When the Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli arrives at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend, driver and team owner Claudio Burtin will unload a brand-new Burtin Racing TA class chassis, which will make its competition debut in Saturday’s race following three years of design and development.
“There’s many unique features with this car,” said Burtin. “We worked very closely with TA Technical Director Aaron Coalwell in terms of the specifications and tolerances of what we could and could not do with the chassis and positioning of certain things. We consider it to be a very evolutionary design. We started from a completely clean sheet of paper, beginning with a benchmark and improving every aspect that we could within the rules.”
Burtin said that the metric-sized tubular design of the chassis is unique and is a foot wider than current vehicles in the TA field, utilizing the strength and lightweight nature of the chassis to create a more stable platform. It also moves the full contents of the fuel tank in front of the rear axle, allowing it to be more balanced. He also states that the car is metallurgically different than every other car in the garage. Through careful design, and the use of tubing with superior specifications, the new chassis has a torsional rigidity that is nearly three-times higher than the previous chassis.
“This is a lifelong dream of mine,” said Burtin. “It’s finally coming to fruition after three years, from conceptual ideas, design to surface plate. TA is a destination class for pro racing. TA cars are the ultimate machines in terms of an American road racing car. Every track Trans Am visits, we’re still breaking track records, which you can’t say for any other series competing in the United States.”
Burtin’s car this weekend is the first of its kind, with another currently halfway through production. The production process takes approximately six months for a turnkey, rolling vehicle with ECR engine. However, Burtin says that there are various states in which Burtin Racing can supply a car to a race team if they wish to finish it themselves.
The No. 17 Top Liner Chevrolet Camaro, which will be driven by Burtin this weekend, was built in Burtin Racing’s 70,000 square-foot facility in Adairsville, Ga., with design and manufacturing assistance from Leap Racing in Georgia and CP Tech and CP Autosport in Germany.
“Owen Hayes from CP Tech, he’s the one that kind of orchestrated this whole deal, and the design was done by Brian Willis, who is the founder of Leap Racing in Georgia,” said Burtin. “He is the one who designed the chassis and did a lot of computational fluid dynamics air work on the car. Damon Lockhart was the primary fabricator on this car. We have our own in-house chassis dynamometers, and we have our own in-house 3-D modeling. The new car has approximately 40 different carbon parts on it where we were able to replace non-structural aluminum parts in order to save weight.”
This weekend will be the first event for Burtin Racing since Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course last June. In addition to Burtin behind the wheel of the new No. 17 Top Liner Chevrolet Camaro, Indiana native Adam Andretti will pilot a second entry for the team, the No. 44 Top Liner Camaro.
The Trans Am Series’ TA/XGT/SGT/GT standalone event begins on Thursday, June 15 and the green flag will wave for the feature race on Saturday, June 17. Tickets are available here.
