E D O M O T O R S P O R T S
Race Report: California(Auto Club) Speedway, March 2008

After a tough season opener at Willow Springs for Edo Motorsports, the car needed some body work and the engine needed a rebuild. The car was changed from black color the car started out with to the long beach blue pearl off of the Honda NSX. The engine was burning a lot of oil and when the pistons were removed, some of the pistons had broken rings and cracks between the ring lands. We also corner weighed the car for the first time and removed the APR rear wing and cut down the splitter to reduce drag at California Speedway.

Saturday:

The warmup session went well with no problems, but the qualifying session ended in the 6^th lap when the driver’s side axle CV joint broke. Edik was able to put the Edomoto Integra on pole with a 1:59.278 lap with James Landry and Benny P. rounding up the top 3. The axle was changed in time for the race.

The green flag dropped and Edik took off and built a pretty big lead. Manny Coats, James and Benny fought for 2^nd place for several laps until Benny spun trying to avoid a collision. Johnny Pag took over fourth place while Manny and James fought for 2^nd place. Edik started to lose the big lead due to another driver’s side axle breaking, he was still able to put the power down and continue the race. Edik let Manny and James pass him when they caught up. With one lap remaining, Pag also caught up to Edik and passed him going into turn one. Edik took a risk and pushed the broken axle to hold on for one more lap. He regained 3^rd place and was able to salvage the race and finish on the last podium spot. Manny finished in first with James right behind.

Sunday:

The axle failure was a problem and we alleviated it as we raised the car and replaced the polyurethane motor mounts with the stock mounts since we thought the motor mounts had shifted the engine enough to damage axles.

Practice went by with no problems as we had fixed the axle problem. The qualifying session was a qualifying race. The grid was set by inverting Friday’s finishing positions. Edik started in front of James and John Howard and was able to pass the other 8 H4 race cars in 6 laps and qualify in first for the second race of the weekend as well.

The green flag dropped on the Honda Challenge field and Edik held onto the lead, but was passed in turn 1 by Patrick Heavy and James. Edik was able to get by each driver and regain the H4 lead. Edik also caught up to Gregory Neuwirth, who was driving his RSX in the H2 class. He was able to pass Greg with several laps remaining and finished 1^st in H4 and in 1^st in Honda Challenge overall.

Thanks to all who helped and came to watch. See you at the next Honda Challenge event at Buttonwillow on April 26 and 27.

We would like to thank our sponsors for helping us get out to the race track.
http://edomoto.com/sponsors.html

the pictures of the race weekend are here: http://edomoto.com/images.html