Riley Racing has partnered with renowned film maker and time-lapse producer, Sean Stiegemeier, to capture, direct, document, and produce an exclusive video of the Riley Racing team’s weekend at Miller Motorsports Park during the season finale event taking place on September 9-11.

Sean Stiegemeier (@sstieg) is most recently famous for his time-lapse video of the Icelandic volcano eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in May 2010. The video is attached to this release, but can also be found on Vimeo. With over 2 million views and more than 14,000 “Likes”, Sean demonstrated his unique ability to capture a destructive force and produce a stunning piece of work.

PitchEngine is the official Title Sponsor of the Riley Racing team, and will thus have the naming rights to the video once produced.

Sean and the Riley Racing team intend to capture a unique perspective of a racing weekend in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, including the drivers’ duties and schedule, on-track and on-board action, and the excitement of a professional racing event at one of the country’s most stunning venues.

Riley Racing is sponsored by PitchEngine, Riley Mazda, DRIVEN Clothing Company, Bremont Watch Company, Oakley, and Honey Stinger.

Riley Racing drivers and brothers, Jameson and AJ Riley, are now working directly with TARGETRAINING to increase their fitness levels and endurance.

Leading up to their Philly Half-Marathon effort, the brothers and TARGETRAINING are focusing on running techniques and distance training. After the half-marathon event, their focus will turn to heat tolerance, physical endurance, and core strength.

With TARGETRAINING’s professional competition experience, the Riley brothers will be able to significantly increase their fitness levels to aid their driving and racing efforts.

Links

targetraining.com
facebook.com/targetraining
@targetraining

Riley Racing is pleased to announce PitchEngine® as the Title Sponsor of the Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 for the Miller Motorsports Park season finale event as part of the 2010 Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge series.

As Title Sponsor, the Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 will display a PitchEngine branding and color scheme for the single event, as well as custom racing suits provided by Oakley, and online marketing. Riley Racing partner, DRIVEN Clothing Company, will also produce special edition t-shirts and hats for the event, which will be given away in several contests during the event online and at the track.

Chris Riley, Owner of Riley Racing, is excited about the new sponsorship and pleased to be working with PitchEngine: “It’s great to have PitchEngine on board, and we’re really looking forward to working with them at the Miller Motorsports Park event. Sponsors are an essential part of this sport, and to have a great partner such as PitchEngine involved really helps our team and our sport.”

Jason Kintzler, CEO of PitchEngine, is looking forward to a new venture in motorsport and working with Riley Racing: “We’re always looking for ways to make PitchEngine rev. This seemed like a no brainer. It’s actually a great fit as the brands involved in racing are all looking to get the word out and could utilize a platform like PitchEngine.”

With PitchEngine, users can easily create and share a “Pitch™” – a modern version of the press release. Unlike the rigid press release of old, the Pitch offers both creator and reader far more flexibility. Users can incorporate embedded video, images, powerpoints and more into a hosted “microsite” that can easily be shared via the social web using apps like Facebook, Twitter and more. A dynamic blend of traditional PR and a more progressive, conversational method, the Pitch opens doors and engages readers. Those readers include not just media, but investors and consumers (friends, fans and followers) alike.

Riley Racing is a family owned and operated professional racing team competing in the Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge with their Mazda RX-8. The drivers are brothers, Jameson and AJ Riley, who each have raced in various series in the U.S. and internationally.

Brothers Jameson and AJ Riley will be running in the ING Rock ‘n’ Roll Philadelphia Half-Marathon on September 19, 2010. Training for the racing duo will begin next week, with both runners targeting finish times under two hours.

Riley Racing and the Riley Brothers have a fundraising page setup for their favorite charity, @LIVESTRONG, and will be running to help raise money and awareness for fighters and survivors of cancer. Donations go directly to @LIVESTRONG via an online donation website created through the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and can be found HERE. Remember, any amount helps.

Bringing momentum with us from the first race of the season where we lead 23 laps, the 4th race of the season (our 2nd) looked to be promising for a podium finish. Virginia International Raceway (VIR) is a familiar track for both Riley Racing (@RileyRacing) drivers, but unfortunately the team quickly ran into engine issues.

After qualifying, but before the start of the race, the team was able to find a vacuum leak in the intake system, which was a quick and fairly simple fix. Because of the engine issues, AJ (@ajriley) qualified the car, significantly down on power, in 28th in-class, which put us starting second-to-last.

AJ was making a great charge through the field, lapping much faster than most of the drivers in front of him. After only 30 minutes, AJ had managed to move up to 16th position, and was continuing to move forward. Unfortunately, AJ made a mistake and was caught out by the excessive rubber chunks and “clag”, leading to a spin and rearward contact with a guardrail.

AJ was able to continue on, and at the first full course caution, he brought the car in for fuel and a driver change. Jameson (@JamesonRiley) got in the car, but had to stay in pit lane for a few extra minutes to allow the crew to repair some of the rear damage.

Even with the damaged car, Jameson was able to lap faster than the leaders, and made up a lot of track position and time thanks to another yellow flag. Even though Jameson was lapping quickly, a fuel pump failed as a result of the crash, and our race was over 20 minutes before the checkered flag.

We will be making the repairs and improvements necessary, and will be at the next event at Lime Rock Park, our home track, on May 28-29.

The weekend started with a brake issue: no ABS. The ABS system in our car controls the power braking, and without it, we have far too much braking, resulting in easy lock-up. The problem was quickly fixed, and we were up to speed immediately.

With only one practice session left before qualifying, Jameson set out for his first time driving at Daytona International Speedway’s infield course, trying to learn the track and find setup changes that would need to be made for qualifying later that afternoon. AJ got some seat time as well at the end of the second practice session.

Qualifying went well, with Jameson setting the 5th fastest time for the ST class in our Mazda RX-8. We encountered some fuel issues during qualifying, which prevented us from going any faster, but we were happy with our qualifying time for our first time at Daytona.

Friday morning practice went even better, as we made some vital setup changes, and Jameson went fastest for the session with a 2:09.9 lap time, which would be our fastest time for the weekend. AJ started the session to get much needed track time and was able to get some good laps in before the race.

Jameson started the race, and quickly got to the front of the field, leading 23 laps of the 66 lap event, second most laps led only to the eventual winner. Because of our reoccurring fuel issues, Jameson had to pit for a second fuel stop, while other teams only required one stop. This put us out of contention for the win, or even a podium. Unfortunately, our race ended with a rookie driver spinning AJ on the last lap, resulting in a different car hitting AJ and damaging our car.

Although the race ended with a crash, we still made great progress throughout the weekend, and led many laps. It was a great effort from the entire Riley Racing crew and drivers, and we look forward to the next event.

We’ve been hard at work during the off-season with our Mazda RX-8. The car has been lightened and several systems upgraded.

With the announcement from Grand-Am that Continental Tires is the new title sponsor of our series, we will be running Continental Tires for the 2010 season, which should pose an interesting challenge to all teams, as we understand and work with the new tire.

DRIVEN Clothing Company will be featured more prominently on the car and team apparel in 2010; look for the Official Riley Racing Team Crewshirt available soon from DCC.

Due to budget restrictions in this tough economy, we didn’t do much racing this year. In fact, the only race in which we competed was the season finale at Virginia International Raceway with our Castrol SYNTEC Mazda RX-8 in the KONI Sports Car Challenge ST class.

We were able to go over 3 seconds faster than in 2008 at the same event, and were only half a second from the fastest car of the weekend. Although we were the fastest and highest placed Mazda RX-8 in the field, the Mazda RX-8 still needs some help from the Grand-Am officials to be more competitive.

Jameson qualified the car in 11th place, the highest qualifying Mazda RX-8 in the field. After about 2 1/2 hours into the 4 hour race, AJ experienced fuel pump failure, and so he had to bring the car behind the wall for repairs. After half an hour in the paddock, the Riley Racing mechanics were able to replace the faulty fuel pump and get the Mazda RX-8 back on track.

We ended up finishing 16th, definitely not representative of what our car was capable.

Riley Racing plans to be at the 2010 season opening event during the Daytona 24 hr weekend, and are working to put together a budget to compete in the entire 2010 Grand-Am KONI Sports Car Challenge season.