| Welcome |
Hey, welcome to my official blog!
This is the place where you will find quick reports directly from my race weekends, plus a lot of other fun stuff going on, not always about racing.
Cheers! /Carl |
| Pic of the week |
Me in the Karousel, Nordschleife 2007. |
| Songs to check out |
1. Foo Fighters - Let it die
2. Foo Fighters - The Pretender
3. Adam Tensta - My Cool
4. Outkast - Take Off Your Cool
5. Sia - Breathe Me
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| Food and Drinks |
1. Vino Pasta, Gothenburg, SWE
2. The Standard, Hollywood, CA
3. Barney's Beanery, Santa Monica, CA
4. Le Clafoutis, Sunset Strip, CA
5. Heaven 23, Gothenburg, SWE
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| Other things |
| Spot to be filled with useful content. |
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| Another day at the office |
| Thursday, June 28, 2007 |
Having driven lots of different cars and being very focused on just racecars it´s not very often a car impresses me performance-wise, but on the paper this Porsche 911 Turbo does. Almost reaching 200 mph it actually passes 186mph after 18 seconds already.
So, this upcoming weekend I am assigned to set this beast up, to make it behave well on racetrack. This means playing with anything from wheel angles such as camber, toe to sway bars, the Öhlins shock absorbers, pressure in those fat Yokohama tyres, ride-height and aerodynamics. The pit crew will be kept busy for sure...
The event will be the Extreme Street Car Fest "Gatebil" at Mantorp Park, a 3,5k long racetrack located two hours from capitol Stockholm. A big crowd is expected, there´s gonna be lots of show cars, performance cars, car builders, drifters and fans around - and of course big parties - The Poodles are headlining btw, that rocks!
The event is somewhat different from a traditional Swedish racing weekend since there won´t be an actual race, but for me the job will be just the usual business anyway; two days of taking a lap or two at full throttle, going into the pits to adjust what needs adjusting, then out on the track again and quickly feel in the differencies and dive back into the pits for further adjustments - and then head out on the track again... Doing this we will bit by bit chew off small pieces of time and finally end up with a well balanced, very fast and decently driveable car.
Check out "Gatebilsfest" at www.gatebil.no and the Porsche at itsfun.nuLabels: Misc |
posted by Carl Rydquist @ 12:28 AM   |
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| End of our race |
| Sunday, June 10, 2007 |
Ulf had an incident during the night when he had to avoid two cars that crashed in front of him, but the team quckliy towed the car to the pits and replaced radiators and the front bumper. Martin went out and we started to pick up positions again but suddenly the engine just gave up after 4-5 laps into Martins stint. We have downloaded all data from the data logger at every pitstop to keep check on oil pressure, temperature, revs and so on, and there was no sign of anything alarming, the engine just blew.
 Really disappointing since we were running extremely well, up in the top 10 already.
Now we´re just trying to get over this and look forward to upcoming races. I´ll get back to you with more pictures and reports in a while.Labels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 7:26 PM |
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| Rain... |
| Saturday, June 9, 2007 |
Just when the grid was about to roll away for the formation lap, a great thunderstorm arrived over the track and the rain started POURING down. The start was delayed since many teams didn´t have a chance to get rain tyres on their cars. We are cool since we got a direct link to the weather gods ;) and get frequent very exact reports.
 Good to have live TV to look at in the box. Heavy rain out on the track...
 The front of the grid, Martin is sitting in our car to do the first stint. Rain is not a problem for us, we are confident about the car setup and we are used to rain racing in Sweden.
Don´t know when I have the time to update this blog next time, so to follow the race, go to www.24h-rennen.de for live results and web-TV.
Cheers!Labels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 3:48 PM |
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| Successful qualifying! |
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Hey folks!
After this day's efforts we´ve finally found the right setup on the car to get a fast qualifying time. We had a thorough discussion with our race engineer Fredrik after the morning session and made some changes to the car, which resulted in appr another 15 seconds on this 25km challenging track.
 We found a lot of time and the car felt really good on the track, it was just a blast to drive it now, like a dream. With 9.23 we´re among the all important top twenty.
We ended up as 18th (out of 220+ cars) which means we´ll get a flashing blue light to mount facing forward in the windscreen (the 20 fastest cars get these blue lights to signal to slower cars that we are front runners).
Race starts at 3 pm so I´ll post some impressions during the day. For the top twenty there´ll be an extra drivers meeting tomorrow at 10 am
 Impressions from the pits tonight, awesome atmosphere.
See yaa all tomorrow!Labels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 1:44 AM |
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| Second practice |
| Friday, June 8, 2007 |
Peter is in the car at the moment, practice just started. Weather has been cooling of a bit but hopefully there won´t be rain tonight. We hope that our setup changes will provide what we want from the car, to be able to keep full throttle a greater percentage than this forenoon.
 Uffe in the team motorhome, ready to try out the Nürburgring in the dark as well later tonight
 You can tell we´re getting closer to the race as more and more PR people and sponsors are beginning to show up and there are more and more activities going on around the track.
The team just had a nice barbeque that team owner Anders cooked and some guests to the team are arriving too, among others my former MV Racing team-mate Håkan Hall which was fun. We have done many races together from 2004-2006.
Ok, I´ll make a quick report tonight when the second practice session has ended.
CheersLabels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 7:53 PM |
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| First practice session |
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So we are finally underway with the driving. We also still have our one car in one piece which is really not the situation for everyone - no less than 30 cars were involved in some sort of incident during this first two hour long practice! They either spun out, had mechanical failures or collided. Just insane...
Anyway, our run began with me going out to check the chassis balance on the GP track and then check that the suspension, bump stops, dampers, ride height and aerodynamics were correctly tuned for the Nordschleife part.
 Ready to rock. I was really happy with my new earplugs from Bellman & Symphon, great clear sound over the CB-radio and they damp out the noise inside the car to a perfect level.
Overall, the balance was perfect on the GP track, which means it´s a little bit to oversteered for the Nordschleife, you couldn´t really go flat out on the fastest and most bumpy parts since the car was just a little too looose. This got worse when the tyres started to wear out, so the team is fixing some small things at this moment; we have some margins to work on the rear ride-height and sway-bars are easily adjusted.
Speed in the car was good otherwise, gearing is good, engine is really strong and the brakes are awesome. On my 2nd lap when I had checked the car was decent also on the Nordschleife I got a good start on my flying lap, passing among other Uwe Alzens brutal Porsche Cayman RS on the GP circuit. Unfortunately on this lap there were some cars that had suffered serious crashes on two different places, causing yellow flags and marshals were out on the track to tow the wrecks so we were like a queue of cars that had to go really really slow for some hundred meters and it just ruined any chance of a decent lap time.
When Ulf went out it only took half a lap before two cars collided and went into the barriers just in front of him, when they were all diving down Fuchsröhre at 200 km/h - he just slammed the brakes and luckily went through without a scratch..! Like expected he did a really solid job. Peter ran well as usual, no drama and good pace but he also had comments about oversteer. Martin was fast as usual, suffered traffic and yellows too and had even more problems with oversteer when rear tyres were really getting too hot. At the end he at least got a 9.46 putting us on 27th out of well over 220 cars.
 A lot of cars in the pits, tonight we´ll try to be among the first 20 cars out on the track.
The teams with the best laptimes were the ones who could exit the pits first since they got clean runs in the first couple of laps, before all the incidents started occuring, so tonight we´ll try to do the same thing and get our car out into the pitlane as early as possible. Also at a late stage in tonight's session there might be less cars and incidents on the track that may give an opportunity to get a clean run, the car is a lot faster than it shows at this moment.
Ok, talk to you later.Labels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 2:28 PM |
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| Waiting... |
| Thursday, June 7, 2007 |
Everything in order, dinner with the team coming up. Driver's meeting tomorrow at 08.45 am, then first timed practice. Rules say every driver has to complete two full laps to be allowed to start in the race. There are some forecasts saying there´ll be rain for the second timed practice tomorrow night, so it´s important to get some decently fast laps already in the forenoon (if it´s dry then no one will be able to top that if it rains during the second practice).
I´ll be starting out tomorrow to first check that we have a good balance in the chassis and then I check that the car handles well on the bumpy Nordschleife part of the track too. After that the other drivers will do their laps and hopefully at the end of the session Martin will get an opportunity to put in a good lap with an almost empty fuel tank.
Incredibly warm weather today so we´re drinking A LOT of water. If it gets this hot during the race it´ll very much be a question of having a driver line-up that can race without making mistakes in the heat since it will be truly exhausting at the end of every 100-110 minute stint. The night will then be a blessing when it cools down.
The atmosphere is great as usual! A lot of parties going on around the track and all teams are cheerful and eager to get out on the track.
 Rasmus has promised to put the wheels back on the car before I go out on the track tomorrow.Labels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 6:56 PM |
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| Preparations |
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Today has been a day for various preparatory work, such as registration, weighing in of the drivers and last details on the car livery. I was happy to see that the last 1,5 month of extra excercise put my weight back to raceweight (I haven´t checked at home).
 Marcus, team coordinator, takes care of our paperwork. Martin (one of the drivers) to the left is in a great mood and together we all feel very well synchronized and confident about how to do our race. To the right my new helmet - about the same paint as before with just some modernisation.Labels: Racing |
| posted by Carl Rydquist @ 4:15 PM |
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| Fast Facts |
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Name: Carl Rydquist
Age: 31
Home: Redondo Beach
Web: CarlRydquist.com
Reel: Click to watch
Highlights: Winner of Swedish Endurance GT Racing Championship (2001 & 2004). Winner of Zandvoort 500 (2005). Winner of Eurosport Super Racing Weekend Challenge (2001). 24 Hours of Nurburgring (2006, 2007, 2008).
Memberships: FIA (international racing license), Performance Two Stunt & Precision Driving Team, Hollywood, CA (professional driver).
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