Portland National Roll call

[mjaremko]

Who's making the show ??

Registered so far:

Kyle Oberndorf / Stohr
Dave Palmer / Stohr
Mark Jaremko / Phoenix

[kmt63]

i think rod rice is running.should be a good race.

[jabro1000]

Good to see that Kyle is still alive and well...look forward to watching you guys when the tour gets to Seattle.

[kmt63]

i thought the rfr west guys where coming to this race?

[rickb99]

Sorting things out here.

Portland has a single national on May 8-10. RFR West is not showing that race on their schedule.

The Northwest region double national will be in Seattle on May 23-25. Jaremko, Oberndorf and Palmer are entered.

Although the RFR web site lists the Seattle race on their schedule, no entry's from RFR as of today on MotorsportReg.com. The even sadder part is, 2.5 weeks till the race and there's only a TOTAL of 30 entry's

Portland has a double national July 3-5. RFR shows this race on their schedule also.

[kmt63]

thanks for the info rick.i thought they showed a may race on the posting they made when they became the west coast dealer.i was hoping to check out the car this weekend.did they get the cars cars yet?

[Firman West Cars]

Our current online schedule does show us as making our first race at Pacific in Seattle May 23-25.

Since we decided to launch our effort this year with the new 2009 Suzuki engine package it has put us a little behind where we wanted to be. This was due to issues getting the new engine to us. We made this decision based on our desire to present the most up-to-date and best performing option possible when we launch. So, rather than just rush out with the first thing we could come out with, we decided that we very much wanted to do this the right way.

Currently, we have two cars that are being built with the 2009 engine package. They will be on track and competing this summer. These cars will also be available to either rent or purchase.

We will also of course, be able to provide the older 2007/08 engine package for those that desire it.

Our completed cars (delivered fully assembled, complete with the 2007/08 Suzuki engine) will be very competitively priced with those of our competitors with the cost of our car with the 2009 engine package to be slightly more.

When we first posted our schedule we considered it to be a proposed schedule covering events that we would like to attend. It was intended that that schedule would have been updated by now. We apologize. It will be updated very soon to reflect more accurately the events we will definitely be attending. We will also try at the same time to give everyone an idea of what our 2010 plans are, which will be pretty extensive.

There will be plenty of support provide here on the West Coast by Firman West Cars to all our customers. This includes the ready availability of parts. We plan on having more than a full complement of spares available locally for our customers. Ready to ship whenever it's needed.

We will be releasing more news soon on all our plans here on the West Coast both for the remainder of the 2009 season and for 2010. We are very much looking forward to meeting all of you at the track soon.



Regards,

Firman West Cars
FirmanWestCars.com

[mjaremko]

Glad to see RFR will make the Seattle Double later in May, should be one of the larger FB fields so far this year.

mj

[Firman West Cars]

Actually, sorry, no, we won't be able to make the May Seattle event. The cars won't have the engines installed in time for that weekend. The delay is all due to the wait to get the 2009 engines installed. Perhaps we should have mentioned that in the first paragraph and not later into the post. Sorry for any mis-understanding.

We will be updating our schedule later this week to reflect the races we will be making. By then we will have a better idea of when we'll be on track. We will be on track this summer and we do plan on attending races in the Northwest before the end of the year.

Regards,

Firman West Cars
FirmanWestCars.com

[kmt63]

thanks firmin west cars for the update.i will look forward to seeing the new cars soon.

[RussMcB]

It's cool to think of an ARRC-like full field of all these super-fast F1000 cars and drivers. We seem to be getting closer to that all the time.

[Lee Stohr]

Absolutely perfect weather this weekend in Portland, lot's of car out for the first National.

Keith Lively (Swift 014) battled with Phil Fogg Jr's Pro Mazda for the overall win with Phil taking the honors.
Larry Vollum won FB in his Stohr F1000, after spinning in the first turn. Rod Rice was second in his Stohr. Mark Jaremko ran the Phoenix with Dustin and the team still chasing a mysterious fuel pressure issue. They think they solved it during a long pit stop and Mark went back out to take fastest FB lap.
Tomorrow John Hill will sit in as Mark and his wife take off for their 10th wedding anniversary.
Dustin was making a bead seat for John as we left.
A Norma ran in CSR and an Amac and Cheetah battled for DSR honors. Daniel Frost beat Tom Hamilton.

Starting grid:

[rickb99]

No Oberndorf or Palmer??

Tomorrow's race for FB's is a regional so no car count add for that

[Lee Stohr]

I think Dave Palmer had a differential issue and couldn't start.

[Matt Conrad]

I haven't had a chance to chat with Dustin (I did speak with him on Friday and he was elbow deep into the fuel cell when I called) or George as I've been traveling as well....but from the grid pictures it appears that Jeremko may have out-qualified the other FB's as well as setting fast lap during the race???

Any Sunday results???

Matt Conrad

[Wright D]

Congratulation to John Hill for bringing home the first win for the Phoenix F1K.09.

It was a bit of a last minute decision to put John into the car, but as it turns out it was a good one, as he brought home our first win. John was able to drive in the low 1:12 lap after lap.

At this point it is almost cliche, but the tires were old. We ran this whole weekend on rubber that was left over from Thunder Hill. By the time John got into the car the tires had 6 sessions on them, yet he was still able to rail off consistent fast laps. With this car we will be able to get the most out of the of the tires. The car is not going to kill tires in just a few laps like some cars can do. I designed the cars suspension around tire data so it has lots of grip, good feel, and excellent tire life.

All in all it was a good second outing for the Phoenix F1K.09. We lowered the track record to 1:11.51 in the national race with Mark driving the car and picked up our first win with John driving the car.

Mark was really pleased with the car's handling, and thinks that we could have gotten down into the 1:10's if he had not had race traffic to contend with.

A big thanks to Mark for his patience while we sorted the bugs out.

Thanks to everybody on the Phoenix Race Works team. Watch out Washington, here we come!



Spy!


Our crew this weekend.

Stefan on the left and Kyle on the right.

[mjaremko]

Another tough weekend for the Phoenix crew, we had some highs and lows, the lows being a fuel starvation problem that wont seem to go away, although we did finally solve it, it kept us from the full performance potential of the car at Portland.
We struggled with it in the first practice and regional qualy, then the National qualy, it was crunch time by now and we needed to get some kind of lap for the grid, so we filled the tank all the way to the brim and went back out, it still wouldent rev past 10k and was sputtering half way down both straights but somehow we were on the pole by a half second.
For the race we replaced the battery (thinking this was the issue) and double checked everything in the fuel system and wireing. We got a good start out braking two Atlantics and headed out of the first chicane in the overall lead, evrything looked great until about a half lap later when it started to misfire again, aargh! Back to the pits and Dustin Stefon and Kyle did their best to find something wrong, went back out, came back in, went back out, no luck. The fourth time out was the charm, as soon as I left the pits I knew she was going to run, with three laps left I drove as hard as possible on cold tires and although I caught some traffic at poor times we manged to set a new race lap record of 1:11.494. Theres more time left, the chassis is so solid. Seattle here we come !!


mj