Jackson-Dawson Scion Takes National Podium at Mid-Ohio
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Jackson-Dawson Scion Takes National Podium at Mid-Ohio
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September 21, 2007
Jackson-Dawson Scion Takes National Podium at Mid-Ohio
Two Second-Place Finishes in NASA’s PTE and TTE Class Mark Milestone for Scion
TORRANCE, Calif. — Just days ago at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Dan Gardner and the Jackson-Dawson team drove their 2007 Scion tC into the pages of history. With strong second place finishes in both PTE and TTE, the team became the first-ever Scion to take a national podium in road racing.
“It didn’t come easy, that’s for sure,” said Gardner. “The work just getting the car ready for the big event would have been enough, but the challenges never end there. There were a lot of late nights in that Mid-Ohio garage trying to set up and figure things out. My crew and sponsors were great all week long. The trophies are really theirs.”
The forecast called for clear skies and moderate temperatures. There was a chance of rain on Friday, and although there was a drizzle, the real rain never came, and the team would never need to find out how well the rain tires would actually work.
And so it was with a dry track and crisp air that the team would vie for the championship, but not before some challenging events took place during test day and practice.
During testing the team found that the car simply would not turn. They couldn’t induce enough rotation for this very twisty track. They had a tire stagger setup to try to get oversteer. The front tires were Nitto NT-01 235/40R17s, while the backs were 225/45R17s. They went full-stiff on the rear Progress swaybar. They took out the rear spacers to close up the rear track. They went to radical tire pressures. And though some subtle improvements were made, the general balance just wasn’t right.
Toward the end of the day, the team decided to check the alignment even thought it was done immediately prior to the event. What they found explained a lot. The front had lost over a degree of camber, and more importantly had moved from 1/8-inch toe-out to 3/8-inch toe-in.
After a quick alignment with the help of Robert Fuller from RobiSpec, Gardner went out to test the car. Most of the balance had returned and the car could be planted with the brakes, rotated, and actually hustled around a corner. Problem mostly solved.
The brakes were taking their fair share of abuse. Mid-Ohio proved to be brutal on the stock front brakes, eating pads every day, and deeply grooving the rotors into submission. Danny Puskar from Carbotech was on-site, and a quick call to engineer Chris was all it took to cook up some more pads and get them to the team.
In spite of the high rate of wear and the extraordinary heat, the pads never lost their bite, but the team would have other strange brake happening before test day was done. The pedal got a bit low and the brake warning light started flickering on the dash. A brake pad swap and a fluid change seemed to fix both issues, and so the team headed into Thursday’s practice feeling confident.
On Thursday the team continued to learn the track and build speed, and by the end of the day, Gardner had ripped off a 1:42.xx lap time, better than all save one PTE competitor. Things were looking promising as the first Qualifying race was approaching.
On Friday the team got a welcome addition to the crew, as Master Tech, Phil Nedrow, showed up from Graham Toyota/Scion just down the road in Mansfield. Nedrow proved to be extremely valuable, as he had race crew experience and he jumped right in.
The front rotors were still burning up, and by the middle of the day, the team encountered another brake issue, this one far more perplexing. The brake pedal was hard with the motor off, but when the car was started the pedal became squishy and dropped all the way to the floor. Not a good sign.
The team tried everything they could initially think of, but none of the normal diagnostic procedures seemed to make things better. Gardner got on the phone to Toyota Motorsports and talked with the fantastic trio of Marty, Chuck, and Rich who have been a tremendous help throughout the season.
Everyone was perplexed, but Marty began the hustle that would eventually land extra rotors, a brake booster, and a brake control ECU in the team’s lap on Saturday morning.
During Friday’s Qualifying session, Gardner would arrive first to grid, and would be the first car out on track. Unfortunately the track would be immediately green, and Gardner would have to hustle on cold tires and brakes if he didn’t want other cars to zoom by, as they vied for space to get a clean lap.
As Gardner hustled the car around the track during what otherwise would have been a warm-up lap, he was closing faster and faster on the back of the pack. In the end, the strategy of being first to grid would backfire, as the team only was able to post one clean lap before catching traffic. Two Qualifying DQs, however, would put Gardner on pole for the first Qualifying race.
Before the race, Gardner noticed that the pedal seemed to be getting worse. He repeatedly pumped the pedal up, which got it slightly off the floor, but then it would sink again. It looked like he might have to use this technique going into each brake zone for the race.
When the green flag dropped, Gardner got a good jump and passed a few cars by taking the inside heading into Madness. The PTD cars were staged ahead of PTE, and so he was dealing with that traffic right from the start. After just a couple of laps, an incident forced the pace car to come out and collect the group as the track went full yellow. All cars circled the track for multiple laps, until it was safe to start the race again.
Two cars were ahead of Gardner on the single-file restart. Right before the flag dropped, the car in front of Gardner checked up, leaving him off the gas when the green flew. Gardner mashed the gas, but by then other cars far in the back had gotten a good jump and were raging up through the field.
Immediately the black Civic Si was on Gardner’s bumper through Madness and into Thunder Valley. Gardner saw a double yellow going into the Carousel, and he eased up. The Civic driver apparently wasn’t paying attention to the flags, as he zoomed by Gardner in the turn, which would result in a DQ.
An ITA Sentra SE-R driven by Joe DiMinno gave Gardner a ton of pressure for the remainder of the short race, tapping Gardner in the keyhole and sending him sideways. Still, Gardner would hold off DiMinno and eventually win the race after the Civic was doled out the DQ.
On Saturday, the team woke up at the crack of dawn with a plan in place to further trouble-shoot the brakes. Gardner and crew chief Chris Viscovich checked the brake control ECU diagnostic codes to make sure nothing was amiss even though there was no light on the dash. No codes came back, but the team reset all codes just to be on the safe side.
That seemed to make no difference in terms of the pedal height and mushiness, and the team wanted to test pulling a wheel speed sensor. After doing that, Viscovich drove the car around the paddock and seemed to think the pedal was a bit better. It wasn’t drastic, but even if it was a little better it might help.
Having dislodged a wheel speed sensor at Willow Springs earlier in the year, the team knew the car’s brakes would still function, even if in a degraded state of performance. No one was quite sure what it would do to the brake bias, as the car controlled bias electronically through the EBD system.
Gardner went out in a TT practice session to get a feel for things. The rear brakes seemed to have a bit too much bias, so Gardner knew he would have to be ginger with the brakes. He didn’t know how ginger until it was too late.
Going down the back straight at over 120 mph, Gardner eased softly into the brakes. Things felt fine upon initial application, but a split second later the rear brakes violently locked up and sent the car spinning like a top toward the inside wall. Gardner was a passenger along for the ride at that point as the car plowed through the grass, hit the wall, bounced off it, spun two more times around in the grass, leapt across the track surface and landed in China Beach, the gravel trap at the end of the back straight.
Gardner wasn’t hurt, but he was unsure of the damage to the car. A tow truck was quick to the scene, pulling Gardner out by the rear tow hook. The car started back up and Gardner was able to drive off. Things seemed surprisingly ok as no strange noises or rubbing were to be heard or felt during Gardner’s drive back to the paddock.
"When your driver calls you on the radio to say that he has just crashed into a wall, the first thing you want to know is that he’s ok," said Viscovich. "Dan was calm and let me know he was ok, though he didn’t know how bad the car was damaged. At that point I wasn’t really thinking about much other than whether he was hurt."
When the team had a chance to look over the car, they were simply shocked. The rear bumper support was pushed in, the bumper had a hole and scrapes, and the trunklid was slightly bent. Besides a wheel and tire needing replacement, that seemed to be the extent of the damage. The team had dodged a huge bullet. Chalk one up to simple luck and one tough Scion.
Needless to say, the team put the wheel speed sensor back on, and started to pursue other options. The team now was under the impression that the brake control ECU was somehow the culprit. Viscovich wanted to try a strange procedure: bleed the brakes with the engine running. The procedure was actually validated by a NASA tech guy who had some experience working with electronic braking systems. He stated that if there was any air or contaminated fluid in that brake control box, it would only be able to get out with the motor on. And so the team set out to try it. It couldn’t hurt, and the new part was arriving from Toyota Motorsports later that morning anyhow.
Strange enough, during the unorthodox bleeding procedure Viscovich noticed that a bit of air was coming out of each caliper. Nothing major, but enough to say that maybe the team was onto something. Gardner confirmed that the pedal indeed felt harder. Before patting themselves on the back, Gardner would still have to try the brakes out on track.
During Saturday’s Qualifying session, Gardner did notice a significant improvement in the brakes. Gardner’s low 1:43 time couldn’t match DiMinno’s mid 1:42, and so he would qualify second. Still not a bad place to be.
Saturday’s Qualifying race still placed some of the slow PTD cars ahead of the PTE field, and this again made the start messy. Gardner got an ok start, but struggled to find racing room as he was trapped on the outside of the track. A car swung into a Miata next to Gardner sending the Miata flying into Gardner’s right side. This sent him into the grass as he motored down the straight, all the while fighting not to lose too many positions.
It was too late, though, as many cars had gotten by Gardner. He was now in fourth place behind the Civic, the Sentra, and Todd Reid’s Probe GT. And that’s how the short race ended. But a complaint from the Miata driver against the Sentra penalized the Nissan, putting it last in class. That bumped Gardner up to third, and it seemed like this was going to be an event where you had to keep your nose clean or risk huge penalty.
When the dust had settled, Gardner had finished the Qualifying races with a first and a third. That gave him 185 total points, enough to win pole position for the final National Championship race. And as a bonus, the race director gave the pole-sitters the choice of what side they would like to start on.
There were lots of nerves on Sunday, as Gardner tried to stay relaxed and loose. Music seemed to be the magic elixir of choice, and it calmed Gardner while he tried to shut everything out and focus on the task at hand.
After thinking about strategy, Gardner decided that it would still be best to start along the inside, and so with a finger point, he motioned the Ford Probe to the outside. The pace car pulled off, Gardner put the car in second gear, and maintained a speed that he felt would keep the motor in the sweet spot.
The green flew and Gardner mashed the gas, but there was a slight delay before the throttle opened. Add that to the fact that the Probe got a fantastic start, and Gardner couldn’t hold him from nosing ahead slightly. He grabbed third, then fourth, and then it was time to turn into Madness. The Probe had the edge going in as he passed Gardner, forcing the Scion to tuck in behind.
Gardner followed the Probe around for a single lap, and then repassed the Ford at the end of the back straight going back into Madness. From there Gardner tried to get away from the field, but it wasn’t to be. The Civic came raging up, as he clearly had significantly more power than the rest of the field. Gardner did all he could to keep the Civic behind him, running as defensively as possible to protect the position. In the end the super-motor Civic would pass Gardner going toward the keyhole, and would never look back.
But Gardner now had the Sentra right on his rear bumper, with the Probe not far behind. The rest of the field fell behind, as they were off the pace for the entire Championship event.
Gardner was making his car as wide as possible, and standing on the gas down the straight-aways to fend off the vastly lighter Sentra. And it was working. After several laps the Sentra got a run on the Scion, passing Gardner in the keyhole along the inside. Gardner took the more natural line, exiting out of the turn quickly. He immediately put himself on the Sentra’s rear bumper and then proceeded to pass the Nissan right back on the back straight.
From that point on, it was a matter of what would happen with traffic. The two leading PTD cars got intermingled in the PTE field. While racing eachother, they slowed down the leading PTE cars, but Gardner stayed ahead and started to run away from the rest of the field (though he would never catch the Civic.)
The race would end up being a 17 lap sprint, and Gardner would finish in second, six seconds ahead of third place. It was a strong showing for the Scion, and something that the whole team could hold their heads up high about.
“This was a car in its first year of development. It was a huge task to find out what would work and what wouldn’t,” said Gardner. “There really wasn’t anyone we could call, as no one had ever taken this car to the level we were building it. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of help from our sponsors, and a lot of long nights (and mornings) in the garage. The list of people to thank is long, but we’re grateful to all who helped (and sacrificed) along this journey. We can’t wait for the new challenges that next year will bring!”
The car and team has two regional events remaining, that will count toward the final SoCal region standings. The next NASA event will be at Buttonwillow on October 13-14.
The JD Scion tC is currently fitted with
• Scion-supplied OE and TRD parts
• Nitto 235/40R17 and 225/45R17 NT-01 tires
• Enkei RPF1 17x8 wheels
• Recaro Pole Position Seats
• Progress Technology coilovers, rear swaybar, and camber bolts
• Dezod-supplied AEM standalone engine management, plug and play harness and stainless clutch line
• Kaminari carbon fiber roof
• Centerforce clutch and lightweight aluminum flywheel
• NST underdrive pulleys and shifter bushings
• AIT carbon fiber hood
• Wild Pony Motorsports-supplied camber/caster plates
• Goodridge stainless brake lines and oil cooler fittings and lines
• Carbotech XP10 and XP8 brake pads
• G-Force 5-point harnesses, racing suit, gloves, and helmet
• TRD limited slip differential, thermostat, and crank pulley bolt
• DC Sports Header
• AEM wideband O2 sensor and controller
• Energy Suspension bushings and motor mounts
• HoseTechniques silicone hoses, couplers, and clamps
• Motul brake fluid, engine oil, transmission fluid, and super coolant
• RobiSpec brake ducting
In addition, tire mounting, balancing, and repair are performed by America's Tire Co., tuning is done by i-Speed, alignment is performed by M-Workz, car care products are supplied by Mothers Polish, body work is done by Royalty Auto Body, team clothing is supplied by turn3, and dyno testing services are done by Harman Motive.
Jackson-Dawson Communications (JD) is a 25-year-old privately held company that provides creative and strategic services to a range of national clients. Core competencies include retail training, event marketing, marketing services, business theater, video and media production services, meeting planning, print graphic and design services, staging service and vehicle management.
With corporate offices in Detroit, MI, Jackson-Dawson also maintains offices in Torrance and Irvine, CA, Manhattan, NY, and Spring Hill, TN. Jackson-Dawson owns and operates several divisions: Peloton Creative Group, BenMar Communications, Drivers Talk Radio and Drivers Talk Testing.
-###-
September 21, 2007
Jackson-Dawson Scion Takes National Podium at Mid-Ohio
Two Second-Place Finishes in NASA’s PTE and TTE Class Mark Milestone for Scion
TORRANCE, Calif. — Just days ago at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Dan Gardner and the Jackson-Dawson team drove their 2007 Scion tC into the pages of history. With strong second place finishes in both PTE and TTE, the team became the first-ever Scion to take a national podium in road racing.
“It didn’t come easy, that’s for sure,” said Gardner. “The work just getting the car ready for the big event would have been enough, but the challenges never end there. There were a lot of late nights in that Mid-Ohio garage trying to set up and figure things out. My crew and sponsors were great all week long. The trophies are really theirs.”
The forecast called for clear skies and moderate temperatures. There was a chance of rain on Friday, and although there was a drizzle, the real rain never came, and the team would never need to find out how well the rain tires would actually work.
And so it was with a dry track and crisp air that the team would vie for the championship, but not before some challenging events took place during test day and practice.
During testing the team found that the car simply would not turn. They couldn’t induce enough rotation for this very twisty track. They had a tire stagger setup to try to get oversteer. The front tires were Nitto NT-01 235/40R17s, while the backs were 225/45R17s. They went full-stiff on the rear Progress swaybar. They took out the rear spacers to close up the rear track. They went to radical tire pressures. And though some subtle improvements were made, the general balance just wasn’t right.
Toward the end of the day, the team decided to check the alignment even thought it was done immediately prior to the event. What they found explained a lot. The front had lost over a degree of camber, and more importantly had moved from 1/8-inch toe-out to 3/8-inch toe-in.
After a quick alignment with the help of Robert Fuller from RobiSpec, Gardner went out to test the car. Most of the balance had returned and the car could be planted with the brakes, rotated, and actually hustled around a corner. Problem mostly solved.
The brakes were taking their fair share of abuse. Mid-Ohio proved to be brutal on the stock front brakes, eating pads every day, and deeply grooving the rotors into submission. Danny Puskar from Carbotech was on-site, and a quick call to engineer Chris was all it took to cook up some more pads and get them to the team.
In spite of the high rate of wear and the extraordinary heat, the pads never lost their bite, but the team would have other strange brake happening before test day was done. The pedal got a bit low and the brake warning light started flickering on the dash. A brake pad swap and a fluid change seemed to fix both issues, and so the team headed into Thursday’s practice feeling confident.
On Thursday the team continued to learn the track and build speed, and by the end of the day, Gardner had ripped off a 1:42.xx lap time, better than all save one PTE competitor. Things were looking promising as the first Qualifying race was approaching.
On Friday the team got a welcome addition to the crew, as Master Tech, Phil Nedrow, showed up from Graham Toyota/Scion just down the road in Mansfield. Nedrow proved to be extremely valuable, as he had race crew experience and he jumped right in.
The front rotors were still burning up, and by the middle of the day, the team encountered another brake issue, this one far more perplexing. The brake pedal was hard with the motor off, but when the car was started the pedal became squishy and dropped all the way to the floor. Not a good sign.
The team tried everything they could initially think of, but none of the normal diagnostic procedures seemed to make things better. Gardner got on the phone to Toyota Motorsports and talked with the fantastic trio of Marty, Chuck, and Rich who have been a tremendous help throughout the season.
Everyone was perplexed, but Marty began the hustle that would eventually land extra rotors, a brake booster, and a brake control ECU in the team’s lap on Saturday morning.
During Friday’s Qualifying session, Gardner would arrive first to grid, and would be the first car out on track. Unfortunately the track would be immediately green, and Gardner would have to hustle on cold tires and brakes if he didn’t want other cars to zoom by, as they vied for space to get a clean lap.
As Gardner hustled the car around the track during what otherwise would have been a warm-up lap, he was closing faster and faster on the back of the pack. In the end, the strategy of being first to grid would backfire, as the team only was able to post one clean lap before catching traffic. Two Qualifying DQs, however, would put Gardner on pole for the first Qualifying race.
Before the race, Gardner noticed that the pedal seemed to be getting worse. He repeatedly pumped the pedal up, which got it slightly off the floor, but then it would sink again. It looked like he might have to use this technique going into each brake zone for the race.
When the green flag dropped, Gardner got a good jump and passed a few cars by taking the inside heading into Madness. The PTD cars were staged ahead of PTE, and so he was dealing with that traffic right from the start. After just a couple of laps, an incident forced the pace car to come out and collect the group as the track went full yellow. All cars circled the track for multiple laps, until it was safe to start the race again.
Two cars were ahead of Gardner on the single-file restart. Right before the flag dropped, the car in front of Gardner checked up, leaving him off the gas when the green flew. Gardner mashed the gas, but by then other cars far in the back had gotten a good jump and were raging up through the field.
Immediately the black Civic Si was on Gardner’s bumper through Madness and into Thunder Valley. Gardner saw a double yellow going into the Carousel, and he eased up. The Civic driver apparently wasn’t paying attention to the flags, as he zoomed by Gardner in the turn, which would result in a DQ.
An ITA Sentra SE-R driven by Joe DiMinno gave Gardner a ton of pressure for the remainder of the short race, tapping Gardner in the keyhole and sending him sideways. Still, Gardner would hold off DiMinno and eventually win the race after the Civic was doled out the DQ.
On Saturday, the team woke up at the crack of dawn with a plan in place to further trouble-shoot the brakes. Gardner and crew chief Chris Viscovich checked the brake control ECU diagnostic codes to make sure nothing was amiss even though there was no light on the dash. No codes came back, but the team reset all codes just to be on the safe side.
That seemed to make no difference in terms of the pedal height and mushiness, and the team wanted to test pulling a wheel speed sensor. After doing that, Viscovich drove the car around the paddock and seemed to think the pedal was a bit better. It wasn’t drastic, but even if it was a little better it might help.
Having dislodged a wheel speed sensor at Willow Springs earlier in the year, the team knew the car’s brakes would still function, even if in a degraded state of performance. No one was quite sure what it would do to the brake bias, as the car controlled bias electronically through the EBD system.
Gardner went out in a TT practice session to get a feel for things. The rear brakes seemed to have a bit too much bias, so Gardner knew he would have to be ginger with the brakes. He didn’t know how ginger until it was too late.
Going down the back straight at over 120 mph, Gardner eased softly into the brakes. Things felt fine upon initial application, but a split second later the rear brakes violently locked up and sent the car spinning like a top toward the inside wall. Gardner was a passenger along for the ride at that point as the car plowed through the grass, hit the wall, bounced off it, spun two more times around in the grass, leapt across the track surface and landed in China Beach, the gravel trap at the end of the back straight.
Gardner wasn’t hurt, but he was unsure of the damage to the car. A tow truck was quick to the scene, pulling Gardner out by the rear tow hook. The car started back up and Gardner was able to drive off. Things seemed surprisingly ok as no strange noises or rubbing were to be heard or felt during Gardner’s drive back to the paddock.
"When your driver calls you on the radio to say that he has just crashed into a wall, the first thing you want to know is that he’s ok," said Viscovich. "Dan was calm and let me know he was ok, though he didn’t know how bad the car was damaged. At that point I wasn’t really thinking about much other than whether he was hurt."
When the team had a chance to look over the car, they were simply shocked. The rear bumper support was pushed in, the bumper had a hole and scrapes, and the trunklid was slightly bent. Besides a wheel and tire needing replacement, that seemed to be the extent of the damage. The team had dodged a huge bullet. Chalk one up to simple luck and one tough Scion.
Needless to say, the team put the wheel speed sensor back on, and started to pursue other options. The team now was under the impression that the brake control ECU was somehow the culprit. Viscovich wanted to try a strange procedure: bleed the brakes with the engine running. The procedure was actually validated by a NASA tech guy who had some experience working with electronic braking systems. He stated that if there was any air or contaminated fluid in that brake control box, it would only be able to get out with the motor on. And so the team set out to try it. It couldn’t hurt, and the new part was arriving from Toyota Motorsports later that morning anyhow.
Strange enough, during the unorthodox bleeding procedure Viscovich noticed that a bit of air was coming out of each caliper. Nothing major, but enough to say that maybe the team was onto something. Gardner confirmed that the pedal indeed felt harder. Before patting themselves on the back, Gardner would still have to try the brakes out on track.
During Saturday’s Qualifying session, Gardner did notice a significant improvement in the brakes. Gardner’s low 1:43 time couldn’t match DiMinno’s mid 1:42, and so he would qualify second. Still not a bad place to be.
Saturday’s Qualifying race still placed some of the slow PTD cars ahead of the PTE field, and this again made the start messy. Gardner got an ok start, but struggled to find racing room as he was trapped on the outside of the track. A car swung into a Miata next to Gardner sending the Miata flying into Gardner’s right side. This sent him into the grass as he motored down the straight, all the while fighting not to lose too many positions.
It was too late, though, as many cars had gotten by Gardner. He was now in fourth place behind the Civic, the Sentra, and Todd Reid’s Probe GT. And that’s how the short race ended. But a complaint from the Miata driver against the Sentra penalized the Nissan, putting it last in class. That bumped Gardner up to third, and it seemed like this was going to be an event where you had to keep your nose clean or risk huge penalty.
When the dust had settled, Gardner had finished the Qualifying races with a first and a third. That gave him 185 total points, enough to win pole position for the final National Championship race. And as a bonus, the race director gave the pole-sitters the choice of what side they would like to start on.
There were lots of nerves on Sunday, as Gardner tried to stay relaxed and loose. Music seemed to be the magic elixir of choice, and it calmed Gardner while he tried to shut everything out and focus on the task at hand.
After thinking about strategy, Gardner decided that it would still be best to start along the inside, and so with a finger point, he motioned the Ford Probe to the outside. The pace car pulled off, Gardner put the car in second gear, and maintained a speed that he felt would keep the motor in the sweet spot.
The green flew and Gardner mashed the gas, but there was a slight delay before the throttle opened. Add that to the fact that the Probe got a fantastic start, and Gardner couldn’t hold him from nosing ahead slightly. He grabbed third, then fourth, and then it was time to turn into Madness. The Probe had the edge going in as he passed Gardner, forcing the Scion to tuck in behind.
Gardner followed the Probe around for a single lap, and then repassed the Ford at the end of the back straight going back into Madness. From there Gardner tried to get away from the field, but it wasn’t to be. The Civic came raging up, as he clearly had significantly more power than the rest of the field. Gardner did all he could to keep the Civic behind him, running as defensively as possible to protect the position. In the end the super-motor Civic would pass Gardner going toward the keyhole, and would never look back.
But Gardner now had the Sentra right on his rear bumper, with the Probe not far behind. The rest of the field fell behind, as they were off the pace for the entire Championship event.
Gardner was making his car as wide as possible, and standing on the gas down the straight-aways to fend off the vastly lighter Sentra. And it was working. After several laps the Sentra got a run on the Scion, passing Gardner in the keyhole along the inside. Gardner took the more natural line, exiting out of the turn quickly. He immediately put himself on the Sentra’s rear bumper and then proceeded to pass the Nissan right back on the back straight.
From that point on, it was a matter of what would happen with traffic. The two leading PTD cars got intermingled in the PTE field. While racing eachother, they slowed down the leading PTE cars, but Gardner stayed ahead and started to run away from the rest of the field (though he would never catch the Civic.)
The race would end up being a 17 lap sprint, and Gardner would finish in second, six seconds ahead of third place. It was a strong showing for the Scion, and something that the whole team could hold their heads up high about.
“This was a car in its first year of development. It was a huge task to find out what would work and what wouldn’t,” said Gardner. “There really wasn’t anyone we could call, as no one had ever taken this car to the level we were building it. There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of help from our sponsors, and a lot of long nights (and mornings) in the garage. The list of people to thank is long, but we’re grateful to all who helped (and sacrificed) along this journey. We can’t wait for the new challenges that next year will bring!”
The car and team has two regional events remaining, that will count toward the final SoCal region standings. The next NASA event will be at Buttonwillow on October 13-14.
The JD Scion tC is currently fitted with
• Scion-supplied OE and TRD parts
• Nitto 235/40R17 and 225/45R17 NT-01 tires
• Enkei RPF1 17x8 wheels
• Recaro Pole Position Seats
• Progress Technology coilovers, rear swaybar, and camber bolts
• Dezod-supplied AEM standalone engine management, plug and play harness and stainless clutch line
• Kaminari carbon fiber roof
• Centerforce clutch and lightweight aluminum flywheel
• NST underdrive pulleys and shifter bushings
• AIT carbon fiber hood
• Wild Pony Motorsports-supplied camber/caster plates
• Goodridge stainless brake lines and oil cooler fittings and lines
• Carbotech XP10 and XP8 brake pads
• G-Force 5-point harnesses, racing suit, gloves, and helmet
• TRD limited slip differential, thermostat, and crank pulley bolt
• DC Sports Header
• AEM wideband O2 sensor and controller
• Energy Suspension bushings and motor mounts
• HoseTechniques silicone hoses, couplers, and clamps
• Motul brake fluid, engine oil, transmission fluid, and super coolant
• RobiSpec brake ducting
In addition, tire mounting, balancing, and repair are performed by America's Tire Co., tuning is done by i-Speed, alignment is performed by M-Workz, car care products are supplied by Mothers Polish, body work is done by Royalty Auto Body, team clothing is supplied by turn3, and dyno testing services are done by Harman Motive.
Jackson-Dawson Communications (JD) is a 25-year-old privately held company that provides creative and strategic services to a range of national clients. Core competencies include retail training, event marketing, marketing services, business theater, video and media production services, meeting planning, print graphic and design services, staging service and vehicle management.
With corporate offices in Detroit, MI, Jackson-Dawson also maintains offices in Torrance and Irvine, CA, Manhattan, NY, and Spring Hill, TN. Jackson-Dawson owns and operates several divisions: Peloton Creative Group, BenMar Communications, Drivers Talk Radio and Drivers Talk Testing.
-###-
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