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.

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.