Fast all weekend. Fourth both days. One small part decided it.
SRC sponsors SoCal Rustlers Motorsports, and the two ran together at the World Racing League’s round at Utah Motorsports Campus, running the number 180 car in GP1 across two days and roughly fifteen hours of racing. The pace was there from the first session. The result was not.
Running second, twice
Drivers Charlie Buzzetti, Marcelo Vine, and SRC owner Shawn Sampson kept the car fast and clean all weekend, with SoCal Rustlers owner Troy Lindstrom taking a turn in the car on Saturday — no contact, no mistakes, no time lost in the garage. That is most of the job in endurance racing.
Saturday: running second with one lap to go, we had to pit for fuel. Finished 4th.
Sunday: running second with five minutes left, we had to come in again. Finished 4th.
Two days, two podiums lost inside the final minutes of the race.
Ride along, and listen in
Saturday’s race is up on the SRC YouTube channel, shot from inside the 180 car. The audio is what makes it worth watching: the SRC Inline IMSA Race Audio Recording System wired into the on-board camera lays the two-way radio traffic straight onto the video, so you hear the driver and the crew working the race in real time instead of ten hours of engine noise.
Watch lap 191. The lap counter runs across the banner at the top of the video, so you can scrub to it. That is where the fuel problem shows itself on the radio and the crew starts working out what to do about it — the whole thing plays out in the driver and crew calls, not in the pictures.
Half a tank we could not reach
The 180 car runs the stock E46 BMW fuel tank, which is a saddle tank. It straddles the driveshaft tunnel in two lobes, and that means two pumps: one feeding the engine, and one on the opposite side whose only job is to move fuel across so you can actually use what is in that half.
That second pump failed. The fuel never left the car — we simply could not get it over to the side that feeds the motor. So we were effectively racing on half a tank, without a reliable read on how much of the rest we could count on. That is why both stops came, and why they came so late.
You can drive a perfect fifteen hours and still get beaten by a pump that costs less than a set of brake pads.
Why we keep telling these stories
Because this is the environment our equipment lives in. Fifteen hours, driver changes under pressure, a crew making fuel calls in the last five minutes of a race with a car running second. When a call like that gets made, the radio system and the crew headsets have to work the first time.
We do not test that in a lab. We test it in the car, at speed, with something on the line.
Next stop: COTA, December 4–6
The next WRL round for SRC is at Circuit of the Americas on December 4 to 6, where Shawn will be teaming up with SoCal Rustlers owner Troy Lindstrom and a third driver to be named. Word in the paddock is that this may be the last public event held at the track — if that turns out to be true, it is a weekend worth being at.
Thanks to SoCal Rustlers Motorsports for a well-prepared car and a weekend that deserved better, and to Charlie and Marcelo for two days of quick, clean driving.
Sampson Racing Communications. Built by racers, trusted by racers, still racing.
Running an endurance program? Call SRC at (805) 650-7223 or browse complete racing radio systems.