Team Firman West Cars Loads the trailer and departs for early testing Portland Raceway

[Nicholas Belling]

[Mike B]

I count three. Is Copeland finally going to get in one?

[fredvs]

They look like FE cars wasn't the STOHR faster?

[ghickman]

They look like FE cars wasn't the STOHR faster?

There's a good reason why they look like the FE chassis....is the Stohr faster...depends on who's behind the wheel.

Mike the third car is a roller...fairly sure they're trying to sell it. Belling had all 3 at Buttonwillow also.

Gary Hickman
FB #76

[Thomas Copeland]

Hi Mike,

I had a serious neck injury last year that hasn't completely healed (I'm actually still getting therapy for). For that reason I'm not sure I can even race anymore. Also, I'm really out of shape these days. I've started a workout routine to try and get back into shape. When I do I'll test one of the cars and see if my neck can handle racing again. This won't probably happen until end of this year or most likely early next year.

In the meantime we are selling the roller that was to be built into my team car. If after testing my neck can handle the stress of racing then we'll buy another roller (if this one is sold) and build that up.

[Thomas Copeland]

BTW:

On the three tracks we have raced at this year the Firman in Nicholas hands has broken the FB track record at two of them.

We now hold both qualifying and race records at Willow Springs and Buttonwillow.


...and we are still trying to dial in our setup. We had too much aero at Thunderhill.

[RussMcB]

<snip> ... wasn't the STOHR faster?

Maybe somewhere (not sure of every time the two chassis have raced against each other), but not at the 2009 F1000 championship race: http://www.atlantascca.org/documents.../GRP6_Race.pdf

Of course, it could be argued that Niki Coello could win in just about anything. Still, he had STIFF competition (super-FAST drivers in great cars) and still won with a decent margin.

It would be fun to have top drivers drive the top chassis on the same day in a comparison test.

[Lee Stohr]

JR Osborne in the Stohr F1000 is fastest in National Qualifying with a 1:05.7, Kyle (Stohr) 1:06.1, Rod Rice (Stohr) 1:07.7.
All the Firman cars had problems and they packed up and went home.
National race tomorrow.

[Mike B]

Guess that explains why I haven't gotten any updates...

[fredvs]

.

[J Leonard]

1st FB Lucian Pancea Stohr
2nd FB Kyle Oberndorf Stohr

[Mike B]

Osborne and Rice dnf'ed?

[KVS84]

The Stohrs are proving to be not only fast but reliable. Way to go boys! Congrats!


-Keegan

[rickb99]

1st FB Lucian Pancea Stohr
2nd FB Kyle Oberndorf Stohr

I don't think Oberndorf has run in a while but, he is usually VERY quick. What was the margin of victory for Pancea?

Belling is usually VERY well prepared. What was the reason for withdrawing 2 cars?

We are 20 days away from the Northwest Region Double National at Pacific Raceways. Rather shocking to see only 19 cars entered in the National Races!

FB has two Stohr's of Taylor Archer and Dave Palmer. Archer switched from FC to FB this year.

The race group at the moment is 2 FB's (above) and 1 FM.

Last year we had 5 FB's. 4 Stohr's and 1 Phoenix.

Rice/Stohr took race 1.
Jaremko/Phoenix took race 2.

Oberndorf/Stohr set the FB lap record in race 2 at 1:20.516

[Thomas Copeland]

I wasn't able to make it to Portland and was expecting Nicholas to let me now what went on.

Can anyone send me results (qualifying and race with times) along with story of event? I will post it the F1000 Pro Series website.

Thanks.

[Nicholas Belling]

Testing started out very well.. within our first sessions after testing new wing components we were in the low 1:06's consistentaly. But unfortunately a oil fitting that wasnt tight let oil out and when I started to sense some smoke in the drivers cockpit underbraking on back complex I pulled the extinguisher. In the pits my crew member sprayed a shot of his bottled fire suppresseant into the car with an ABC extinguisher.. made a real mess. so we decided to run our other car and wait to do a cleanup on the car at the shop.

We then had unfortunate luck of having a chain let go under my qualifying open lap. broke into the engine case and tore the entire water pump assembly up.

After this and no spare engine in the trailer we decided to watch the FB group qualify and headed back to the shop to prepare for pacific.

Congrats to Luchiano and Kyle. Bad luck for JR as he was fast. Our best time on 10 heat cycle tires on thursday's test day was 1:05.8. So we knew after testing and sorting out our decided aero package we would be running in the low 1:05's and probably breaking into the high 1:04's for qualify as being our goal.

Track weather conditions were ideal.

See you all in Pacific.