I’ve been prepping like a madman. Why?
I’ve been accepted to the Ultimate Track Car Challenge @ Virginia International Raceway May 18/19!
In Emilio’s words:
UTCC is a no holds barred, no rules time attack competition held at VIR every year. It’s put together by Grassroots Motorsports. Coincides with NASA’s Hyperfest which is a motorsports festival with live music shows late into the night, vendor rows, drifting, w2w racing and lots of other stuff going on.
It’s probably the single largest amateur motorsports event in North America. Tens of thousands of people will filter through the gates during the 4 day event.
I’m joining the guys at 949Racing / Supermiata to make the journey to Virginia and see if we can raise some eyebrows of those who never thought a Miata could play in the deep end. They’re taking Bullet, the car they ran at SLB 2017 but now with the knob turned wayyy up on the boost and making north of 400whp. That will be a monster. Mine will be the car with less power but more refined aero and probably more total downforce. VIR has some suuuper long straights so I expect more power will make the faster car there, but in the Miatas vs the World conquest, I think between the two cars we’ll be able to accomplish a lot.
The plan after GTA Round 1 was to make a few big aero updates to the car with the relatively large gap I had before Round 3 in June. I was just starting to dive into that when I got word about UTCC. Suddenly the timeframe was cut in half, the car needs to be ready to head across the country by May 13! I axed a few things off the list that I knew I couldn’t get to, and spent every day since then in the shop after work to bring as much of the updates to fruition in time. The largest change is an entirely new front end aero setup, but I also had to make several changes to be NASA compliant (like moving the lithium battery from the passenger area to the trunk), and move to a new even larger rear wing. I’ll have pics at some point.
Format for UTCC this year is interesting. Friday is as it has always been, essentially a time attack format where fastest lap time of the day from multiple sessions counts. However, new for 2018, the fastest 20 cars plus 3 staff picks go to a Knockout round on Saturday:
By Grassroots Motorsports:
The field of 23 cars will be released from the false grid onto a green track. After two laps, the three cars with the slowest best lap times will be black flagged and will immediately return to the pits. With each successive lap the three slowest cars for THAT lap will be removed. That means each lap is unique and only serves to eliminate the three slowest cars on that lap. This process continues with each lap until the field has been trimmed to the fastest five. The top five will receive a white flag at the start/finish line indicating they are on their final lap. The fastest time for that final lap is the winner.
After the Knockout Finals are complete, we’ll pull the top five cars over to the podium by the tech shed in the paddock and announce first, second and third place and hand out awards.
The key to this competition is consistency, since the times reset with every round. And per the NASA time trials rules, if a driver places more than two wheels off course during an incident, or has both front or both rear wheels off course at the same time, they are automatically eliminated.
This is going to be fun!