Challenging the Factory Five GTM from Prototype Development Group

We also had some basic maintenance to take care of on this car, we wanted to have fresh and full brakes on the car so we worked with our local partner over at Porterfield to make some custom Raybestos ST-45 pads for this car as well as some rotors. This pad compound always worked well for us in our customers’ cars so we thought we should continue using the products we were familiar with. The rotors were custom made for us by Porterfield as well, were heat treated and stress relieved and had no issues dissipating the heat we threw at them.

Besides getting the car ready Andrew also had to get in a bit better shape than usual to drive 3.5 hours straight. We didn’t have a codriver for this event so the plan was to have Andrew drive the entire race. This was never an issue in the E46 M3, but that car also had power steering and was generally more comfortable than the Norma. This would be a new challenge.

The team worked hard and got the car ready to make it up to the track for Friday testing the day before the race. The car seemed to be working flawlessly without any issues on Friday which gave the team time to relax on Friday night. When Saturday qualifying rolled around there was one other car in ESR that would be giving us quite a challenge. The car was a Factory Five GTM from Prototype Development Group. This car had quite a power advantage on our 4 cylinder Honda engine but we did manage to out qualify it and take pole position by a comfortable margin. The race was scheduled to start around 5pm so we had time to relax and fill the car. We spent our time doing some fuel burn analysis and decided we were not able to do the entire race with just one stop like we had hoped. We planned to stop late into the race for a second splash and dash. Despite having to do two stops we thought we would have an overall advantage over the other teams due to not having to spend times changing drivers.

In our next installment of the Norma series, the race is on…