Round Three Nor-Cal Honda Challenge-Devin Raynal

Hello,

Another race weekend is in the books. This particular weekend was a great one. It involved some set up changes and a few close calls. The Raynal Racing crew had a lot of long nights in preparation for this event. Somehow, I think that is always going to be the case.

All the preparation for this event (April 12-13) started immediately after Round 2. Through all of last season and the beginning of this season my water temperature would run a bit too high for our liking. We never worried too much about it because our stock type r never missed a beat through all of it. However, we have a new motor for the second half of this season that we want to take all the precautions we can think of. Our first change was a full width radiator provided by our sponsor Password:JDM. I thought this was going to be an easy swap into the car but I was mistaken. The fitment of this bigger radiator required some intricate fabrication from my crew chief and dad Roger Raynal. The radiator fit awesome and it was on to our next alteration to the Raynal Racing civic si.

Since we are planning on running a bigger motor for the rest of the season, we thought it would be a good idea to increase the size of our exhaust. We were running a 2.5 inch exhaust up to this point. We decided to make the jump to a 3 inch exhaust. We purchased some stanless steel piping and three resonators and started chopping and welding. All of this fabrication was done by my dad and brother, Roger and Chad Raynal(Spotter and role model). These two guys make my car the trickest Honda Challenge car on the track! The exhaust turned out awesome. We were able to run all the stock hangers with the exception of one and tucked the exhaust higher than even a stock Honda exhaust. Not one rub or vibration.

Now on to our biggest task, the transmission. In our last race of round 2 the Raynal Racing civic developed a bad 3rd and 4th gear grind. It was almost bad enough that we considered running my teammates car to not lose valuable championship points. Instead, I decided to just take it easy on this tranny and limp our way through the race (April 13th). I had another transmission that I got from a good friend, Mark Downey, that works at Blactrax Performance (Tuning and fabrication sponsor). The tranny needed some help so we replaced all of the synchros, some of the gaers, and the final drive. The tranny was rebuilt by Graham Downey of Redstone Motors, my chief mechanic. main sponsor, and best friend. None of this would be possible without him.

Our biggest addition was a brand new carbon LSD differential from our newest sponsor Carbonetic. This was probably the easiest install that we have ever done. Putting the LSD in required almost no effort at all. It was as simple as just taking out the old one and dropping the carbonetic in. There was maybe 15 minutes of blueprinting needed and it was ready to go. Truly a pleasing experience!

Well those were all the changes that were done. That took many late nights in between events all the way up to the last minute. Much thanks to the Raynal Racing crew! Now let's see how all of our changes work out.

We traveled on Friday like usual to the track. This race weekend was at our home track Infineon Raeway in Sonoma California. It takes us about an hour and a half to get there. We loaded up and caravaned with teammates Liam and Graham Downey from Redstone Motors. All went well and we were able to test out the new tranny and exhaust around the paddock before dinner and bed time. Can't wait for race day.

Saturday involved much of the normal routine. Get up early, tech inspect the car, driver registration, and a once over on all of the torque specs etc. It was time for our practice session. If you don't remember from the previous race report, our practice sessions are packed full with 60 plus cars out there. This makes it difficult to test out new equipment on the car. However, we were able to make some moves and get some clear track. The session was only 10 minutes long so we did not get much time to wring out the race car. We were fairly fast with the limited time we got to practice.

The tranny worked flawlessly. This is by far the best transmission I have had to date. The gears all shifted effortlessly and the carbonetic LSD was awesome! I have heard all of the bad stories from people using aftermarket LSD's for the first time. Everyone complains of a chattering and bad push that requires a change in driving style. I experienced none of this with the Carbonetic carbon LSD. It was a seamless transition. I was able to get on the gas much earlier in corners and I have absolutely no wheel spin exiting corners like I used to with the stock LSD. The carbonetic makes it much easier to drive smooth and fast. Our new radiator performed flawlessly as well. Our temperatures dropped about 15-20 degrees from our previous events. Much thanks to Password:JDM for the radiator and continuos technical and financial support of the Raynal Racing civic Si. As for the exhaust, it all held up, sounded killer, and most importantly was under the decible limit of 103.

Now it was time to qualify. With no more worrying about our new equipment I could concentrate on putting down some good lap times. That is exactly what we did. The lap time we did was good enough to put us in 3rd on the grid. Everything went smoothly and according to plan. Now we just had a whole lot of waiting around to do before the race. Our race was set to go out at 4:30pm. That is 2 and a half hours later than we normally race.

Race time finally! As we gridded up I noticed that we were gridded right behind the United States Touring Car Series cars. I was excited about this because I wanted to see how the Raynal Racing civic would fare against these "Pro cars". The green flag dropped and we passed three USTCC cars before turn two. By turn 5 another was passed. At this point there was only two Honda Challege cars in front of me with four USTCC cars left to pass. As we entered turn 11 on the first lap a far too ambitious USTCC driver tried to out break me into the corner. Luckily, I heard him lock up his brakes and turned away to avoid him t-boning my car. Thank goodness because that would have been the end of my little civic. As the race went on I managed to very carefully get around three more of the USTCC cars and stayed behind the top two Honda Challenge cars. We finished the race third in our class and fourth overall out of 40-50 cars in our race group. Our lap time was faster than all the USTCC cars. This was awesome considering our car is under powered compared to the USTCC cars and all of the other H1 cars.

Sunday was much of the same. We decided to skip Sunday's practice because there was no need to put any more wear and tear on the car. Qualifying was just like Saturday. We were gridded in third for Sunday's race. The grid was a bit different. Honda Challenge gridded a bit further behind the USTCC cars. However, the same result happened by turn two. Three USTCC cars were passed and we were behind the two other high powered H1 cars. Everything stayed the same until about 3 laps remained in the race. After I was forced off track coming into turn 7 by the same overly ambitious USTCC car as yesterday my car started to sputter out of turn 7 and then a check engine light appeared. Oh well, no big deal, we limped the car to the checkered flag while still passing more USTCC cars and coming home in third place.

The check engine light was no concern to us because we have a new motor waiting in the shop at home just itching to beat up on some H22's and K series motors. We will finally have some more power to duke it out with those big bore motors. I can't wait to see what will happen May 3rd-4th at backwards Thunderhill for round 4 of the Nor-Cal Honda Challenge Racing series. Things could get interesting. We are sitting second in the championship point standings at this moment. We are in good position to make a move.

-Devin Raynal

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