Randy

The signing of BJ is fantastic!

For those who do not know, BJ along with Owen Trinkler were in a very select group of young U.S. drivers, choosen as Team Green Indy Car Academy Scholorship drivers. His experience includes Rolex GT in a Porsche 997 GT-3 as well as Rolex Daytona 24 hr. in a Daytona Prototype.

BJ, as Randy noted, is just fast and is a great addition to the team.

Mark

 

HEADS UP !!!

The Koni challenge race from Lime Rock is on today 5-31-08 on Speed channel. It is scheduled for 11:pm eastern time. Check your local listings.

Can't wait to see the RSR MINI's again.

 

Sorry ! They are only showing the Monday GS race from Lime Rock . . . no ST.

Our next TV will be from Mid Ohio shown on June 28th at 2:00pm EDT . . . . .Speed

 

Well that sucks!

 

Yep....................

 

Darn it anyhow. Guess I'll watch have to watch the GS race.

I'm looking forward to seeing you guys at Mid-Ohio.

 

Randy - this is great news for the team!

You have done an incredible job to bring the team from a brand new team last year to having some of the top talent this year!!

Absolutely fantastic!

Wish I could have joined you for Mosport!

Good luck and I will see you at the Glen!

 

WOW, Randy. That sounds great.. Definitely planning on doing Watkin Glen. Not sure about Mosport.

 

I am excited to be back with the guys at RSR.
Randy has been hard and work and super comitted to this project ..its great to see the cars development since driving the car last at Barber.
Looking forward to helping out ...anyway I can.

 

Good news! The chase has begun!

 

qualified sixth? what about the other two cars? I have a lot of trouble navigating grand-am's site....

good luck tomorrow!

 

6th indeed! Nice job guys.

The other two seem to have qualified 25th and 30th.

 

 

Sorry . . . no computer access up here except at the hotel

The 196 Qualified in 6th place. A clamp failed on a supercharger boot and the 196 lost some power. We still hold the fast time in ST for the weekend. This the second race in row where we have had the fastest car.

Owen will start the car and BJ will finish. The cars are fast and we will be in the hunt. Bad luck has plagued us the last two races. We hope it turns around tommorrow.

The Factory Cobalts are FAST ! We think thay may even be sand-bagging.

Both 197 and 198 have had some issues. Both suffered map sensor failures which kills the HP. We are pretty sure we have them fixed and expect to be back to speed tomorrow. Unfortunately, there are no warm-up sessions tomorrow so we will be unable to test the fix.

More tomorrow . . .

Randy

 

We travel next week to Mid-Ohio with only 3 days rest.

The race is ST only (no GS) and will be televised later in the month.

More details later as we are still at Mosport as I write this....

Randy

 

Here are some photos from Lime Rock.

Thanks for a great time, Randy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2638278...57605404300827

 

Good luck!!

 

Randy, great job!

Its so exciting to see the cars consistently fast!

I hope all three cars have a clean, fast race.

...and congrats on the writeup:

http://www.grand-am.com/koni/news/index.cfm?cid=17417

Mini Coopers Run Fast: Randy Smalley Racing's three-car Mini Cooper entry saw the top of the charts several times on Friday with the team's newest car, the No. 196. Drivers Owen Trinkler and BJ Zacharias were both quick in the practice sessions, and Trinkler was sixth in qualifying. Team owner Randy Smalley said a variety of updates and setups, as well as a strong driver combination, have helped the team improve.


Good luck!

 

Good God! What the hell happened?

 

Overall . . . not a good day. 17th,26th,27th

Owen and BJ drove a great race in the 196. A timing mistake in the pits dropped us a lap down at the driver change and then a stop and go penalty for jumping a restart sent us to 17 place. We think the penalty was wrong but none the less, it was assessed.

Trouble plagued the 198. The car was down on power all weekend. Only a MINI dealer has the special tool that can diagnose these 'electronic bugs'. We think it may be in the throttle pedal or the throttle body itself. The car was never competitive and came in 26th place. We kept changing parts hoping to find the cure. We thought we had it . . . unfortunately no.

The 197 had a strong race but DNF'ed near the end with an electrical short. Again, there was an electrical bug in the car that we could not diagnose without dealer help. The end result was the master fuse blew. It's pretty frustrating to have these kind of problems that are not repairable at the track. The cars will be visiting a dealership before Mid-Ohio. We have three days to do this. Thank you Grand Am for the back to back scheduling!

We had another weekend of high expectations dashed by lady luck. The systems on these cars are only accessable with special 'dealer only' tools and since we don't have them, we are left to replacing parts, hoping to find the faulty one.

Special thanks to Alain and his Canadian crew for their help. They did a really professional job.

Sorry fans . . . we are disappointed too. Our day will come soon!

Mid-Ohio next week and the Mini's are strong there.


PS: Anyone know where we can get the 'GT1' computer used at the Mini Dealerships? I'm a buyer for the correct model !!

 

Mosport pictures are posted at . . . .

www.rsrmotorsports.com

As always, courtesy of premier motorsports photographer, Wes Duenkel . . .

 

It's going to all come together very soon!!! Keep at it....

 

Graet photos at your website. The kinds of problems that you are having - those not related to standard gearhead fare - must be terribly frustrating for the team. We know that you'll get them ironed out and be on the podium soon!

We live near Lime Rock but we're driving out to watch you guys run at The Glen in July. Really looking forward to it.

 

Looking forward to seeing you at Mid-Ohio this weekend. There are a couple of us from Columbus coming up on Friday and I think a couple more coming up on Saturday.

 

Randy, look forward to seeing you and the team on Friday the 20th at Mid-Ohio as we did last year.