[Ellis V Buth]

Fall Classic in Indy marked the end of our 2023 season. Andrew Fidler was still waiting on parts for his stocker, so he continued to drive the Cobalt. Leading up to the Fall Classic Andrew worked on fabricating a new weight box which will let us move the weight towards the front of the car. That's the only change from St. Louis...and while we see no change in ET the car did stop spinning and the reaction out of the beams became much more raceable.

We end the season with a best run of 16.02 and 2 full weekends of consistent runs under the index. If we had the faster oil in the car at Fall Classic, I believe we would have seen a 15.9x timeslip from it! So in year 1, we saw a gain of 1 second and significant testing time and lessons learned. We were able to complete the season with all upgrades and maintenance for right at $2,000.

This winter, we plan on going thru the head and getting stronger valve springs, installing an electric water pump to get rid of the one driven by the engine, setting up the electric fan to be controlled by the driver, replacing the rocker panels that are the only real rusted spots on the car and getting the car painted.

After that, if the budget allows, we will see about getting a more favorable gear ratio for the stock setup as we believe we have one of the gear ratios that falls "in the middle" of the available options for the 2.2L setup from the factory. We are also going to start looking for a spare engine that we can work with and try to make some improvements or at least have a "fresh" engine that doesn't have 160,000 miles on it.

Now that we have a "proof of concept" season in the books, our goal is to make the car as quick as possible. Our hopes are to be able to run 1 second under in DF/S trim which would put us solidly under in CF/S trim as well.