Category: HyperMiata Race Recaps

Going in this year the tactics were very different than last. Last year this was the new build that might shake up the field. This year was about seeing how far I could drill down closer to the class record, and my goal was to grab the one thing I missed by 6 hundredths of a second last year; the overall Limited class win across all drivetrain layouts. Every car in Limited was a competitor for us. The GTRs, Evos, STIs, Porsches, everything.

This year we had to work for it a bit, but the stoke was through the roof beginning to end. Having shredded 5th gear during the shakedown just days before the event I was working down to the wire to swap to the backup trans before Superlap, but we got things buttoned up and I even had a good night’s sleep before the tow out to Buttonwillow.

We started right out of the gate with working through some stuff. On the first session of the day I lost two of the strakes in my splitter. Thanks to the lessons learned at VIR I brought spare material in the trailer so I cut new strakes out of aluminum, bent them over the tool box edge and gorilla epoxied those into place, plus a couple self-tapping screws (something I would never use in building the car but suddenly completely acceptable for a track-side fix). Those new strakes held for both days.

On an LFX related note, I had got sick of being unable to remove the driveshaft without dropping the diff or engine so while the trans was out I cut the flanges off the transmission tail shaft and the centering pin off the differential’s flange. This means the driveshaft has to be manually centered. Early on day 1 there was a lot of vibration coming from the driveline. We got under the car and re-centered the driveshaft and that fixed things.

By the third session I was down to a 1:48.1. Six tenths off my PB, but discussions with a lot of other teams and drivers revealed everyone felt that the track was slower. Various theories about why but ultimately you just get out there and wheel it, make tweaks to find the most speed you can, and the times are what they are and you see how you stack up with everyone else, so that’s what I set my mind to.

Last session of day 1 I had a brake master cylinder failure, no pedal going into Cotton Corners. Kept it on the track and tip-toed back to the pits. I had another MC in the spares bin, the challenge was bench bleeding it with what we had on hand. Thanks to John (Supermiata), Andrew (TSE) and Moti (BFW) for contributing ideas to come up with some McGyver ways we might be able to do it. Took a while, made longer because it was in near-freezing temps but had the MC in and bled by 11pm. Big thanks to our team member Greg for sticking it out with me in the cold to get it swapped and bled.

The next morning drove around the paddock at 7 AM, pop bled it again, then bled again after 1st session and the brakes were ready to rock for the rest of the day.

Fresh tires on for day 2. 1st session of day 2 was a mess with a bunch of the Unlimited class cars going off due to either failures or trying to push too hard. This caused some chaos with the restart and the flaggers weren’t communicating with each other well, so I had a near-incident with the Savvy Motorsports Porsche GT3. I was on a green flag flyer, he thought we were still under yellow. He was weaving to warm up tires as I approached at probably >60mph closing speed, he weaved left off-line which I mis-read as he saw me and was getting out of the way, then at the last moment he weaved right again in front of me. I wasn’t going to stop in time so I aborted right and sent it into the dirt. No harm done to the car, good place for an off. It’s always the lap that feels best when something like that happens.

Hoping we got the chaos out of the way with that session we dug in to finding some more time in the later sessions.

Set a new PB with double 1:47.3’s. After session 2 I wanted a little more front end bite so Moti and I cut and installed some gurneys on the splitter.

That worked but almost too much with things getting loose at high speed so we added 2° of rear wing and a click more low speed compression in the front shocks for the final session. I also went into the trailer and just closed my eyes and went through laps in my head for the last 15 minutes before the final session.

First hot lap of the final session showed a 1:46.95 on the AIM. Too close for comfort; sometimes the track timing doesn’t agree perfectly with the AIM and I REALLY wanted that official 1:46 so I did a cool down lap to really baby the tires and then went for another one. AIM said 1:46.599, I was fist pumping in the car.

Low on fuel so I pulled into the pits and got my high five hands ready for the whole crew. Official timing said 1:46.8, I’ll take it. Only later did we find out that Amir in the V8 M3 (600+hp) went 1:47.2 in that session, which would have taken the win from us if I hadn’t done the 46.

Final results: 1st in Limited RWD and an overall win across all Limited class drivetrains!

Data from the lap shows some ridiculousness for street tires. As in, it looks like I’m on 275 Hoosiers. The aero package is really strong. I’m continuing to improve the chassis setup, the brakes are stellar, and the more I race and dial this car in the better it gets. There’s more to come.

I want to thank every single person who tuned in to the live feed, followed along on Instagram/Facebook or kept tabs in the forums. After the dodge with the Porsche on day 2 a bunch of people reached out to make sure things were OK which was really cool. I’ve said it many times before and I will continue to; when we’re out there dicing with Goliaths it really feels like we’re racing for an entire community of friends and enthusiasts behind us. Each of you are a part of what motivates me to push forwards.

Where to now? That Limited RWD record is still out there! The gap is down to 2.255 seconds. The current record was set before the rules slowed Limited class down, but I really believe we’re on the way to resetting it despite that. I have more plans on the drawing board that I didn’t get to this year, so there is more coming soon.

There’s been a severe lack of updates! Things always get crazy at the end of the season and with the additional chaos of moving our Goodwin Racing home to a new larger location I’ve been even more tied up than usual.

We won the Pro Am round 3 at Buttonwillow which also meant winning the ProAm season for Limited class (the season points are measured against competitors with all drivetrains).

For that event I got the repaired GT1000 wing back on the car. Had to trim it down a lot in angle to balance with the 2017 front end. It was a hot day but still the first time I was able to take Riverside completely flat out, so the wing is definitely an improvement over the last… which is saying quite a bit coming from a massive Kognition airfoil before. I used to enter Riverside at about 110 mph and bleed down to 106 or so at the apex before accelerating out. This time I’m entering with my foot on the floor never lifting and at that same point I was doing 106, now I’m at 114 mph and climbing.
Power felt low all day and I had worries the engine was getting tired. Then in the last session after splashing some fresh gas in the power came back. I did some backtracking in my head on the age of the E85 that I had left in the tank and it was just at the 3 month mark in age. One of those things.. you know E85 ages out but then when you have an experience like that it really underlines it for you. I’ll be ensuring I get fresh fuel for every event in the future.

Following that, all eyes have been set on Superlap Battle. The primary focus has been rebuilding the 2018 front aero, with a trip back up to Blackbird Fabworx. We ended up cutting the splitter in half, putting the good half back in the mold and building out the other half fresh the same way we made the original. Pretty darn cool to do the whole layup and put it under vacuum and the finished half and the fresh carbon half just suck into the mold like a glove and cure together. Not saying it was easy, but certainly rewarding. Thanks to Chip for CNCing some aluminum bits that needed to go in to the splitter at the last minute for me.

Finished splitter came back to San Diego with me and then it was thrash time to rebuild the brackets, ducting, front bumper, etc. for that front end. The last of the VIR damage disappeared with the addition of some carbon/kevlar fenders.

Tired of the issues with the SPEC clutch I swapped to a Luk factory clutch/flywheel. Not ideal, but given the choice between 20 lbs and a clutch that works, I know what I’m picking.

Lots of other small updates like changing to Stoptech’s race floating rotor that allows a little more float which should help with knockback from the flexible factory front uprights. Full inspection on the car, replaced several bits, etc. Another corner balance and alignment and then we were ready to do a shakedown of all the new stuff.

With Superlap Battle coming up on the 8th, I went out to Streets of Willow this past Saturday. Great shakedown overall, worked through the many little things that always pop up on shakedowns with new parts, and the car feels great. The good news is the clutch is shifting way better. The bad news is that 5th gear is toast, too many times grinding into gear and the damage was already done before I changed to the factory clutch. It got worse through the day to where at the end of the day it refused to go into 5th any more.

Despite that, we happened to set a new Miata lap record for CCW… while coasting down the straight in 4th, and on the street tires we run at GTA. So, a lot of things are working right. Both aero and mechanical grip are dialed.

So, we’re back at the shop and last night I got the drivetrain out. I have another MV7 here, it’s the one I was running in 2017 that never shifted right because the shifter pivot was seized. We fiddled with the pivot for a couple hours and got it freed up, so in it went! This trans has had plenty of grinding into gear on the old spec clutch as well, so its health is unknown but it was still working when it came out so now with the good clutch in it hopefully it’s happy. Sit rep as of last night:

She’s back in the car now, getting the last bits bolted on and fluids in tonight. Fingers crossed the trans is good and we’ll be rocking and rolling in two days at Buttonwillow.

After UTCC, the car had to make the week-long trip back across the country, and it was still held together by duct tape. By the end of that event, I didn’t want to even think about all the work that lay ahead to repair the car. Before we left for VIR I had signed up for Global Time Attack’s ProAm round 2 on June 3. There’s no way I was going to make that event.

I flew home and had a few days to myself before the car returned to think things over. One day in, I had already decided I was going to run at GTA. When the car returned I had four days with it before I needed to be on the road to Willow Springs International Raceway. I did a full inspection on the car, separated the list of repairs by priority and focused on just what it absolutely needed. The old 2017 front and rear aero package came out of the office and went back on, and I rebuilt a few items that were needed to make that possible.

It was a hectic few days, but by Friday it was ready to rock.

Willow Springs International Raceway, GTA ProAm Round 2. Just days from arriving back in CA with a broken car.

Session 1 was already hot out in the desert. I took an early lead with a 1:26.8. With most of the Unlimited class cars on the East coast for the recent Pro event we realized that I was in the race for the top time of the day, with a Limited AWD GTR nipping at my heels a few thousands behind, and the rest of the Limited class a bit further behind.

By mid-day it was 104°F ambient / 138°F surface temps. Way too hot for the tires, they were greasy even on the out lap, which made for a wild ride at full pace. It’s been a while since I’ve driven WSIR so despite the heat I found a few more tenths with a 1:26.5. The GTR went slower, and I took the overall top time of day in addition to my class win.

Full results are here: http://globaltimeattack.com/rd2-gta-…rings-results/

Test Day: Willow Springs 5/11/18

The final couple weeks prepping for UTCC were full of a lot of long days. Moti of Blackbird Fabworx and I had just finished up the new front aero config and it would be debuting at UTCC. For the new splitter I had to make all new mountings, ducting and airdam. I also moved to a new GT1000 wing at the rear to balance. Just a couple days before the car needed to be loaded up for the journey I got out to Willow Springs International Raceway for a shakedown.

First impressions were great. Mega grip, doing 1:27’s while just cruising and doing systems check on used RC1 tires. Front aero was doing a lot of scraping, ride height was a little too low. Lost a CV joint boot on the right axle which ended the day, but I had found the weak points that needed correction so it was job done.

Sat/Sun were long days. Built struts to support the rear endplates (GT1000 is an animal, serious suction under that wing, Emilio and I were both bending the endplates through T8 and down the front straight). Resized the front endplates, made new titanium wear strips for the front endplates with rounded edges to reduce the shock when they scrape, added an additional mounting point in the splitter with corresponding mount in the frame (good problem to have, tons of downforce), pulled the axle and replaced the boot, raised the car a half inch front and rear to improve clearance. Got it buttoned up and then loaded with the 949 guys. Sonny and Manny began the tow across the country. I had 3 days to catch up on sleep.

The weather forecast wasn’t looking good for UTCC on Friday, but guys from that area said it can change rapidly. We made sure we had a rain tire strategy and packed jackets and rain-X. Well, everyone but John, who only wears shorts and T shirts…

Thursday came, CA to VA.

Prepping Friday morning, very wet.

Morning conditions were abysmal, should have packed snorkels. Went out anyways on the rain tires and did some easy laps. Some epic pics were the up-side:

The weather was shifting constantly. We would watch the weather till the last minute, pick tires, go out and then the weather would change as soon as you hit the track. Rain tires can’t be run on a dry line because you’ll literally burn them to nothing in less than a lap, and slicks simply don’t work in the rain. UTCC drivers were split into an A and B group, with both Emilio in the Supermiata and myself in group B. During group A’s first timed session, the track dried up and there was a nearly completely dry line all the way around the track. That session got delayed a couple times due to cars going off, etc. and went super long which pushed our group B session later and later. Not knowing what the conditions were on-track, we both went out on rain tires.

On the out-lap we discovered what group A had been enjoying: a perfectly dry line. We both quickly worked our way around the track careful to not overheat the rain tires and then pulled right back in to the pits to swap to slicks. The team swapped Emilio’s wheels first, he went back out, and then they jumped to my car. As the jack released and let me back on to the ground, the first rain drops began to fall again. By the time I got to the track entry, it was pouring. I went out, determined to try to get a lap in just to have something in the books. It was standing water everywhere and the slicks felt like there was nothing connected to the steering wheel. I had an off in T4, and on wet grass the only thing to stop you is the tire wall.

I was OK, but this was a really low moment for me, sitting in the car unable to see how badly it was damaged and knowing there was no way for any of that new aero to have survived. So many hours in the car, so much work from everyone to get it all the way across the country, and I get a couple soaking wet laps and the weekend is over. The tow truck brought me back to the pits, damaging the hood during the tow just to help rub things in.

Back in the pits it was as I feared: the splitter was destroyed along with damage to the ducting, hood, fender, door, barge board, the rear wing and the steering. The 949 guys shared their condolences but immediately sprang into “how can we get this thing back on the track?” mode. I was still reeling from the anger and frustration of so many hours lost and so many more suddenly piled up ahead of me to repair it, but Emilio had some sage words of advice: “When you’re home and you look back on today a month from now, you’ll wish you had tried to repair it if you don’t.” I sat down for a little while to think things through, and anger turned to determination. This is not how this weekend was going to end.

We came up with a game plan to graft 949’s small backup splitter on to the car, build new splitter mounts, hammer the fender into rough shape, leave the rest of the body damage as it was and tape up the rest, and just run what was left of the wing (which was just the primary element). Everyone jumped in and helped. At some point, someone dropped by our pits to make sure I was OK for those following along on MiataTurbo.net which I really appreciated and snapped this pic. Not sure why I was smiling, likely just delusional:

She wasn’t pretty, but it would do:

Sonny did an on-the-fly toe fix to get the wheels pointed roughly straight. Then we discovered the power steering rack had cracked and lost fluid. That required some more MacGyvering; with no way to seal the rack, we scavenged a couple lines from the steering cooler to create a loop from the pump outlet back to the reservoir so the pump could run and cycle its fluid and not burn itself up. We left the steering rack just open-air depowered with tape over the open ports. It might not feel great, but I could steer.

To be sure we had enough work to do, Bullet went into the wall the session after me. Emilio somehow got it back to the pits without a tow, so about the time we got Hyper patched up it was time to jump on Bullet as get that one back into shape.

Sonny made this montage from me going back out for the final session of the day. It felt as big as any win to just be driving the car back out onto the track.

I was just happy to be moving:

The conditions were even worse than the morning. They black flagged the session and shut the track down for the day due to the rain flooding a portion of the track. Back in the pits though, it was high fives all around.

With such terrible conditions ruining most of the day and only half the UTCC field getting a chance at a decent lap, GRM pulled some strings to give everyone a single session on Saturday. We crossed our fingers with the hopes of getting a shot at a dry track, but the rain gods weren’t going to let that fly. When the session came on Saturday, a massive cloud rolled in and dumped on the track just 15 minutes before the session, and left about 30 minutes after the session ended. No chance.

Unfortunately, this means the UTCC results for this year are pretty much meaningless; the top half of the results are group A who got nearly dry conditions for one session, group B never got a shot.

With Saturday’s UTCC session pointless, we all turned our attention to supporting Bullet which was being driven by Sonny in STU and TTU against a bunch of exotic hardware.

The forecast for Sunday looked clear and I realized I might be able to get a chance at some dry laps. Sunday morning I spoke with the NASA staff and lucked into getting a spot in HPDE3. YES I was going to finally get to drive VIR a bit.

First session was full of traffic and got cut short by the splitter scraping on the ground. We got to work reinforcing and adding mounts. More MacGyvering, and a couple endplates gave their lives to further support the damaged splitter.

Second session out, the splitter was holding and I was just loving the chance to begin to feel the rhythm of VIR’s complexes at some speed. There was zero aero grip compared to what the car usually has and the steering was a little wonky, but the car still felt decently quick and I was going to enjoy this. Still had traffic on every lap but began to get the feel of things and find a little speed. Here are a 2:03 and 2:04 among traffic:

Third session, finally a bit of clear track ahead of me. 1:58.9
Second fastest Miata to ever lap VIR, behind only Bullet which Sonny did a 1:57.x in on Saturday.
I’ll take that. Bruised and battered, but still fighting:

In the craze of the weekend I had forgotten to charge the GoPro so I didn’t get that lap on video. C’est la vie.

The team after three days of busting our butts in the rain. Low on sleep, a little loopy, and thoroughly satisfied:

Looking at TT results for Sunday:

https://racehero.io/events/nasa-ma-v…c-2018/results

If I had ran NASA TT my 1:58.9 would have taken 3rd overall for the entire day, behind only two TTU cars (Dan Raver in the LS7 Superlight and Sonny in Bullet). Faster than every entry in TT1, TT2, etc.

It wasn’t the way any of us envisioned the weekend going, but I was still all smiles just to have had a dry day at VIR and a respectable lap time to hang my hat on until we have a chance to return.

Cool vid from GTA Round 1 highlighting the new overall record set by the PZTuning Civic. I make a few appearances:

Late update, it’s the busy season here at GWR so as soon as I got back from Buttonwillow I dove back in to work straight away.

The day went exactly how you want every race to go: used my setup notes from previous times here to best-guess the morning setup and that got it 90% there right out of the gate. Minor adjustments in a few areas after first session and the car was strong. Increased the gap from the rest of the field through the day and finished 5 seconds up from 2nd place. New PB of 1:47.5 (1 sec improvement on my time from SLB).

Not only 1st place in class, also fastest overall in Limited across drivetrain categories. Really can’t ask for more than that! Here are some tasty pics and vid from the weekend!

This turned out to be an excellent two days out in the desert. I had a chance to begin tweaking shock settings, the brakes were rock solid with the knockback gone, and I got a ton of laps in. Very refreshing after the last test to have the car feeling right now.

My best from December at this track was a 1:51.4. Returning this time on test tires I wasn’t expecting to be much faster, just focus on setup. However, to my pleasant surprise I set a new best of 1:49.777. I was really stoked to see a sub-1:50 on the AIM at the time, but it was only later when I started looking around at other lap times that I realized there was more significance to it. This is a new track record for a modified production car!

Wow suddenly a month’s gone by!

We left off with heading out for the first test day of the year at Streets of Willow CCW. This was a Roadster Cup event so the plan was to have equal parts fun hanging out with friends in that series and doing demo laps in their run group and also to work on initial setup and testing of the changes made during the winter.

On the testing side, I did one shake-down session Saturday afternoon. The car felt stronger than ever on the E85. However, it was showing some issues in the chassis and handling; brakes were touchy and quick to lock up, the car wouldn’t rotate the way I wanted, and it was skipping over bumps (particularly problematic on such a bumpy track). This resulted in quickly flat spotting the set of tires I was on, and here is where my first BIG “thank you” comes along because Saturday night I left the racetrack and drove to Northridge where Moti met me and generously loaned me the wheels and tires right off Creampuff so I could have something to run the car on on Sunday.

Sunday was more of the same struggles. I had to drive very patiently, give myself extra braking distance, reduce corner entry speed until the car would be willing to turn, etc. Tip-toeing around these issues resulted in a best time of 1:19.488, an exact match to the thousandth with the existing Miata lap record.

Hard to be unhappy with matching the Miata record, but I left the event feeling like I have some unfinished business with this track knowing the car wasn’t right. I didn’t even post an update here because I put the car on the rack and immediately started crawling around on it to figure out what was wrong. My second big “thank you” goes to 949Racing/Supermiata who provided a ton of input to help pinpoint the issues and then work through them.

We uncovered several surprises. The largest one was that the new V8R tubular front lower control arms interfered significantly with the downpipes during suspension compression. Easy to see why the car was skipping over bumps and the shocks couldn’t do their job – the suspension was going effectively solid. Not the fault of the arms, obviously I’m the one who put downpipes in the wheel wells, and I had factory arms when I made them. One item or the other had to be altered, and for several reasons I decided it was the arms that had to be reworked. The arms were cut, reshaped, reinforced with extra gusseting, and then capped. With the revisions, the suspension could finally do its thing:

Along with the major interference of the front lower arms, once that item was sorted I launched into a week of examining the suspension and wheel/tire travel. Even though my previous shocks had the same total stroke as these, the XIDAs use more of that stoke for bump travel. As a result, I found several other areas that had more minor interference issues at close to full compression, and we dealt with each item as I found it until suspension range of motion was maximized.

Finally, I’ve been chasing a pad knockback issue caused by significant flexing in the front uprights. Stoptech has been superb in their ongoing support, and to establish whether a floating rotor can solve this issue I’ve switched to Stoptech’s 11″ floating rotors in front.

With things sorted out much better at this point, I went to West End to get re-aligned and properly corner balanced. They got the cross weights exact to the pound.

The Streets of Willow test was invaluable in that it uncovered some big issues to address, but because the suspension wasn’t working right there was zero progress on learning and setting up the new pieces in the system. The next test day at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway will be the first opportunity for this.

Always so focused on moving forward; next race, next improvement, next season, next steps. Every once in a while though it’s good to glance back to appreciate how far we’ve come, and when I have pages of to-do lists for the next season, it helps to remind myself it doesn’t happen over-night.

2011 Buttonwillow 13CW (my first track day) – 2:13.9

2017 Buttonwillow 13CW (Superlap Battle) – 1:48.4

Great pics from the event captured by Yia Lor:

And a few more from other sources: