About 2.5 degrees.
Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project
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About 2.5 degrees.
Project Update for Sept 23, 2013: When I started to finally write this last piece of the Miller event coverage, on Monday Sept 23rd, we had just gotten back from yet another NASA event (TWS), so I was already 2 weeks behind. And it took me a week to get all of this written down, after looking at results sheets and watching the in-car videos from 9 sessions I drove over the 4 days. In this installment I will talk about our actual racing experience that week at NASA Nationals... finally! I will start with how they do things at NASA's "big show" event, which differed ever so slightly from the dozens of regional NASA events I've done in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and California over the past six years. For the most part it was a bit more serious, but no less fun.
Impound Is Important
I'm going to talk about Nationals impound, as it had a bearing on my final finish placing. The way NASA runs their all of their road racing and Time Trial classes is pretty unique compared to other clubs, but I really like The NASA Way and I have said so many times. Sure, there are some quirks, but I learned a lot at this event and understand the various classes better than before.
One of the biggest differences in NASA is their proclivity to measure not just chassis weights but to also measure horsepower output in most cars & classes, with an actual chassis dyno. I have written letters to other clubs asking them to MEASURE HORSEPOWER instead of relying on some quaint "gentleman's agreement not to cheat" nonsense, and not rely on poorly written rules or very outdated displacement-to-weight formulas - that have been proven to be ineffective for 40+ years. Still, even with continuous dyno testing and weight checks, NASA is always investigating new ways to keep racers honest. Now they are even looking at GPS based data loggers going onto race cars - looking for spikes in acceleration past what the car can physically do at a given power and weight. They were testing a new black box data logger on a few cars which we've started to see in Professional Racing circles. Look for this to go into some of their race groups in the next season or two, hopefully. I totally support this type of active policing in racing... 'cause racers naturally will try to push the boundaries. This isn't the NSA or Big Brother, this is "let's keep everyone honest" type of thing. Good stuff.
Anyway, NASA's current techniques to police classing include 2 main components: weight checks on scales (virtually ALL classes) after qualifying and race sessions, and measuring horsepower on a chassis dyno for most classes. So many classes within NASA have some "power-to-weight" component that checking the cars on a dyno is common practice, and at Miller they didn't hold back. They must have checked hundreds of cars on the dyno that week. Qualifying races, random TT sessions, and the top 3 in almost every racing class got checked at least once. There were 3 dynos on site that week getting a steady stream of business (it was a constant background noise), but one "official" dyno was used for all NASA Impound checks (a trailer mounted DynoJet). The others were being used for tuning and verification before the final Championship races began. Most of the W2W classes had a big final race on Saturday or Sunday that determined the Champions, whereas raced over 4 days to get our one best lap (which was unique).
It seems like common sense to me; if you want to keep cars competitive and legal, you weigh them and dyno them often. NASA officials even had racers at this event put evidence tape on OBD and other computer ports or "any aftermarket switches within reach of the driver" to show that they haven't been tampering with power levels or tunes while on track, too. And for TT this is extra important, because we raced over FOUR DAYS and 9 sessions that counted (+ one Warm Up practice session on Thursday morning, used just for gridding purposes). We could make changes to chassis and aero set-up all week, but if we wanted to make computer/tuning changes we had to go to Tech and the TT Director to ask permission, first. I brought an SCT tuner with the ability to alter timing and RPM on our car but I never messed with it.
On the first day, I heard that 3 or 4 American Iron cars were popped for blowing dyno tests, and a few people were whining. But they warned us, every race group, that they would be dyno testing a lot of cars, and they did. And I'm GLAD they did. I wish this happened at more Regional TT events, too (I have seen race groups have the top 3 finishers dyno'd at a few NASA Texas Region events, just not ever in TT). Sure, dyno testing is a logistical hassle, especially for AWD cars, but it is a necessary tool to help keep everyone on a level playing field. The future black box real time monitoring could be even easier, when the technology gets good enough (and cheap enough).
BMW E46 M3s are becoming increasingly popular in TT3/ST3/GTS3 classes
So this isn't the official racing procedure verbatim, but what I observed on how this worked in the Time Trial group. First, we had to be on grid in your assigned spot before the first car went out on track. Late to grid? Too bad, you lost that session. Why? They didn't want people popping out of the hot pits into the fastest part of the track and messing up other people's laps. NASA Texas has started to do this, too, and it is a welcomed change. Next, if you came off track before the end of the session, you went to Impound. Period. No tweaking the car on the hot pits, no going back out to finish the session, nope. Same reasons as above - coming back out on track during a hot session was dangerous and interrupted the flow of the racers, who are gridded in the order of their lap times (fastest to slowest). Also, they split the large TT contingent into two race groups that never shared the track at the same time: The "Letter Classes" (TTB-TTE) ran in Race Group C and The "Numbered Classes" (TTU/1/2/3) ran in Race Group H. It was nice for the faster TT guys to not have to worry about catching the E cars on lap 2, which can happen when all of the TT classes run at once.
Once TT racers came off track we were held in Impound until a TT Director released us, usually not until the session was over and everyone was in. We couldn't jack with the cars in Impound AT ALL. The driver could stay in his car and have ONE helper CHECK tire pressures and tire temps -or- he could exit the vehicle and do it himself. That was it. No dropping tire pressures, fiddling under the hood, or any funny business. And if you wanted to check tire pressures you had to ask a NASA official first, and they observed. Why? We were told because some folks have gamed the system in the past and dumped tire pressures in Impound down to 10 psi or less, then if they were dyno'd... yep, the numbers would be much lower than normal. So if you were caught dropping tire pressures in Impound then they gave you a dyno chit, aired your drive tires up to 40 psi, and off to the dyno you go. Automatic dyno check. Another sensible measure and fewer chances for shenanigans.
"A dozen ways to skin a cat" - here are two very different approaches to a TT2/ST2 build
Over the week my car was weighed 5 times, which was about average, but never was quick enough to warrant a dyno check. I was sweating it all week, as was everyone. Many of the faster TT guys' cars saw the dyno 1, 2 or even 3 times that week. How they dyno'd TT cars was simple. First, a TT director called down to Impound with a list of cars to by dyno'd and/or weighed ("If you drop a lot of time and move up to the front of the pack, prepare to be dyno'd"). If you were called out to be Dyno'd you got a "chit". Every car getting dyno'd was weighed first, which was recorded, and if it was not greater than your stated weight you got a session DQ. Same for anyone just getting a weight check. The closest to minimum I got was 21 pounds (3791 lbs with driver on a 3770 lb stated minimum) but I was often 50-60 pounds over, depending on fuel load. I saw some competitors get within 1-2 pounds, and several go under. We all were issued a decal that had to be posted on the side of the car with our declared minimum weight, max torque and max hp numbers, as shown below. Many of us made changes to this after we talked with TT officials, too.
Left: After conferring with TT officials, instead of assuming my car would dyno low at altitude, I revised it to the latest tested number
So if you got a dyno chit, you went straight from the scales to the dyno, 50 feet away. Nobody could touch the car but the driver, and you couldn't open the hood or do anything else. Once it was your turn the dyno operators took the car from you, used an elaborate series of ramps to get it up onto their mobile Dynojet trailer, strapped it to the rollers, and got some fans going on the radiator and opened the hood. Once the engine was up to speed in the 1:1 transmission gear they asked about redline RPMs or rev limiters, then did three back-to-back dyno pulls. Vrooom.... vroom.... vroom. Didn't take 60 seconds. Then if your car made more than your claimed dyno number ("popped dyno" or "blew dyno"), even by 1 a hp, you got a session DQ. Then the NASA TT directors would calculate your latest dyno and weight number, and if that ratio was over your class minimum, ALL of your previous sessions times back to your last successful dyno/weight check were thrown out. This matters for later, so keep this in mind.
Now that I know how this works I would have ASKED for a dyno earlier in the week. Because a successful dyno/weight check means your times up to that point are SAFE. Just like when we come in from a TT session early, to "bank" our times. Why? Because if you have a 4-off or a spin during a TT session, you lose ALL of your times in that session (session DQ). It has happened to me twice in the past 6 years (spin or off during TT), and it sucks. So when you know you have a good lap time in the books (from watching your onboard lap timer), most of us come the hell in! Again, this matters for later.
They had similar procedures for virtually every NASA race group, but I'm sure there were small differences I don't know about. In any Championship W2W race, for instance, if a driver blew minimum weight or blew the dyno, they were DQ'd and everyone moves up a space in the standings. So everyone was watching the dyno all week. And yes, even at 4500 feet of elevation, they use an SAE correction factor to correct for that. And it was huge, close to a 20% correction! I'm used to seeing 0-2% corrections here in Texas, sometimes even negative 1-2% for SAE. So you couldn't just rely on "the elevation will soften my numbers", no sir. You have to factor that in. I was a FOOL for not getting a dyno check before the event started and for not ASKING for a dyno during the event. I got lucky, I guess, but if you were in the top 3 during the week you saw the dyno, trust me. I wasn't in the top three until.... well, the very end. I'll get to that.
Race Coverage - Day By Day
I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but the course being run for the week of Nationals for ALL race groups was the 3.0 mile "Outer Loop" CCW, and there were no HPDE groups running at Nationals. This 3 mile course is the fastest configuration of the 4 possible track layouts at Miller, and has many high speed turns and a LONG 3500' front straight. There is some elevation change in a couple of corners, but for the most part it was like most other desert tracks I've run: flat and with few visual markers. This meant many corners looked identical, which confused me a bit. I have never run this track before and struggled all week, learning the layout. And we fought all week to find balance with the set-up...
Like we do for every NASA TT event, we made our own maps in case they didn't hand any out. They had great maps, though
I will break up my "race coverage" into the 4 days we had to get our best lap time. Every session from all 4 days of Nationals counted for TT, and you only had to bag one fast lap in one of the 9 official sessions (the Warm-up session was the first of 10, really, but it didn't count towards times). Some days we had 3 sessions and some days we had 2, which I will explain below.
Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/NASA_National_Championships/ (TT3 was in Group H)
I missed one session due to rain and another where we had to work on the car, but ran every other one and thankfully had no DSQs (a spin or 4 off will net you a DSQ). I had some close calls, and came in early to "bank" a good lap time when I noted a decent time on my AIM Solo display (which was extremely accurate all week, matching the official transponder times usually to the hundredth place).
Day 1 - Thursday
TT had our first mandatory meeting of the week at 8:30 am this day (one of 9 meetings we had that week), where we went over the basics, then TT1/2/3/U (Group H) had our first "Warm Up" session at 10:30 am (TTB-TTF ran in a separate run group all week - Group C). I went out in this session on those well worn R6 tires we brought on the grey wheels and fumbled my way around the track. Car was LOOSE at speed! Aero balance felt terrible, and any corners over 80 mph the car wanted to be sideways. The slow speed corners felt fine, but it was a complete handful everywhere else. I thought we had this sorted at our ECR test, but that track's fastest corners are probably sub-65 mph. Some of the corners here at Miller I was entering at 100-150+ mph. Scary fast, and I was working on my lines and my "testicular fortitude" in every session. I stayed out in the Warm Up for the entire time and had a best lap of 2:10.804 on Lap 5, and a 2:10.9 on the lap before, neither of which was fast. The quickest TT3 car in this session was a red E36 325is, which had an S54 3.2L M3 engine swap and good aero, driven by an old autocross buddy Chris Mayfield. He ran a 2:06.448, so he was fast right out of the gate. Ken Smith in the yellow ST3/TT3 C5 Z06 ran a 2:09.306 in that session (and was broken down on the side of the front straight, then came on the hook), with two faster TT3 cars between him and Mayfield. The Miller track crew did an excellent job and was doing "hot tows" all week (towing cars in with rolling local yellows, while keeping the racers going). I was only 5th fastest out of the 11 cars running in the TT3 class (at this point - we saw 12 different TT3 cars by week's end), and well over 5 seconds back... yikes. TT3 was the largest TT class of the event, by a good margin over any other (here's group C).
Print-outs showing results from Day 1's 3 TT sessions: The TT Warm up, TT Session 1 and TT session 2
In that Thursday Warm-Up session I ran so many consecutive hot laps that I saw some warmer than anticipated engine temps on lap 6, even with the lowest ambient temps of the day (high 70s). On Lap 6 the temp gauge shot up to maybe 3/4 of the range from "C" to "H", which is warmer than we ever see in this car. It was not that warm outside yet, so I chalked it up to the thin air here at 4500 feet of altitude and maybe still having an air bubble passing through the newly set-up cooling system (I added some distilled water in the pits after this). Talking to other drivers they were seeing the occasional warm temp readings, too, and I was told by many "high altitude racers" to be on the watch for this at Miller. I took a cool down lap and stayed well out of people's way while coming in, and with a 3 mile course the cool down laps can take a while. Within 30 seconds the engine temps came back to the "middle" of the range. This happened two more times during the week, saw a warm temp after too many hot laps that was corrected in the first cool down lap..
Navigating the "Attitudes", 3 S-curves right in a row with some wide, tall and nasty curbing
continued below
Impound Is Important
I'm going to talk about Nationals impound, as it had a bearing on my final finish placing. The way NASA runs their all of their road racing and Time Trial classes is pretty unique compared to other clubs, but I really like The NASA Way and I have said so many times. Sure, there are some quirks, but I learned a lot at this event and understand the various classes better than before.
One of the biggest differences in NASA is their proclivity to measure not just chassis weights but to also measure horsepower output in most cars & classes, with an actual chassis dyno. I have written letters to other clubs asking them to MEASURE HORSEPOWER instead of relying on some quaint "gentleman's agreement not to cheat" nonsense, and not rely on poorly written rules or very outdated displacement-to-weight formulas - that have been proven to be ineffective for 40+ years. Still, even with continuous dyno testing and weight checks, NASA is always investigating new ways to keep racers honest. Now they are even looking at GPS based data loggers going onto race cars - looking for spikes in acceleration past what the car can physically do at a given power and weight. They were testing a new black box data logger on a few cars which we've started to see in Professional Racing circles. Look for this to go into some of their race groups in the next season or two, hopefully. I totally support this type of active policing in racing... 'cause racers naturally will try to push the boundaries. This isn't the NSA or Big Brother, this is "let's keep everyone honest" type of thing. Good stuff.
Anyway, NASA's current techniques to police classing include 2 main components: weight checks on scales (virtually ALL classes) after qualifying and race sessions, and measuring horsepower on a chassis dyno for most classes. So many classes within NASA have some "power-to-weight" component that checking the cars on a dyno is common practice, and at Miller they didn't hold back. They must have checked hundreds of cars on the dyno that week. Qualifying races, random TT sessions, and the top 3 in almost every racing class got checked at least once. There were 3 dynos on site that week getting a steady stream of business (it was a constant background noise), but one "official" dyno was used for all NASA Impound checks (a trailer mounted DynoJet). The others were being used for tuning and verification before the final Championship races began. Most of the W2W classes had a big final race on Saturday or Sunday that determined the Champions, whereas raced over 4 days to get our one best lap (which was unique).
It seems like common sense to me; if you want to keep cars competitive and legal, you weigh them and dyno them often. NASA officials even had racers at this event put evidence tape on OBD and other computer ports or "any aftermarket switches within reach of the driver" to show that they haven't been tampering with power levels or tunes while on track, too. And for TT this is extra important, because we raced over FOUR DAYS and 9 sessions that counted (+ one Warm Up practice session on Thursday morning, used just for gridding purposes). We could make changes to chassis and aero set-up all week, but if we wanted to make computer/tuning changes we had to go to Tech and the TT Director to ask permission, first. I brought an SCT tuner with the ability to alter timing and RPM on our car but I never messed with it.
On the first day, I heard that 3 or 4 American Iron cars were popped for blowing dyno tests, and a few people were whining. But they warned us, every race group, that they would be dyno testing a lot of cars, and they did. And I'm GLAD they did. I wish this happened at more Regional TT events, too (I have seen race groups have the top 3 finishers dyno'd at a few NASA Texas Region events, just not ever in TT). Sure, dyno testing is a logistical hassle, especially for AWD cars, but it is a necessary tool to help keep everyone on a level playing field. The future black box real time monitoring could be even easier, when the technology gets good enough (and cheap enough).
BMW E46 M3s are becoming increasingly popular in TT3/ST3/GTS3 classes
So this isn't the official racing procedure verbatim, but what I observed on how this worked in the Time Trial group. First, we had to be on grid in your assigned spot before the first car went out on track. Late to grid? Too bad, you lost that session. Why? They didn't want people popping out of the hot pits into the fastest part of the track and messing up other people's laps. NASA Texas has started to do this, too, and it is a welcomed change. Next, if you came off track before the end of the session, you went to Impound. Period. No tweaking the car on the hot pits, no going back out to finish the session, nope. Same reasons as above - coming back out on track during a hot session was dangerous and interrupted the flow of the racers, who are gridded in the order of their lap times (fastest to slowest). Also, they split the large TT contingent into two race groups that never shared the track at the same time: The "Letter Classes" (TTB-TTE) ran in Race Group C and The "Numbered Classes" (TTU/1/2/3) ran in Race Group H. It was nice for the faster TT guys to not have to worry about catching the E cars on lap 2, which can happen when all of the TT classes run at once.
Once TT racers came off track we were held in Impound until a TT Director released us, usually not until the session was over and everyone was in. We couldn't jack with the cars in Impound AT ALL. The driver could stay in his car and have ONE helper CHECK tire pressures and tire temps -or- he could exit the vehicle and do it himself. That was it. No dropping tire pressures, fiddling under the hood, or any funny business. And if you wanted to check tire pressures you had to ask a NASA official first, and they observed. Why? We were told because some folks have gamed the system in the past and dumped tire pressures in Impound down to 10 psi or less, then if they were dyno'd... yep, the numbers would be much lower than normal. So if you were caught dropping tire pressures in Impound then they gave you a dyno chit, aired your drive tires up to 40 psi, and off to the dyno you go. Automatic dyno check. Another sensible measure and fewer chances for shenanigans.
"A dozen ways to skin a cat" - here are two very different approaches to a TT2/ST2 build
Over the week my car was weighed 5 times, which was about average, but never was quick enough to warrant a dyno check. I was sweating it all week, as was everyone. Many of the faster TT guys' cars saw the dyno 1, 2 or even 3 times that week. How they dyno'd TT cars was simple. First, a TT director called down to Impound with a list of cars to by dyno'd and/or weighed ("If you drop a lot of time and move up to the front of the pack, prepare to be dyno'd"). If you were called out to be Dyno'd you got a "chit". Every car getting dyno'd was weighed first, which was recorded, and if it was not greater than your stated weight you got a session DQ. Same for anyone just getting a weight check. The closest to minimum I got was 21 pounds (3791 lbs with driver on a 3770 lb stated minimum) but I was often 50-60 pounds over, depending on fuel load. I saw some competitors get within 1-2 pounds, and several go under. We all were issued a decal that had to be posted on the side of the car with our declared minimum weight, max torque and max hp numbers, as shown below. Many of us made changes to this after we talked with TT officials, too.
Left: After conferring with TT officials, instead of assuming my car would dyno low at altitude, I revised it to the latest tested number
So if you got a dyno chit, you went straight from the scales to the dyno, 50 feet away. Nobody could touch the car but the driver, and you couldn't open the hood or do anything else. Once it was your turn the dyno operators took the car from you, used an elaborate series of ramps to get it up onto their mobile Dynojet trailer, strapped it to the rollers, and got some fans going on the radiator and opened the hood. Once the engine was up to speed in the 1:1 transmission gear they asked about redline RPMs or rev limiters, then did three back-to-back dyno pulls. Vrooom.... vroom.... vroom. Didn't take 60 seconds. Then if your car made more than your claimed dyno number ("popped dyno" or "blew dyno"), even by 1 a hp, you got a session DQ. Then the NASA TT directors would calculate your latest dyno and weight number, and if that ratio was over your class minimum, ALL of your previous sessions times back to your last successful dyno/weight check were thrown out. This matters for later, so keep this in mind.
Now that I know how this works I would have ASKED for a dyno earlier in the week. Because a successful dyno/weight check means your times up to that point are SAFE. Just like when we come in from a TT session early, to "bank" our times. Why? Because if you have a 4-off or a spin during a TT session, you lose ALL of your times in that session (session DQ). It has happened to me twice in the past 6 years (spin or off during TT), and it sucks. So when you know you have a good lap time in the books (from watching your onboard lap timer), most of us come the hell in! Again, this matters for later.
They had similar procedures for virtually every NASA race group, but I'm sure there were small differences I don't know about. In any Championship W2W race, for instance, if a driver blew minimum weight or blew the dyno, they were DQ'd and everyone moves up a space in the standings. So everyone was watching the dyno all week. And yes, even at 4500 feet of elevation, they use an SAE correction factor to correct for that. And it was huge, close to a 20% correction! I'm used to seeing 0-2% corrections here in Texas, sometimes even negative 1-2% for SAE. So you couldn't just rely on "the elevation will soften my numbers", no sir. You have to factor that in. I was a FOOL for not getting a dyno check before the event started and for not ASKING for a dyno during the event. I got lucky, I guess, but if you were in the top 3 during the week you saw the dyno, trust me. I wasn't in the top three until.... well, the very end. I'll get to that.
Race Coverage - Day By Day
I don't know if I mentioned this earlier but the course being run for the week of Nationals for ALL race groups was the 3.0 mile "Outer Loop" CCW, and there were no HPDE groups running at Nationals. This 3 mile course is the fastest configuration of the 4 possible track layouts at Miller, and has many high speed turns and a LONG 3500' front straight. There is some elevation change in a couple of corners, but for the most part it was like most other desert tracks I've run: flat and with few visual markers. This meant many corners looked identical, which confused me a bit. I have never run this track before and struggled all week, learning the layout. And we fought all week to find balance with the set-up...
Like we do for every NASA TT event, we made our own maps in case they didn't hand any out. They had great maps, though
I will break up my "race coverage" into the 4 days we had to get our best lap time. Every session from all 4 days of Nationals counted for TT, and you only had to bag one fast lap in one of the 9 official sessions (the Warm-up session was the first of 10, really, but it didn't count towards times). Some days we had 3 sessions and some days we had 2, which I will explain below.
Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/NASA_National_Championships/ (TT3 was in Group H)
I missed one session due to rain and another where we had to work on the car, but ran every other one and thankfully had no DSQs (a spin or 4 off will net you a DSQ). I had some close calls, and came in early to "bank" a good lap time when I noted a decent time on my AIM Solo display (which was extremely accurate all week, matching the official transponder times usually to the hundredth place).
Day 1 - Thursday
TT had our first mandatory meeting of the week at 8:30 am this day (one of 9 meetings we had that week), where we went over the basics, then TT1/2/3/U (Group H) had our first "Warm Up" session at 10:30 am (TTB-TTF ran in a separate run group all week - Group C). I went out in this session on those well worn R6 tires we brought on the grey wheels and fumbled my way around the track. Car was LOOSE at speed! Aero balance felt terrible, and any corners over 80 mph the car wanted to be sideways. The slow speed corners felt fine, but it was a complete handful everywhere else. I thought we had this sorted at our ECR test, but that track's fastest corners are probably sub-65 mph. Some of the corners here at Miller I was entering at 100-150+ mph. Scary fast, and I was working on my lines and my "testicular fortitude" in every session. I stayed out in the Warm Up for the entire time and had a best lap of 2:10.804 on Lap 5, and a 2:10.9 on the lap before, neither of which was fast. The quickest TT3 car in this session was a red E36 325is, which had an S54 3.2L M3 engine swap and good aero, driven by an old autocross buddy Chris Mayfield. He ran a 2:06.448, so he was fast right out of the gate. Ken Smith in the yellow ST3/TT3 C5 Z06 ran a 2:09.306 in that session (and was broken down on the side of the front straight, then came on the hook), with two faster TT3 cars between him and Mayfield. The Miller track crew did an excellent job and was doing "hot tows" all week (towing cars in with rolling local yellows, while keeping the racers going). I was only 5th fastest out of the 11 cars running in the TT3 class (at this point - we saw 12 different TT3 cars by week's end), and well over 5 seconds back... yikes. TT3 was the largest TT class of the event, by a good margin over any other (here's group C).
Print-outs showing results from Day 1's 3 TT sessions: The TT Warm up, TT Session 1 and TT session 2
In that Thursday Warm-Up session I ran so many consecutive hot laps that I saw some warmer than anticipated engine temps on lap 6, even with the lowest ambient temps of the day (high 70s). On Lap 6 the temp gauge shot up to maybe 3/4 of the range from "C" to "H", which is warmer than we ever see in this car. It was not that warm outside yet, so I chalked it up to the thin air here at 4500 feet of altitude and maybe still having an air bubble passing through the newly set-up cooling system (I added some distilled water in the pits after this). Talking to other drivers they were seeing the occasional warm temp readings, too, and I was told by many "high altitude racers" to be on the watch for this at Miller. I took a cool down lap and stayed well out of people's way while coming in, and with a 3 mile course the cool down laps can take a while. Within 30 seconds the engine temps came back to the "middle" of the range. This happened two more times during the week, saw a warm temp after too many hot laps that was corrected in the first cool down lap..
Navigating the "Attitudes", 3 S-curves right in a row with some wide, tall and nasty curbing
continued below
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continued from above
So, as with all NASA TT events, the times from this first "Warm Up" session on the first day only count towards our grid positions for the first "official" TT session, session 1. We checked air pressures hot and they were WAY higher than I thought they'd get up to, so we bled off 8-10 psi from each tire, from hot. We had an 11:10 am TT meeting where we did roll calls and listened to Greg give us the latest session DQs for spins, offs, weights or dyno (which were not printed on the individual session time sheets, strangely enough). Someone in the group also asked "what is a 4 off here", as there are some rather WIDE curbs at Miller - in some places more than 25 feet of paved but painted curbing. The biggest section of track in question was the "Attitudes", Turns 8/9/10, which are S-curves in rapid succession that also fall down a hill. Apparently this section was a bit controversial, and some race groups were seeing a handful of drivers really pounding over the curbs, some catching 4 wheels in the air and short cutting Turn 9 altogether (just going straight over the curbs/gravel and leaving the track). After some discussion it was ruled that the white painted line was to be considered the edge of the track and as long as 2 wheels were still "touching the paint", that was allowed. Tons of latitude but no more "cutting a corner". If we were 4 wheels over the paint it would be a "4 off" and a session DQ.
Above photos by Brian Smyer
I was staying off the curbing in almost all corners, as the bumps were making the already very loose car even more twitchy. Like the picture above, where my car is already sideways after just touching two outside wheels on the paint, is what would happen. So I stayed off the curbs on almost every lap. I tried to take a bit more on the last day, with some negative consequences (video of that in a lower section). Other drivers were a lot more liberal with their curbing, though. And it likely helped their times - I just couldn't see jumping them like that and doing the "4 wheels in the air" thing. I would have ripped the splitter off and done all sorts of damage to our car. In the AI circles I heard one driver admit that cutting Turn 9 was worth a full second on his lap times, and there were a few of those guys really getting a lot of time using the curbs. Amy was there and if I would have broken the car on the curbing she would have KILLED me!
Just watched my TT session 1 video, which began on Thursday at 2 pm, and it was 20 degrees hotter than the TT Warm Up. At least this time we were gridded better, but I still had to deal with several passes, and the car was SUPER loose in the first 2 laps. I was finally figuring out where to shift, what gear to be in for each corner, pushing some still-early braking points, and just beginning to get a feel for where I was and where the apexes should be. I took a good number of laps in this session and dropped down to a 2:09.039, with my fastest lap on Lap 1. I spent the rest of the session trying different lines, braking points, etc. In Session 1 Ken Smith really picked up the pace and moved into the lead with a 2:05.099, with Mayfield right on his tail at a 2:05.753 time. Steve Nagel found a lot of time and dropped to a 2:07.284 and 3rd place in his white E36 M3 with aero and a claimed 310 whp, nearly 2 seconds quicker than my times.
The third and final TT session for Thrusday was TT session 2, we started at about 5:30 pm (about 30 minutes behind schedule) and ambient temps were up to 94 °F when we started. It was so delayed and so hot that attendance was pretty sparse by the time we finally got released from grid. After 2 false starts for this session we finally heard the reason for problem - Mark Baer had a pretty bad crash in his GTS BMW going into The Tooele Turn, T11, and they had to air flight him to the hospital for observation, tow the car in, and do some quick repairs to the armco.
Smith (left) and Mayfield (right) traded the TT3 lead all week, but nobody else could seem to catch them
As I recalled after watching my video of this session, I was still pretty lost on 2nd half of the track after Turn 7, where I was confusing Turn 11 with Turn 13, and I still couldn't get the entry speeds up into Turn 7 (Witchcraft) or my line right into Turns 8/9/10. Really struggling to grasp this track layout, and there was a lot of gravel on the track from people going off and on at various corners. In my video I noted that the car was using about 5 gallons per session, and I was seeing "155 mph" on the speedo (probably more like 150mph) as I was braking into Turn 1. The car was still a loose mess at speed, and Amy and I were running out of things to change (tire pressures, wing angle, and some other things). I nearly looped the car going into Turn 3 on my 2nd hot lap, so took a cool-down lap and then another hot lap on the now well worn R6s. Just touching one of these monster curbs was setting the car into bump-steer convulsions. My best lap was again my 1st lap out, and nearly matched my previous session at a 2:09.054. Mayfield slowed down to a 2:05.574 and Ken Smith was in the 2:05.927 range, with Nagel slowing down to a 2:10.5. The higher ambient temps were hurting everyone and I was 4.5 seconds back from the class leader, not making up any ground.
My outlook was pretty bleak that night, but we had our lone good meal in Tooele (The Brewhouse) with Doug and Stuart Maxcy of Maxcyspeed. I drank away my sorrows and dreamed all night about turns like Witchcraft and the Attitudes, that were straight up kicking my ass.
Day 2 - Friday
After some dismal driving on Thursday I had planned on doing some work early Friday morning to the car and going out on the R6s again in the first session with some set-up improvements. Then Ryan and Brandon missed their very early flight, so it was just me and Amy again, and with too much to fix we skipped the first TT session of the day. During that time we replaced a leaking caliper bleed screw, dialed in 2 degrees more angle of attack on the rear wing, re-tightened the splitter mounting screws (several had loosened up), reset air pressures, and went out in session 2. Turns out we neglected to add enough fuel, so I was worried about fuel starvation. The left side tires were more abused than the right, which surprised me as there are more left hand turns than rights... but a lot of the high speed turns are right handers, and those tore up the appropriate side.
Left: Grey wheels = old R6s. Right: The fastest AI car was a World Challenge Boss 302R, which ran a 2:07.860 in the final race
At this point we had been weighed twice. 3791 lbs was the lightest and as high as 3836 lbs with a lot of fuel. Brakes looked good - the Carbotechs were wearing very well for the abuse I was throwing at them. I have never braked this car this hard, from these speeds, this many times in a row. Some say our upgraded GT500 14" rear brakes "are worthless" compared to the stock 11.5" rear discs, but I disagree strongly. This car was the heaviest in the TT3 class, had one of the highest terminal speeds into Turn 1, yet I could brake as late or later than anyone else. In some cases I was braking nearly 100 feet later than some TT2 and TT3 cars. The brakes just flat worked, flawlessly, all week.
Just watched my TT session 4 video and I was pushing hard yet only managed another 1/2 second gain, down to a best of 2:08.537. Heavy cross winds made for major buffeting in the car on the higher speed sections, and the high ambient heat (2 pm, high 90s again) baked the track, overheated tires, and made for generally slower lap times. Only five TT3 cars went out this time, with Mayfield and Smith skipping the session entirely. Nagel went out in the white E36 and put in a best of 2:08.324, which was over a second slower than his best time from the first official TT session on Thursday. I was within 2 tenths of Nagel, everyone was slower, but I had found another half second, so that was at least a little encouraging. The R6s felt really awful and the car was still very loose at speed, and once the tires got hot after my 1st lap it was loose everywhere. I pounded out 5 laps (3 hot laps + 2 cool downs), well after almost everyone else had come in, and saw another 2:08.8 lap in the closing lap, but my first lap was again my fastest.
TT session 3, Session 4 and session 5 time sheets from Friday
For the Friday's final TT session (TT session 5) we we removed the Grey Forgestar 18x12's with the well worn R6s and slapped on the white Forgestar set with the the used set of Hoosier A6 tires. Clouds were rolling in, temperatures were dropping, and at the beginning of this late afternoon session it was down to 88°F. Amy and I had to swap wheels without any power tools, so it took a while and we barely made it to grid in time. Then we had another long delay on grid, as had been the case several times previously.
During this grid delay Brian Smyer shot the pictures above, as well as several others that he put into his blog post. "I fell in love with this mustang from Vorshlag so thought I would share a few images from Miller Motorsports Park" Brian also got some great images out on track, which I have scattered through this post (anything without the Vorshlag watermark was taken by him). Good stuff. After he took the above two pics the clouds rolled in and it started to look like rain again. Winds picked up, and many of the cars went out on sticker tires in this session, thinking it might be one of our last dry times for a bit (storms were predicted to roll in hard for Friday night/Saturday).
I left a gap to the rest of the field on the out lap, because I had been catching several cars gridded higher than me on the 1st and 2nd laps out, time and again. This session looked like the best conditions we had seen all week, and I had what I thought would be faster tires and some clear track ahead. I got a good run out of the last turn and pushed the revs in 5th gear down the front straight. With the higher AoA on the wing I only saw an indicated 150 mph into the braking zone (down from 155), but it seemed to stop fine. As I'm rolling into the throttle exiting Turn 1... the rear tires washed out, lots of counter steer, no help. I put 2 wheels off on the exit of T1 at 100+ mph and blew the lap. Took a cool down lap and tried to set up to try again.
After my 2 off I had let about 6 cars that were behind me go by, after I had gathered it up. So my next hot laps involved getting held up by virtually all of these cars as I re-passed them. The tires quickly felt greasy and the car was oversteering more than it had all week. My 2nd lap was only a 2:09.031, on the A6 tires. I knew I was in trouble and took another cool down lap, where I let a few of the same cars back around me, trying not to impede their laps. Started another hot lap, it was looking better on predictive timing, then exiting Turn 6 and I got blocked by two of the SAME cars that I had pointed by on my cool down, including one of the same cars that had blocked me on my previous hot lap. Very frustrating, my session was blown, the A6 tires were now overheated, so I threw in the towel and came into the pits. In that session Mayfield was 1.5 seconds quicker than his previous best, down to a blistering 2:04.170. Nagel ran a 2:07.808 as well, so it was a good session to get a fast lap in. My 2 off and subsequent blocked laps blew the session for me, but the tires never felt very good anyways.
After this session we buttoned up the trailer, left the Mustang out in the rain, and headed to the airport through a sandstorm to pick up Ryan and Brandon, who finally made it to SLC by about 4:30 pm. This was the night we switched hotels and the better accommodations, free drinks at the bar, and a good meal in SLC raised our spirits.
Day 3 - Saturday
We arrived at the track at 7 am and got to work on the car. We had a new game plan - don't wait until Sunday to put the sticker tires on, as the weather was too unpredictable and any of the next 4 sessions might be our last chance at a dry track. So Ryan and Brandon had the scrub A6 tires dismounted and the lone set of brand new "sticker" 315/30/18 A6 tires went on ($130 mounting charge from the Hoosier guys, ouch). Ryan tweaked the front swaybar, dialed some wing back DOWN, and I went out on track. It was 71 degrees, still very windy, but sunny and dry. Track was green from rains the night before, but I went out and pushed it hard anyway.
I was gridded behind Nagel and gapped him hugely on the out lap, so I wouldn't catch him on the first lap. Since he was running Yokohama slicks that took several laps to heat up he was a good bit slower for the first 3-4 laps in every session, and I still caught him by Turn 6 on the first hot lap. Got a little held up into T6 but took the pass on the exit. What freaked me out was his brake lights didn't work almost the entire week (they were operational by Sunday), so I had to gauge at when he got on the brakes, which was a bit earlier than me into T5 and T6. After I got around him it put me on a bad trajectory into T7 (Whitchcraft) and I got a little bit of curb into T8, and again into T11, which really caused the car to bumpsteer hard. I knew the pass and both subsequent curb touches had cost me some time, but I still managed a 2:06.6 on my first hot lap with the new A6 tires. Dropped two full seconds on my first lap on stickers, with tons of mistakes and delays... man, I was regretting only bringing that one set of new tires! The previous 2 days felt like a big waste of time, now.
Time Trial Results for TT session 6 and 7 on Saturday
On my second hot lap in this session I was on a flyer when my foot slipped off the brake pedal downshifitng and braking into T6, and I almost had an off. I managed to gather it up, with the left front tire getting way out onto the outside curbing mid-corner, and of course that lap was blown. At that point I wanted to "bank" the first 2:06 lap and started a cool down to then come into the pits... but I changed my mind at the last second and went ahead and took a 3rd hot lap. I had already turned off the video so I don't have details but apparently I got fairly clean track and managed to drop 3 more tenths and put in a 2:06.356. Considering that these were A6 tires, with which I almost always put in my best laps on the 1st lap and they fall off a cliff after that, I knew the car had more in it. After that 2nd 2:06 lap I came in to bank it. This new time briefly pushed me into 3rd place in TT3, ahead of Nagel. Most everyone was faster in that session and Nagel dropped a good bit of time on his 5th lap, and jumped back ahead of me back into 3rd with a 2:05.562. Mayfield dropped another 9 tenths to a 2:03.170 and finally jumped ahead of Ken Smith (who had a 2:03.3 from TT session 3) for the TT3 lead. In this session Smith had put in a 2:04.110, with the rest of the class was 2 seconds behind me in 4th position. The two tight battles in TT3 were between Mayfield and Smith for 1st in the 2:03s and Nagel and me for 3rd in the 2:05-2:06 range.
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So, as with all NASA TT events, the times from this first "Warm Up" session on the first day only count towards our grid positions for the first "official" TT session, session 1. We checked air pressures hot and they were WAY higher than I thought they'd get up to, so we bled off 8-10 psi from each tire, from hot. We had an 11:10 am TT meeting where we did roll calls and listened to Greg give us the latest session DQs for spins, offs, weights or dyno (which were not printed on the individual session time sheets, strangely enough). Someone in the group also asked "what is a 4 off here", as there are some rather WIDE curbs at Miller - in some places more than 25 feet of paved but painted curbing. The biggest section of track in question was the "Attitudes", Turns 8/9/10, which are S-curves in rapid succession that also fall down a hill. Apparently this section was a bit controversial, and some race groups were seeing a handful of drivers really pounding over the curbs, some catching 4 wheels in the air and short cutting Turn 9 altogether (just going straight over the curbs/gravel and leaving the track). After some discussion it was ruled that the white painted line was to be considered the edge of the track and as long as 2 wheels were still "touching the paint", that was allowed. Tons of latitude but no more "cutting a corner". If we were 4 wheels over the paint it would be a "4 off" and a session DQ.
Above photos by Brian Smyer
I was staying off the curbing in almost all corners, as the bumps were making the already very loose car even more twitchy. Like the picture above, where my car is already sideways after just touching two outside wheels on the paint, is what would happen. So I stayed off the curbs on almost every lap. I tried to take a bit more on the last day, with some negative consequences (video of that in a lower section). Other drivers were a lot more liberal with their curbing, though. And it likely helped their times - I just couldn't see jumping them like that and doing the "4 wheels in the air" thing. I would have ripped the splitter off and done all sorts of damage to our car. In the AI circles I heard one driver admit that cutting Turn 9 was worth a full second on his lap times, and there were a few of those guys really getting a lot of time using the curbs. Amy was there and if I would have broken the car on the curbing she would have KILLED me!
Just watched my TT session 1 video, which began on Thursday at 2 pm, and it was 20 degrees hotter than the TT Warm Up. At least this time we were gridded better, but I still had to deal with several passes, and the car was SUPER loose in the first 2 laps. I was finally figuring out where to shift, what gear to be in for each corner, pushing some still-early braking points, and just beginning to get a feel for where I was and where the apexes should be. I took a good number of laps in this session and dropped down to a 2:09.039, with my fastest lap on Lap 1. I spent the rest of the session trying different lines, braking points, etc. In Session 1 Ken Smith really picked up the pace and moved into the lead with a 2:05.099, with Mayfield right on his tail at a 2:05.753 time. Steve Nagel found a lot of time and dropped to a 2:07.284 and 3rd place in his white E36 M3 with aero and a claimed 310 whp, nearly 2 seconds quicker than my times.
The third and final TT session for Thrusday was TT session 2, we started at about 5:30 pm (about 30 minutes behind schedule) and ambient temps were up to 94 °F when we started. It was so delayed and so hot that attendance was pretty sparse by the time we finally got released from grid. After 2 false starts for this session we finally heard the reason for problem - Mark Baer had a pretty bad crash in his GTS BMW going into The Tooele Turn, T11, and they had to air flight him to the hospital for observation, tow the car in, and do some quick repairs to the armco.
Smith (left) and Mayfield (right) traded the TT3 lead all week, but nobody else could seem to catch them
As I recalled after watching my video of this session, I was still pretty lost on 2nd half of the track after Turn 7, where I was confusing Turn 11 with Turn 13, and I still couldn't get the entry speeds up into Turn 7 (Witchcraft) or my line right into Turns 8/9/10. Really struggling to grasp this track layout, and there was a lot of gravel on the track from people going off and on at various corners. In my video I noted that the car was using about 5 gallons per session, and I was seeing "155 mph" on the speedo (probably more like 150mph) as I was braking into Turn 1. The car was still a loose mess at speed, and Amy and I were running out of things to change (tire pressures, wing angle, and some other things). I nearly looped the car going into Turn 3 on my 2nd hot lap, so took a cool-down lap and then another hot lap on the now well worn R6s. Just touching one of these monster curbs was setting the car into bump-steer convulsions. My best lap was again my 1st lap out, and nearly matched my previous session at a 2:09.054. Mayfield slowed down to a 2:05.574 and Ken Smith was in the 2:05.927 range, with Nagel slowing down to a 2:10.5. The higher ambient temps were hurting everyone and I was 4.5 seconds back from the class leader, not making up any ground.
My outlook was pretty bleak that night, but we had our lone good meal in Tooele (The Brewhouse) with Doug and Stuart Maxcy of Maxcyspeed. I drank away my sorrows and dreamed all night about turns like Witchcraft and the Attitudes, that were straight up kicking my ass.
Day 2 - Friday
After some dismal driving on Thursday I had planned on doing some work early Friday morning to the car and going out on the R6s again in the first session with some set-up improvements. Then Ryan and Brandon missed their very early flight, so it was just me and Amy again, and with too much to fix we skipped the first TT session of the day. During that time we replaced a leaking caliper bleed screw, dialed in 2 degrees more angle of attack on the rear wing, re-tightened the splitter mounting screws (several had loosened up), reset air pressures, and went out in session 2. Turns out we neglected to add enough fuel, so I was worried about fuel starvation. The left side tires were more abused than the right, which surprised me as there are more left hand turns than rights... but a lot of the high speed turns are right handers, and those tore up the appropriate side.
Left: Grey wheels = old R6s. Right: The fastest AI car was a World Challenge Boss 302R, which ran a 2:07.860 in the final race
At this point we had been weighed twice. 3791 lbs was the lightest and as high as 3836 lbs with a lot of fuel. Brakes looked good - the Carbotechs were wearing very well for the abuse I was throwing at them. I have never braked this car this hard, from these speeds, this many times in a row. Some say our upgraded GT500 14" rear brakes "are worthless" compared to the stock 11.5" rear discs, but I disagree strongly. This car was the heaviest in the TT3 class, had one of the highest terminal speeds into Turn 1, yet I could brake as late or later than anyone else. In some cases I was braking nearly 100 feet later than some TT2 and TT3 cars. The brakes just flat worked, flawlessly, all week.
Just watched my TT session 4 video and I was pushing hard yet only managed another 1/2 second gain, down to a best of 2:08.537. Heavy cross winds made for major buffeting in the car on the higher speed sections, and the high ambient heat (2 pm, high 90s again) baked the track, overheated tires, and made for generally slower lap times. Only five TT3 cars went out this time, with Mayfield and Smith skipping the session entirely. Nagel went out in the white E36 and put in a best of 2:08.324, which was over a second slower than his best time from the first official TT session on Thursday. I was within 2 tenths of Nagel, everyone was slower, but I had found another half second, so that was at least a little encouraging. The R6s felt really awful and the car was still very loose at speed, and once the tires got hot after my 1st lap it was loose everywhere. I pounded out 5 laps (3 hot laps + 2 cool downs), well after almost everyone else had come in, and saw another 2:08.8 lap in the closing lap, but my first lap was again my fastest.
TT session 3, Session 4 and session 5 time sheets from Friday
For the Friday's final TT session (TT session 5) we we removed the Grey Forgestar 18x12's with the well worn R6s and slapped on the white Forgestar set with the the used set of Hoosier A6 tires. Clouds were rolling in, temperatures were dropping, and at the beginning of this late afternoon session it was down to 88°F. Amy and I had to swap wheels without any power tools, so it took a while and we barely made it to grid in time. Then we had another long delay on grid, as had been the case several times previously.
During this grid delay Brian Smyer shot the pictures above, as well as several others that he put into his blog post. "I fell in love with this mustang from Vorshlag so thought I would share a few images from Miller Motorsports Park" Brian also got some great images out on track, which I have scattered through this post (anything without the Vorshlag watermark was taken by him). Good stuff. After he took the above two pics the clouds rolled in and it started to look like rain again. Winds picked up, and many of the cars went out on sticker tires in this session, thinking it might be one of our last dry times for a bit (storms were predicted to roll in hard for Friday night/Saturday).
I left a gap to the rest of the field on the out lap, because I had been catching several cars gridded higher than me on the 1st and 2nd laps out, time and again. This session looked like the best conditions we had seen all week, and I had what I thought would be faster tires and some clear track ahead. I got a good run out of the last turn and pushed the revs in 5th gear down the front straight. With the higher AoA on the wing I only saw an indicated 150 mph into the braking zone (down from 155), but it seemed to stop fine. As I'm rolling into the throttle exiting Turn 1... the rear tires washed out, lots of counter steer, no help. I put 2 wheels off on the exit of T1 at 100+ mph and blew the lap. Took a cool down lap and tried to set up to try again.
After my 2 off I had let about 6 cars that were behind me go by, after I had gathered it up. So my next hot laps involved getting held up by virtually all of these cars as I re-passed them. The tires quickly felt greasy and the car was oversteering more than it had all week. My 2nd lap was only a 2:09.031, on the A6 tires. I knew I was in trouble and took another cool down lap, where I let a few of the same cars back around me, trying not to impede their laps. Started another hot lap, it was looking better on predictive timing, then exiting Turn 6 and I got blocked by two of the SAME cars that I had pointed by on my cool down, including one of the same cars that had blocked me on my previous hot lap. Very frustrating, my session was blown, the A6 tires were now overheated, so I threw in the towel and came into the pits. In that session Mayfield was 1.5 seconds quicker than his previous best, down to a blistering 2:04.170. Nagel ran a 2:07.808 as well, so it was a good session to get a fast lap in. My 2 off and subsequent blocked laps blew the session for me, but the tires never felt very good anyways.
After this session we buttoned up the trailer, left the Mustang out in the rain, and headed to the airport through a sandstorm to pick up Ryan and Brandon, who finally made it to SLC by about 4:30 pm. This was the night we switched hotels and the better accommodations, free drinks at the bar, and a good meal in SLC raised our spirits.
Day 3 - Saturday
We arrived at the track at 7 am and got to work on the car. We had a new game plan - don't wait until Sunday to put the sticker tires on, as the weather was too unpredictable and any of the next 4 sessions might be our last chance at a dry track. So Ryan and Brandon had the scrub A6 tires dismounted and the lone set of brand new "sticker" 315/30/18 A6 tires went on ($130 mounting charge from the Hoosier guys, ouch). Ryan tweaked the front swaybar, dialed some wing back DOWN, and I went out on track. It was 71 degrees, still very windy, but sunny and dry. Track was green from rains the night before, but I went out and pushed it hard anyway.
I was gridded behind Nagel and gapped him hugely on the out lap, so I wouldn't catch him on the first lap. Since he was running Yokohama slicks that took several laps to heat up he was a good bit slower for the first 3-4 laps in every session, and I still caught him by Turn 6 on the first hot lap. Got a little held up into T6 but took the pass on the exit. What freaked me out was his brake lights didn't work almost the entire week (they were operational by Sunday), so I had to gauge at when he got on the brakes, which was a bit earlier than me into T5 and T6. After I got around him it put me on a bad trajectory into T7 (Whitchcraft) and I got a little bit of curb into T8, and again into T11, which really caused the car to bumpsteer hard. I knew the pass and both subsequent curb touches had cost me some time, but I still managed a 2:06.6 on my first hot lap with the new A6 tires. Dropped two full seconds on my first lap on stickers, with tons of mistakes and delays... man, I was regretting only bringing that one set of new tires! The previous 2 days felt like a big waste of time, now.
Time Trial Results for TT session 6 and 7 on Saturday
On my second hot lap in this session I was on a flyer when my foot slipped off the brake pedal downshifitng and braking into T6, and I almost had an off. I managed to gather it up, with the left front tire getting way out onto the outside curbing mid-corner, and of course that lap was blown. At that point I wanted to "bank" the first 2:06 lap and started a cool down to then come into the pits... but I changed my mind at the last second and went ahead and took a 3rd hot lap. I had already turned off the video so I don't have details but apparently I got fairly clean track and managed to drop 3 more tenths and put in a 2:06.356. Considering that these were A6 tires, with which I almost always put in my best laps on the 1st lap and they fall off a cliff after that, I knew the car had more in it. After that 2nd 2:06 lap I came in to bank it. This new time briefly pushed me into 3rd place in TT3, ahead of Nagel. Most everyone was faster in that session and Nagel dropped a good bit of time on his 5th lap, and jumped back ahead of me back into 3rd with a 2:05.562. Mayfield dropped another 9 tenths to a 2:03.170 and finally jumped ahead of Ken Smith (who had a 2:03.3 from TT session 3) for the TT3 lead. In this session Smith had put in a 2:04.110, with the rest of the class was 2 seconds behind me in 4th position. The two tight battles in TT3 were between Mayfield and Smith for 1st in the 2:03s and Nagel and me for 3rd in the 2:05-2:06 range.
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continued from above
That picture above is from the grid before Saturday's final TT run group, session 7, which began at 3:45 pm. As you can see the bad weather really rolled in and the rain was eminent, and we even felt a sprinkle or two in grid. I had no windshield wipers (pulled them for less drag!) so I applied two coats of RainX to the windshield prior to going out. I was hoping to drop another 2 seconds, to maybe "get in the hunt", but that was a bit optimistic. I had watched some previous in-car videos and noted several of my driving mistakes, so I tried to clean up my lines, and again - my first lap was going to be the most crucial.
I dropped back a bit on the out lap and tried to gap Nagel, but I caught and passed him again in the braking to Turn 1 on the first hot lap, which threw my line off for this high speed corner, and my entries into T2 and T3 were slower. Rest of the lap was relatively clear and was a 2:06.6, with a pass and several compromised corners. I went ahead and took a 2nd hot lap, where I caught and passed a TT1 Corvette on the main front straight, then got held up a little by a TT2 Subaru early braking into T1 (so many cars brake early there). He pulled ahead in Turns 2-4 but I caught him a bit in the heavy braking into Turn 6. For the rest of this lap he stayed ahead and pulled away on the main straight. Hot lap 2 was a 2:06.111. I had a little more gap to the TT2 Subie so I took a 3rd hot lap in the row.
Braked a little late into T1 (155 mph) and got a little sloppy, then borked the high speed Turn 4 a bit, too. Felt like the rear tires were getting greasy, and they were. I watched the predictive timing off and on through the lap, and and it was only showing a 2:06.3-2:06.4 towards the latter 1/4 of the lap. The rear tires were really overheating by Turn 12, car was getting too loose, so I bailed on this hot lap right before Pit In and came into Impound. The 2 tenths improvement was at least something but I was still a 1/2 second behind Nagel's previous 2:05.5 (he ran a 2:11.3 in this session).
I guess because of the weird weather, higher winds and darker visibility only 2 cars dropped time in our class - I ran a couple of tenths quicker at a 2:06.111 on my 2nd lap and Bezard dropped from the 2:08s down to a to a 2:07.5 in his E46 M3 to close up behind me in 5th place. Smith was slower at a 2:03.9 and Mayfield was a second slower at a 2:04.1. So on only my 2nd session on "sticker A6" tires I was still dropping time, but I still felt there was more left to drop still.
Click above and skip to 5:57, where they spend a minute on our Mustang
One difference from this year's NASA Nationals was the "SpeedcastTV" coverage. There were cameras up on man lifts at a number of corners around the track and they were showing video live online at www.speedcasttv.com/nasa. There were also two announcers giving color commentary on the live video feed. They had a director who would tell the cameramen to switch from car to car and they'd stay with them for 30 seconds or up to a minute. The linked video above shows some footage from TT session 7, and at the 5:57 mark they cover me driving the red Mustang. One of the announcers was even a follower of this very forum thread and a fan of the car (thanks!). They talked about the car for a minute, which was cool.
Saturday night was a lot more upbeat, as I was at least within a 3 seconds of the 2 drivers who were trading the class lead (closest I had been all week) and I was only 1/2 second out of a podium position. We had 2 more sessions to go on Sunday and anything was possible. But it started to rain as the sun fell and it rained pretty much all night. We knew this meant another green track (no rubber down) for Sunday, so it might all be over for fast laps in TT. We had no more tuning tricks left up our sleeves so it was all down to the track/weather conditions and my driving on Sunday. Great...
Day 4 - Sunday
It rained all Saturday night so we were treated to a wet first session on Sunday, with drops still coming down. Only 7 drivers from the entire H group of Time Trial racers took to the track, but they got some extra SpeedcastTV time, so kudos to them. I skipped that session, as I didn't bring any rains and didn't see a point, with 8 other dry session's worth of times to fall back on. Don't need to stuff the car off track, either. So we waited for the 9th and final TT session, which began at 2:45 pm, and it was the last race group to run the entire week of the 2013 NASA Nationals. The track was green but dry, temperatures were down to 79° after the rains had blown through, there was a good wind again (which dried off the track quickly), and it looked pretty much like the best conditions of the week.
In the last TT meeting before this session we were told by the TT Director, "If you go faster in this last session, be prepared to be dyno'd". The top 2 in TT3 had already been dyno tested more than once this week, but almost nobody else in our class had, including me. We had all been weighed many times, and as far as I know there were no under-weights. We were told if we weighed under, or dyno'd higher than our claimed numbers, we'd get a session DQ. They would then take our weight and divide by the power test number, and if our ratio was under what the class allowed, ALL times prior to that would be thrown out, back to our last legal dyno/weight check from this event.
Final two Time Trial sessions were run on Sunday. Session 8 (at left) was raining but Session 9 (right) was dry and fast...
I went out on the same fresh-ish Hoosier A6 tires that we installed on Saturday morning (I saw more new sticker sets in this last Sunday session than in most others), with several heat cycles now acquired on them. I was sitting in 4th place out of 12 in class, 6 tenths behind Nagel in 3rd, with the two of us gridded side by side. We talked before going out and agreed to a point-by on lap 1 if I was closing down on him, like we had been doing most of the week, since he doesn't get tire heat until lap 4 or 5. He knew I was close to his times and was pushing to pick up some time cushion, too. He had a sizable crew with him including spotters with 2-way radios to communicate his and my times during the session. I really wished we had radios at this point, because I would have no way of knowing if he went faster. Amy and Ryan told me to STAY OUT THE ENTIRE SESSION, to make sure I got the most out of the car, but I knew my best lap would likely be my first. We fueled up heavy to give a bit more range and out I went.
Last TT SpeedcastTV video: http://www.speedcasttv.com/nasa/#/races/358
If you watch the above video it gives you some good action in TTU and TT3 during this session. The Godzilla GTR in TTU dropped 2 seconds in this final session and leaped into the lead by nearly 2 seconds over the Subaru powered Radical. That car's 1:55 lap times for a full bodied car were amazing. In the 9th TT session Nagel had dropped another tenth down to a 2:05.454, but spun it on course and on camera, late in the session - at approximately 21:20 on this 2nd linked Speedcast video, you can see him sitting crossed up and stopped on track. So that spin caused a session DQ and his new 0.1 second faster time was thrown out. So we have to look back at his previous best of a 2:05.562 from TT session 6 on Saturday. That was the mark I was looking for... mid 2:05s. So when I ran the lap below, I didn't know if I had beat him or not.
In-car video from the final TT group, Session 9, where I ran my best lap of the week!
My best lap was my first hot lap, once again, with a 2:05.579 - or 17 thousandths of a second back from Nagel! I stayed out and ran 3 hot laps in a row, which you can see bits and pieces of in the Speedcast video or in my in-car video, above. Nagel gave me the point right before the start-finish and I got a mostly clear track ahead of me for my first lap. I caught the TT2 Subaru again in Turn 4, T5 and was maybe held up a tick braking into T6, but he started pulling away from me after Turn 7. Watching my lap I was talking to myself and yelling at the car the whole time, might have left a few tenths out there, but I was on the ragged edge and tracking out to the curbing on most corners. When my lap timer said 2:05.59 after my first hot lap it was too close to call. So I went out in lap 2 looking for a tenth. I keep saying that on the video, "I just need a tenth... I just need a tenth!"
Exiting Witchcraft I pushed it a bit too hard and took the S-curves (attitudes) with a bit more curb than the car could handle and got it very crossed up. Kept it on track, barely, then cooled down for a couple of corners and went straight into hot lap 3. Tires were getting greasy and loose at the high speed corners in T2/T3/T4. Predictive timing was only showing low 2:06s and I was getting very, very frustrated. I needed to push it hard to find that tenth but could not afford to have an off. After 3 hot laps, where I noticed lap times slowing on each successive attempt, I packed it in, assuming I was probably only hundreds of a second slower than 3rd place.
We all got into Impound and they started weighing and dyno'ing a selection of cars. I was eventually weighed and was still 40 pounds heavy. Before they could finish with all of us, were told to leave our cars and head to the trophy ceremony.
NASA did a great job and each podium finisher in every racing class got champagne, a trophy, pictures with the Toyo Girls, and many of the contingency winnings were handed out right there. GoPro 3 Black edition cameras (just for running stickers), cases of Royal Purple, driving suits, and on and on. Time Trial had some of the more lucrative payouts, surprisingly. Mayfield had arm fulls of goodies and he had a smile a mile wide. Big congrats to him for the win and TT3 track record at Miller in his first time to NASA Nationals. It was close, with his final TT session 9 time dropping to a 2:03.052, and Smith in second only 3 tenths back at a 2:03.328 from earlier in the week. Nagel rounded out the podium in 3rd.
Left: The Official TT Final Results. Right: Nagels car sitting in Impound awaiting a ruling, after blowing the dyno. Twice.
But the fat lady hadn't sung her song just yet. After the trophy ceremony we headed back to Impound and the cars awaiting dyno runs and weight checks stuck around until our cars were released. Mayfield's BMW dyno'd clean and went to load up. Nagel's white M3 got weighed and dyno'd since he was in the top 3, which was apparently that car's first trip onto the rollers all week. But it blew the claimed maximum power number on the dyno by nearly 10 whp. They did the 3 pulls and then his team argued about the shape of the dyno graph on one of the first pulls. So they pulled it around in line, got it up on the trailer, strapped it down and dyno'd it again, 3 more pulls. Ryan watched the second set of pulls and it failed again. Meanwhile I'm drinking a few beers and just hanging out at Impound, awaiting the outcome. Several TT directors met, they checked his most recent weight and dyno numbers, recalculated his class ratio, and it was also over the limit. Hmm....
The National TT Director Greg Greenbaum was busy with a protest and an appeal from another class entry (Super Touring Corvette) that took over an hour. After that was decided (it went all the way to an Executive Appeal and a NASA Board of Directors), he came to decide what to do with Nagel's dyno issues. Apparently since it blew both the dyno and ratio, all times back to a previous good dyno were to be thrown out. And since he didn't volunteer or have another a clean dyno earlier in the week, there was nothing to fall back on that was legal, so all of his times were tossed. If the ratio had still been good (power to weight) it would have just been a session DQ, which was already a DQ for the spin anyway, and he would have held onto 3rd. Greenbaum said "yep, he's DQ'd for the entire week, you are now 3rd place". Yep, just like that.
I talked to Nagel, and he was rather cool about it "Hey, I don't tune it, I just drive it". We shook hands, he congratulated me, then he went and got the 3rd place trophy out of his trailer and handed it to me. Man, that was rough - I felt so bad for him.... but not bad enough that I didn't take that trophy! Does an inherited win feel as good? Heck yes, when the cars were thousandths of a second apart and the other car didn't make dyno. We worked our asses off all year, and built a heck of a good TT3 car, that was both quick and legal. It was also a street legal car, with A/C, emissions, tags, interior, NAV/radio, the works. Weren't too many (any?) of those on the podium that week in any TT class. Probably for a reason!
Left: One of the TT Directors congratulates me on 3rd place. Right: It wasn't a podium ceremony, but I'll take it,
While I was awaiting the Impound ruling, Amy, Ryan and Brandon had pulled the front end off, loaded up the car, got the 21 tires with only a qualifying run I scavenged from Hoosier's trash pile secured, and we rolled out for our 2 day/25 hour return trip around 6 pm, with Ryan and Brandon with us for the return trip. These Hoosier scrubs will keep us in R compounds for HPDE and test laps for months to come!
Wanted to give a shout out to our paddock mates from Minnesota. These guys are part of a ChumpCar team that were at Nationals to support one of their driver's, who ran some World Challenge races in the past and was now running a Honda Challenge Civic in PTC (should have been PTD - long story). These guys have been friends for years and were having a lot of fun. Photographer Brian Smyer was hanging around with this crew, too.
At right is the Best Team Photo.. EVAR!
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That picture above is from the grid before Saturday's final TT run group, session 7, which began at 3:45 pm. As you can see the bad weather really rolled in and the rain was eminent, and we even felt a sprinkle or two in grid. I had no windshield wipers (pulled them for less drag!) so I applied two coats of RainX to the windshield prior to going out. I was hoping to drop another 2 seconds, to maybe "get in the hunt", but that was a bit optimistic. I had watched some previous in-car videos and noted several of my driving mistakes, so I tried to clean up my lines, and again - my first lap was going to be the most crucial.
I dropped back a bit on the out lap and tried to gap Nagel, but I caught and passed him again in the braking to Turn 1 on the first hot lap, which threw my line off for this high speed corner, and my entries into T2 and T3 were slower. Rest of the lap was relatively clear and was a 2:06.6, with a pass and several compromised corners. I went ahead and took a 2nd hot lap, where I caught and passed a TT1 Corvette on the main front straight, then got held up a little by a TT2 Subaru early braking into T1 (so many cars brake early there). He pulled ahead in Turns 2-4 but I caught him a bit in the heavy braking into Turn 6. For the rest of this lap he stayed ahead and pulled away on the main straight. Hot lap 2 was a 2:06.111. I had a little more gap to the TT2 Subie so I took a 3rd hot lap in the row.
Braked a little late into T1 (155 mph) and got a little sloppy, then borked the high speed Turn 4 a bit, too. Felt like the rear tires were getting greasy, and they were. I watched the predictive timing off and on through the lap, and and it was only showing a 2:06.3-2:06.4 towards the latter 1/4 of the lap. The rear tires were really overheating by Turn 12, car was getting too loose, so I bailed on this hot lap right before Pit In and came into Impound. The 2 tenths improvement was at least something but I was still a 1/2 second behind Nagel's previous 2:05.5 (he ran a 2:11.3 in this session).
I guess because of the weird weather, higher winds and darker visibility only 2 cars dropped time in our class - I ran a couple of tenths quicker at a 2:06.111 on my 2nd lap and Bezard dropped from the 2:08s down to a to a 2:07.5 in his E46 M3 to close up behind me in 5th place. Smith was slower at a 2:03.9 and Mayfield was a second slower at a 2:04.1. So on only my 2nd session on "sticker A6" tires I was still dropping time, but I still felt there was more left to drop still.
Click above and skip to 5:57, where they spend a minute on our Mustang
One difference from this year's NASA Nationals was the "SpeedcastTV" coverage. There were cameras up on man lifts at a number of corners around the track and they were showing video live online at www.speedcasttv.com/nasa. There were also two announcers giving color commentary on the live video feed. They had a director who would tell the cameramen to switch from car to car and they'd stay with them for 30 seconds or up to a minute. The linked video above shows some footage from TT session 7, and at the 5:57 mark they cover me driving the red Mustang. One of the announcers was even a follower of this very forum thread and a fan of the car (thanks!). They talked about the car for a minute, which was cool.
Saturday night was a lot more upbeat, as I was at least within a 3 seconds of the 2 drivers who were trading the class lead (closest I had been all week) and I was only 1/2 second out of a podium position. We had 2 more sessions to go on Sunday and anything was possible. But it started to rain as the sun fell and it rained pretty much all night. We knew this meant another green track (no rubber down) for Sunday, so it might all be over for fast laps in TT. We had no more tuning tricks left up our sleeves so it was all down to the track/weather conditions and my driving on Sunday. Great...
Day 4 - Sunday
It rained all Saturday night so we were treated to a wet first session on Sunday, with drops still coming down. Only 7 drivers from the entire H group of Time Trial racers took to the track, but they got some extra SpeedcastTV time, so kudos to them. I skipped that session, as I didn't bring any rains and didn't see a point, with 8 other dry session's worth of times to fall back on. Don't need to stuff the car off track, either. So we waited for the 9th and final TT session, which began at 2:45 pm, and it was the last race group to run the entire week of the 2013 NASA Nationals. The track was green but dry, temperatures were down to 79° after the rains had blown through, there was a good wind again (which dried off the track quickly), and it looked pretty much like the best conditions of the week.
In the last TT meeting before this session we were told by the TT Director, "If you go faster in this last session, be prepared to be dyno'd". The top 2 in TT3 had already been dyno tested more than once this week, but almost nobody else in our class had, including me. We had all been weighed many times, and as far as I know there were no under-weights. We were told if we weighed under, or dyno'd higher than our claimed numbers, we'd get a session DQ. They would then take our weight and divide by the power test number, and if our ratio was under what the class allowed, ALL times prior to that would be thrown out, back to our last legal dyno/weight check from this event.
Final two Time Trial sessions were run on Sunday. Session 8 (at left) was raining but Session 9 (right) was dry and fast...
I went out on the same fresh-ish Hoosier A6 tires that we installed on Saturday morning (I saw more new sticker sets in this last Sunday session than in most others), with several heat cycles now acquired on them. I was sitting in 4th place out of 12 in class, 6 tenths behind Nagel in 3rd, with the two of us gridded side by side. We talked before going out and agreed to a point-by on lap 1 if I was closing down on him, like we had been doing most of the week, since he doesn't get tire heat until lap 4 or 5. He knew I was close to his times and was pushing to pick up some time cushion, too. He had a sizable crew with him including spotters with 2-way radios to communicate his and my times during the session. I really wished we had radios at this point, because I would have no way of knowing if he went faster. Amy and Ryan told me to STAY OUT THE ENTIRE SESSION, to make sure I got the most out of the car, but I knew my best lap would likely be my first. We fueled up heavy to give a bit more range and out I went.
Last TT SpeedcastTV video: http://www.speedcasttv.com/nasa/#/races/358
If you watch the above video it gives you some good action in TTU and TT3 during this session. The Godzilla GTR in TTU dropped 2 seconds in this final session and leaped into the lead by nearly 2 seconds over the Subaru powered Radical. That car's 1:55 lap times for a full bodied car were amazing. In the 9th TT session Nagel had dropped another tenth down to a 2:05.454, but spun it on course and on camera, late in the session - at approximately 21:20 on this 2nd linked Speedcast video, you can see him sitting crossed up and stopped on track. So that spin caused a session DQ and his new 0.1 second faster time was thrown out. So we have to look back at his previous best of a 2:05.562 from TT session 6 on Saturday. That was the mark I was looking for... mid 2:05s. So when I ran the lap below, I didn't know if I had beat him or not.
In-car video from the final TT group, Session 9, where I ran my best lap of the week!
My best lap was my first hot lap, once again, with a 2:05.579 - or 17 thousandths of a second back from Nagel! I stayed out and ran 3 hot laps in a row, which you can see bits and pieces of in the Speedcast video or in my in-car video, above. Nagel gave me the point right before the start-finish and I got a mostly clear track ahead of me for my first lap. I caught the TT2 Subaru again in Turn 4, T5 and was maybe held up a tick braking into T6, but he started pulling away from me after Turn 7. Watching my lap I was talking to myself and yelling at the car the whole time, might have left a few tenths out there, but I was on the ragged edge and tracking out to the curbing on most corners. When my lap timer said 2:05.59 after my first hot lap it was too close to call. So I went out in lap 2 looking for a tenth. I keep saying that on the video, "I just need a tenth... I just need a tenth!"
Exiting Witchcraft I pushed it a bit too hard and took the S-curves (attitudes) with a bit more curb than the car could handle and got it very crossed up. Kept it on track, barely, then cooled down for a couple of corners and went straight into hot lap 3. Tires were getting greasy and loose at the high speed corners in T2/T3/T4. Predictive timing was only showing low 2:06s and I was getting very, very frustrated. I needed to push it hard to find that tenth but could not afford to have an off. After 3 hot laps, where I noticed lap times slowing on each successive attempt, I packed it in, assuming I was probably only hundreds of a second slower than 3rd place.
We all got into Impound and they started weighing and dyno'ing a selection of cars. I was eventually weighed and was still 40 pounds heavy. Before they could finish with all of us, were told to leave our cars and head to the trophy ceremony.
NASA did a great job and each podium finisher in every racing class got champagne, a trophy, pictures with the Toyo Girls, and many of the contingency winnings were handed out right there. GoPro 3 Black edition cameras (just for running stickers), cases of Royal Purple, driving suits, and on and on. Time Trial had some of the more lucrative payouts, surprisingly. Mayfield had arm fulls of goodies and he had a smile a mile wide. Big congrats to him for the win and TT3 track record at Miller in his first time to NASA Nationals. It was close, with his final TT session 9 time dropping to a 2:03.052, and Smith in second only 3 tenths back at a 2:03.328 from earlier in the week. Nagel rounded out the podium in 3rd.
Left: The Official TT Final Results. Right: Nagels car sitting in Impound awaiting a ruling, after blowing the dyno. Twice.
But the fat lady hadn't sung her song just yet. After the trophy ceremony we headed back to Impound and the cars awaiting dyno runs and weight checks stuck around until our cars were released. Mayfield's BMW dyno'd clean and went to load up. Nagel's white M3 got weighed and dyno'd since he was in the top 3, which was apparently that car's first trip onto the rollers all week. But it blew the claimed maximum power number on the dyno by nearly 10 whp. They did the 3 pulls and then his team argued about the shape of the dyno graph on one of the first pulls. So they pulled it around in line, got it up on the trailer, strapped it down and dyno'd it again, 3 more pulls. Ryan watched the second set of pulls and it failed again. Meanwhile I'm drinking a few beers and just hanging out at Impound, awaiting the outcome. Several TT directors met, they checked his most recent weight and dyno numbers, recalculated his class ratio, and it was also over the limit. Hmm....
The National TT Director Greg Greenbaum was busy with a protest and an appeal from another class entry (Super Touring Corvette) that took over an hour. After that was decided (it went all the way to an Executive Appeal and a NASA Board of Directors), he came to decide what to do with Nagel's dyno issues. Apparently since it blew both the dyno and ratio, all times back to a previous good dyno were to be thrown out. And since he didn't volunteer or have another a clean dyno earlier in the week, there was nothing to fall back on that was legal, so all of his times were tossed. If the ratio had still been good (power to weight) it would have just been a session DQ, which was already a DQ for the spin anyway, and he would have held onto 3rd. Greenbaum said "yep, he's DQ'd for the entire week, you are now 3rd place". Yep, just like that.
I talked to Nagel, and he was rather cool about it "Hey, I don't tune it, I just drive it". We shook hands, he congratulated me, then he went and got the 3rd place trophy out of his trailer and handed it to me. Man, that was rough - I felt so bad for him.... but not bad enough that I didn't take that trophy! Does an inherited win feel as good? Heck yes, when the cars were thousandths of a second apart and the other car didn't make dyno. We worked our asses off all year, and built a heck of a good TT3 car, that was both quick and legal. It was also a street legal car, with A/C, emissions, tags, interior, NAV/radio, the works. Weren't too many (any?) of those on the podium that week in any TT class. Probably for a reason!
Left: One of the TT Directors congratulates me on 3rd place. Right: It wasn't a podium ceremony, but I'll take it,
While I was awaiting the Impound ruling, Amy, Ryan and Brandon had pulled the front end off, loaded up the car, got the 21 tires with only a qualifying run I scavenged from Hoosier's trash pile secured, and we rolled out for our 2 day/25 hour return trip around 6 pm, with Ryan and Brandon with us for the return trip. These Hoosier scrubs will keep us in R compounds for HPDE and test laps for months to come!
Wanted to give a shout out to our paddock mates from Minnesota. These guys are part of a ChumpCar team that were at Nationals to support one of their driver's, who ran some World Challenge races in the past and was now running a Honda Challenge Civic in PTC (should have been PTD - long story). These guys have been friends for years and were having a lot of fun. Photographer Brian Smyer was hanging around with this crew, too.
At right is the Best Team Photo.. EVAR!
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What Did We Learn At Nationals?
Reflecting back on this Nationals week, heck, this last year of running TT in NASA, we have learned a lot of lessons, and I'm sure we have many more to still learn. The experience of going to NASA Nationals was both informative and fun for our entire crew - and even the guys at the shop who didn't join us there. Coming home with a trophy was a good feeling, especially after starting the week off so slow and so far back (the car got 5.3 seconds faster from Thursday to Sunday).
Here are some of the little bits of wisdom that I humbly share with you after this Nationals experience:
I hope our mistakes and experiences can help you make the right choices for your TT build, if and when you decide to try your hand at this sport. And I hope reading our posts encourages that goal for most HPDE folks. Why? Because after a while just "running a DE" can get boring. There are not rules, times, or competition to drive you. Just "driving around a track" doesn't teach you much, once you have gone through instruction and are Solo'd. We've seen a lot of HPDE drivers moving towards TT, and I think that is great. But don't assume you have to go W2W racing after you get to TT. Many of us don't want or need the added risks, costs and damage potential that W2W racing has. If you can afford to write off your car after some asshat punts you off track and destroys your car, and that won't upset you too badly, then by all means... go right ahead.
Because that can and does happen in W2W, but not in TT.
Hard Choices - Selling BOTH Mustangs?
Unfortunately we still need to sell the 2013 GT, and it has taken so long now that I'm forced to put the 2011 GT up for sale now, too. I know, that sucks - trust me, I don't want to do this. We had planned on selling the 2011 at the end of this year or in the Spring of 2014, to make room for the all new 2015 Mustang we want to buy, prep and race in 2014. That is still happening, but with so much $$$ tied up in both Mustangs, I need to move them sooner rather than later. We had hoped we could keep the red car for a while longer, but expanding the business needs cash right now and both of our S197 projects are going on the auction block. Look for an updated ad for the 2013 GT and a new for sale ad for the 2011 GT soon.
Since nobody made a serious offer on it, our black 2013 GT is getting taken back to stock very soon and will likely be sold on CraigsList to some random schmuck, as the "track ready" set-up didn't get me any legit buyers (just a couple of fast talking con men and a few low ball pranksters). Our red 2011 GT will be posted up as it sits in TT3 trim now, with the aero front end and one set of 18x12" wheels and tires. If that is a bust we'll put it back to nearly stock and sell it that way, too. Don't PM me about parts off of either car just yet, as I will ignore those straight off. When/if these cars have parts pulled off they will go for sale all at once and I'll post an ad here.
What's Next?
There are still a lot of events we might be able to squeeze in with the red 2011 GT. And who knows? Maybe the 2013 GT will sell and some other things will fall into place and we won't have to sell the red GT right away, and I can make all of these events (fingers crossed!). Here's what is on the race schedule for the next few weeks.
2015 Mustang for 2014 in... TT2?
So to recap a few of our 2014 plans, we plan on buying one of the all-new 2015 Mustang GT's as soon as it is available. From talking to a few key people that have sources at Ford, we think the new S550 chassis is going to be at least 100 pounds lighter. The Coyote 5.0 engine choice is assumed to carry over, and if it is like previous "chassis changes" it will likely have a small power bump, too. We will get the V8, manual transmission, and likely red again - but that's it. I'm not letting Amy pimp this one out with a bunch of options. So this means it will be even lighter and more powerful than the 2011 GT which we have been playing with in TT3, so we'd have to cork up the engine and/or slap on a bunch of extra weight to stay within the 9.5:1 pounds per hp ratio of TT3 class "with aero".
The next class up the Time Trials ladder is TT2, which has an 8:1 ratio. We have extrapolated that this S550 will likely end up there, once we upgrade the suspension, wheels/tires, and aero like we have the 2011 (and that will happen quickly). So TT2 is what we are shooting to run next year, again with a goal of developing new parts for this new Mustang chassis (S550), and hopefully racking up a few more NASA TT track records along the way. We haven't found a better venue to test new products for a car than the competition that NASA Time Trial provides. Unfortunately the NASA Texas the season starts in January, and the new car might not be out until April or May... and we had the TT3 regional championship for 2013 wrapped up by May of this year, so we can't wait that long to get a race car built.
Some of you may already know that Vorshlag is a lot more than just a "Mustang suspension shop". One of the many series of products we have developed over the years is our LS1 V8 swaps into various BMW chassis. We've done E30, E36, E46, Z3 BMW swaps and have kits for most of those, plus a V8 Miata kit that is under development. Our service shop has been cranking out a lot of BMW V8 swaps of late and I have a couple of E36 donor chassis at my house right now, without a clear purpose. So....
Vorshlag TT2/ST2 E36 Build Thread: http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8254
Over the winter we will be building a TT2/ST2 BMW E36 LS1. The chassis is a white 1992 325is "E36 Coupe", with a tired motor and interior. This will be stripped down, caged, flared, painted and built into a W2W race car. We might briefly run it in TT2 before we sell it, too - that's my goal if we do end up selling the red 2011 GT before the new 2015 GT arrives.
Above: Our TT2/ST2 build is already underway with the BMW E36 chassis being stripped and readied for a cage
I know, its not a Mustang, but it will allow us to at least get in the class with something while we await the S550's introduction. We will also be building our E46 LS1 Alpha car with a 5.7L motor around TT1 class rules, also over the winter, which we plan to race and develop that kit with as well. The Alpha LS1 Miata that is moving forward (customer car), among other builds in our shop.
Don't worry - we're not done developing S197 parts, not hardly. Lots of S197 Mustang race prep, development and upgrades are still going on at Vorshlag on a daily basis. And we might be able to hang onto the red GT for a while, or if it is sold in "near stock form" I will look for a front damaged '11-14 GT as soon as we can and transfer over the front sheet metal and aero updates from this car, as well as some new shock and suspension options we are working on for this chassis.
So I hope this last series of posts wasn't too long and boring, and I apologize that my "Nationals Event Coverage" spanned so many days and too many words. I've already started my write-up for the TWS event on Sept 21-22nd, where the car again did very well. There was a host of updates done to the car before we took it to Texas World Speedway for this NASA race weekend, including a new "shorter" splitter which balanced out the aero imbalance we had at Miller. Our painter also reworked the hood and it looks top notch, but we lost the vinyl stripes in the process. I'll get that update posted shortly. Until next time...
Thanks for reading,
What Did We Learn At Nationals?
Reflecting back on this Nationals week, heck, this last year of running TT in NASA, we have learned a lot of lessons, and I'm sure we have many more to still learn. The experience of going to NASA Nationals was both informative and fun for our entire crew - and even the guys at the shop who didn't join us there. Coming home with a trophy was a good feeling, especially after starting the week off so slow and so far back (the car got 5.3 seconds faster from Thursday to Sunday).
Here are some of the little bits of wisdom that I humbly share with you after this Nationals experience:
- The power to weight ratios in TT's numbered classes are better explained in the ST rules. Most people were cheating themselves, running too much weight or too little power until the TT directors got us straightened out. Yes, even at Nationals, mistakes were often made on classing sheets.
- Don't run 40-60 pounds heavy for your class then complain if you lose by .017 seconds. In NASA, the power and weight matter a lot.
- Don't fear the dyno - get a dyno test done AT Nationals on the OFFICIAL dyno early in the week. Ask for a weight check early and often, too. You will want to have a good "tested legal" date to fall back on, in case a later test is blown.
- High altitude tracks can produce funky dyno numbers - be prepared to have to de-tune or add weight when the conditions are very different from your home track.
- There is no substitute for fresh race tires. Ever. The normal tire strategies we use at Regional NASA events (R6s for most of the laps, A6 for a single session and faster hot lap) can work well, but at Nationals we needed more sticker sets. Showing up on used or worn tires was a big mistake, as we were partially tuning around bad tires. Neal Roberts had taught us this. Economics got the better of us.
- Making huge changes to the car or set-up right before Nationals is a bad idea. Pick a time period a month or two before Nationals and LOCK DOWN YOUR SET-UP. Don't count on the 4 days of TT sessions to help fine tune the set-up, either.
- Don't skimp on your trailer tires. On an enclosed 2 or 3 axle trailer, bring two mounted spares plus at least a third unmounted spare trailer tire. Keep one spare + the axle lift ramp + a proper lug wrench right next to the trailer side door for easy access.
- Towing over the Rocky Mountains is the suck, no matter what vehicle you are using. Going "around" the mountains is easier than going over the worst passes. Plan your route accordingly. On the return trip we heard of some folks seeing ice on the roads on the difficult passes.
- If you are going to Nationals and have never run the track before, get there at least a day early to practice. Budget for this with time and tires.
- If you have doubts about fuel availability or quality at the track, bring your own fuel. We spent a small fortune on 100 octane race fuel to mix with the 91 octane "Premium" they use in Utah.
- When it comes to numbered TT classes (TTU/1/2/3), don't skimp on the aero. EVERY SINGLE top TT3 car had excellent wings, splitters, and low drag tricks. Nobody in TT3 used the "better" 9:1 optional ratio for using stock aero... every fast car took the weight hit to use aftermarket aero.
- Too much front downforce can be a bad thing (we've since made a 2nd splitter that is 4" shorter - see my next event write-up on how that worked).
- Don't do your aero set-up testing at a track that only has low speed corners (duh).
- High speed tracks require SERIOUS braking systems. Don't skimp, and "bigger is better" applies.
- Don't bring a street car to run in the top TT classes at Nationals and expect to win. It might work at a Region level, and it might have worked at Nationals in the past, but the top guys show up to Nationals in serious race cars.
I hope our mistakes and experiences can help you make the right choices for your TT build, if and when you decide to try your hand at this sport. And I hope reading our posts encourages that goal for most HPDE folks. Why? Because after a while just "running a DE" can get boring. There are not rules, times, or competition to drive you. Just "driving around a track" doesn't teach you much, once you have gone through instruction and are Solo'd. We've seen a lot of HPDE drivers moving towards TT, and I think that is great. But don't assume you have to go W2W racing after you get to TT. Many of us don't want or need the added risks, costs and damage potential that W2W racing has. If you can afford to write off your car after some asshat punts you off track and destroys your car, and that won't upset you too badly, then by all means... go right ahead.
Because that can and does happen in W2W, but not in TT. Hard Choices - Selling BOTH Mustangs?
Unfortunately we still need to sell the 2013 GT, and it has taken so long now that I'm forced to put the 2011 GT up for sale now, too. I know, that sucks - trust me, I don't want to do this. We had planned on selling the 2011 at the end of this year or in the Spring of 2014, to make room for the all new 2015 Mustang we want to buy, prep and race in 2014. That is still happening, but with so much $$$ tied up in both Mustangs, I need to move them sooner rather than later. We had hoped we could keep the red car for a while longer, but expanding the business needs cash right now and both of our S197 projects are going on the auction block. Look for an updated ad for the 2013 GT and a new for sale ad for the 2011 GT soon.
Since nobody made a serious offer on it, our black 2013 GT is getting taken back to stock very soon and will likely be sold on CraigsList to some random schmuck, as the "track ready" set-up didn't get me any legit buyers (just a couple of fast talking con men and a few low ball pranksters). Our red 2011 GT will be posted up as it sits in TT3 trim now, with the aero front end and one set of 18x12" wheels and tires. If that is a bust we'll put it back to nearly stock and sell it that way, too. Don't PM me about parts off of either car just yet, as I will ignore those straight off. When/if these cars have parts pulled off they will go for sale all at once and I'll post an ad here.
What's Next?
There are still a lot of events we might be able to squeeze in with the red 2011 GT. And who knows? Maybe the 2013 GT will sell and some other things will fall into place and we won't have to sell the red GT right away, and I can make all of these events (fingers crossed!). Here's what is on the race schedule for the next few weeks.
- NASA @ TWS on Sept 21-22 - we've completed this event and I will have the write-up shortly.
- Camaro Vs Mustang Battle on Oct 5 @ Texas Motorplex - sign up here. Vorshlag is putting together the autocross portion, so if you have a GM or Ford powered vehicle, please come out and join us. Only $45 to both autocross and drag race, and we will make sure it is going to be fun!
- Goodguys Lone Star Nationals Oct 4-6th @ TMS - We will go to this on Sunday Oct 6th for the Autocross (the last Optima Qualifier for 2013) in the red car on whatever street tires we can scrounge up. Any American built or American powered vehicle is eligible.
- SCCA Autocross @ TMS Road Course Oct 13 - if we still have the red Mustang by then we will run this event in that car. This is their once-a-year "road course" event, with the infield road course at Texas Motor Speedway lined with some cones and packed with a bunch of autocrossers. Walls beware!
- NASA @ ECR Nov 2-3 - Again, assuming we still have a TT3 car to race by then, we will be there trying to finish out the NASA Texas calendar with a 100% track record sweep in TT3 for 2013. We're 7 for 7 so far....
2015 Mustang for 2014 in... TT2?
So to recap a few of our 2014 plans, we plan on buying one of the all-new 2015 Mustang GT's as soon as it is available. From talking to a few key people that have sources at Ford, we think the new S550 chassis is going to be at least 100 pounds lighter. The Coyote 5.0 engine choice is assumed to carry over, and if it is like previous "chassis changes" it will likely have a small power bump, too. We will get the V8, manual transmission, and likely red again - but that's it. I'm not letting Amy pimp this one out with a bunch of options.
So this means it will be even lighter and more powerful than the 2011 GT which we have been playing with in TT3, so we'd have to cork up the engine and/or slap on a bunch of extra weight to stay within the 9.5:1 pounds per hp ratio of TT3 class "with aero". The next class up the Time Trials ladder is TT2, which has an 8:1 ratio. We have extrapolated that this S550 will likely end up there, once we upgrade the suspension, wheels/tires, and aero like we have the 2011 (and that will happen quickly). So TT2 is what we are shooting to run next year, again with a goal of developing new parts for this new Mustang chassis (S550), and hopefully racking up a few more NASA TT track records along the way. We haven't found a better venue to test new products for a car than the competition that NASA Time Trial provides. Unfortunately the NASA Texas the season starts in January, and the new car might not be out until April or May... and we had the TT3 regional championship for 2013 wrapped up by May of this year, so we can't wait that long to get a race car built.
Some of you may already know that Vorshlag is a lot more than just a "Mustang suspension shop". One of the many series of products we have developed over the years is our LS1 V8 swaps into various BMW chassis. We've done E30, E36, E46, Z3 BMW swaps and have kits for most of those, plus a V8 Miata kit that is under development. Our service shop has been cranking out a lot of BMW V8 swaps of late and I have a couple of E36 donor chassis at my house right now, without a clear purpose. So....
Vorshlag TT2/ST2 E36 Build Thread: http://www.vorshlag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8254
Over the winter we will be building a TT2/ST2 BMW E36 LS1. The chassis is a white 1992 325is "E36 Coupe", with a tired motor and interior. This will be stripped down, caged, flared, painted and built into a W2W race car. We might briefly run it in TT2 before we sell it, too - that's my goal if we do end up selling the red 2011 GT before the new 2015 GT arrives.
Above: Our TT2/ST2 build is already underway with the BMW E36 chassis being stripped and readied for a cage
I know, its not a Mustang, but it will allow us to at least get in the class with something while we await the S550's introduction. We will also be building our E46 LS1 Alpha car with a 5.7L motor around TT1 class rules, also over the winter, which we plan to race and develop that kit with as well. The Alpha LS1 Miata that is moving forward (customer car), among other builds in our shop.
Don't worry - we're not done developing S197 parts, not hardly. Lots of S197 Mustang race prep, development and upgrades are still going on at Vorshlag on a daily basis. And we might be able to hang onto the red GT for a while, or if it is sold in "near stock form" I will look for a front damaged '11-14 GT as soon as we can and transfer over the front sheet metal and aero updates from this car, as well as some new shock and suspension options we are working on for this chassis.
So I hope this last series of posts wasn't too long and boring, and I apologize that my "Nationals Event Coverage" spanned so many days and too many words. I've already started my write-up for the TWS event on Sept 21-22nd, where the car again did very well. There was a host of updates done to the car before we took it to Texas World Speedway for this NASA race weekend, including a new "shorter" splitter which balanced out the aero imbalance we had at Miller. Our painter also reworked the hood and it looks top notch, but we lost the vinyl stripes in the process. I'll get that update posted shortly. Until next time...
Thanks for reading,
claudermilk
Senior Member
Great write-up! Congratulations on the 3rd!
While it will be sad to see the S197 cars go, it sounds like there's a lot of interesting stuff in the works.
While it will be sad to see the S197 cars go, it sounds like there's a lot of interesting stuff in the works.
Congratulations – Nationals, un-tested setup, never been at the track before, overly stiff suspension with a straight axle trying to jump raised apexes, driving a heavy piss poor CD boat and finishing 3rd in class against Vetts. A win is a win and all the hard work usually pays off.
I’ve never run at Miller but was finally able to check the track out earlier in the year while taking a deviation from Speed Week at Bonneville. I was exceedingly impressed with the track also. Never had a problem with NASA either un-like SCCA.
Like I said - Congratulations on a 3rd. in class – one more feather for to stick in your hat.
I’ve never run at Miller but was finally able to check the track out earlier in the year while taking a deviation from Speed Week at Bonneville. I was exceedingly impressed with the track also. Never had a problem with NASA either un-like SCCA.
Like I said - Congratulations on a 3rd. in class – one more feather for to stick in your hat.
Mike K
WANNA BE FAST
A Z3 with an LSX would make for a badass car. How does it effect the handling tho? I'm sure not much if at all considering what you guys are.
kona302
forum member
Good read as always, you paint a good picture.
dontlifttoshift
forum member
It seems sort of silly to ask after an epic update from the NASA nationals......
What did you think of the Goodguys show?
What did you think of the Goodguys show?
joeymustang
forum member
It sucks so bad that I wasn't able to see the race at MMR.
Good luck with all the new adventures!
Good luck with all the new adventures!
It was a typical Goodguys show from my understanding. Terry is writing an update on it and the local Mustang VS Camaro challenge that went on the same weekend.
Another double-header for him.
Project Update for Oct 10th, 2013: In this update we will pick up coverage of the TT3 Mustang's preparations and updates after we returned from the 2013 NASA Nationals, at Miller Motorsport Park. That work started about Sept 10th. Then I will cover the NASA event at TWS Sept 21-22 and what we have coming up next.
Pre-TWS Updates and Prep
There was less than 2 weeks between our return from Miller (Sept 10th) to the next NASA event (Sept 21st), and I wasn't about to go back to another track with high speed corners with this aero imbalance. So we made a list of changes to make and got to work on them quickly, between customer service and race prep jobs. And the shop was BUSY for those 2 weeks, and the work came down to the wire.
We started by leaving the Mustang in the trailer from the return trip from Miller and taking it straight to the painter. The guys at Heritage Collision wanted a little more time to finish the detail work, as we rushed them picking up the car before they had a chance to wet sand and buff the hood. They removed the vinyl stripes and decals and got to work. When we picked it up on Thursday the hood looked as perfect as the painted front bumper cover and fenders, but we never got around to re-striping the hood before the NASA event (ran out of time). Never rush your painter with an insane deadline, BTW.
After we got the trailer back to Vorshlag's shop we played musical chairs, moving cars back and forth from my home shop to Vorshlag. Mustang came out and stayed, our white Alpha E46 LS1 BMW went to my house for a few weeks while the "ST2/TT2 Build" E36 LS1 BMW came to the shop for its turn at some race prep work (it is now stripped down to the bare chassis and squeaky clean). Then another car was picked up at Heritage and delivered for one of my employees. Man, we need a bigger shop, and a bigger trailer. Growth problems.
When the car was back from the painter the custom made front bumper beam (which I personally weighed at almost exactly 10 pounds) was removed, the ends were capped and welded, and a few more stitch welds were added to the ducting tabs. Then it was scuffed, cleaned and painted. We spray bombed it the same Race Red as the exterior... just because. I hate leaving anything unpainted in bare steel, even on a "race car". And I knew we might be selling this car soon, so it was a loose end to wrap up.
Next up was something that has been on my "to do list" for a long time. We finally did the rear "bump-stop-bracket-ectimy". See, there is a little angled bracket spot welded to the body which has an integral hook slot for (I guess) transatlantic tie-downs (?) and that also has a flat spot above the axle-mounted bump stop to whack into. Well we removed that axle-mounted bump stop ages ago, and with a 12" wide wheel mounted the T-slot is completely inaccessible. This bracket serves no purpose for us now. It does, however, get in the way of the inside barrel when the 12" wide wheels are put down at full suspension droop. We've been doing this crazy multi-step wheel removal process every time it goes up in the air on our 2-post lift or for wheel removal at the track.
First, we drive the rear wheels up on some wood blocks or ramps, so we can then slide a long floor jack way under the axle pumpkin. Next we can jack up the rear of the car (to put the rear suspension loaded in bump direction), then we can remove the wheels, THEN we can allow the car to be raised on the lift and the rear suspension can go to full droop without letting the inner barrels of the rear wheels hang up on this useless bracket. Whew... it is a lot of words to describe, and it is an even bigger hassle to do each time the car goes on the lift. This is one of those special restrictions that go along with a 12" wide rear wheel (but not 10" or even 11" wheels - they are well clear of this bracket). You can work around the brackets with 12s, like we have for 2 seasons... or you can remove the damned things and no longer worry about the wheel hanging up on the bracket at max droop. This never once is an issue in any sort of driving, on the street or on the track track, but only comes int play at EXTREME droop (aka: only when the car is going on a 2-post body lift or being jacked up at the rear NOT by the axle).
It is even more fun to put the car up in the air for inspections or work track-side, as you have to either put jackstands under the axle tubes (as shown above) or yank the wheels first before it goes up onto jackstands. Nine spot welds later, the brackets fall off. If you use a spot weld cutter properly you only cut through the bracket itself (and not the tub). Then clean and paint the part of the inner fender area behind the bracket (otherwise it will be that green-grey primer) in a matching color you will never be able to tell it was ever there. Olof painted this area but we didn't get a picture of it all matching and pretty this time, oh well.
What idiot suggested making a set of race wheels and having them powder coated in white?! Oh, yea... that was me. Err... Oops. Looked cool in the very first pictures, but they were stained worse in each successive session at Miller. We tried cleaning them between sessions but it was hopeless. I showed my powder coater what they looked like after we got back and he suggested some polish. We tried that, and it worked OK in some small spots, but it just wouldn't cut the brake dust everywhere. We broke out the Mothers Power Ball and all kinds of waxes, cleaner wax, paint polish, aluminum polish... burned an hour... no help. They sort of almost tried to clean up, but these will have to be stripped (glass bead blasted) and recoated in grey or black if we use them in the future. They look bad.
I guess these big, powerful, heavy cars can just get the brakes too dang hot and the harsh XP20 Carbotech pad material we are using is embedding itself into the top layer of the clear coat on these wheels. Wouldn't be a problem on a street car or with most street compound brake pads, but this is the reason why so many race cars use grey, black or silver wheels. Live and learn... race wheels need to be some shade of "brake dust color", just to be safe. The other "flat grey" set of 18x12's we have looks excellent and has seen much more track time, of course.
So the lower grill opening got yet another screen, this time back in the stainless 1/4" spacing mesh we used before. Ryan and I talked about the Kevlar radiator screen and the few hotter than normal sessions we saw at Miller (and once at ECR) with that installed, so he fabricated another mesh screen surround frame & insert for the CS Lower Fascia. It was something to test again, we verified to be better at TWS, but there were other restrictions that happen when you "mow the grass" off track. I'll talk about that in my TWS race write-up, heh. We would have put the old screen back in but a customer with a 2012 Boss really wanted to buy that first screen from us, so it was sold off about a month ago. This now "screens" all incoming air to the radiator and air filter, since the upper grill is blocked off.
We made a new splitter for testing and use TWS (at left) that was approx. 4" shorter than the splitter we used at Miller (at right)
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Pre-TWS Updates and Prep
There was less than 2 weeks between our return from Miller (Sept 10th) to the next NASA event (Sept 21st), and I wasn't about to go back to another track with high speed corners with this aero imbalance. So we made a list of changes to make and got to work on them quickly, between customer service and race prep jobs. And the shop was BUSY for those 2 weeks, and the work came down to the wire.
We started by leaving the Mustang in the trailer from the return trip from Miller and taking it straight to the painter. The guys at Heritage Collision wanted a little more time to finish the detail work, as we rushed them picking up the car before they had a chance to wet sand and buff the hood. They removed the vinyl stripes and decals and got to work. When we picked it up on Thursday the hood looked as perfect as the painted front bumper cover and fenders, but we never got around to re-striping the hood before the NASA event (ran out of time). Never rush your painter with an insane deadline, BTW.
After we got the trailer back to Vorshlag's shop we played musical chairs, moving cars back and forth from my home shop to Vorshlag. Mustang came out and stayed, our white Alpha E46 LS1 BMW went to my house for a few weeks while the "ST2/TT2 Build" E36 LS1 BMW came to the shop for its turn at some race prep work (it is now stripped down to the bare chassis and squeaky clean). Then another car was picked up at Heritage and delivered for one of my employees. Man, we need a bigger shop, and a bigger trailer. Growth problems.
When the car was back from the painter the custom made front bumper beam (which I personally weighed at almost exactly 10 pounds) was removed, the ends were capped and welded, and a few more stitch welds were added to the ducting tabs. Then it was scuffed, cleaned and painted. We spray bombed it the same Race Red as the exterior... just because. I hate leaving anything unpainted in bare steel, even on a "race car". And I knew we might be selling this car soon, so it was a loose end to wrap up.
Next up was something that has been on my "to do list" for a long time. We finally did the rear "bump-stop-bracket-ectimy". See, there is a little angled bracket spot welded to the body which has an integral hook slot for (I guess) transatlantic tie-downs (?) and that also has a flat spot above the axle-mounted bump stop to whack into. Well we removed that axle-mounted bump stop ages ago, and with a 12" wide wheel mounted the T-slot is completely inaccessible. This bracket serves no purpose for us now. It does, however, get in the way of the inside barrel when the 12" wide wheels are put down at full suspension droop. We've been doing this crazy multi-step wheel removal process every time it goes up in the air on our 2-post lift or for wheel removal at the track.
First, we drive the rear wheels up on some wood blocks or ramps, so we can then slide a long floor jack way under the axle pumpkin. Next we can jack up the rear of the car (to put the rear suspension loaded in bump direction), then we can remove the wheels, THEN we can allow the car to be raised on the lift and the rear suspension can go to full droop without letting the inner barrels of the rear wheels hang up on this useless bracket. Whew... it is a lot of words to describe, and it is an even bigger hassle to do each time the car goes on the lift. This is one of those special restrictions that go along with a 12" wide rear wheel (but not 10" or even 11" wheels - they are well clear of this bracket). You can work around the brackets with 12s, like we have for 2 seasons... or you can remove the damned things and no longer worry about the wheel hanging up on the bracket at max droop. This never once is an issue in any sort of driving, on the street or on the track track, but only comes int play at EXTREME droop (aka: only when the car is going on a 2-post body lift or being jacked up at the rear NOT by the axle).
It is even more fun to put the car up in the air for inspections or work track-side, as you have to either put jackstands under the axle tubes (as shown above) or yank the wheels first before it goes up onto jackstands. Nine spot welds later, the brackets fall off. If you use a spot weld cutter properly you only cut through the bracket itself (and not the tub). Then clean and paint the part of the inner fender area behind the bracket (otherwise it will be that green-grey primer) in a matching color you will never be able to tell it was ever there. Olof painted this area but we didn't get a picture of it all matching and pretty this time, oh well.
What idiot suggested making a set of race wheels and having them powder coated in white?! Oh, yea... that was me. Err... Oops. Looked cool in the very first pictures, but they were stained worse in each successive session at Miller. We tried cleaning them between sessions but it was hopeless. I showed my powder coater what they looked like after we got back and he suggested some polish. We tried that, and it worked OK in some small spots, but it just wouldn't cut the brake dust everywhere. We broke out the Mothers Power Ball and all kinds of waxes, cleaner wax, paint polish, aluminum polish... burned an hour... no help. They sort of almost tried to clean up, but these will have to be stripped (glass bead blasted) and recoated in grey or black if we use them in the future. They look bad.
I guess these big, powerful, heavy cars can just get the brakes too dang hot and the harsh XP20 Carbotech pad material we are using is embedding itself into the top layer of the clear coat on these wheels. Wouldn't be a problem on a street car or with most street compound brake pads, but this is the reason why so many race cars use grey, black or silver wheels. Live and learn... race wheels need to be some shade of "brake dust color", just to be safe. The other "flat grey" set of 18x12's we have looks excellent and has seen much more track time, of course.
So the lower grill opening got yet another screen, this time back in the stainless 1/4" spacing mesh we used before. Ryan and I talked about the Kevlar radiator screen and the few hotter than normal sessions we saw at Miller (and once at ECR) with that installed, so he fabricated another mesh screen surround frame & insert for the CS Lower Fascia. It was something to test again, we verified to be better at TWS, but there were other restrictions that happen when you "mow the grass" off track. I'll talk about that in my TWS race write-up, heh. We would have put the old screen back in but a customer with a 2012 Boss really wanted to buy that first screen from us, so it was sold off about a month ago. This now "screens" all incoming air to the radiator and air filter, since the upper grill is blocked off.
We made a new splitter for testing and use TWS (at left) that was approx. 4" shorter than the splitter we used at Miller (at right)
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The big job I asked our fab crew to tackle before TWS was MAKE ME A NEW SPLITTER! Yes, it seems like a lot of work, and it was, but it paid off with a balanced car at speed (more on that below). The 10.25" splitter we used at Miller was a big too aggressive, and too much of a good thing (front downforce) turned into a loose car at speed. I'm really more surprised than anything that this worked... because "all of the textbooks" say that a splitter stalls past 6" in length. Well, this one sure didn't, and the 10.25" length unit just kept on pushing down on the front wheels. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we ducted the hood, added the waterfall deflector, and blocked the upper grill, but the "long" splitter was overpowering the rear downforce. Ideally I would have liked to keep the long version and tried a wider 2D wing element with a longer chord (and possibly a more efficient design with more downforce at a lower AoA) on the rear, but the budget for a new wing just wasn't there, either in time or money.
Luckily we had made 2 identical water jet aluminum splitter elements before we went to Nationals, so Ryan and the crew cut down the "spare" unit by 4" in length and made a 2nd full splitter. Still the same width, and still much larger than the surface area of the '12 Leguna splitter, and much stiffer. Since we might want to test this original 10 incher again later (on this car or another S197), I had them keep the old splitter intact and make a completely new unit from the spare piece. The new 6" unit has a new 1" square tube lower spacer, new strut mounting tabs welded in place (closer to the leading edge), new pin mounts at the back, everything. And we painted this one black, too.
Of course we learned some lessons from building the last splitter and this version one went a lot faster, and mounts faster/easier/better, too. Subtle tweaks here and there. And even though this 6" long unit is as low as the 10" long splitter before, the shorter front length makes it able to load the car into the trailer with the front end attached again. We still have to use a lot of ramps, but it works without scraping. Much. Huge time and hassle savings, though.
Now that we have a fully functional, remote controlled winch we can pull it in or out of the trailer with ease. And as you can see in the picture above, we have re-installed the OEM side view mirrors. Why? Well it can't really be called a street car without these. We pulled these off for the high speed track at Miller, as we were looking for every way to reduce drag. For that one event, where there wasn't any "leaving/returning" to a hot track, it almost made sense. At any other Time Trial or HPDE, where there is more passing.... not so much. If it was a pure race car we would install a multi-element rearview mirror at the top of the windshield (like a Wink mirror) plus a "school bus" convex side mirror on the driver's side, mounted to a roll cage just inside the car.
Another upgrade we did to our TT3 Mustang before Miller but finally got around to getting pictures of was an improved set of front brake backing plates for cooling air ducting. These finally match what we've been making for our customers for months and replaced the first versions we made 2 years ago. The original set for this car was a bit compromised and we have since made about a dozen sets for customers using the 14" front Brembos. Now we're finally making a production batch and will have them for sale soon in our Mustang S197 Brakes section of the Vorshlag website.
We did a lot of suspension, safety and other track prep work to another Boss 302 Leguna Seca last week (shown here) and Brandon got some good pics of the improved ducting plates we made for his car, too (check out the ghosted composite image, above). We also added a Whiteline Watts, rear control arms and brackets, Vorshlag/Bilstein StreetPro suspension, 5300-K springs, and more before he heads off to do the Big Bend Open Road high speed event.
These latest Vorshlag backing plates are somewhat unique in that they have the best aspects from several aftermarket designs we've seen - but they are made from OEM backing plates, so they fit tighter to the rotor face than other brands. Instead of starting with a (less costly) flat laser cut sheet, we use the OEM stamped/formed backing plates, which allow for these closer tolerances. We cut away most of the outer ring section that normally covers the rotor face (blocking the rotor from rain but also holding in heat) but we leave the section near the tie rod end (to protect the ball joint from rotor heat). Then we add the properly sized tubing to fit inside a 3" ducting hose (virtually every kit we've seen uses 3" diameter, which is too large to fit inside 3" hose). The tube is then cut to fit and TIG welded in place so that it pushes air inside the rotor face. This way the ducted air can be sucked through the vanes of the rotor, like an air pump. Nothing revolutionary, but just has the best features from all of the best kits we've seen and installed.
This Leguna also received a Corbeau bolt-in S197 harness bar (we are a Corbeau dealer now - with a demo seat in our lobby) and a set of the 6-point Schroth Profi ii harnesses. Submarine straps were special ordered to work with his Boss Recaro seats, since there is no lower harness hole in the bottom of those OEM seats. You can see these and many more options in the Mustang Seats and Safety section. A lot of people don't know we are dealers for many of the brands we have added in 2013.
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The big job I asked our fab crew to tackle before TWS was MAKE ME A NEW SPLITTER! Yes, it seems like a lot of work, and it was, but it paid off with a balanced car at speed (more on that below). The 10.25" splitter we used at Miller was a big too aggressive, and too much of a good thing (front downforce) turned into a loose car at speed. I'm really more surprised than anything that this worked... because "all of the textbooks" say that a splitter stalls past 6" in length. Well, this one sure didn't, and the 10.25" length unit just kept on pushing down on the front wheels. Maybe it has to do with the fact that we ducted the hood, added the waterfall deflector, and blocked the upper grill, but the "long" splitter was overpowering the rear downforce. Ideally I would have liked to keep the long version and tried a wider 2D wing element with a longer chord (and possibly a more efficient design with more downforce at a lower AoA) on the rear, but the budget for a new wing just wasn't there, either in time or money.
Luckily we had made 2 identical water jet aluminum splitter elements before we went to Nationals, so Ryan and the crew cut down the "spare" unit by 4" in length and made a 2nd full splitter. Still the same width, and still much larger than the surface area of the '12 Leguna splitter, and much stiffer. Since we might want to test this original 10 incher again later (on this car or another S197), I had them keep the old splitter intact and make a completely new unit from the spare piece. The new 6" unit has a new 1" square tube lower spacer, new strut mounting tabs welded in place (closer to the leading edge), new pin mounts at the back, everything. And we painted this one black, too.
Of course we learned some lessons from building the last splitter and this version one went a lot faster, and mounts faster/easier/better, too. Subtle tweaks here and there. And even though this 6" long unit is as low as the 10" long splitter before, the shorter front length makes it able to load the car into the trailer with the front end attached again. We still have to use a lot of ramps, but it works without scraping. Much. Huge time and hassle savings, though.
Now that we have a fully functional, remote controlled winch we can pull it in or out of the trailer with ease. And as you can see in the picture above, we have re-installed the OEM side view mirrors. Why? Well it can't really be called a street car without these. We pulled these off for the high speed track at Miller, as we were looking for every way to reduce drag. For that one event, where there wasn't any "leaving/returning" to a hot track, it almost made sense. At any other Time Trial or HPDE, where there is more passing.... not so much. If it was a pure race car we would install a multi-element rearview mirror at the top of the windshield (like a Wink mirror) plus a "school bus" convex side mirror on the driver's side, mounted to a roll cage just inside the car.
Another upgrade we did to our TT3 Mustang before Miller but finally got around to getting pictures of was an improved set of front brake backing plates for cooling air ducting. These finally match what we've been making for our customers for months and replaced the first versions we made 2 years ago. The original set for this car was a bit compromised and we have since made about a dozen sets for customers using the 14" front Brembos. Now we're finally making a production batch and will have them for sale soon in our Mustang S197 Brakes section of the Vorshlag website.
We did a lot of suspension, safety and other track prep work to another Boss 302 Leguna Seca last week (shown here) and Brandon got some good pics of the improved ducting plates we made for his car, too (check out the ghosted composite image, above). We also added a Whiteline Watts, rear control arms and brackets, Vorshlag/Bilstein StreetPro suspension, 5300-K springs, and more before he heads off to do the Big Bend Open Road high speed event.
These latest Vorshlag backing plates are somewhat unique in that they have the best aspects from several aftermarket designs we've seen - but they are made from OEM backing plates, so they fit tighter to the rotor face than other brands. Instead of starting with a (less costly) flat laser cut sheet, we use the OEM stamped/formed backing plates, which allow for these closer tolerances. We cut away most of the outer ring section that normally covers the rotor face (blocking the rotor from rain but also holding in heat) but we leave the section near the tie rod end (to protect the ball joint from rotor heat). Then we add the properly sized tubing to fit inside a 3" ducting hose (virtually every kit we've seen uses 3" diameter, which is too large to fit inside 3" hose). The tube is then cut to fit and TIG welded in place so that it pushes air inside the rotor face. This way the ducted air can be sucked through the vanes of the rotor, like an air pump. Nothing revolutionary, but just has the best features from all of the best kits we've seen and installed.
This Leguna also received a Corbeau bolt-in S197 harness bar (we are a Corbeau dealer now - with a demo seat in our lobby) and a set of the 6-point Schroth Profi ii harnesses. Submarine straps were special ordered to work with his Boss Recaro seats, since there is no lower harness hole in the bottom of those OEM seats. You can see these and many more options in the Mustang Seats and Safety section. A lot of people don't know we are dealers for many of the brands we have added in 2013.
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continued from above
These red painted marks are there to see when a bolt has loosened up, on future inspections (this is the Whiteline Watts on David' H's Leguna)
The rest of the pre-TWS prep work to our TT3 Mustang was pretty basic - A set of well used R6s (from the Miller Hoosier trash pile) were mounted to the grey wheels, for use in early sessions on Saturday. Some fluids were changed and some Motul RBF600 was pushed through the brake system. We did or normal "NASA Track Inspection) and checked all of the suspension hardware paint marks to make sure nothing had moved. I cleaned the rubber marks off of the body, from the tons of klag hits we took at Miller. The Carbotech brake pads installed before Miller still look great, even after 4 days of abuse at the highest speed track we've seen all year. The guys loaded everything up into the trailer and Amy and I left for the 3 hour tow from Dallas to College Station at Friday around 5 pm. Nice timing - now we hit all sorts of Friday rush hour traffic, yay.
We arrived at the track around 8:30 pm, paid $5 at the gate for the track's "maintenance fund", came in and scoped out a spot to drop the trailer. Showing up on a Friday also incurs a "$35 trailer drop fee". If we would have showed up Saturday or Sunday, no fee for that. Saw some NASA racer buddies and said hi, and then we rolled out in the F-350 to head to our friend, Costas' place. Most of the hotel rooms in College Station were booked, as it was a home football game weekend - Beat the Hella Outta SMU! (and we did). NASA Texas set their race schedule then A&M moved their game weekend, poof, it was the perfect storm for hotel hell. Anyway.... Johnny Football! Sorry... back to the race.
NASA @ TWS, Sept 21-22, 2013
This NASA Texas event was scheduled only 2 weeks after NASA Nationals, and I was dreading this race weekend. Why? Several reasons: first, I was simply tired after the mega-haul to and from Miller and the week we spent there. Once we got back from that 8 day trek I was way behind at work, and had been working crazy late hours playing catch-up. We looked back and realized that Amy and I had only taken a single day off in the past 3 months (we almost always work 7 days a week), so we were both wiped out. Next, the weather forecast looked pretty bleak for the upcoming TWS race weekend, and it ended up raining Friday during the NASA endurance race they held from 6-9pm and looked to continue into Saturday. And I had no rain tires. That 24+ hours of rain also meant the infield grass areas would be a mud bog if anyone went off, and it is TWS... where there are usually big messy offs.
I was also worried about doing damage to the car here more than at any other track on the NASA Texas circuit or Miller. See, this track was built in 1969, in the age before even the RUSH movie was told. And it was made to be a super speedway, first and foremost, with a road course thrown in later for good measure. In 24 years of doing track events I've only ever damaged my cars at this track, and have seen many accidents happen here - the higher speeds, the rougher infield sections, one chicane that isn't needed, and nearby walls were all factors. The harsh impact coming off the banking into Turn 1 is also very jarring and eats RF wheel bearings. So I was more than a a little worried about damaging a car which I might be selling soon, and because of other events leading up to this weekend I was just a little less than cheery when we loaded up and headed down to College Station.
Left: One of the CMC cars that slid off into the muck at TWS on this race weekend. Right: A crashed TT car from April
The facilities at this track have also been somewhat neglected for the past 20 years, which I guess everyone is just used to. From my point of view, there hasn't been much spent on repairs, updates or upgrades to the track since it was built (other than a brief stint in the mid 1990s, when it was purchased by a Japanese investment group who dumped a lot of money into the track hoping to get NASCAR and some other big pro series to run there, unsuccessfully). I worked at this track off and on for a few years back then and have noticed a steady decline, as have many others. I know, a race track's surface should be more important than the bathrooms or parking areas, but it all plays a factor in the overall "Track Weekend Experience".
Vorshlag Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/NASA-TWS-092113/
I do have a lot of good history at TWS other than as a recent NASA Time Trial racer: as an employee during an oil company test that spanned two years driving (of all things) 5.0L Mustangs around the oval for 50,000 miles. As a corner worker with PCA in the 1980s-90s, as a volunteer track worker during a few Pro races they did manage to hold in the 1990s, as an HPDE driver at many events in the 1980s-1990s, and as an officer in the Texas A&M Sports Car Club (TAMSCC) when we rented the track 3 times in the early 1990s. I have driven many hundreds of laps here on virtually all of the various configurations since my first track event there in 1989. I guess it a love-hate relationship, because as good as this track is in some ways (the higher speeds, unique layouts, central location for Texas) the facilities and track have declined for a couple of decades. And you know me, I am not "politically sensitive" and usually say what's on my mind...
What I'm saying is, it doesn't take a keen eye or 24 years of history here to know that this track has seen better days. When you look at the bathrooms, garages, grand stands, the vehicle tunnels under the track, the man tunnels under the track (which have spent years being flooded), and the TWS scoreboard above (picture was shot in April) that looks like it should have a post-apocalyptic Charlton Heston standing under it yelling, "You damned dirty apes!"
This is the lone track that is on the NASA Texas schedule twice in each year, too, and in my humble opinion there are newer, safer tracks we could race at twice a year, all of which have been built in the last 13 years and have nicer facilities. So basically TWS is not my favorite track, because of the added dangers there and the generally declining facilities, but I still enjoy the once a year or so race there.
So that was my list of reservations about another race weekend at TWS, and this weekend in particular (with the Nationals 2 weeks earlier + bad weather). If this race wasn't on the schedule I would have stayed at home and slept, a lot, at least for one day. But I made a promise last year to compete in every NASA Texas race weekend in 2013, and I'm going to stick to it. I have also been trying to bag every TT3 track record this year, and already had the TWS record for the Clockwise 2.9 mile track back in April. Amy was ready to sign up at the event in TT3 if we didn't have 5 in class, to help somebody win Hoosiers, but she was tired enough herself that she wouldn't mind sitting this one out and just helping me that weekend. So likely I would run both days and we'd concentrate on getting me as much track time on this Counter Clockwise 2.9 mile course as possible to put in our best lap time for TT3 track record attempt number 7 for the year.
Last year, in April 2012 when I ran the Mustang at the same 2.9 mile CCW NASA race weekend, we had car problems from the word "go". The high G left turn off the banking and into Corner 1, coming off the high banks at 150+ mph, was causing oil to sling from the axle vent onto the right rear tire. The higher speeds seen here were overworking the plate style limited slip and apparently boiling the diff fluid. The lube was at first just spitting out of the right side axle vent, but later turned into a steady spray of oil. Going into a 150 mph corner with diff fluid spraying onto the loaded outside rear tire is NOT FUN. After fighting massive high speed oversteer for a handful of sessions on the first day, and a failed attempt at a track side fix, we packed up and headed home Saturday afternoon before ruining the weekend for someone else. All I could manage on some fresh 315mm Kumho V710s was a lousy 1:56.7 lap (nearly 4 seconds slower than the AI record), and it was a slip-sliding, scary mess.
Our TWS 2.9 CCW race weekend in April 2012 was a dud, with gear oil pouring on the back tire and slow times
We learned a lot from that event, and have since made 3 revisions of a custom rear diff fluid catch can system on the car, with the current version being ready to turn into a production kit (when we get time to do that). The aero package on the car is also much better now, the suspension more sorted, the tire strategy is better, there's a Torsen T-2R diff in the car now, the Watts link over the previous Panhard rod, and the car is better classed in TT3 vs the TTS class we ran last year. So I was hoping I could stay ahead of the growing TT3 field that seems to be steadily getting faster, and maybe, just maybe, redeem my poor showing on this 2.9 CCW TWS configuration from last year. I had to beat that high 1:56.7 time, for sure, and was hoping to scoot in between the two closest records to TT3 on the books (TT2's record of a 1:50.2 and AI's record of a 1:52.9).
Saturday - Day 1
We got to the track early and it was still spitting rain, so the first few scheduled morning sessions were wet. Amy and I unloaded the car and got everything ready, we went to the TT meeting and handed out the Vorshlag created TT maps (below) but when the first TT Warm Up was scheduled it was still spitting rain. Like at Miller, with no wet tires I wasn't going to risk going out, so I stayed in the paddock. In hindsight, this was a mistake, which I will explain.
At the behest of the TT Director Vorshlag makes a TT Track Map for each NASA Texas race showing the bunch up and "go green" spots
When the next and first "official" timed TT session was scheduled, the track was mostly dried out, so I pulled into grid - at the back, since I didn't have a previous time from the Warm-up to rely on. Again, the Warm Up is mostly run just to get the cars some times to use for gridding purposes for the upcoming "official" TT sessions. So I was stuck in the back for TT session 1 and figured I'd need to make several passes in this session to be able to get a time good enough to move me up on grid for TT session 2. By my rough estimation our Mustang should be about 2nd quickest of the 31 TT cars entered, but I was gridded about 20th. Oh well, how bad could it be?
I was gridded poorly for the 2nd TT session (first official session), due to missing the Warm Up
As you can see in the video below, pretty damned bad, actually. The tires we were using in these early Saturday sessions were some of the 315mm Hoosier R6 scrubs I picked up at Miller from the Hoosier trash pile, and all 4 had a LOT of klag (balled up rubber) glued to the carcasses. So on my warm up "out lap" I was aggressively trying to get the rubber off by slaloming hard on the straights. Most of the time on a TT out lap we're doing about 50 mph, and until we get to the "bunch up" zone (marked on the map) we can swerve and brake and do what we need to get tire heat, brake heat, oil heat, and scrub off klag like on my set of tires. I thought I had done enough... but no.
That's my first hot lap and yes, I had an off at Turn 6. The car was very loose exiting Turn 3 so I should have been ready for anything, but it was calmed down in Turns 4 and 5, so I started turning it up by Corner 6. I did my normal turn in for T6 and the rear washed out VERY QUICKLY. When it did I think the right rear tire caught some of the still damp track surface off line and it REALLY stepped out some more. I like to think I have pretty fast hands, and can usually catch a spin like this fast enough. Nope, not this time. I got into a classic tank slapper and shot straight off the exit of Corner 6 like a bullet. I could have gone of sideways but figured "go off straight" was the wise choice.
The times from Saturday's TT Warm-Up (left, which I skipped) and TT Session 1 (right, where I had an "off" and a subsequent DQ)
The "off" didn't do anything bad to the car, as the stiff aluminum plate splitter just mowed the grass - you could clearly see the path I took in the outfield. I felt like I should go back and do the edging, since I did so much mowing. Luckily I didn't go very far off track and missed any ruts or big bumps while in the dirt. I slowed down, waited for a gap, and got back on track when it was safe. Once back on track (in between a safe gap of cars) I immediately pulled off line (track left) on the straight and waved several more cars behind me by, until I could check the gauges, brakes and tires to see if I could get back up to speed. Once I was up to Turn 7 the car felt and looked fine, so I sped up and started planning for a hot lap on lap 2. I knew that now this TT session 1 was was going to be a DQ (offs or spins = automatic session DQ in Time Trial), but my times should still count towards gridding for TT session 2. And I needed to move up the grid more than I needed to worry about my fastest official TT time at this point. I took 2 more hot laps with lots of traffic (mostly passing cars I let by when I had the "off"), and got down to a 1:55.564 in traffic, then noticed engine temps shooting up so I took a cool down and came in. Turns out the new mesh grill we added to the lower fascia opening was PACKED FULL OF GRASS, so no air was getting to the radiator. But it still took 2 laps to get hot, so I guess the ducted hood was still pulling some air through the rad, somehow. I wiped away the tall grass clippings that I had mowed and got the car ready for TT session 2, after lunch.
These grey wheels have the R6 tires, and were only used in TT session 1 on Saturday
I went up to check the grid sheet after lunch before TT session 2 was to begin and they had me gridded in... 26th. Huh?? There was apparently some mistake in T&S and they hadn't gridded me by my Session 1 time, which they should have. Oiy, what a mess. But hey, weird stuff can happen when you DQ a session, which was my own damned fault. Since we only had 2 sessions left on Saturday and we all knew it was only going to get hotter, and I had some fast TT3 drivers already breathing down my neck, I went ahead and made the call - switch to A6s now. I was hoping to wait until Sunday morning to make the A6 move, but I wasn't going to risk losing on Saturday by leaving the fast tires in the trailer. So I ran the scrub R6 tires for all of one session, and they never felt very good, but I was buried in traffic the whole time so who knows?
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These red painted marks are there to see when a bolt has loosened up, on future inspections (this is the Whiteline Watts on David' H's Leguna)
The rest of the pre-TWS prep work to our TT3 Mustang was pretty basic - A set of well used R6s (from the Miller Hoosier trash pile) were mounted to the grey wheels, for use in early sessions on Saturday. Some fluids were changed and some Motul RBF600 was pushed through the brake system. We did or normal "NASA Track Inspection) and checked all of the suspension hardware paint marks to make sure nothing had moved. I cleaned the rubber marks off of the body, from the tons of klag hits we took at Miller. The Carbotech brake pads installed before Miller still look great, even after 4 days of abuse at the highest speed track we've seen all year. The guys loaded everything up into the trailer and Amy and I left for the 3 hour tow from Dallas to College Station at Friday around 5 pm. Nice timing - now we hit all sorts of Friday rush hour traffic, yay.
We arrived at the track around 8:30 pm, paid $5 at the gate for the track's "maintenance fund", came in and scoped out a spot to drop the trailer. Showing up on a Friday also incurs a "$35 trailer drop fee". If we would have showed up Saturday or Sunday, no fee for that. Saw some NASA racer buddies and said hi, and then we rolled out in the F-350 to head to our friend, Costas' place. Most of the hotel rooms in College Station were booked, as it was a home football game weekend - Beat the Hella Outta SMU! (and we did). NASA Texas set their race schedule then A&M moved their game weekend, poof, it was the perfect storm for hotel hell. Anyway.... Johnny Football! Sorry... back to the race.
NASA @ TWS, Sept 21-22, 2013
This NASA Texas event was scheduled only 2 weeks after NASA Nationals, and I was dreading this race weekend. Why? Several reasons: first, I was simply tired after the mega-haul to and from Miller and the week we spent there. Once we got back from that 8 day trek I was way behind at work, and had been working crazy late hours playing catch-up. We looked back and realized that Amy and I had only taken a single day off in the past 3 months (we almost always work 7 days a week), so we were both wiped out. Next, the weather forecast looked pretty bleak for the upcoming TWS race weekend, and it ended up raining Friday during the NASA endurance race they held from 6-9pm and looked to continue into Saturday. And I had no rain tires. That 24+ hours of rain also meant the infield grass areas would be a mud bog if anyone went off, and it is TWS... where there are usually big messy offs.
I was also worried about doing damage to the car here more than at any other track on the NASA Texas circuit or Miller. See, this track was built in 1969, in the age before even the RUSH movie was told. And it was made to be a super speedway, first and foremost, with a road course thrown in later for good measure. In 24 years of doing track events I've only ever damaged my cars at this track, and have seen many accidents happen here - the higher speeds, the rougher infield sections, one chicane that isn't needed, and nearby walls were all factors. The harsh impact coming off the banking into Turn 1 is also very jarring and eats RF wheel bearings. So I was more than a a little worried about damaging a car which I might be selling soon, and because of other events leading up to this weekend I was just a little less than cheery when we loaded up and headed down to College Station.
Left: One of the CMC cars that slid off into the muck at TWS on this race weekend. Right: A crashed TT car from April
The facilities at this track have also been somewhat neglected for the past 20 years, which I guess everyone is just used to. From my point of view, there hasn't been much spent on repairs, updates or upgrades to the track since it was built (other than a brief stint in the mid 1990s, when it was purchased by a Japanese investment group who dumped a lot of money into the track hoping to get NASCAR and some other big pro series to run there, unsuccessfully). I worked at this track off and on for a few years back then and have noticed a steady decline, as have many others. I know, a race track's surface should be more important than the bathrooms or parking areas, but it all plays a factor in the overall "Track Weekend Experience".
Vorshlag Picture Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-Events/NASA-TWS-092113/
I do have a lot of good history at TWS other than as a recent NASA Time Trial racer: as an employee during an oil company test that spanned two years driving (of all things) 5.0L Mustangs around the oval for 50,000 miles. As a corner worker with PCA in the 1980s-90s, as a volunteer track worker during a few Pro races they did manage to hold in the 1990s, as an HPDE driver at many events in the 1980s-1990s, and as an officer in the Texas A&M Sports Car Club (TAMSCC) when we rented the track 3 times in the early 1990s. I have driven many hundreds of laps here on virtually all of the various configurations since my first track event there in 1989. I guess it a love-hate relationship, because as good as this track is in some ways (the higher speeds, unique layouts, central location for Texas) the facilities and track have declined for a couple of decades. And you know me, I am not "politically sensitive" and usually say what's on my mind...
What I'm saying is, it doesn't take a keen eye or 24 years of history here to know that this track has seen better days. When you look at the bathrooms, garages, grand stands, the vehicle tunnels under the track, the man tunnels under the track (which have spent years being flooded), and the TWS scoreboard above (picture was shot in April) that looks like it should have a post-apocalyptic Charlton Heston standing under it yelling, "You damned dirty apes!"
This is the lone track that is on the NASA Texas schedule twice in each year, too, and in my humble opinion there are newer, safer tracks we could race at twice a year, all of which have been built in the last 13 years and have nicer facilities. So basically TWS is not my favorite track, because of the added dangers there and the generally declining facilities, but I still enjoy the once a year or so race there.
So that was my list of reservations about another race weekend at TWS, and this weekend in particular (with the Nationals 2 weeks earlier + bad weather). If this race wasn't on the schedule I would have stayed at home and slept, a lot, at least for one day. But I made a promise last year to compete in every NASA Texas race weekend in 2013, and I'm going to stick to it. I have also been trying to bag every TT3 track record this year, and already had the TWS record for the Clockwise 2.9 mile track back in April. Amy was ready to sign up at the event in TT3 if we didn't have 5 in class, to help somebody win Hoosiers, but she was tired enough herself that she wouldn't mind sitting this one out and just helping me that weekend. So likely I would run both days and we'd concentrate on getting me as much track time on this Counter Clockwise 2.9 mile course as possible to put in our best lap time for TT3 track record attempt number 7 for the year.
Last year, in April 2012 when I ran the Mustang at the same 2.9 mile CCW NASA race weekend, we had car problems from the word "go". The high G left turn off the banking and into Corner 1, coming off the high banks at 150+ mph, was causing oil to sling from the axle vent onto the right rear tire. The higher speeds seen here were overworking the plate style limited slip and apparently boiling the diff fluid. The lube was at first just spitting out of the right side axle vent, but later turned into a steady spray of oil. Going into a 150 mph corner with diff fluid spraying onto the loaded outside rear tire is NOT FUN. After fighting massive high speed oversteer for a handful of sessions on the first day, and a failed attempt at a track side fix, we packed up and headed home Saturday afternoon before ruining the weekend for someone else. All I could manage on some fresh 315mm Kumho V710s was a lousy 1:56.7 lap (nearly 4 seconds slower than the AI record), and it was a slip-sliding, scary mess.
Our TWS 2.9 CCW race weekend in April 2012 was a dud, with gear oil pouring on the back tire and slow times
We learned a lot from that event, and have since made 3 revisions of a custom rear diff fluid catch can system on the car, with the current version being ready to turn into a production kit (when we get time to do that). The aero package on the car is also much better now, the suspension more sorted, the tire strategy is better, there's a Torsen T-2R diff in the car now, the Watts link over the previous Panhard rod, and the car is better classed in TT3 vs the TTS class we ran last year. So I was hoping I could stay ahead of the growing TT3 field that seems to be steadily getting faster, and maybe, just maybe, redeem my poor showing on this 2.9 CCW TWS configuration from last year. I had to beat that high 1:56.7 time, for sure, and was hoping to scoot in between the two closest records to TT3 on the books (TT2's record of a 1:50.2 and AI's record of a 1:52.9).
Saturday - Day 1
We got to the track early and it was still spitting rain, so the first few scheduled morning sessions were wet. Amy and I unloaded the car and got everything ready, we went to the TT meeting and handed out the Vorshlag created TT maps (below) but when the first TT Warm Up was scheduled it was still spitting rain. Like at Miller, with no wet tires I wasn't going to risk going out, so I stayed in the paddock. In hindsight, this was a mistake, which I will explain.
At the behest of the TT Director Vorshlag makes a TT Track Map for each NASA Texas race showing the bunch up and "go green" spots
When the next and first "official" timed TT session was scheduled, the track was mostly dried out, so I pulled into grid - at the back, since I didn't have a previous time from the Warm-up to rely on. Again, the Warm Up is mostly run just to get the cars some times to use for gridding purposes for the upcoming "official" TT sessions. So I was stuck in the back for TT session 1 and figured I'd need to make several passes in this session to be able to get a time good enough to move me up on grid for TT session 2. By my rough estimation our Mustang should be about 2nd quickest of the 31 TT cars entered, but I was gridded about 20th. Oh well, how bad could it be?
I was gridded poorly for the 2nd TT session (first official session), due to missing the Warm Up
As you can see in the video below, pretty damned bad, actually. The tires we were using in these early Saturday sessions were some of the 315mm Hoosier R6 scrubs I picked up at Miller from the Hoosier trash pile, and all 4 had a LOT of klag (balled up rubber) glued to the carcasses. So on my warm up "out lap" I was aggressively trying to get the rubber off by slaloming hard on the straights. Most of the time on a TT out lap we're doing about 50 mph, and until we get to the "bunch up" zone (marked on the map) we can swerve and brake and do what we need to get tire heat, brake heat, oil heat, and scrub off klag like on my set of tires. I thought I had done enough... but no.
That's my first hot lap and yes, I had an off at Turn 6. The car was very loose exiting Turn 3 so I should have been ready for anything, but it was calmed down in Turns 4 and 5, so I started turning it up by Corner 6. I did my normal turn in for T6 and the rear washed out VERY QUICKLY. When it did I think the right rear tire caught some of the still damp track surface off line and it REALLY stepped out some more. I like to think I have pretty fast hands, and can usually catch a spin like this fast enough. Nope, not this time. I got into a classic tank slapper and shot straight off the exit of Corner 6 like a bullet. I could have gone of sideways but figured "go off straight" was the wise choice.
The times from Saturday's TT Warm-Up (left, which I skipped) and TT Session 1 (right, where I had an "off" and a subsequent DQ)
The "off" didn't do anything bad to the car, as the stiff aluminum plate splitter just mowed the grass - you could clearly see the path I took in the outfield. I felt like I should go back and do the edging, since I did so much mowing. Luckily I didn't go very far off track and missed any ruts or big bumps while in the dirt. I slowed down, waited for a gap, and got back on track when it was safe. Once back on track (in between a safe gap of cars) I immediately pulled off line (track left) on the straight and waved several more cars behind me by, until I could check the gauges, brakes and tires to see if I could get back up to speed. Once I was up to Turn 7 the car felt and looked fine, so I sped up and started planning for a hot lap on lap 2. I knew that now this TT session 1 was was going to be a DQ (offs or spins = automatic session DQ in Time Trial), but my times should still count towards gridding for TT session 2. And I needed to move up the grid more than I needed to worry about my fastest official TT time at this point. I took 2 more hot laps with lots of traffic (mostly passing cars I let by when I had the "off"), and got down to a 1:55.564 in traffic, then noticed engine temps shooting up so I took a cool down and came in. Turns out the new mesh grill we added to the lower fascia opening was PACKED FULL OF GRASS, so no air was getting to the radiator. But it still took 2 laps to get hot, so I guess the ducted hood was still pulling some air through the rad, somehow. I wiped away the tall grass clippings that I had mowed and got the car ready for TT session 2, after lunch.
These grey wheels have the R6 tires, and were only used in TT session 1 on Saturday
I went up to check the grid sheet after lunch before TT session 2 was to begin and they had me gridded in... 26th. Huh?? There was apparently some mistake in T&S and they hadn't gridded me by my Session 1 time, which they should have. Oiy, what a mess. But hey, weird stuff can happen when you DQ a session, which was my own damned fault. Since we only had 2 sessions left on Saturday and we all knew it was only going to get hotter, and I had some fast TT3 drivers already breathing down my neck, I went ahead and made the call - switch to A6s now. I was hoping to wait until Sunday morning to make the A6 move, but I wasn't going to risk losing on Saturday by leaving the fast tires in the trailer. So I ran the scrub R6 tires for all of one session, and they never felt very good, but I was buried in traffic the whole time so who knows?
continued below
continued from above
I switched wheels to run the the A6 tires for Saturday's TT Session 2, with help from Brian Matteucci (striped shirt)
By now my old college racing buddy and former roommate Brian Matteucci had arrived and he helped me and Amy swap the tires over - and because of the swarm of people coming by, we needed the help. With a freakishy good paddock spot and the "hard to miss" changes to the car, we had 100+ people come by on Saturday and ask questions about the hood, splitter and flares, as this was the first NASA Texas event where anyone had seen the front aero mods. But we don't mind talking to folks - that's why we're here. Matteucci was here to watch a NASA event, as he is building a top secret TT car that should debut next month at the NASA @ ECR event (Nov 2-3).
Getting gridded up for TT session 2 took some "wheelin and dealin"
My lap time from the DQ'd session should have put me in 5th place on the grid, but the official sheet showed me way back at the back again. After telling the nice grid workers my story about the mistake on the grid sheets, and talking to some competitors gridded ahead of my, I begged my way into 10th place on the grid (most of the folks didn't want "the big red Mustang that just drove off track" right behind them, heh) and I was ready for Session 2.
So in that session I started in 10th and got some passes done in the first few laps and finally got in a quick, mostly traffic free run on hot lap 4. The best time I ran on this 4th hot lap was a 1:54.369, which was the 3rd quickest time in the session. Vorshlag customer Allen Page was on fire in this session and cut a 1:53.893 in his TTB car, the quickest car out there this time! Mike Weather's was 2nd quickest in his TT1 car, still clearly in the TT1 lead but he wasn't even running his good tires yet (didn't until Sunday).
Allan Page (left) was the quickest in TT session 2 in his TTB E46 M3, while Mike Weathers was fastest of the day, running a 1:50.480 in TT Session 1
My lap time was still way slower than I wanted to see, but was good enough to move me up to P3 on the grid for the final TT session , TT Session 3. Mike was clearly in the TT1 lead and didn't want to bother with the added heat of the last session of the day, as was Allan in TTB, so I ended up leading the pack out for the last TT session. More importantly, I finally had the first bit of clear track all day, and what I thought was a full battery on the vidcam and lap timer. So here we go, in the video below...
As you can see if you watch that video (up to 1080P rez available) there were a few video and timing equipment faults. First, the data logger got all out of sync and we lost data about halfway down the straight away for my first hot lap. Brandon has been trying to coax the TrackMate software to work with the native output of my Sony HD video camera. Long story, but the data was borked so we cannot see speeds or the g-meter data on my hot lap. He has finally figured out how to sync this stuff, when the data isn't corrupt, so we'll keep trying. Next, the battery on the vidcam died about 3/4 of the way through my first hot lap.
Of course I didn't realize this until Sunday, so I don't have any Sunday video, either. And that's when I found 2 more seconds. Anyway, the final TT session Saturday went well enough, and I dropped down to a 1:52.616 on my 2nd hot lap (I made some driving mistakes on my first lap - the car was very twitchy and loose, and it took a lap to get the tires up to temp and settled down). And I'm glad I went out, because another TT3 driver slapped on some sticker Hoosiers in this session and dropped to a 1:53.330, for 2nd place. We had TEN cars in the TT3 class by day's end, out of 31 cars, so it was the biggest TT class of the day.
NASA time sheets for TT Session 2 (left), TT session 3 (middle) and End of Day Saturday Results (right)
I still didn't think the time was where I should have been running in this car, as the American Iron lap record was a 1:52.9 and I was barely beating that. The track was green from the recent rains, and the fastest AI car that day was in the 1:53s (Mike P's 4th gen Camaro), but that was still too close. I was hoping the first session on Sunday would seal the deal and we could push the TT3 record into the 1:49s or 1:50 flat range.
The best part of the weekend was still to come - the Saturday night NASA party! This time, instead of cooking the food themselves, the NASA region folks had the TWS food service crew cook the food, who did a stupendous job. Fajitas and drinks and beer for everyone there, entrants, friends, volunteers and everyone. That's how NASA does it - everyone is invited. We heard a short speech from Dave Baligant, who announced all of the NASA Texas folks who went to the NASA National Championships at Miller. He noted that I was the only TT racer from our region who went, trying to push more of our group to go next year. We ate, we drank, and had a good time conversing with other racers, friends and other shops from our area (like the guys from Texas Track Works and Evolution Dynamics). I also had great burger at lunch both days and breakfast tacos Sunday from the same TWS cafe, too. For such an old looking building they worked out of, that crew cooked up some damned good food.
After the party we went back to Costas' place and I talked about my laps with Paul. He has a lot more time on this track than I do lately, running his tube framed "GT-1-esque" Camaro in the 1:43-1:45 range. He had some pointers and I thought about these as I drifted off to sleep with the beginnings of a headache.
Sunday - Day 2
I didn't sleep well (woke up with that headache) and Amy and I woke up early and watched the start and first few laps of the F1 race with Costas, then got ready to go to the track at around 7:15... when I started feeling even more sick. We got out in his front yard, were getting into the F-350 to head back to TWS, and I felt very very nauseous ... double over for a ten count and almost puked. Head was POUNDING and I felt terrible. Brushed it off and we got fuel in the truck, ice for the coolers and headed out for an 8:30 TT session 1. This massive headache and stomach thing was with me all day and I was far from 100%, but I tried to push it out of my head and wanted to get in my first 2 early TT sessions, when I knew the conditions would be most favorable.
Mike was seen installing some sticker Hoosier A6 tires for sunday's TT Session 1
continued below
I switched wheels to run the the A6 tires for Saturday's TT Session 2, with help from Brian Matteucci (striped shirt)
By now my old college racing buddy and former roommate Brian Matteucci had arrived and he helped me and Amy swap the tires over - and because of the swarm of people coming by, we needed the help. With a freakishy good paddock spot and the "hard to miss" changes to the car, we had 100+ people come by on Saturday and ask questions about the hood, splitter and flares, as this was the first NASA Texas event where anyone had seen the front aero mods. But we don't mind talking to folks - that's why we're here.
Matteucci was here to watch a NASA event, as he is building a top secret TT car that should debut next month at the NASA @ ECR event (Nov 2-3). 
Getting gridded up for TT session 2 took some "wheelin and dealin"
My lap time from the DQ'd session should have put me in 5th place on the grid, but the official sheet showed me way back at the back again. After telling the nice grid workers my story about the mistake on the grid sheets, and talking to some competitors gridded ahead of my, I begged my way into 10th place on the grid (most of the folks didn't want "the big red Mustang that just drove off track" right behind them, heh) and I was ready for Session 2.
So in that session I started in 10th and got some passes done in the first few laps and finally got in a quick, mostly traffic free run on hot lap 4. The best time I ran on this 4th hot lap was a 1:54.369, which was the 3rd quickest time in the session. Vorshlag customer Allen Page was on fire in this session and cut a 1:53.893 in his TTB car, the quickest car out there this time! Mike Weather's was 2nd quickest in his TT1 car, still clearly in the TT1 lead but he wasn't even running his good tires yet (didn't until Sunday).
Allan Page (left) was the quickest in TT session 2 in his TTB E46 M3, while Mike Weathers was fastest of the day, running a 1:50.480 in TT Session 1
My lap time was still way slower than I wanted to see, but was good enough to move me up to P3 on the grid for the final TT session , TT Session 3. Mike was clearly in the TT1 lead and didn't want to bother with the added heat of the last session of the day, as was Allan in TTB, so I ended up leading the pack out for the last TT session. More importantly, I finally had the first bit of clear track all day, and what I thought was a full battery on the vidcam and lap timer. So here we go, in the video below...
As you can see if you watch that video (up to 1080P rez available) there were a few video and timing equipment faults. First, the data logger got all out of sync and we lost data about halfway down the straight away for my first hot lap. Brandon has been trying to coax the TrackMate software to work with the native output of my Sony HD video camera. Long story, but the data was borked so we cannot see speeds or the g-meter data on my hot lap. He has finally figured out how to sync this stuff, when the data isn't corrupt, so we'll keep trying. Next, the battery on the vidcam died about 3/4 of the way through my first hot lap.
Of course I didn't realize this until Sunday, so I don't have any Sunday video, either. And that's when I found 2 more seconds. Anyway, the final TT session Saturday went well enough, and I dropped down to a 1:52.616 on my 2nd hot lap (I made some driving mistakes on my first lap - the car was very twitchy and loose, and it took a lap to get the tires up to temp and settled down). And I'm glad I went out, because another TT3 driver slapped on some sticker Hoosiers in this session and dropped to a 1:53.330, for 2nd place. We had TEN cars in the TT3 class by day's end, out of 31 cars, so it was the biggest TT class of the day.
NASA time sheets for TT Session 2 (left), TT session 3 (middle) and End of Day Saturday Results (right)
I still didn't think the time was where I should have been running in this car, as the American Iron lap record was a 1:52.9 and I was barely beating that. The track was green from the recent rains, and the fastest AI car that day was in the 1:53s (Mike P's 4th gen Camaro), but that was still too close. I was hoping the first session on Sunday would seal the deal and we could push the TT3 record into the 1:49s or 1:50 flat range.
The best part of the weekend was still to come - the Saturday night NASA party! This time, instead of cooking the food themselves, the NASA region folks had the TWS food service crew cook the food, who did a stupendous job. Fajitas and drinks and beer for everyone there, entrants, friends, volunteers and everyone. That's how NASA does it - everyone is invited. We heard a short speech from Dave Baligant, who announced all of the NASA Texas folks who went to the NASA National Championships at Miller. He noted that I was the only TT racer from our region who went, trying to push more of our group to go next year. We ate, we drank, and had a good time conversing with other racers, friends and other shops from our area (like the guys from Texas Track Works and Evolution Dynamics). I also had great burger at lunch both days and breakfast tacos Sunday from the same TWS cafe, too. For such an old looking building they worked out of, that crew cooked up some damned good food.
After the party we went back to Costas' place and I talked about my laps with Paul. He has a lot more time on this track than I do lately, running his tube framed "GT-1-esque" Camaro in the 1:43-1:45 range. He had some pointers and I thought about these as I drifted off to sleep with the beginnings of a headache.
Sunday - Day 2
I didn't sleep well (woke up with that headache) and Amy and I woke up early and watched the start and first few laps of the F1 race with Costas, then got ready to go to the track at around 7:15... when I started feeling even more sick. We got out in his front yard, were getting into the F-350 to head back to TWS, and I felt very very nauseous ... double over for a ten count and almost puked. Head was POUNDING and I felt terrible. Brushed it off and we got fuel in the truck, ice for the coolers and headed out for an 8:30 TT session 1. This massive headache and stomach thing was with me all day and I was far from 100%, but I tried to push it out of my head and wanted to get in my first 2 early TT sessions, when I knew the conditions would be most favorable.
Mike was seen installing some sticker Hoosier A6 tires for sunday's TT Session 1
continued below
continued from above
Luckily my first session went well and I didn't puke in the car! That was my biggest concern, because my stomach was telling me that whatever I ate the night before was going to come up. I went out on the same A6s from the end of the day before (which was the same set we used at Miller), and the temps were ideal in that first session. I went out right behind Mike Weathers in his TT1 Corvette, who was gridded P1, and I was P2 for the rest of the weekend. On paper my times were within 2 seconds of Mike, but I knew he had a lot left in the tank. And sure enough, Mike had a sticker set of A6 Hoosiers mounted Sunday morning and he said his first lap was going to be his best - and I told him I was on the same tire strategy and would follow right behind him. So we both went out with minimal tire scrubbing and looking to put in our best shot on hot lap 1, then cool down and come right in on Lap 2. That's the A6 tire game in TT and we both knew it well.
Well something happened to change that; one of the instructors was delayed getting from his student's car to grid in his new F30 3 series BMW (gorgeous car, BTW!), got released from grid late, made a wrong turn in the pits, and long story short... he was almost 3/4 of a lap behind the field we we went green. Just bad luck for everyone, and not his fault - instructing is a lot fo work and makes it extra tough if you are competing or trying to get some track time in your own car. Mike's C6 Z06 was setting a BLISTERING pace (he said his predictive timer showed a 1:44 lap!) and I pushed as hard as I dared, trying to simply keep him in sight. My timer was showing a 1:49 predictive, far better than I've ever run in any car at TWS over the years, in any car I've owned, even the E36 LS1 Alpha car. These two lap times were not to be, however, as Mike caught the F30 BMW in Turn 10 and I caught him in Turn 12, and we both had to scrub our first laps getting around him.
It wasn't a huge deal, and he did his best to get out of our way, but we just got unlucky and caught him in bad places to try to pass and had to back off. So Mike took a 2nd hot lap and so did I, with him getting down to the 1:45.680 and me getting a 1:50.744. I knew there was more in it so I took a 2nd hot lap (lap 3) and managed a nearly identical 1:50.75X, pushing even harder. The car was already sloppy and only got worse after that, as the tires had been overheating after the first lap. So I took a cool down and came in. Turns out I could have put it in the trailer then for the day, but I had no idea how anyone else was running, yet.
Sunday's TT Session 1 (left) and TT Session 2 (middle) were the only 2 I ran that day. Sunday End of Day times at right
We had beautiful, sunny weather on Sunday, which meant that Session 1 might have been the golden attempt. Ambient temps and track temps were up in TT Session 2, so Mike blew off going out in this one (he knew he had already seen the fastest session of the day). This meant I was gridded in P1, so I set the pace on the out lap at about 50 mph, and we had some stragglers but they finally caught up. I got in a good first lap and dropped a whopping tenth, down to a 1:50.675, for the new TT3 lap record (TT2 is a 1:50.2, but I couldn't get there in the growing heat). The car felt better than that, but the ambient temps were rising and times were slowing down to match. It is common for many TT racers on gumball tires set their fastest runs on the first Sunday TT sessions, once they have learned the track, as this can be the best track and tire temperatures. I tried another hot lap after my first but it slowed down a lot, then I started catching the back of the field. I took a cool down and came in.
Today my times were closer to where they needed to be. This 1:50.675 ended up being the winning time in class and the new TT3 track record, but I wouldn't know that until the end of the day. I felt like total crap so we loaded the car up before the 3rd TT session (after lunch) and headed back to Dallas by 2 pm. With the splitting migraine and other symptoms, I felt like I was coming down with something and didn't want to be out on track with my body nowhere near 100%. Leaving early put us home by 5:30 pm and we took a relaxing evening to eat, rest and catch up on TV shows and the like. We did, however, watch the MyLaps Race Monitor app during the TT session 3 and 4 on our drive back to Dallas, and as the temperatures rose the lap times did indeed slow down, and my time was safe. Whew!
New TT3 racer Jeremy Johnson (E46 M3 shown above) was fast and he is one to watch in 2014 in this class in Texas, as is John Robert's LS1 Miata (he's supposed to have his newest chassis built and ready for ECR). This was Jeremy's first weekend in TT, after his check ride on Saturday, and I'm sure he will get faster once he learns the "TT tricks". He still can add aero, A6s and more. Very clean car, well done cage, Motion Control double adjustable dampers with remotes, etc.
Aero Improvements Worked
The ease at which the car cornered at the handful of higher speed corners (T1, T2, T7 and T12) at TWS means that the aero changes we made after Miller worked. Lopping four inches off the front of the splitter brought the front to rear downforce balance to a perfect feel, once I got the car onto decent tires. The brakes, tires, motor, trans, and everything else worked perfectly. This was the car's 7th TT3 track record for the year, but I could have driven better both days and felt like I left that 1:49 lap out there.
Big thanks to Amy for coming and supporting me and the car on this race weekend, and to Matteucci for helping lend a hand on Saturday. I didn't ask Ryan or Brandon or any of our crew to come down to TWS, due to the lack of hotel rooms and recent haul to SLC for the big race. So the pictures are just ones Amy shot with our Nikon, and not Brandon's normal high end photo work. We also lacked the tuning help of Ryan, but I fumbled along well enough for the win.
Once I woke up that next Monday morning I was showing all of the symptoms of the flu-like thing that had been going around, and I was sick for a solid week, but luckily not enough to miss any work. This bug went around our shop and I was one of the last ones to finally get it. Everyone that went to Miller from Vorshlag got sick, so that explains the weird headache and nausea on Sunday. I did manage to take a day off the following Sunday, not going to the shop once, and took care of some long overdue home improvement projects and a bit of a lazy afternoon. With the racing season starting to wind down I can hopefully recharge my batteries for next season, which starts in January. Well, after about 3 more autocrosses, one more NASA Texas race weekend, and a couple of HPDE events planned in November and December.
For some of you that know me and/or are from NASA Texas specifically, there is a big topic stemming from events after this race weekend that is obviously missing from this write-up, which I have written but decided to keep out of this build thread. It involves the track management at TWS, but I'm saving that for another time and another place - this thread doesn't need any more drama. I'm hoping some people come to their senses and these issues can be resolved privately.
What's Next?
We're still trying to sell the 2013 GT, and have removed the AST 4200RR coilover remote reservoir shocks and the 18x10" wheels. And before you ask, THE SHOCKS ARE ALREADY SOLD. Removing these two "big ticket" parts makes it a more affordable Mustang, but it still has the upgraded 14" front Brembo brakes, the custom front brake ducting, the Whiteline adjustable Panhard Bar, and Whiteline rear relocation brackets. We've re-installed the OEM shocks and top mounts but added Ford Racing 5300-K lowering springs, and installed the OEM 19x9" wheels and Pirelli tires from our red 2011 GT, since the stock 18x8" wheels won't fit over the bigger front brakes. The price dropped from $35K to $29.5K, and the ad is linked below.
FFS, somebody please buy this car. If we can move this one I might be able to keep the red 2011 GT, which we would continue to use to develop more S197 parts. There's still a long list of parts we'd like to tackle, which having a car on hand would help with. I really need your help here, so please spread the word. Beautiful car, low miles, some covert track upgrades, great price. Thanks.
Other events that are upcoming (some already completed) include:
Stay tuned and we'll have more racing action coverage of the TT3 Mustang soon, more S197 parts development, and other interesting bits chronicled in this thread.
Thanks for reading,
Luckily my first session went well and I didn't puke in the car! That was my biggest concern, because my stomach was telling me that whatever I ate the night before was going to come up. I went out on the same A6s from the end of the day before (which was the same set we used at Miller), and the temps were ideal in that first session. I went out right behind Mike Weathers in his TT1 Corvette, who was gridded P1, and I was P2 for the rest of the weekend. On paper my times were within 2 seconds of Mike, but I knew he had a lot left in the tank. And sure enough, Mike had a sticker set of A6 Hoosiers mounted Sunday morning and he said his first lap was going to be his best - and I told him I was on the same tire strategy and would follow right behind him. So we both went out with minimal tire scrubbing and looking to put in our best shot on hot lap 1, then cool down and come right in on Lap 2. That's the A6 tire game in TT and we both knew it well.
Well something happened to change that; one of the instructors was delayed getting from his student's car to grid in his new F30 3 series BMW (gorgeous car, BTW!), got released from grid late, made a wrong turn in the pits, and long story short... he was almost 3/4 of a lap behind the field we we went green. Just bad luck for everyone, and not his fault - instructing is a lot fo work and makes it extra tough if you are competing or trying to get some track time in your own car. Mike's C6 Z06 was setting a BLISTERING pace (he said his predictive timer showed a 1:44 lap!) and I pushed as hard as I dared, trying to simply keep him in sight. My timer was showing a 1:49 predictive, far better than I've ever run in any car at TWS over the years, in any car I've owned, even the E36 LS1 Alpha car. These two lap times were not to be, however, as Mike caught the F30 BMW in Turn 10 and I caught him in Turn 12, and we both had to scrub our first laps getting around him.
It wasn't a huge deal, and he did his best to get out of our way, but we just got unlucky and caught him in bad places to try to pass and had to back off. So Mike took a 2nd hot lap and so did I, with him getting down to the 1:45.680 and me getting a 1:50.744. I knew there was more in it so I took a 2nd hot lap (lap 3) and managed a nearly identical 1:50.75X, pushing even harder. The car was already sloppy and only got worse after that, as the tires had been overheating after the first lap. So I took a cool down and came in. Turns out I could have put it in the trailer then for the day, but I had no idea how anyone else was running, yet.
Sunday's TT Session 1 (left) and TT Session 2 (middle) were the only 2 I ran that day. Sunday End of Day times at right
We had beautiful, sunny weather on Sunday, which meant that Session 1 might have been the golden attempt. Ambient temps and track temps were up in TT Session 2, so Mike blew off going out in this one (he knew he had already seen the fastest session of the day). This meant I was gridded in P1, so I set the pace on the out lap at about 50 mph, and we had some stragglers but they finally caught up. I got in a good first lap and dropped a whopping tenth, down to a 1:50.675, for the new TT3 lap record (TT2 is a 1:50.2, but I couldn't get there in the growing heat). The car felt better than that, but the ambient temps were rising and times were slowing down to match. It is common for many TT racers on gumball tires set their fastest runs on the first Sunday TT sessions, once they have learned the track, as this can be the best track and tire temperatures. I tried another hot lap after my first but it slowed down a lot, then I started catching the back of the field. I took a cool down and came in.
Today my times were closer to where they needed to be. This 1:50.675 ended up being the winning time in class and the new TT3 track record, but I wouldn't know that until the end of the day. I felt like total crap so we loaded the car up before the 3rd TT session (after lunch) and headed back to Dallas by 2 pm. With the splitting migraine and other symptoms, I felt like I was coming down with something and didn't want to be out on track with my body nowhere near 100%. Leaving early put us home by 5:30 pm and we took a relaxing evening to eat, rest and catch up on TV shows and the like. We did, however, watch the MyLaps Race Monitor app during the TT session 3 and 4 on our drive back to Dallas, and as the temperatures rose the lap times did indeed slow down, and my time was safe. Whew!
New TT3 racer Jeremy Johnson (E46 M3 shown above) was fast and he is one to watch in 2014 in this class in Texas, as is John Robert's LS1 Miata (he's supposed to have his newest chassis built and ready for ECR). This was Jeremy's first weekend in TT, after his check ride on Saturday, and I'm sure he will get faster once he learns the "TT tricks". He still can add aero, A6s and more. Very clean car, well done cage, Motion Control double adjustable dampers with remotes, etc.
Aero Improvements Worked
The ease at which the car cornered at the handful of higher speed corners (T1, T2, T7 and T12) at TWS means that the aero changes we made after Miller worked. Lopping four inches off the front of the splitter brought the front to rear downforce balance to a perfect feel, once I got the car onto decent tires. The brakes, tires, motor, trans, and everything else worked perfectly. This was the car's 7th TT3 track record for the year, but I could have driven better both days and felt like I left that 1:49 lap out there.
Big thanks to Amy for coming and supporting me and the car on this race weekend, and to Matteucci for helping lend a hand on Saturday. I didn't ask Ryan or Brandon or any of our crew to come down to TWS, due to the lack of hotel rooms and recent haul to SLC for the big race. So the pictures are just ones Amy shot with our Nikon, and not Brandon's normal high end photo work. We also lacked the tuning help of Ryan, but I fumbled along well enough for the win.
Once I woke up that next Monday morning I was showing all of the symptoms of the flu-like thing that had been going around, and I was sick for a solid week, but luckily not enough to miss any work. This bug went around our shop and I was one of the last ones to finally get it. Everyone that went to Miller from Vorshlag got sick, so that explains the weird headache and nausea on Sunday. I did manage to take a day off the following Sunday, not going to the shop once, and took care of some long overdue home improvement projects and a bit of a lazy afternoon. With the racing season starting to wind down I can hopefully recharge my batteries for next season, which starts in January. Well, after about 3 more autocrosses, one more NASA Texas race weekend, and a couple of HPDE events planned in November and December.
For some of you that know me and/or are from NASA Texas specifically, there is a big topic stemming from events after this race weekend that is obviously missing from this write-up, which I have written but decided to keep out of this build thread. It involves the track management at TWS, but I'm saving that for another time and another place - this thread doesn't need any more drama. I'm hoping some people come to their senses and these issues can be resolved privately.
What's Next?
We're still trying to sell the 2013 GT, and have removed the AST 4200RR coilover remote reservoir shocks and the 18x10" wheels. And before you ask, THE SHOCKS ARE ALREADY SOLD. Removing these two "big ticket" parts makes it a more affordable Mustang, but it still has the upgraded 14" front Brembo brakes, the custom front brake ducting, the Whiteline adjustable Panhard Bar, and Whiteline rear relocation brackets. We've re-installed the OEM shocks and top mounts but added Ford Racing 5300-K lowering springs, and installed the OEM 19x9" wheels and Pirelli tires from our red 2011 GT, since the stock 18x8" wheels won't fit over the bigger front brakes. The price dropped from $35K to $29.5K, and the ad is linked below.
- Updated CraigsList ad: http://dallas.craigslist.org/ndf/cto/4114930040.html
FFS, somebody please buy this car. If we can move this one I might be able to keep the red 2011 GT, which we would continue to use to develop more S197 parts. There's still a long list of parts we'd like to tackle, which having a car on hand would help with. I really need your help here, so please spread the word. Beautiful car, low miles, some covert track upgrades, great price. Thanks.
Other events that are upcoming (some already completed) include:
- Camaro vs Mustang Battle Autocross - this was the event we put on October 5th, and my write-up is coming soon.
- Goodguys All American Sunday Autocross - October 6th at TMS, also working on this write-up
- SCCA @ TMS Road Course Autocross - Oct 13th. Amy and I are signed up and will be racing the TT3 Mustang in this annual "road course" autocross event. Lots of fun, and we'll be giving rides on every run
- NASA @ ECR - Nov 2-3. I am already signed up and Amy will drive as well. This is our home track and I am hoping to clinch our final track record of the year here, but it won't be easy! TT3 clas sis hugely popular and it is anyone's guess who will win that class on this weekend. We have a ton of new TT and new to HPDE drivers we've prodded into entering this event, so it should be a blast.
Stay tuned and we'll have more racing action coverage of the TT3 Mustang soon, more S197 parts development, and other interesting bits chronicled in this thread.
Thanks for reading,
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I love the videos, makes me want to go road track racing. Which finally I'm going to get to do on Nov. 3rd. I'm doing the HPDE that day and I was wondering if you were going to be doing any instructing that day. If so is there a way I can "request" you as my instructor and if not do you recommend I request any particular instructor if I can? Also I ordered some Carbotech XP12/XP8 pads from you guys yesterday for my 2006, based on my memory of what you had recommended in the past. Did I order that right?
Thanks,
James
Thanks,
James
Roadracer350
forum member
You think crashing a car their sucks you should crash a superbike their at speed! Now thats a hell of a ride!!
JAJ
forum member
The build thread for the # 187 BMW is here:
http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=800559
Rehagen does this in a couple of days, Vorschlag takes a bit longer, and this guy and his wife build one in 10 months. Fast car though.
http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=800559
Rehagen does this in a couple of days, Vorschlag takes a bit longer, and this guy and his wife build one in 10 months. Fast car though.
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