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

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE GALERY!

Honda Challenge H1 Mid Ohio April 12-13.

OK, where to start? The off season has been a busy one for myself. I had planned on a bunch of changes for the #62 Honda Challenge H1 car. First off the body was redone with a 99-00 civic front end conversion along with a full respray of New Formula Red. The engine is the same 2006 K24a2 from last year but with a new Password:JDM carbon intake, Hytech header. R-Crew 3" exhaust and Hondata K-Pro tuned by Evans Tuning. Next came the suspension, Koni 2812 race series double adjustable coilovers, Eibach springs, Password:JDM tower bars and new ASR 24mm rear sway bar. The brakes feature new Stoptech 2 piece rotors and Spoon 4 piston calipers with Carbotech XP12's up front and XP8's in the rear.

This event is out of my normal Mid Atlantic region but I really needed to get the car out on track to sort out the new setup. So I signed up for a test and tune day on Friday before the race weekend. Thursday morning I checked the weather for the weekend and it doesn't look good. Rain and cold Friday, Saturday and Sunday. None the less I packed up the truck and loaded the car in hopes that the weather would cooperate.

Friday morning I wake up only to see that it's cold and raining. The first thing I needed to do was to get the car through tech for my 2008 yearly inspection. After an 1 1/2 hours and missing the first on track session the car passed tech and was finally ready to go on track. Overall the day was a wash. The rain did let up for at least one semi dry session on Friday but I was only able to try a fraction of the available adjustments on the shocks. The other major change I did was the brakes, the Spoon calipers proved to be very sensitive when compared to my old ITR caliper setup. The first session out I was locking the brakes so it took a bit of getting used to. Overall the car felt decent but I really needed more dry track time.

Saturday morning the clouds were gray and the temperature was in the mid 30's. The practice session was slick, the combination of the cold track and cold tires were not making for any decent times. The car seemed to be understeering pretty bad so for the qualifying session I tried a little more bump and rebound in the rear to help get the car to rotate. It helped a bit but the session was short and I could not find any open track to put down a decent time. I qualified 5th with a 1:40.394, so I was a bit disappointed. Then came the race, the track was dry with a lite drizzle here and there. We did a standing start, I had Chris Fries in his H22 Prelude on my right and Matt lang in his K20a ITR in front. The starting lights go out and were off, I got a great start and was able to pass Matt Lang for 3rd. After a couple of laps I was able to catch and pass Kelsey Smith in his S2000 for 2nd. Now the only one left was the Honda R&D TL Type S driven by Jeremy Lucas. The car is really fast on the straight but needs to brake early due to the weight. I didn't want to push the car too hard because my main focus of the weekend was for testing so I stayed right on his rear bumper. With about 2 laps to go I missed a shift on the back straight and lost a ton of speed, enough for Chris Fries to squeak on by. Crap, just when I thought I was home free. Anyway, it was a 1,2,3 finish with only .5 sec separating us all. I did end up putting down the fastest lap of the race with a 1:38.339. People were saying that the the track was at least 1-2 seconds slower then it was during nationals so I'd say the car is well on it's way for some really fast times.

Sunday's forecast was calling for snow and rain all day so we just decided to pack it up and hopefully get some more testing before our next big race, Hyperfest at Summit Point, WV.

-Chris Drabouski

#62 H1

http://www.mylaps.com/results/showevent.jsp?id=293506

Nor Cal Honda Challenge Round 2 by Devin Raynal

	Race Results per MyLaps.com   March 8th, 2008 March 9th, 2008 Photo Gallery Click here to view the gallery!

It feels like I start out every race report with a "Wow" type of entry because of a crazy weekend. Well, I guess racing is just crazy in general. This weekend of March 8-9th was no exception. We need to take a step back on this one to the conclusion of the last race on Sunday Feb. 11th. If you remember correctly I was t-boned in turn 7 at Infineon Raceway on the final lap. That weekend ended on a very bad note. Once we got back from the track the car was down at the body shop the next day.

Since the car was at the body shop getting fixed we obviously could not work on it. In the meantime we got to work on my teammate's car. Now our team consists of three Honda Challenge cars. With only a month in between the races we were a little worried as to when we would get my car back. We got the car back with a week to spare. We proceeded to give the car a complete once over. Everything checked out well. We were even surprised that all of my suspension settings had not been changed by the accident. Whew! We dodged an expensive bullet there. All I had to do now was clean off all the body shop dust and put on all the stickers on the passenger side of the car that were damaged in the wreck.

It was time to head to the track on Friday March 7th. My parents towed the car to the track early on Friday with me traveling up later due to me unfortunately having to work. Gotta work to play. I arrived at the track at about 7:30pm. The sun was going down and it was getting cold. I then put on a few more last minute stickers and then headed to the hotel for some rest before a action packed weekend.

We got to the track early to get some last minute tech inspections and registration taken care of. Our practice session was at 8am sharp. I was still a bit concerned that something was going to be wrong with my car because of the previous accident. I was pleasantly surprised with the car. Everything worked awesome. I was a bit perturbed with the session though due to the ridiculous amount of cars that were on the track. There was over 90 cars in our run group. No, that is not a typo. It was really 90 cars. It was crazy out there. There was absolutely no opportunity for any car to get an open lap to get some good lap times. Nonetheless, we were able to put down the 4th fastest lap time out of 16 Honda Challenge cars. I was happy with this because we were faster than several other cars that had 30 to 40 more horsepower and torque than my little old stock type r.

Everything was good with the car after the practice session so we were ready for qualifying. Our qualifying session was at 10:30am. Over 90 cars in a qualifying session is gonna mean some slow lap times. This was the case. My lap time was a second slower than my previous fastest lap at Thunderhill Raceway. However, I was still gridded up on the front row for the race. I was to be in the second position. I was excited about this because the last time I started out on the front row I won the race. As far as how the car was doing it was good. My only complaint was about my new wing on Thunderhill's long straights. It feels like my car struggles halfway down the straights due to the added down force created by the wing. Oh well, I will just have to deal with it until I get a bigger and more powerful motor(coming next race).

Race time! Our race group was thankfully reduced to about 60 cars. That is still a huge amount of cars but much better than 90. We gridded up behind one other run group. There was to be two separate green flag starts. This would have been very cool but unfortunately my teammate jumped the start when the first green dropped. This disqualified him from the race. As our green dropped I got a great start and took the lead into turn 1. Coming out of turn 1 the 2 cars with all that power and torque got by me coming into turn 2. I hung with the front runners for about 3 laps until we encountered lapped traffic. I pulled away to a 30 second gap in between me and the 4th place car. That is how we all finished. We were on the podium again! This was awesome since the first race of the season we had some bad luck that kept us off the podium. The race was good and so was the car. We checked it all over and nothing was wrong. Can't wait for Sunday's race.

Sunday started off nicely. We did not have our practice session until 9:30am. We did not have to go out on a cold and slick track like we normally do when we go out at 8am. The practice session was not that good due the the 90 plus cars out on the track again. We went out for about 6 laps just to get the car fully up to temp and to scrub in some tires that we were running for the first time of the weekend. All was good. We were fourth fastest again just like Saturday. We checked out the car after the practice and everything checked out good like usual. Now we can look forward to a hectic qualifying.

Qualifying was absolutely ridiculous! We were only able to get in 2 laps of qualifying before another car rolled over in turn 2 putting an end to our session. We did however manage to get ourselves gridded in the 3rd position for the race. It was a good thing that we only did two laps because my transmission started to grind really bad on up shifts and down shifts. After the session we changed the tranny fluid, bled the clutch, and checked the shift linkage. All we could do now was cross our fingers and hope that the tranny would hold on for the whole race.

Sunday's race was to be just like Saturday's with the two separate green flag starts. Today was much better. No one jumped the start in our run group. On the drop of the green I was able to get up to 2nd place but by turn 2 one of the big motor cars got by me by turn 2. I was able to stay with the leaders until a very unfortunate thing happened to a very good friend of mine and competitor. Coming into turn 5 the leader clipped a lapped traffic car and flipped his car 4 times on the infield outside of turn 5. This collected the second place driver as well. I was able to get by the incident without harm. Due to the severity of the crash the race was red flagged after only completing 5 laps. This gave me the victory. I never want to win that way. Luckily my friend was okay and just badly bruised up. With how the wreck looked I thought the worst may have happened. It was truly a scary moment. On a lighter note I was on the podium once more and now only 30 points out of first in the championship and only 10 points out of second. Things are definitely heating up. This all just in time for my new bigger and more powerful motor. I will miss my little engine that could. Who would have thought that a stock type r with cams could win 3 times against K24's, K20's, H22's, and B20 vtecs? Let's see how we do with comparable power now.

Thank you so much for all your support. I truly could never do this without the help and support from my family and sponsors. I am forever grateful for all your help in our successes. The championship is right there. Let's go get it!

Sincerely,

Devin Raynal
Raynal Racing Civic Si #6