First event of the year at Sebring

 It is past time I got back to our Motorsports Blog. Sorry for the long delay. At our last event of 2011 in early October at Road America things were going great. My personal lap times were competitive with the top guys in the series. In the final race on Sunday afternoon I was driving very aggressively, but in control and confident in all the turns and braking zones. An opportunity presented itself to make a move into second place. I pulled up alongside of Brian Kimmins on the slight uphill coming out of Canada Corner. This took me off line and when I tucked back in behind Brian right at the crest of the hill and at the slight left turn I spun out and into the tires on the outside of the track. So much for 2011.

Onto 2012. Our first event this year was The 48 Hours of Sebring put on by the Porsche Club of America (PCA) February 3-6, 2012. This was my first event with the PCA. They did a great job organizing 400 racers and advanced drivers education attendees. We again are campaigning with the Intercontinental Trophy Cup Cayman series. Our ITC group raced within the PCA races as a subgroup so to speak. We had practice on Thursday and Friday. Then on Saturday and Sunday we raced – two shorter sprint races on Saturday and a longer Enduro on Sunday. The Saturday races had approximately 70 cars in each race. I have never raced in that type of congestion, especially at the start. It was crazy. I came around the blind Sebring turn 1 with cars aggressively going for it on every side. Guys trying to dart into every minute opening that might present itself at any given moment. As soon as I can see around the turn 1 wall and down the straight, I see cars spinning and bouncing off each other like bowling pins and tire smoke filling the air. They yellow flag the race for a few laps which lets us thin out. I skated through it all unscathed and on track. I finished both races mid pack.

 

Sunday came the longer hour and a half enduro. Michael Levitas of TPC racing introduced me to Randy Pobst. Randy is a multi-year World Challenge Champion, Daytona 24 hour winner and has over 70 professional wins in his racing history. Michael worked with PCA guys to let Randy team up with me in the enduro race. Randy started the race in my car. He spent about an hour in the car. He moved up through the pack pretty well and then handed the car over to me. I got re-passed by some of the guys Randy had gotten around. This race had the fastest cars of the whole event entered, including the new 2010-2012 GT3 Cup cars. I was apprehensive about being out with those guys. So it was great to have Randy to get things started for us. He also pointed out a number of areas where we could improve our car setup.

We had a great time and met some fantastic people while at Sebring. Here are links from Ustream to Randy’s and my stints during the enduro on Sunday. There is an advertisement you have to listen to at the beginning, but then you can watch the start and the driver switch in the second video. We have two videos because we had to switch cameras which were actually iphones. We sent the iphone video stream live to Ustream. Amazing technology. Thanks for your interest and be sure to call if we can help with any of your racing or race car needs.

Geoff Isringhausen

 

Race Season

The ITC race season is well under way.  We have been to Virginia International Raceway(VIR), New Jersey Motorsports Park, Miami Homestead, Sebring, Mid-Ohio and Road Atlanta. Racing has proven to be more of a challenge than I hadanticipated.  Driving a race car fast on a track is not an easy task, but learning to outmaneuver competitors as you brake and set up for turns is even more involved.Both of these skill sets are necessary to win races. Generally, my competitors havemore years of experience in racing, which is my excuse for not being much of a threat to the front runners. However, the experience has been fantastic.
We have learned a lot about preparing the car, which is a big part of the game.
Small adjustments to the cars suspension and weight distribution, among many other
things, play a large role in how the car handles on the track. Here are some
pictures from our events.

We have two more races as part of the ITC series – Watkins Glen and Road America.
These are back to back events the first two weekends in October.

If you would like to be involved in any way please get in touch.
We will help you in any way we can.

Welcome

Welcome to this new Isringhausen Motorsports blog.

I decided to create this venue as a place to share with our friends and customers what we are doing in the motorsports arena. (Don’t expect too much, we are fairly low level.)

I have been involved with racing of some form  since my youth. I started with my love of off-road motorcycles.  Being a Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche dealer, the next logical step to feed my need for the thrills I get from the biking, was to try putting one of our cars on a track.  I dipped my toe in the water with a format called HPDE or High Performance Driver Education.  Various car clubs or just a group of track junkies will rent race track and provide an organized day for people to bring their cars out and drive under a controlled environment.  They always start off with classroom time and instructors who ride with beginners to teach the techniques of high performance track driving. (If any of you are curious about this and would like to learn how to experience track driving in your car, please give me a call or email or just stop sometime and I will help you with the steps involved.)

Last year I acquired a more race prepped Porsche Cayman S.  This car is a great handling machine and allowed me to get my pace up quite a bit.  While at one of the drivers education (DE) events at Putnam Park in Indiana, a guy approached me and told me about a Cayman race series that a friend of his was setting up.  I expressed some interest and he had his friend contact me.  That is where things went off the deep end for me.  Doug Livingston came over to see me from his home near Indianapolis and outlined his vision of a Cayman S racing series that would travel to some of the most famous road courses in America.  That sounded like a lot of fun, so I said I would like to learn more and would probably want to be a part of it.  Doug has formed what is called the Intercontinental Trophy Cup (ITC) – a Porsche Cayman Racing Series.  This is a spec series where Doug has defined the exact car set-up.  He specified everything from roll bars to suspension settings to exhaust systems.  He helped me get a car set up and we did our first official test of an ITC Cayman S at Road Atlanta in November 2010.  Here are a few shots and a video made by David Wilkes at that event.  As you can see it was a fantastic event and  the car performed great.

Doug Livingston and I

We would love for any of our friends or customers to join us at any of these upcoming races.  See the race schedule here.   All of these events have HPDE sessions taking place on the same day.  You could join us in the pits as we practice and race while having a planned time to get your own car on the track on the same day.  I would be glad to help you through the steps involved.  Our ITC races are held under the sanctioning of NASA – National Auto Sport Association.  www.nasaproracing.com.

Thanks for reading.

Geoff Isringhausen