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Battery Beach Burnout Results and Summary |
by Shawn M. Waggoner
Source: Electric Vehicle Discussion List (EVDL)
(1/23/2006)
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 Hi Folks,
I know everyone has been waiting for the results and information about the Battery Beach Burnout event this weekend (especially Jim Husted!). Sorry for the delay but between being at the track until 2AM on Saturday and being back out there at Noon to setup for the next day’s events and then doing it all over again, everyone has been a little tired.
Before getting into the details of the events themselves, I’d like to first thank two groups people. First is the group of people that helped organize the Battery Beach Burnout. Matt Graham and Lowell Simmons, the co-organizers of the event, both were a major help in making the event what it was. Matt’s support in the marketing of the event and planning and Lowell’s organizing the Autocross and contacting the high school teams to attend was awesome. Both of them worked very hard in making sure we had all the trophies, prizes and were as prepared as we could be for the event. I could not have done it without them. I’d also like to thank several other people for the help they offered during the event. Cliff Rassweiler worked with Lowell to setup up an amazing autocross course for the area we were given, Bill Young for all the help in selling shirts and raffle tickets, Jerry Dycus for being willing to jump in any where he could help and also my wife Christina for all her help keeping records, tracking times and putting up with me through all of this!
Any event is only successful if it has two things: people to attend the event and people helping sponsor the event. Our sponsors have been great and really enabled us to hold such a grand event right off the bat for our first year. I would encourage everyone to check out the sponsor’s page on the Battery Beach website (http://www.batterybeach.com/sponsors.html) and to please support the companies that support EV racing and the EV events!
OK, the event itself. Friday afternoon, the generator was dropped off and track officials got us all setup in our own area in the pits. It was really nice having the 70kW of power available for everyone, charging was not a problem! It was even nicer having the wonderful support that we received from Moroso Motorsports Park, the track officials and management have been absolutely fantastic about supporting the event and having the EV’s out there. At one point the staging lane coordinator told me he wished they were all EV’s – he loved how quite they were. The weather was also great, t-shirt weather, clear skies.
Friday night was the drag racing portion of the event. We had a great turnout for the first year. We had lots of locals come out as well as several teams from out of state to join in the fun. From out of state, there was Ricky Lewis and his sons Tim and Chad from Northeastern High School in NC and Shenandoah Valley Governor’s School showed up with two cars and an entire team of students and parents. From here in sunny south Florida, we had Matt Graham with that hot Nissan 240SX, Lowell Simmons from Miramar High School, Steve Clunn with his new Mitsubishi truck conversion (Warp 11 and all), Cliff Rassweiler with the Pro EV Electric Imp and Matt Graham and I brought out a couple of electric bikes to run (including Orange Crush sporting the motor from Jim Husted). After everyone got in and registered it was off to the staging lanes…and then wait. The most frustrating part of the whole event was the waiting. Moroso had the largest turnout of Sportsman class cars that it has had in months. Despite the wait times in staging to run, we got lots of good EV drag racing runs in throughout the night. We raced till after 1AM. What a bunch of die-hard racers! Everyone was running around tweaking cars and jumping back in the staging lanes for another run. Some highlights of the night were Steve Clunn showing just how much power that 11” motor has – and how little traction that poor little truck had. His truck may have been moving a little slower, but those tires had to be doing 150mph! This was Steve’s first time ever on a drag strip and I guess he was a little unclear as to what to do when that green light came on. He adjusted in a hurry and learned the ropes fast. He got back out there and was able to
post a top run of the night of 17 seconds. What a great sport Steve is and will really be posting some better times when gets that rear end to handle the power! Lowell Simmons was out in the Miramar High School Porsche 944 with a new setup at 192VDC. He put on quite the fireworks show during the burnout with lots of arcing coming from those dual 8” ADC motors during the burnout. Besides breaking in the new motors, Lowell was also trying to get the new Z2K setup right in the car. The Porsche’s evening ended in frustration when the driveline busted on the line. Still, a new HS/C record was set at 19.88 seconds! Matt Graham had a frustrating night with the Nissan 240SX. The car was not shifting from Series to Parallel at all and he posted a best time of 14.46 at 95MPH with it only in series. (Matt will be posting with all the details of the night in a separate post). Matt also ran the SEVO/Hi-Torque “Orange Crush” bike. The bike is a 24V Super Pocket Bike and was being run for the very first time. With no break in time for the batteries and the night cooling off, Orange Crush powered by “Mighty Tim” built by Jim Husted, posted a time of 14.04 seconds at 45MPH in the 1/8th. We were less than .3 seconds from seeing a new MT/J record! Cliff Rassweiler had some great runs after chasing out some gremlins of his own. For a car setup for road racing and autocrossing, he sure showed his stuff on the drag strip! This was the first time Cliff ever had the Pro EV Imp on a drag strip. Cliff’s best time for the night was 15.6 (OK…15.596) at 90MPH. We also had some great High School action out there. Chad Lewis was driving the Northeastern High School Volkswagen (96VDC) and the car ran solid all night. Chad was very consistent in performance every run, posting times of 18.09 in the 1/8th. Shenandoah Valley brought their two cars, a Datsun 240Z and Porsche 911 (both 120VDC). They had some transmission issues with the 911 but still overcame the problems to make several good runs. The 240Z ran at 21 seconds in the ¼. Folks, watching these students drive these cars in the drag race and autocross, I have to tell you, there is going to be some great EV drivers in the very near future!
After a few hours of sleep (personally getting home at a little after 3AM), we headed back out to the track for the Show and Shine starting at noon. Moroso gave us plenty of space in the camping area to put all the EV’s on display. Besides all the cars we had the night before, Charles Whalen brought out his two RAV4 EV’s to show off and let people drive. Darin Pinard brought out his new creation, a custom built high end electric Mountain Bike – what a blast! Jerry Dycus also had the shell for the “Freedom EV” on Display for us to check out. Bob Rice made it down for the weekend to join us. The Show and Shine was great. Everyone had a chance to relax and clean up their cars and check out all the other EV’s. During the Show and Shine, there were two ballots passed out. The first was for all the spectators to fill out and the other was only for the EV’ers to fill out. Two of the awards for the Show and Shine were “Viewer’s Choice” and “Show Choice”. The idea was to have the spectators vote for their favorite EV and the EV owners to vote for the EV they liked. Matt Graham managed to sweep both of the awards; however he was given a strong chasing for the lead on the “Show Choice” by Shenandoah’s 240Z. The final award given out for the Show and Shine was the “Best Design” award. While there was no criteria for the Viewer’s and Show Choice awards, the Best Design award was given out based on the technology and engineering that went into the car based on it’s function (performance, range, etc.) and did not take into account ascetics’. The winner was selected by committee. Originally, the committee was going to be the three race organizers, it was agreed upon that since Matt and Lowell both had cars in the show and shine, we should select two more people. Chip Gribben and Jerry Dycus stepped in and worked with me to review the cars. Ladies and Gents, this was not an easy task! There were some very impressive EV’s on display. Chip, Jerry and I agreed that several people deserved recognition for the work in their cars, like Shenandoah’s 240Z, Matt Graham’s 240SX and Miramar’s 944. However, the one car that stood just a little higher in overall design was the Pro EV Imp. Its use of Lithium Polymer batteries, twin AC drives and built-in on-board data acquisition with a tablet PC for the dash display made it the winner. What an amazing car to go through!
OK, its 4:30 PM on Saturday and the gates open to the track. We went in and setup the autocross course. Cliff worked with Lowell to create an amazing course. We had a smaller area than we had hoped, but Cliff and Lowell were up to the challenge! In the short area they were given, they had two straight-aways, slalom areas, tight turns and chicane all built in. I think everyone agreed that the autocross was the best part of the weekend. Everyone that wanted to got to run. The school teams got to run through with several drivers per car. Cliff, like a fish in water, demonstrated his prowess in the course (I guess it helps being a professional driver and having a super hot car!) Charles Whalen brought his RAV4’s out to display them and give rides, but made it clear he wasn’t going to be racing his daily drivers. Yeah. After a little gentle nudging and assurance that the autocross was not going to hurt the RAV’s he ventured out to the course. After his first run through the course, he got out of the RAV with a smile that you couldn’t take off with a Brillo pad! He was hooked! He then offered up the RAV’s for any others to run. Chip Gribben jumped in on that action and took the RAV out to see what it could do. Another smile! Most of the older EV crowd was put to shame by the high school teams of Shenandoah and Northeastern. Shenandoah’s 240Z drivers were hot! When these kids get older, Cliff better be looking out for these guys on the road courses – very talented! Not wanting to end the fun with the autocross, we did have to wind down. Not till we had a bit more fun though. Paul Little came out, but was not able to bring out his electric Porsche 959 due to a mechanical problem, but was driving his ICE Porsche. He ran the course in it. Autocrossing is a practiced sport. The more you run the course, the faster you run, making a little better time on each pass. Paul ran his ICE Porsche through 9 times pushing and pushing to get faster, but after 9 laps he posted a best time of 26.8 seconds for the course, beating most of the of the other times. Well, all but one… after 9 laps, he still could not beat Pro EV’s time of 26.6 seconds after only 4 laps. We would love to have seen how much faster Cliff could have gotten the Imp through after a few more runs. What an impressive display of driving and performance by all.
Winding down from all the events we held the award ceremony and raffle drawings. Lots of great prizes were given away. We had shirts from Megawatt Motorworks, Alltrax, NetGain and Bad Fish Racing. NetGain also sent us enough NetGain cups to give one to everyone there. We also gave out Gone Postal DVD’s, contactors, a 12V charger, multi-meter and commutator stones from Hi-Torque electric. In a separate raffle, we gave away a brand new AXE-4865 compliments of Alltrax. Alltrax was a huge supporter of the event.
Here is a summary of the Trophies that were passed out:
High voltage car (over 156VDC):
1st – Matt Graham
2nd – Cliff Rassweiler
3rd – Steve Clunn
Low Voltage Car (under 156VDC):
1st – Northeastern High School of North Carolina
High School Car:
1st – Lowell Simmons & Miramar High School
2nd – Shenandoah 240Z
3rd – Shenandoah 911
Motorcycle:
1st – SEVO/Hi-Torque “Orange Crush”
Show and Shine:
Viewer’s Choice – Matt Graham
Show Choice – Matt Graham
Best Design – Cliff Rassweiler / Pro EV
Autocross:
1st – Cliff Rassweiler / Pro EV
2nd – Harrison Mohn / Shenandoah 240Z
3rd – Chad Lewis / Northeastern High School
Two other awards were given out. The first was the Battery Beach Burnout “Burnt Out” award. This was given to the competitor who had the toughest weekend with breaking and car failures. This year’s winner (well, sort of) was Lowell Simmons and Miramar High School for the motor and driveline problems they had. The second award was the “Best Overall”. This award was given to the competitor who demonstrated great skill and performance in all the events. It was a pleasure to give this year’s award to Cliff Rassweiler and Pro EV. Each of these award certificates came with a custom made Palm Tree sculpture made of copper. Jim Husted, aside from making amazing motors, uses copper from burnt motors to create beautiful artwork. He sent us two palm tree pieces a smaller one and a larger one. The smaller one was given out with the “Burnt Out” award and the larger was given with the “Best Overall”.
Again, I want to say thanks to everyone one who attended, supported and raced at the event. It was a wonderful weekend and lots of great EV fun was had. We look forward to next year’s event and look forward to it being even bigger. We will have the full results and photos posted to the website by mid-week, so please keep checking the site.
Thanks,
Shawn M. Waggoner
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Wednesday, September 08, 2010