the first lap just as he went under the bridge at Start/Finish he passed P1 in the TC field. In a single lap he had left the entire GT & TC field in his wake. P2 in the GT class was still mired deep in the TC field.

At this point we knew we had the field covered and it was a matter of playing two simultaneous strategies. First, keep the tires cool. Look for every bit of standing water on the track and stay off the main (rapidly drying) racing line in hopes that we can either make the rain tires last for the entire race or at least until the second band of showers hit. The second play was to put as much time into P2 as possible in the event that the track just got too dry and we needed to pit for slicks. We can do a 4-tire change pretty quickly, but Laguna is a quick lap. We calculated that we'd need a 1:15 gap at 15min remaining or more in order to pit, change 4 tires and run down the P2 car before the checker fell.

Luck fell our way though in that the track never dried enough that we had to really worry about burning up the wets.

After 45min of racing..and a few more "Our Fathers"...the checkered flag dropped. We had won pole position, set fastest lap, lapped everyone but P2 overall who we beat by 1:15. Not sure when, but this and all the USTCC races will be broadcast on NBC Sports later in the year.

139503

Huge thanks, first and foremost to RideTech and Ron Sutton Race Technology. This shock package really has taken this program to the next level and given us the ability to give the car and driver what they need when they need it, regardless of what track or the weather. Additional thanks to Hankook Tire, Mendeola Gear, Baja Designs, Champion Spark plugs and all the rest of our partners.

Our next race is April 22 at Buttonwillow. Back to WERC so in the interim we need to reconfigure the car for endurance racing. Anyone in So-Cal or the central valley is welcome to come on out and hang with us at the track. We love putting kids in the car so if you have a son or daughter that loves race cars, bring them too! If you can't make it you can follow the action on racehero.io but we'd love it if you came out to the track and enjoyed the racing with us!!!

Damn True

04-18-2017, 07:48 AM

Willow Springs qualy video (white balance is off on the camera...sorry):

BoEGRwoEiC8&t=250s

Laguna Mojado Race Video (white balance fixed):

HxDeUc-GFAc

Ron Sutton

04-18-2017, 08:07 AM

Yesterday we had our first race of the year with USTCC (United States Touring Car Championship). This is a sprint racing series that mixes Touring and GT cars. Some really great drivers and teams from top-to bottom and some interesting artillery in the rather loosely regulated (except in power to weight ratio) GT class. We faced off against a Jaguar XKR, a nasty M3 Superlight and a Camaro bodied Howe TA2 chassis....and the best part...the race was at one of America's most iconic tracks...Laguna Seca!

139497

139500

Carl Rydquist is again driving for us in this series as well. He's a test engineer for Mercedes Monday to Friday and on weekends he isn't racing is a SAG precision stunt driver and driving coach. He's got a ton of European endurance experience including wins at Zandevoort, Nurburgring and a bucket-load of Porsche cup type events. In the US, he's done a bit of CTSCC and PWC racing as well.

Our major restriction in this series is power to weight ratio. To be within the rules our partners at Roadrace Engineering developed a custom engine map for our LS 376/525 that caps horsepower at 420...it's not unlike what you see done with the tunes on modern GT3 cars racing in IMSA and PWC. A pretty trick bit of software engineering...that I don't for a second pretend to understand.

139498

The car rolled out of the trailer fast and after our recent spate of mechanicals it was a real treat to be able to spend the weekend tuning the car and extracting the last few 10ths out of it. A few aero tweaks to maximize mid corner speeds and we were close to where we needed to be. The last bit of speed came from...as we've come to expect...our RideTech/RSRT shock package. The extremely precise and predictable adjustments allowed us to pin down the front end of the car in the most critical corners maximizing entry speed and delaying weight transfer. At the rear we were able to soften the car, just enough to ensure that it was supple enough to lay down the power from mid-corner off without giving anything up elsewhere on the track.

Saturday ended with qualifying and Carl was able to lay down a 1:34 (we've gone a bit faster at Laguna (1:32) but we had 100 more horsepower when we did) against the P2 qualifiers best of 1:39.....for comparison...two years ago when we raced in this series we battled head to head with this guy all year long and wound up beating him in points by 20 or so IIRC....and now...he only gets this view of the car.

139499

But Saturday was warm and sunny...Sunday...not so much. Rain was in the forecast and it was supposed to begin according to my meteorological tools in our trailer...about 15min before the Green flag. So Sunday mornings practice sessions were spent putting a setup on the car to optimize it for the wet...but we had to effect the tune in the dry. No small challenge. But having raced at the 2014 25hr in roughly 11hrs of torrential rain we have a pretty good idea of what this car needs to run in the rain. That combined with Carl's experiences in Europe a great set of Hankook Ventus full wets and our RideTech shock package we were pretty confident we'd be able to arrive at a setup that would work for us.

One of the things we learned from Ron when we began our partnership was to make aggressive changes to the car then creep back to ideal. Since we only had two practice sessions this worked out spectacularly. We pulled a bunch of damping out in the first session...and the car was total garbage. Carl brought it in after a few laps and we worked back a bit toward the right setup. We were close at the end of the first session but still not working the front tires hard enough to keep heat in them when the rain came. In the second session we made one more small change to the front and we were dead nuts on that end and another small change to soften the rear just a touch. Then, given that it was Easter Sunday we said a couple of "Our Fathers" and mounted the rain tires and waited to grid.

139501

I hopped on my bike to head up the hill to spot for Carl. I left the trailer and it was dry. By the time I got to my spot above T1 I was soaking wet and you could barely see the bridge between T5-6. The skys opened up on us and turned Laguna Seca into Laguna Mojado. But...the radar indicated that this band was the first....and the second wouldn't come for about 45min. Which means we'd be starting the race on full wets (GOOD) but the track would be drying throughout the race (sub-optimal) but it might (fingers crossed) rain again just before the end.

139502

In USTCC they invert the field for the starts putting the Touring cars up front and the much faster GT cars at the rear in s standing start. In this case, they put the TC's on the grid all the way up at the flag stand and gridded the GTs all the way back as close as they could get us to turn T-11. When the green flag dropped Carl took off like a shot and was 4-5 cars deep into the Touring Car field before getting to T-2. At the end of the first lap just as he went under the bridge at Start/Finish he passed P1 in the TC field. In a single lap he had left the entire GT & TC field in his wake. P2 in the GT class was still mired deep in the TC field.

At this point we knew we had the field covered and it was a matter of playing two simultaneous strategies. First, keep the tires cool. Look for every bit of standing water on the track and stay off the main (rapidly drying) racing line in hopes that we can either make the rain tires last for the entire race or at least until the second band of showers hit. The second play was to put as much time into P2 as possible in the event that the track just got too dry and we needed to pit for slicks. We can do a 4-tire change pretty quickly, but Laguna is a quick lap. We calculated that we'd need a 1:15 gap at 15min remaining or more in order to pit, change 4 tires and run down the P2 car before the checker fell.

Luck fell our way though in that the track never dried enough that we had to really worry about burning up the wets.

After 45min of racing..and a few more "Our Fathers"...the checkered flag dropped. We had won pole position, set fastest lap, lapped everyone but P2 overall who we beat by 1:15. Not sure when, but this and all the USTCC races will be broadcast on NBC Sports later in the year.

139503

Hey True !

First ... congrats on the Dominant win in USTCC (United States Touring Car Championship) Gt Class ! That is quite an accomplishment.

Second, tell the crew & Carl I said, "Hi & Congrats !"

Third, for a race team car chief, you have quite the writing skills. That's quite a good update & report. You might need to change your title. LOL

:cheers:

Damn True

04-18-2017, 02:05 PM

I have to give Ron Sutton and True Tourtillott (Damn True on this forum) a lot of credit on this project. Ridetech has built the foundation for a truly world class damper, but at this level it is the experience of the crew cheif and the individual shock tuner that makes the difference between good, great, and this level of performance. They took our foundation and refined it into a component that will allow the PDG team to see the competitive success they have worked so hard for. And this was with one test session!
As I tell all my customers...thanks for making our stuff look so good!

I just noticed this post...duh...

Wow, Bret, thanks. But I can't take credit for any of this. This is 100% the result of the collaboration of Carl & Ron. I just assembled the component parts (You, Ron, and our Team). Carl's experience and ability to communicate what the car is doing and what it needs and Ron's ability to translate the language of "Race Driver" into useful english is what is in play. It helps that Carl is himself an engineer (at Mercedes) but Ron seriously knows his craft. Give guys like them a great set of tools (Your RideTech shocks) and they can make magic happen.

I just wish Ron wasn't so bloody busy and that he could come with us to the the track. We've gotten to where we can work pretty well with the RideTech package on our own, but often, given the peculiarities of race weekend schedules, we don't have a lot of time to test and iterate on our setup. I almost always feel like I'm leaving something on the table and that..."If only Ron were here"...we could extract that last bit of speed from the car.

I should say however that this is in no way meant to indicate that the RideTech product is difficult to work with. It isn't. The testing and iteration just takes time and cycles to get exactly right. We often don't have enough of it but because the shocks are so predictable with their adjustments we are able to get things headed in the right direction...but we're racers. If there is an advantage, we want to employ it....and that's why we race with RideTech.

Damn True

04-24-2017, 01:04 PM

Two races in 7 days...I'm tired but super happy with the results.

Hope to have a story and some video for y'all in a couple of days.

Damn True

04-25-2017, 09:38 AM

Just a peek

c6sDFzeotpY

The vertical bar next to the Speedo/Tach is a heart-rate monitor.

Damn True

04-26-2017, 01:44 PM

RYDQUIST TAKES FLAG TO FLAG WIN AT BUTTONWILLOW

Only a week after winning the United States Touring Car Championship season opener at Laguna Seca, racedriver Carl Rydquist collected another race win, this time in the second round of the 2017 NASA Western Endurance Championship. Driving the Prototype Development Group's Factory Five GTM owned by Yvonne and Richard Migliori, Rydquist showed the team's determination to fight the 2016 champions TruSpeed Autosport by setting a new ES class lap record in qualifying with a 1.46,9.

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Once the green flag dropped, Rydquist was chased by Jim Slavik in the TruSpeed Porsche 997 GT3 Cup 4.0 and Troy Lindstrom in Coldcok Whiskey's blazing fast SuperTruck. Lapping of slower cars from the lower classes began after four laps which added to the excitement since any gap created between these top three ES class cars could get quickly reduced to nothing. After one hour of frantic racing Lindstrom's Supertruck developed a suspension problem and continued with reduced speed, and at the same time Rydquist was able to edge out a cushion over Slavik that eventually would hold past the pitstops.

TruSpeed had changed tires and put Tom Haacker at the wheel of their screaming Porsche whereas the Prototype Development Group had only added fuel to make it to the end. As both Haacker and Rydquist were nearing qualifying laptimes when lapped traffic permitted, it was obvious that any mistake or technical problem would decide the outcome of the race, but both cars and drivers ran trouble free until the end which meant the pre-pitstop gap Rydquist had built up reamined unchanged and he took the checkered flag as winner of the ES class to mark his first endurance racing win of 2017. Slavik/Haacker (who both have Championships in the Pirelli GT3 Cup Series in addition to racing in NASA WERC) finished second in the ES class in their TruSpeed Autosport Porsche 997 GT3 Cup 4.0 followed by Lindstrom/Sampson in the Coldcock Whiskey SuperTruck. Winner overall was a Norma Sports Prototype from the ESR class.

"Crazy race tonight!", Carl commented, "This clockwise configuration can be super costly in terms of time when lapping slower traffic, and it's a track where you need to be on point everywhere which makes it even tougher when you can't see anything. As usual, the NASA drivers are real racers who are extremely talented and good with the speed differences, just a couple of the drivers were struggling to keep it together and dirt dropped a lot in the end, pulling out gravel all over the track and making huge dust clouds sometimes providing no visibility at all. Overall it was probably one of the hardest races I can recall, but also very fun thanks to the latest steps with our Ridetech shocks tuned by Ron Sutton, and the Hankook race tires that held up extremely well. Those factors and a super fast pitstop by the PDG crew meant I could stay in the lead until the end."

Carl Rydquist's next race with the Prototype Development Group's Factory Five Racing GTM will be in the United States Touring Car Championship on May 20-21 at Autoclub Speedway in Fontana, CA.

CONTACT RYDQUIST RACING per [email protected] for stunt driving, race driving and partnership inquiries.

ABOUT CARL RYDQUIST

Carl Rydquist (born 1977 in Goteborg) is a Swedish racing driver and a SAG-AFTRA licensed stunt and precision driver who has won many auto races, the most famous to date the Zandvoort 500. In Rydquist's auto racing career, he currently has a victory in one out of four races and podium finishes in two out of three Touring and GT car endurance and sprint races.

Rydquist won the Zandvoort 500 during the 2005 Dutch Winter Championship making him the first of only three Swedish drivers to ever win this race, following three successful seasons in the Swedish Endurance Racing Cup which earned him two GT-class titles (2001, 2004). This was the starting point of his international career in Europe and the USA.

ABOUT NASA PRO RACING

National Auto Sport Association is a business dedicated to organizing and promoting racing activities for both the aspiring or accomplished racer. The National Auto Sport Association (NASA) was formed in 1991 to deliver high quality motorsports events to enthusiasts at major racing venues throughout the nation.

NASA has created programs that allow owners of both racecars and high-performance street-driven vehicles to enjoy the full performance capabilities of their cars in a safe and controlled environment. NASA offers many different programs that will allow you to enjoy motorsports on a number of different levels, including our High Performance Driving Events (HPDE), Rally Sport, Time Trial, NASA-X and Competition Racing programs.

NASA is the sanctioning body for the longest endurance car race in the world, the 25 Hours of Thunderhill, which is a premiere sportscar racing event that attracts international drivers from all over the world and sees in excess of 70 starting racecars annually.

Damn True

04-26-2017, 01:54 PM

Hey gang...sorry for the lack of photos this week. We we're counting on the track photog and he decided not to shoot the endurance race.

Should have a longer video with more action and both fwd and rear view for you soon.

Damn True

05-08-2017, 01:02 PM

Still working on video...we've all got regular jobs too...sorry.

In other news...

Our next race is coming up soon. May 20/21 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA. We'll be racing this time with USTCC so it will be a sprint format. Likely practice and qualy on Saturday and practice, qualy-2 and race (usually 45min or so) on Sunday.

I'll post the weekend schedule when I get it but in the mean-time we'd like to invite you to come on out and enjoy the racing with us. We'd love to show you and your kids the car and hang out and bench-race a bit.

Hope to see you there!

Ron Sutton

05-09-2017, 09:32 AM

Damn True

05-12-2017, 01:51 PM

The May 20/21 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA will be a good race to watch.

True, do you know if NASA charges for spectators ... and if so ... how much ?

Not up to NASA it's up to the track.
For the places we race: Willow Springs doesn't, Buttonwillow does ($10 I think), Thunderhill doesn't, Laguna Seca doesn't, Sears Pt (no, I refuse to use the new name) does ($20 last time we were there). First time we've been to Auto Club so I'm not sure....I will ask.

Damn True

05-12-2017, 02:07 PM

Race director says no entry fee at Auto Club Speedway for the road racing.

....note that there is a drag racing event at the facility on the same weekend...no idea as to what they're doing...but keep it in mind if you're coming out in terms of traffic.

Hope to see some of you LA/OC/SD folks at the track. We'd love to visit with you and by all means, bring your kids. We'd love to put them in our car.

Damn True

06-23-2017, 01:50 PM

Fontana
Sonoma
.....and beyond........

In a previous installment I mentioned the difference, from a Crew/Crew-chief perspective between sprint races and endurance races. In this installment I’ll illustrate the impact of that difference when it goes right and when it goes wrong.

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The salient difference is time. You have very little of it within the construct of the USTCC weekend in which to maximize the performance of the car for a 30-45min sprint race. We don’t care in this environment about making the tires last (although keeping the temps under control is still critical) and we don’t care about fuel except as ballast. We care about lap times and ability to overtake when needed and we generally have one (rarely two) practice session and a qualy period to get it right before the actual race.

Since I last posted we’ve raced twice with USTCC, once at the previously mentioned Autoclub Speedway in Fontana and again at Sears Pt. in Sonoma.

The race at Fontana presented a number of challenges in that we’d never raced there so the transitions on/off the banks of the “roval” and the unique, sustained loads of the banks turn 1 & 2 was a new one for us as well.

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Right off the bat we nuked a RF hub. Luckily, Carl felt it early and slowed way down before things got really bad and we avoided backing it into the wall in turn 1 or 2 but we destroyed a set of tires when the RF began to act like a shopping cart wheel. Imagine that at about 150mph. A delaminated racing tire is as neat looking as it is terrifying…

With that fixed we were able to massage the RideTech/RSRT shocks to deal with the unique inputs of going on-through-off the banks and also deal with the bomb-crater-esque dips in the road course infield segment and we were feeling pretty good. Then, turning our attention to the aero side we made some adjustments to our new APR wing to maintain just enough downforce to deal with the infield corners w/o creating so much drag as to limit our top speed on the banks. Cool right?

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No Gin & Juice, but laaayed back just the same.....

USTCC utilizes a BOP (Balance Of Perfomance) model to keep the racing close. Under their model they modify power:weight by awarding weight penalties to top finishers to slow them down. Our ability to change the tune on the LS when needed allows us to usually find an advantageous combination of weight/power relative to the nuances of a given track….if your calculations use good data.

At some point in the weekend my data wasn’t good. Either I screwed up the math (entirely possible) or we got a bad reading off of USTCC’s scales for our baseline weight (also possible). Either way, my calculations for our weight relative to our power were off…a lot.

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Carl absolutely drove the wee out of the car. His braking points were spot on, his lines were great and he gave the eventual winner a good run for a few laps but because of the weight he was forced to overdrive the car a bit and took the tire temps into the red and we lost a fair amount of grip. The end result was that Daniel Akhromstev (the guy in the red/black BMW) was able to pull away in enough in the infield that we weren’t able to make up (due to aero advantage) on the banks. We finished 2nd. Not horrible, but it keeps the championship points totals a bit closer than we'd like.

I am a competitive SOB and losing sucks, but it's valuable. I firmly believe that one learns far more from losing than winning. So there's the silver lining of learning to ensure the validity of my data.....still sucks though......

https://youtu.be/teCk02heoBo

I’d be remiss if I didn’t show you guys this…….

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This isn’t a DTM that some yahoo bought and decided to bring to a track day. This is a 100% home-built replica of a DTM that a 22yr old engineering student is building while in school (what?!?) that he plans to use as a “resume” when he graduates. All the body work is metal. He built a DRS system for the wing. Full FIA-spec cage. Body removed from the tub and channeled. He built the center-drive hubs…..need to talk to him about maybe making some for us. He made that steering wheel as well as the software to run the paddle-shift system and though he didn’t make the guts of that transmission, it’s too bitchin not to show you……enjoy.

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That button isn't a joke...this thing has a functional DRS

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Just this past weekend we got together again with the USTCC for a sweltering Sunday in Sonoma. This time things went a touch smoother…..maybe because I was 250mi away in Paso Robles and not doing math…no pics yet....but video below....

At any rate, the team unloaded the car and it was right on par with the much lighter BMW from the previous race that is our primary threat in the championship. Sears Pt. is obviously a vastly different track than Fontana. The racing surface is excellent, pool table smooth with consistent and useable curbs. Faster, but just as technical as Laguna, it also calls for a lot more wing than we’d used at Fontana. Our lead engineer, Jim Haussler, had made some changes to the front end between races and he got it absolutely right. That combined with some simple and predictable adjustments to the RideTech/RSRT shocks got us right where we needed to be. Carl was raving about the grip levels, the ability to get into the throttle early in the turns and to brake really late.

I can’t authoritatively give you a breakdown of the race weekend beyond that as I wasn’t there but I’ll let the video tell the story. Enjoy.

https://youtu.be/x6wucMGYKpY

…..we finally got the pictures from the Laguna race that we’d paid for….would’a been nice to have them a few months ago. Can't link to pics in this gallery, but you are free to have a look. Get a load of the pics in the corkscrew...neat huh?

https://billwangphotos.smugmug.com/Track-Photos/2017-04-2223/USTCC-4/i-2tqd3Qj

So…what’s next?

This coming weekend (Saturday 24 June) we’re racing at Buttonwillow. This time back to endurance racing for a 3hr event that begins at 6PM. As always, anyone is welcome to come join us at the track (a few did at Fontana…thanks for stopping by!) come before 1pm if you want to see practice & qualifying and catch the daytime race action from other classes. Honestly, we’d love to have you come say hi and absolutely mean it when I say don’t hesitate to bring your kids.

This ain’t a Goodguys show….we love putting kids in our car.

Ron Sutton

06-24-2017, 11:14 AM

Great report & update True!

Damn True

06-28-2017, 12:26 PM

Back to endurance racing….yippee!

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020Night202-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20Night%20-%20BW__9877_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zpspiovxldt.jpg.html )

This last weekend we had round three of the NASA Western Endurance Racing Championship at Buttonwillow (http://buttonwillowraceway.com). If you aren’t familiar, Buttonwillow is located in California’s central valley (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Buttonwillow+Raceway+Park/@35.4907701,-119.5446288,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x604167651662b657!8m2!3d35.49 07701!4d-119.5446288) about 30mi West of Bakersfield and 50mi North of the I-5 “Grapevine”. It’s a challenging track to go fast on due to the surface and the technical nature of many of it’s critical corners. It also has many different configurations, some advantageous to our car, some advantageous to others. This race would use the #13 CCW configuration which works pretty well for us, but it also has a few elements that play into TruSpeed’s strengths. We are really well matched with TruSpeed, and their brand new, factory Porsche 911 GT3 and as usual, we are battling them for the championship.

We are however playing from behind on this season as we had a gearbox mainshaft bearing failure in the season opener. We were awarded only 43 points based on the amount of laps completed in that round so we have a lot of catching up to do and need a bit of luck in order to close the gap to TruSpeed who has one win and two second place finishes coming into this round compared to our two wins and a 43pt DNF.

We unloaded the car on Saturday morning and jumped right into installing a hub upgrade on the front of the car that Mike Holland brought with him from San Diego. We’d been using MyRaceShop.com’s (http://myraceshop.com) (Mike’s company) up-leveled hubs in the rear for a few years now, but we suspect that the increased cornering loads we are seeing with our current setup combined with the additional downforce have accelerated the wear on the fronts as well. Hence the recent front hub failure at Auto Club Speedway. That and a recheck of the alignment completed we hit the track for practice/qualifying.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020side20sh-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20side%20shot%20-%20BW__9410_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zps38qqchpo.jpg.html )

On a normal weekend, Carl Rydquist would have taken the car out for this session, put a time on the books so we’d be in the show and then we’d concentrate on fine tuning the package for the race. This time ‘round things necessarily had to run differently….

Buttonwillow can be, and often is an utterly miserable place in the summer and this weekend lived up to that reputation with the temp at sunrise at 75deg and mid day at 110. The forecast was for 108deg and 1-2kt winds when the green flag was scheduled to drop at 6pm….aaaaaand Carl was recovering from a bout of illness.

In 3hr races we try to run solo to reduce the time in the pits associated with a driver change so we wanted to maximize the odds that Carl, in his diminished state, could go the distance and to facilitate that we had Mike Holland qualify the car. Normally not a big deal, but he’s had some profound business commitments this season that have kept him out of the car since last years 25hr.

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A Norma M20 in case you were curious....they're quick. Essentially the previous generation of LMP3.

Mike did fine though and got up to speed reasonably quickly qualifying the car in P3 behind a Norma M20 and TruSpeed. Mainly because of how easily and predictably the car can be tuned to a given track now that we are running the RideTech/RSRT shock package. In just over a month we’ve gone from a rough but very fast “Roval” at Fontana, to the super smooth and technical Sears Pt. to the very rough and technical Buttonwillow. Very different tracks with huge differences in the amount of available grip combined with very different aero influence and at each we were either the fastest car on track or within a couple of ticks. All because we have developed a “book” of what the car needs from the shocks at each of these tracks and the simplicity and predictability of putting the required changes into the car. It just works the way you want and works well.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020Night202-2.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20Night%20-%20BW__9864_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zpsdeckxguw.jpg.html )

Our strategy for this race was to bank time against the slower of TruSpeeds two drivers as we had in the past which would allow Carl to dial things back to manage the gap in the second half of the race hopefully preserving his strength in the event he had to battle for position close to the end.

Mike Tyson once said that everyone goes into a fight with a plan and that doing so works….right up until the first time you get punched in the mouth.

If you’ve watched the previous videos of our races I’m sure you’ve noticed the heart rate monitor display in the data. Carl runs around 170-178 bpm while driving and at this race he would be running at that level of intensity, in 108deg temps…all while inside an already hot car while wearing a 3-layer nomex fire suit….for three hours…while sick.

So our punch in the mouth came in the form of Carl being physically limited and unable to drive (for long) at the usual “qualifying lap” pace we like to use early in races. Subsequently, the 1+ lap advantage we are used to putting on TruSpeed early on turned a close battle in the 1st ½ of the race. At one point Jim Slavik in the Porsche got by us but Carl regained the position when Slavik lost the back end briefly in the penultimate corner of the track. All told we wound up less than 10 seconds ahead. That’s all we could do w/o risk of burning up Carls diminished energy.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020side20sh-2.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20side%20shot%20-%20BW__9356_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zpsjx7oclm4.jpg.html )
At lap 62, roughly 1.25hrs into the race TruSpeed made their first stop. Full service, four tires, fuel and a driver change. Worryingly, Slavik was noticeably wobbly when he exited the car. Note here that their car has center-drive hubs and they use a gravity refueling rig like you see at IMSA races so their total time from pit-in to pit-out was dead-on 3 minutes. At this point they were now 1 lap +40sec behind us with their faster driver (Tom Hacker) in the car, fresh Michellins and a full bag of gas. We had another 45min before our first stop.

Within that time TruSpeed was able to claw back roughly 30 seconds before we made our stop wherein we fueled the car with no tire change, poured some cold water into Carl and got back after it. Our total time in the pits was 2.4min so a great pit-stop but, TruSpeed was now on the same lap as us.

Carl was feeling pretty good at this point having managed his level of effort in the 1st ½ of the race so the race was on!

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020Dusk2020-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20Dusk%20-%20BW__9676_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zps9gukrclt.jpg.html )

A bit less than 1.5 hrs remaining and TruSpeed charging hard with a fresh driver and fresh tires.

The heat was taking it’s toll on tires, cars and drivers alike. Honda Research popped a motor on one of its Civic Si’s in a lower class than ours. Another competitor in our class had to pit when his engine just quit due to vapor lock with his fuel tank in excess of 185 degrees. A number of competitors failed to modify their pace to preserve tires in the heat and were seeing earlier than predicted drop-offs in grip and occasional tire failures as well. The drivers were suffering too. Significantly higher incidence of off-track excursions in general and even some from teams that rarely if ever make mistakes led to a number of broken cars and local yellows.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020sunset20-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20sunset%20-%20BW__9581_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zpsdf3g8rw1.jpg.html )
Carl passing slower traffic while someone wrecks in the background....

And Carl continued on…never missing a braking point, nailing every apex and getting as much as possible out of himself while preserving the car against the elements…and Tom Hacker continued his charge as well.

The local yellows conspired to condense the field aiding Hacker in pulling us back in to the point at which we were within 3-5sec of each other on track with ~30min remaining.

At this pace, we calculated that neither us nor TruSpeed would be able to make it to the finish w/o a splash & go stop. The race result would come down to a matter of execution and whomever made the fewest mistakes in the closing hour would likely come out on top.

As if on queue, TruSpeed entered the pits and went….to the penalty box?

Apparently, during the aforementioned flurry of yellow flags Hacker had overtaken someone in a yellow zone earning a “time-out”. This would provide for an anticlimactic finish as once both us added the required fuel to make it to the end we had a full lap advantage. There was still necessity to make it to the end in conditions that were conspiring to break both driver and car.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/June242017Nasa20WERC20Enduro2020Night202-3.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/June-24-2017-Nasa%20WERC%20Enduro%20-%20Night%20-%20BW__9904_Jun2517_CaliPhoto_zpsz9kopysh.jpg.html )

All told, Carl drove for 3hrs in a period that began at 108deg and ended at 95deg. He never dropped further back in the race than P2 in class or P3 overall. We finished P1 in class and P2 overall behind, but on the same lap with the Norma M20 that qualified on pole.

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/DC30FD9DA4764DBF9F12DD5EB607963B_zpsrqhq-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/DC30FD9D-A476-4DBF-9F12-DD5EB607963B_zpsrqhq6sla.jpg.html)
A totally knackered Carl Rydquist with Car owner Rich Migliore

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/FB23BCD8FD8A485AA07551CD00B502D6_zpsrouf-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/FB23BCD8-FD8A-485A-A075-51CD00B502D6_zpsroufe9l8.jpg.html)
L-R Sean Sampson & Troy Lindstrom of Coldcock Whiskey Racing (Troy drives for us at the 25hr), Carl Rydquist, Tom Hacker & Jim Slavik of TruSpeed Autosport

https://static1.pt-content.com/images/pt/2017/06/BFF5BFF83AC748F1A36766F661A6326C_zpsewk0-1.jpg (http://s490.photobucket.com/user/damn_true/media/BFF5BFF8-3AC7-48F1-A367-66F661A6326C_zpsewk0fhks.jpg.html)
Thanks Bret & Ron for the amazing shocks...these wins are yours!

We remain in 2nd position in the points battle with a 37pt deficit to TruSpeed and two races remaining. On August 5th we will race a 6hr event at Miller Motorsports Park near Salt Lake City, UT and on October 28th we’ll have a 3.5hr race at Sears Pt. in Sonoma.

I honestly don’t blame anyone for having not come to visit us at Buttonwillow…it was miserably hot and it’s a long drive from anywhere. Please do consider coming out to either of the two remaining events. Both are at great tracks and there will be tons of other action beyond just our races.

Video to come....takes a while for the guys to edit it up when also dealing with jobs, wives, kids etc.....

bearden4242

06-29-2017, 05:10 AM

I dont have any technical questions, at the moment atleast, but i have bought into the Ron Sutton way both litterally and figuratively, although i havent had a chance to apply it yet (soon). One of the things that peaked my interest in rsrt, along with all the people i know that have attended his workshops or run his rsrt valving all ready, was the story i heard from Ron about the lap time your car picked up when testing ride tech shocks with "secret sauce." Now reading of your teams performance in this forum makes the decision i made all the more promising. Congrates, and Looking forward to reading about your teams continued success.

bret

06-30-2017, 05:51 AM

Thanks for the detailed and informative update True...it continues to be an honor to be associated with your team. Keep up the GREAT work!

Damn True

06-30-2017, 10:30 AM

The honor is ours Bret. In the 5yrs I've been working with Prototype Development Group the addition of your product is the the single greatest performance upgrade made to this car. Not engines, not aero, not professional drivers, not tires.......shocks....your shocks and Ron's tuning. Those other things are important too, but the shocks are what have taken us to the next level.

They have literally transformed the car from "also-ran" home-built racer to a legitimate competitor (on pace alone) with factory GT3 race cars.

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ugh....what happened to my photo links?