This has been a season to remember.
In March we set the Modified Production Car Lap Record for Chuckwalla Valley Raceway CW.
At GTA Round 1 we took 1st place and top time across all drivetrains for Limited.
At VIR the unfortunate contact with the wall set development back about 150 hours, but it also offered me an amazing opportunity to learn from the Supermiata crew as we thrashed to get the car back into running shape and made it out to set the 2nd fastest Miata lap of that track ever.
GTA Round 2 fell just one week after the car arrived back in CA wounded from VIR. It took some long nights but we didn’t just make it to round 2, we took another 1st place and top time across all drivetrains for Limited.
At GTA Round 3 we cinched the season championship with another identical result.
We’ve come incredibly far, and we’ve reached this point by setting big goals and working towards them.
I want to continue to seek big challenges to drive us to improve. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the second half of this year; where do we go to push ourselves to the next level?
With excellent timing, at the driver’s summit at SEMA the GTA series announced very exciting changes for the future. Inspired by and working with World Time Attack Challenge in Australia, GTA is evolving to focus on one new “superbowl” US event. This new Superlap Battle USA is to be held at Circuit of the Americas with a rule book tweaked to facilitate cross-over with WTAC cars from Australia, Japan, and more. Besides that event, there will be just three Pro series events on the calendar (two East Coast events and Buttonwillow remains as the season finals in November). At the driver’s summit at PRI they announced a joining of forces with other organizations to form the North American Time Attack Council, creating a new driver licensing structure and a new series hierarchy where SCCA serves as the club level entry point to time attack feeding drivers up the ranks into GTA as the premier Pro level national series for North America.
This presents us with big new challenges.
1) COTA is a big horsepower track. We’re the best on the brakes and in the corners, but GTRs can bring 1000hp to the fight and at this track with tons of room to use it that will be a massive advantage for them.
2) With the new spotlight on an event bigger and badder than ever, it will draw larger teams and budgets. Further to that point, with a chance of international teams making the trip over by 2020, competition is going to escalate to a new level.
3) Classes have evolved for 2019. Similar to WTAC, there will no longer be any division by drivetrain layout. It’s now just Enthusiast, Street, Limited, Unlimited. This means large fields. In the past we considered every Limited class car a competitor, now it’s official.
SLB USA 2019 is just around the corner, Feb 14. Very little time to make changes. GTA is planning 2019 to be a building year with 2020 bringing international teams, so we’ll take a similar approach; get to COTA this year with the car largely as it is now and use what we learn there to guide development through the rest of the year, building towards the big leagues: COTA 2020.
