Paulie's Blog: Iowa event caps exciting weekend

Now that the spring semester of my freshman year at Duke University has finished, I can focus on a great deal of other things -- and most of these items are racing related! This week, I spent three days at Michigan International Raceway with the Duke University Motorsports team. I flew right from Michigan to Iowa for the Long John Silver's 200 at Iowa Speedway, where both the Camping World East and West Series ran together. Both events were very successful, as the Duke team finished 11th, its highest ever, and we finished fifth in Iowa.

The Duke University Motorsports team, along with teams from most colleges with engineering programs in the country, competed with their Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) car. For the competition, teams are to build an open wheel car from scratch. The objective is to have the fastest, most cost efficient, and safest car. As part of the competition, cars are judged off track for things like overall cost and design, and on the track in acceleration, skidpad, autocross, and endurance events.

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My involvement with the team started when I first visited Duke. I was still a high school senior and two of the team's captains spent some time with me talking about Duke. They were a big part of my decision to attend the university and I began helping out the team where I could before I began as a student there. With all that is going on with my studies and NASCAR racing, I haven't had the time to be with the team every weekend, which is primarily when they engineer and design the car. However, I allowed them to use my AiM Sports MXL Data Acquisition System. This system allows the team to log data on exactly what the car is doing at every section of the race track. It saves data like air/fuel mixture, RPM, lap time, brake pressure, throttle position and more.

The team designed a beautiful car and took it to competition. I drove the car in both the acceleration (essentially a drag race) and skid pad (a Figure-8 shaped track) events. Unfortunately, I had to fly to Iowa and could not stay for the last day and a half of the event, which is when autocross and endurance events were held. The Duke team finished with an overall score that placed it 11th, which is amazing considering how new the team is!

From Detroit, I flew into Iowa, landing just a few minutes before my Bill McAnally Racing crew. We all met up in the airport and jumped in the rental car. Upon arriving at the hotel, crew chief Duane Knorr and I spent about two hours looking through data from his tests at Iowa in previous years to try to get a head start. We were going to be using the same car we did in Phoenix with a setup much like the one we left Arizona with.

On Saturday morning we had a lot of time between when the gates opened and the first round of practice. The guys got the car through inspection and I went to work building a few shocks, in order to have some shock options during practice. At 4:10 in the afternoon, I finished up with the shock stuff, put my suit on, and climbed into the race car.

As soon as practice began, it was apparent that we were fighting many of the same issues that we had in Phoenix. The car was relatively stable, maybe just a bit loose, on entry, then would get to the bottom well only to become tight (understeer) in the center of the corner. Duane and the crew worked hard during practice and we made a few gains, but we still weren't where we needed to be. We ended up 18th out of 37 cars. The garages closed an hour after practice ended, not leaving us much time to make changes. Duane, car chief Ryan Precher and I stayed to watch the late model race that night. I was particularly interested in seeing whether or not the groove moved up as the race moved on. We left the track after watching the late models, grabbed some quick dinner and went back to the hotel. Duane and I spent about 45 minutes discussing what the day's changes had done to the car. From there, we spent another hour and a half discussing what direction we wanted to go in and what changes we would make.

Ultimately, we made some significant changes to the car as soon as we got to the track in the morning. They paid off, as the car was much better at the start of this session than it ever was in the last. From there, we made a number of other changes, none of which did what we were looking for. Most of them helped in some very small way, but we still needed a significant gain in the center of the corner. We also did a mock qualifying run, where we put on new tires and put tape over the grill opening on the nose (creates more downforce, but doesn't allow the engine to cool as well). When we did that, the car turned better in the center, but was way too loose off the corners.

At the end of the session, we made one more change and got ready for qualifying. I was one of the last cars to qualify, so I watched the first half of the session from on top of our hauler, picking up bits and pieces of information from watching other cars. When I finally did head out, the car was still too loose off. I got pretty sideways coming off Turn 2 on the second lap and we ended up qualifying 23rd. It definitely wasn't what we were looking for.

This race was an impound race, meaning that the cars have to stay on pit lane before they go to the grid and that the teams cannot make many changes. NASCAR allows us to make very few changes before the race, but Duane and I took advantage of all of them. We made pretty significant adjustments, all of which made logical sense but were untested. From there, it was off to an autograph signing. The fans at Iowa Speedway were some of the most excited and enthusiastic I've ever seen, making the session a ton of fun!

About the time that driver introductions began, the rain started to fall. After an hour and a half of rain delay, the NASCAR officials instructed us to strap in. As soon as the green flag flew, we started marching toward the front. By Lap 17, we were up to 17th position. I was steadily giving Duane feedback over the radio and Bill McAnally, who was spotting for me since my normal spotter was changing tires, was going a great job of helping me through traffic. The car was turning better than it had all weekend.

After a caution on Lap 34, the field was bunched back up. This really helped us, as we had lost some ground on the cars ahead as we moved through traffic. After we went back to green, we again began moving forward. After fighting Matt Kobyluck, the 2008 East Series Champion, for about 10 laps we were up to 14th on Lap 57. From there, pit stops cycled through, as a number of teams were on different strategies. We were able to pass cars each time we went back green. After everyone had stopped for tires and again for fuel, we were 10th when the green flag flew on Lap 122.

During each pit stop, Duane made small changes based on my feedback. Since this was only my second time on a track this big (Phoenix being the first), and since Iowa is much more aero-sensitive than Phoenix, I was learning a tremendous amount about how much cars can affect each other. One of our biggest problems was that we would get too "aero tight" when I got behind another car, meaning that the car pushed without the downforce on the nose. Duane's adjustments helped that a great deal, but we were still tight in traffic.

We continued to move forward and, after passing Jesus Hernandez and Mike David, were sixth by Lap 138. I then set my sights on Jason Bowles, who was visibly pretty tight. It took me about seven laps to run him down and another two to get alongside of him. However, I lost the air off of the spoiler off of Turn 4 and got the car really sideways. I was able to save it, but lost a lot of ground. I ran down Bowles again, this time understanding the aero game just a little better, and was around him by Lap 158.

From there, I set my sights on the No. 44 car of Brett Moffitt. A caution on Lap 177 bunched up the field. When we went green on Lap 184, I didn't get a particularly good restart and Moffitt pulled about two car lengths on me. From there, I had to work hard to get back to his bumper. I was close enough to him that my car would get aero tight, but not close enough to get him a little aero loose (taking the air off of his spoiler). I was finally able to get to him by Lap 190 and pass him by Lap 193. From there, I set my sights on the top three, hoping to be able to reel them in. Jeffrey Earnhardt got to my bumper and got me just loose enough that he could get inside of me with a lap and a half to go and was able to beat me to the finish by a nose.

Leaving Iowa with a fifth-place finish, which made us the second-highest finishing West car, made for a great weekend for our NAPA AutoCare team. We learned a great deal and were able to benefit from some awesome calls in the pits.

Paulie Harraka, a native of Fairlawn, N.J., is a student at Duke University. He is a member of the Drive for Diversity program and races in the Camping World West Series for Bill McAnally Racing. Harraka won the 2008 track championship at All American Speedway.