This past weekend eEuroparts.com debuted our new Saab 9-3 race car in the American Endurance Racing Sahlen’s Sprig Fest at Watkins Glen International, know as “The Glen”. The Glen is an extreme test of racing that includes 3.9 miles of fast corners, faster straights, and punishing curbing. The field featured 80 cars and it was extremely competitive. Our class contained 13 total cars, all grouped by relative speed. Each class, and the entire race, was decided by mere seconds over an entire 18 hours of racing. Our final placing was 7th of 13 total teams. We were able to race the entire day on Saturday and then ran into some problems with curbing on Sunday. We ended the weekend with lots of valuable information and more to work on when we return to racing with AER at New Jersey Motorsports Park – Thunderbolt May 19-21.

Getting ready to race is always a race in and of itself. Preparation is 80% of racing and we couldn’t have done it without help from our sponsors. Orio supplied us with an awesome Aero kit to give our 2003 Saab 9-3 SS a face lift to 07+ Aero. Krona supplied a stainless steel downpipe and strut tower brace. Unlimited Motorsports & Paint on Route 83 in Ellington, CT got our paint together. Every single bushing on the car was supplied by PowerFlex USA. We always try and use off the shelf parts from vendors that we supply so that’s why on our car you’ll see lots of brands including: Bosch, Sachs, Koni, do88, Ina, FAG, and many more. We race using the parts we sell, so we know if they’re good enough to hold up to 18 hours of punishing racing then they will be great for your street car. If you ever do have an issue our industry-leading warranty process will cover all the costs of shipping you a new item AND the return shipping on the defect.

Friday at an AER event is always practice and qualifying. Qualifying places cars in groups based on overall speed. Practice is where preparation really pays off. Part of our practice for the week also included Tuesday afternoon at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, CT. That practice session in combination with our Friday practice helped us sort out most of the major issues with our Saab 9-3. We spent most of Friday learning the track and addressing various additional minor issues as they came up. Our relative lack of issues was a testament to our lead engineer Jordan Pagano. Any time you completely dissemble a car and then put it back together there are going to be growing pains, and maybe some lose bolts, but overall the car was in great shape.  Only a few leaks and minor issues after a complete chassis, engine, and transmission rebuild.

The most significant issue we faced in practice was a broken lower torque mount on the engine. The job of a torque mounts are to hold the engine in place as the motor torques. This is most important when the suspension is loaded at corner apex and you want to apply power. If the engine is out of place too significantly it can cause serious issues with axle alignment and lead to catastrophic axle failure. Rather than putting a sock mount back in we fabricated a solid arm to replace our broken stock mount. This ensured that the engine would only move minimally as the engine torqued and keep our axles from failing.

Saturday morning dawned cold and cloudy and driving lead off by Lee Carpentier. Lee is a professional driver and driving instructor and runs Advance Motorsports. He’s one of the drivers on our team most experienced in dealing with traffic and we would need that experience when the field saw a car in the wall on the start. During his morning stint Lee managed to show us the potential of our new Saab 9-3. Lee moved us from our starting position of 40th all the way into the top 15 in the race and third in our class.

A new challenge quickly became apparent: fuel consumption. Our Saab 9-3 fuel consumption of about 6.9 MPG was only going to be good for about 64 minutes over a stint with our 16+ gallon tank. This was going to be significant as the day wore on. Watkins Glen is a NASCAR track so the pit lane is extra long to accommodate a 43 car NASCAR field. That means stopping for fuel every 64 minutes, over a 9 hour race, would mean at least 7 stops total. AER rules require five pit stops no shorter than 3 minutes from all teams during the race. Given the length of pit lane it wasn’t possible to stop for much shorter than 3 minutes so that would mean the extra fueling would cost us valuable laps throughout the day, as many as five total. Given the high level of competition in the field that just wasn’t going to cut it but we stuck it out and did the best we could for a seventh place finish on Saturday. Overall not bad at all for a brand new car.

Sunday dawned finally with some nice weather. The weekend was typical upstate New York spring, mostly cool and wet with some sun. We were starting in the top 40 again and lead off by Lee. In the first two laps Lee was pinched off in a turn and resulted in a small amount of contact on the left front wheel of the car. This seemed innocuous at the time but about 16 laps later it came back to haunt us when Lee slid over the curbing in turn 1 and the left front wheel suffered a catastrophic wheel stud failure, shearing all five studs off on the wheel. Luckily Lee saved the Saab 9-3 from a date with the baby blue Armco lining the track wall.

After assessing the damage it was actually relatively minor. We needed a new wheel bearing and studs. Not bad for something that could have been much worse. Given the situation with fuel and our need for additional testing, as crew chief I decided that we weren’t going to push to be in the race for the day and it was much more valuable to use the day to test for the upcoming race in three weeks. Sunday was very valuable for us. We tested a variety of computer modifications and found some other minor issues with the car that I believe will lead to a very competitive car at NJMP.

This is going to be a very exciting season as we continue to develop the race car and start releasing new Saab 9-3 items to help you upgrade your car.  If you want a recap of the race there is about 15 hours of live footage on our YouTube channel and Facebook, as well as a massive image gallery from AER. Give it all a look and see if you think you could come racing with us!