Ecurie Ecrappe/AUTODENTA At Thunderhill's Arse Freeze - Apaloza 2009

Ecurie Ecrappe was back in action at Thunderhill with the same Coda-Toppo 4C2000 Spider you've seen in ADDX Tuning (France), Grassroots Motorsports (USA) and a little newspaper called the Wall Street Journal. The car felt a bit flexible during its previous outing at Reno, and the team (that would be Conrad) made some small adjustments to the chassis in hopes of stiffening a few key areas. The drivetrain was removed in order to better view the front crossmember and suspension mounts. While out, the gearbox was freshened with used parts. Metal was added to the shock mount areas as well as the front crossmember connection. A blown-up ball joint didn't help the handling at Reno either. Conrad also replaced the roll cage to bring it up to current safety specs and borrowed a more modern seat. Don't worry, the "Fangio Foam" was taken from the original seat and used in the bottom of the modern one for continuity. True to the Ecurie Ecrappe motto of not spending too much time on it, most of the work was accomplished the week before the event.

Guest shoe Martin Lauber joined the team again, and Conrad and Martin did most of the driving with Nick putting in some good pulls despite working the event, Christine put in a decent stint on Saturday and Jeff took some short breaks from event staff duties in the car as well. Thanks to a pair of visits to the penalty box during Jeff's stints, the color scheme changed during event as well. Sweet.

Overall it ran well, and finished 20th, despite slowly smoldering a good portion of the wiring harness throughout the weekend.

Photos below are in no particular order- most were shot by Nick.