Chasing the checkered flag

For Vestavia Hills resident Andrew Pinkerton, life moves really fast. 

Pinkerton, a sophomore communications and broadcasting student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, competed in September at the Chumpcar World Series “Slightly More Than 12 Hours of Sebring” race at Sebring International Raceway in Sebring, Florida.

The 14-hour endurance road race was the debut event for Pinkerton’s three-driver Slysdexic Racing team, who drove a Volkswagen Golf No. 247 that they rebuilt themselves through sponsorships from Waffle House, Parts 4 VWs and Advanced Clutch.

The full-time team consists of Pinkerton and Evan Maynard, a sophomore mechanical engineering student at Auburn University. The two met when they were both freshmen at Auburn who shared an interest in motorsports. Maynard had already rebuilt the engine of the VW 247, and after spending time driving on racing simulators, decided to compete.

The two formed Slysdexic, and Pinkerton and Maynard now do the work of an entire race team. 

Maynard, who is the team owner, handles budgeting, sponsor relations and engineering while Pinkerton handles the day-to-day social media, graphics work, photography and videography. Both were heavily involved in the building of the car, and are responsible for much of the work on race days.

“We’re the tire-guy, the fueler, the driver, the crew-chief, the strategist, and luckily my parents were there [at Sebring] so we didn’t have to worry about catering,” he said. 

Because the team is so small, Pinkerton said they were lucky to have a few volunteers at Sebring that helped them with refueling and maintaining fire safety. Preston Rains, who is a sophomore architecture student at Auburn, also helped the duo as a third driver.

Pinkerton said planning and getting ready for the first race took around seven months from start to finish. The process of turning the Golf 247 from a road car into a racecar took almost three months of nearly constant work. Pinkerton estimates that in the last few weeks of the build, the team worked more than 60 hours a week in the garage.

 “It was a long build, but it didn’t really feel quite like it with the two of us working, we work really well together,” Pinkerton said.

He said normally, a team would have a few months to test the car and “work out all the gremlins” before taking it to a race, but that they were not so lucky. 

Slysdexic finished the car and almost immediately loaded it for the 650-mile drive to Florida. When they arrived, they had a mechanical setback in getting safety approval that took up a majority of their pre-race planning period, and Pinkerton said they worked late into the night getting everything ready.

On race day, the team faced an even greater hurdle.

Around two hours into the 14-hour race, Pinkerton said the bolts connecting the axle to the transmission loosened, causing the axle to come apart and throwing the bolts into the shift system. The malfunction cost the team two hours and 15 minutes. 

For the rest of the race, Pinkerton said it was the weather conditions that were the biggest challenge. Roughly 85 degrees and humid, as well as a brief period of rain, caused problems for all drivers. The race was halted after a driver collapsed from heat exhaustion, and officials required all drivers to exit their cars. 

Slysdexic finished eighth in their class and 44th overall.

Pinkerton had the final driving stint of the race. He said that the team did the math, and had the mechanical issue not occurred, he thinks the team was on pace with the lead lap.

“It was pretty incredible looking back on it, to show up and have that sort of finish,” Pinkerton said.

He said the team is looking forward to their next race at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Georgia in February.

“We showed a promising pace at Sebring, and we‘ve got four months to prepare the car for Road Atlanta, and we built it in three,” he said.