Day 2-3 roundup!

Hello everyone! Thanks so much for reading the first days report and checking back in on how the rest of the weekend went. Saturday ended up being extremely successful day for our #4 CTF Racing4Research TRG Porsche! After posting top 10 times on the first day we focused on getting the guys more comfortable with downshifting of the Porsche. The GT Porsche features a no-lift shifting system for the upshifts which means you leave your foot flat on the gas and just pull back on the shifter as you go UP through the gears. On the downshifts however you need to use the clutch like in a normal car and we also “blip” the throttle to make the downshifts seamless.

After again running in the top 10 in the Saturday morning session I went out to the corners and watched the guys and tried to talk to them and get them to change some of their lines and work on being as smooth as possible. In the afternoon session we got Kenny some more running time because he was gonna have to leave for an appearance Sunday morning and would miss the rest of testing. At this point everyone in the car had gotten into the 1:55 range which is a great pace and gave me thoughts of a podium before remembering we have a LONG way to go!

Before the 2-hour night practice there was a 1-hour session which our crew chief Mike Fox and I agreed to put on some new tires and run low fuel to try a mock qualifying run. I drove around slowly before starting to pick up my pace and started to throw down a big lap. As I entered turn 3, I felt the brake pedal go to the floor and lock-up one of the front tires. Eager to get our name on the top of the time sheet, I kept my foot in it and as I approached the second horseshoe turn 5 I got the same brake pedal going to the floor and locking up a tire. I still didn’t want to give up the lap as sometimes you’ll drive a car that needs the brakes to be bled so you have to pump up the pedal until you can get the brakes fixed. I pumped the brakes thru turn 6 and it felt good. As I was heading towards the bus stop chicane at 175 mph I went to the brakes and the car locked the front brakes instantly and turned towards the wall and I thought we were in big trouble.

I immediately went into survival mode and got the car settled down and made it thru bus stop knowing that I just got extremely lucky and I needed to pick up some lottery tickets on my way home from the track tonight! On the dashboard we have a predictive lap timer that gives you a live estimated lap time and I could see we were still going pretty fast. I made it thru turn one with white knuckles and saw that I had done a 1:51.0 and Mike crackled on the radio that we were P3!!!!

I pitted immediately to find out what was wrong with the car. The guys checked the brakes and looked at the back of the car and found the rear hub had broken completely and one more lap could’ve been detrimental. We decided to take the car back to the garage and the session ended with us in P4! To say we were stoked was an understatement!

For night practice the crew had our blue and white CTF car ready to go and we attempted the same thing. I went out and the car felt great and my first flyer was a 1:51.2 and the 2nd was 1:50.7 which put us P5 at end of the 2 hours and a half second from P1! All the guys ran the night practice and got down to competitive laps which was encouraging to see because a lot of drivers have a hard time finding their pace at night!

We packed up the hot rod for the night and we left the track feeling pretty good about our chances come race day!

Sunday Morning we arrived at the track and talked about our goals for the day. The morning session was aimed at getting the guys a little quicker and then using the afternoon session to let me get our final setup for when we come back to the race. I did a few quick laps and the car felt pretty good. I did notice a slight hesitation in the gearbox but nothing that I felt was detrimental. Ron hopped in the car right after me and ran his fastest lap of the weekend with a 53.7 which was outstanding and I was really happy for him because that’s the fastest he’s ever gone at Daytona!

Daniel hopped in the car and as he was leaving the pits the gearbox decided it had dealt with enough and popped out of gear. The crew decided to end the session early and fix the problem. Upon removal they noticed the gearbox was worse than initially thought and it didn’t make sense to fix it for the last session.

We ended up being 7th or 8th in GT when you combine the times from the entire weekend and have a great five driver average which I’m extremely excited about! As the race gets closer I’ll keep everyone posted of our progress with the car and training to tackle the biggest endurance race in the USA!

Stay tuned!
Ryan

An excerpt from TRG’s Daytona testing weekend wrap-up:

The No. 4 TRG/Children’s Tumor Foundation/Porsche at the hands of Ron Yarab, Richard Zahn, Daniel Graeff, Kenny Wallace and Ryan Eversley made great strides all weekend. The “senior class” of the TRG armada ended the weekend seventh in combined time.

“TRG has put together an excellent package for us,” Graeff said. “We are fast and I think there is more left in the car still. Ryan Eversley is doing a tremendous job helping all of the drivers. We were fifth fastest during last night’s practice. We are coming along really well. All of the drivers get along great and it really fun racing with Kenny Wallace. We are going to take all of the measurements off of the car and try and bring it back in the exact same configuration for the race.”

“Our weekend really went well,” Yarab said. “The car is really fast and I had a great time driving the past three days. In night practice the field was really amped up and some of the guys were getting a little more aggressive, I guess that is a snap shot of what is to come later in the month. I was really focused on being consistent. I am really happy with the car, the TRG guys have got the thing really fast, especially around the banking.”

The Rolex 24 Hour At Daytona will be televised live on the SPEED Channel in two segments. The first segment will air from 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, January 29, rejoining the action from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 30.

Day 1!

Well, here we are folks! First let me introduce myself. My name is Ryan Eversley and I am a 27-year-old race car driver from Atlanta, Georgia. I am new to the CTF Racing4Reseach gang but I’ve been in the racing sport since I was born. In fact, the first race I attended was the 1984 Daytona 24 Hour at 2 months old with my dad who was a crew chief.

When the opportunity was first presented to me to be a part of this program for the Daytona 24 hour I knew I wanted to be involved. When I was young, I was diagnosed with spinal meningitis and spent a long time in the hospital. I recovered from the illness despite the complete loss of my hearing in my left ear. I was very young but still grateful to the people who gave me hope and made me smile so the Racing4Research car hit pretty close to home and I jumped at the chance!

Most of you probably already know about Ron and Daniel, and after meeting them this week I immediately understood how this program has been successful. They’ve welcomed me to the program with open arms and I can already tell we’ll be friends for a long time. Our other two co-drivers are Kenny Wallace and Rich Zahn. Kenny doesn’t need much of an introduction because he is a NASCAR driver and TV commentator. Besides those credentials I’m pretty sure he was either a court jester or a stand-up comedian in another life because he is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever encountered! Rich Zahn and I met at a pre-test we did just last week in Kershaw, S.C. We immediately, along with Kenny, started joking around and getting to know each other and all three of us had a nice time driving the TRG Porsche.

So that’s our lineup, and now we find ourselves at Daytona Beach for the Rolex Series “Roar Before The 24″. For the next three days we will have 12 hours of track time to work out all the kinks, knock off all the rust and prepare for one of the toughest auto races on the planet!

Today was our first practice day and it went pretty well! I was lucky enough to get to take the car out in the first practice session and get a good read on how it was going to handle. We ran a time which was good enough for the top 5 in the early part of the session and then I hopped out and got Daniel buckled in and off he went! Daniel did a great job and found the car similar to my thoughts and we made some small changes to its handling. After, Rich hopped in for about 10 laps to reacquaint himself with the high banks of Daytona before Mr. NASCAR, Kenny Wallace, hopped in. We ended the session with a good idea of changes we needed to make as well as 14th fastest on the speed charts.

In the second session I went out on track first to evaluate some of the changes we made and then began to try to set a fast lap time to see what we had in our awesome looking Porsche! I was able to clock off a 1:51.8 which is the fastest I’ve ever gone around Daytona so it was a special lap to me. When I looked at the time sheets we were P3!!!! I was so surprised and happy that Daniel, Rich, Kenny and I all high fived as Ron hopped in and got his first laps of the weekend. As the session ran on we ran everyone through the car again and worked with our crew on getting seat belts comfy, the dashboard configured and mirrors set where we all liked them. We ended the session in 9th place which is a great showing for our first day and we’ll keep fighting to get closer to the front! Stay tuned!

Ryan

Kenny Wallace, Ryan Eversley and Rich Zahn took some time to get to know the #4 Children’s Tumor Foundation Porsche GT3 Cup Car today at Carolina MotorSports Park in preparation for this weekend’s Roar Before The 24 at Daytona.