With only one week between the Lime Rock and Watkins Glen event, the Riley Racing crew was glad to leave Lime Rock Park with very little damage and few repairs. The Continental Tire 150 weekend at Watkins Glen International started extremely well, with Jameson Riley (@jamesonriley) going 2nd quickest again in Practice, demonstrating the true potential of the Riley Racing Mazda RX-8.

After encountering some traffic in qualifying, AJ Riley (@ajriley) qualified the Mazda RX-8 in 16th. Unfortunately, due to a minor technical infraction (non-performance enhancing), the Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 was pushed to the back of the field and would start the race last in 34th.

AJ Riley took the Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 out for final practice a few hours before the race, and immediately encountered a major problem with the throttle. The Mazda RX-8 had very little power at full-throttle, but if the driver backed off the throttle just a little, a majority of the power was available. Needless to say, the Riley Racing drivers had a very difficult task to drive then entire 2 1/2 hour race having to “guess” the optimal throttle position that would allow for the most power.

After an early pit stop during a full-course yellow, AJ Riley had the Mazda RX-8 up to 3rd place from 34th. Because of the earlier pit stop, the team had to pit again for fuel and a driver change to get Jameson Riley in the car. In the end, Jameson made up a few spots after the reshuffle from the pit stops, and was able to bring the car home in 15th place. A great finish for the team considering they started dead last and ran the entire race with throttle issues.

As the saying goes, “expect the unexpected.” The team ran into multiple teething issues with the new system, including chasing a misfire for an entire day, thus wasting valuable development time. As this entire Bosch system is new to the team, it isn’t a simple plug-and-play system, and requires not only learning how to install the system, but also how to operate and modify the tuning parameters for the ECU.

Long story short, we will not be competing at or attending the Salt Lake City 200 in Utah on September 11. We apologize to all of our fans and anyone that was as excited as us to see the all-new PitchEngine design on the Riley Racing Mazda RX-8 at speed. Since this is the last race of the season, we are dedicating the next few months of the off-season to developing, tuning, and perfecting the new Bosch system in our Mazda RX-8. Expect to see us fighting for the win in Daytona.

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.