SG Finishes It's First KONI Race At Mosport

BRAMPTON, Ontario (June 17, 2008) – It was an exciting race weekend for the SG Motorsport team at Mosport International Raceway where the crew campaigned their Nissan 350z race car for the first time in the Koni Challenge series.

It was quite the experience having never run an endurance race of this nature before, but the team did great and the car ran flawlessly all weekend, except for a tiny issue that cost them a potential top 15 finish.

Leading up to the weekend a ton of preparation was still to be done on the car, a special thanks must be mentioned to Agile Graphics for working so hard to complete all of the decals for the car as well as Endless brakes for express shipping the team’s brake equipment, both parties worked hard last minute to get the SG-Motorsport boys ready to race, and off to Mosport it was for the Thursday test day.

A lot of setup work was done to the car and with fresh tires it was working rather well, however more horsepower and more setup time is required before the team will have front running pace.

Sasha Anis qualified the car in the 22nd position with a 1.33.679, 2.826 seconds off of the leader. Everyone on the SG crew is confident they will be able to close up that gap and be within a second of the front runners by the end of the season.

The race was going great until the team was brought in for a fuel leak issue that was occurring during high-speed corners with a full fuel load. Grand-Am officials inspected the car for a leak and then released the car after realizing it was only the vent tube, this cost the team a lap and Sasha was sent out in the middle of the ST pack and had to carefully fight his way through, not wanting to disturb the ST race leaders. A yellow flag came out and Anis’ car was allowed to get its lap back, passing the pace car and re-joining on the lead lap. After spending the next 40 minutes fighting through ST cars and moving through the GS pack he handed the car over to Andrew Wojteczko now running 22nd, ironically the team’s starting position!

The crew performed a fantastic pit stop, the fueling went extremely quickly and the driver change was smooth and efficient. Andrew got out and started turning really fast laps before reporting that the seat had failed and he was literally hanging on for dear life! After a few laps of racing while trying to carry his own weight as the seat was offering no support, nothing could be done but to come into the pits and try to fix the issue. Realizing it was only a bolt that had vibrated out, a new one was installed and the guys got back out and finished the race.

While at the finish the SG 350z was many laps behind, the team sees the race as a success and looks forward to the Trois Rivieres race August 15-17 where they can take what they’ve learnt at Mosport and work towards possibly running in the top 10 at Quebec’s difficult street circuit.

SG's Wins First Race!

After a long tiring week getting the car prepared for its first Mosport outing, we made it to Mosport friday night ready to rock. The car worked flawlessly all weekend and with a little bit more setup work she is sure to be a weapon.

We had a rain practice session Saturday morning which gave myself some much needed rain practice and then got to qualifying Saturday afternoon which showed us the cars true colors in the dry at Mosport. On sunday we had two races, the first of which we won and the second very wet race we came in second.

Overall it was a great weekend and we're really happy the car came home in one peice and ran as reliably as it did.

SG's First Test With The New Z

After swapping in our race engine and tuning it on the dyno Friday night, we got the car ready for a weekend test day at Dunnville Autodrome to shake down the car. Having never driven it and wondering a whole bunch of things this test day really helped us try a bunch of different stuff and figure out what changes we'd have to make to get the car where it needs to be.

We were riding on the rear bump stops all day and had horrible pad knockback, but aside from those things and a small leak at the fuel cell the car ran fantastically. We didn't have any engine issues or mechanical failures and the cars power output was consistent and strong all day. We're lacking a little bit of grip but with some setup work and fresh tires we're sure we'll have that problem solved. We'll keep everyone updated on our progress as it happens.

SG Goes Pro For 2008

For 2008 the SG-Motorsport team has decided to take the plunge into pro racing. With the purchase of a 350z that used to run in this very series, we are on our quest to prepare it to be one of the best cars in the feild. We hope that with what we've learned in the past few years, and with the help of others we can make this car one of the more competitive in the feild.

Koni Challenge is an endurance based racing series where races range from 2.5-3 hours (VIR is a 6 hour race!) and runs all across eastern North America. Most events are televised and there is some serious competition, big names like TRG and Boris Said are not exactly rare in Koni Challenge.