No pictures yet, but Race 30 is away getting completely resurfaced (think what we did to the belly....but everywhere). This will be the smoothest its been since the belly mod. Which then begs the question of what will the finished product look like. The answer is...different, but I can tell you that at least one part of the plane will be STIHL orange.
Main thing I care about is it will be painted rather than a vinyl wrap. This is great because the wrap would get beat up and leave big holes that like to create lots of drag. An example of this was demonstrated in 2017. On Saturday (or maybe it was Friday...either way) we ran less manifold pressure while maintaining the same speed on the course. The only thing we changed was we filled in all those gouges with Bondo and sanded them smooth. Additional perk is all the sponsor decals will be painted under the clearcoat so lots of drag savings there too.
This also opens up new opportunities to experiment with different waxes and application methods. Because the wrap doesn't like wax, we've been limited to cleaning with water or very weak cleaning solutions, so we're looking to get some more speed there as well.
Like the last 3 years we will be getting a new propeller from McCauley. During the design and analysis of the propeller they discovered one week's worth of racing will put the propeller into its fatigue life. Think of taking a wire and bending it back and forth. Repeat this enough times and the wire will eventually snap with no warning. Obviously this would be bad on an airplane going 410mph so we're getting a new one.
I think that's all for now.
Gotta beat Jeff!