2012 NASA Nationals Wrapped Up

Well that was exciting.  Woke up early to find that my grid position was not all that bad!  10th overall and 3rd in GTS3.  The start was decent as I maintained my position.  We raced under green for a very short time before a GTS4 Porsche driven by Jay Matus flipped over.  Driver is ok.

About this time, my car started acting funny. Felt like a real bad misfire and it would not go away.  I even tried bumping curbs to try to get it to go away, but no dice.  So here I am running on 5 cylinders trying to maintain a podium finish.  We then got a double yellow which was good because it ate up time, but at the same time it was bad because it bunched us up.  I had gotten a decent lead at this point.  I was hoping the race would end on double yellow, but we got some NASCAR green-white-checker action.  I was able to get a good start and maintain somewhat of a gap.  On the last lap, the competition was closing in, but I was lucky to put a slower GTS4 car behind me and then make myself super wide so neither could pass me.  Being boxed in, the next in class car couldnt get by in the only area where I would be hurt real bad w/ 5 cylinders (Thunder Valley).  Once I made it through there, I knew I was good.  Took the checked in 3rd place!  Wish my car was firing on all cylinders so I could try to play with fellow friend and racer, Josh Smith. He ended up w/ a fairly banged up front end from an incident.

We all then proceeded to impound where there was some shuffling of positions.  P1 got DQd and I moved up a spot to 2nd!  That was a nice bonus!  Josh then moved up to Champion status.

Unfortunately I forgot the memory card in my camera, but I did live stream the race!  So this is all I got:  http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-races-w-wonger

2012 NASA Nationals Update

Day 1:  After turning some personal bests in warm up, things were looking super optimistic.  However, in a rush to grid for qualifying, a helper accidentally pushed my fire button.  I went out with AFFF foam spraying me in the face and qualified somewhere near last.  It did not matter, as the officials would DQ me for not having a fully charged fire bottle out on track.  So in the qualifying race, I would need to make up as many positions as possible.  In a SHORT 8 lap sprint, I made my way from dead last to about 18th.  Not too bad.

Day 2: Again, after some blistering fast warm up times, I was pretty excited for qualifying.  But again, I would have some random issue.  This time, I forgot to remove a wheel spacer, so my tires were rubbing.  A grid worked pointed it out at about 5 min to go and I was able to rush back to the garage to remove one spacer but no time for the other.  I managed to qualify 3rd in GTS3.  The race was pretty darn insane.  A strong, quick moving T-storm provided some interesting driving.  My windows fogged, my glasses fogged.  One of the main competitors in GTS3 gambled and went out on full slicks and came in before the race started which helps m greatly.  Managed to preserve a possible 7th overall finish and 3rd in class.  Will see what grid sheets say tomorrow!

Follow along live with NASA Speedcast: http://www.speedcasttv.com/nasa/

Or my live in-car broadcasts at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-races-w-wonger

Official Results: http://team-nasa.com/team-nasa/ftp/

NASA MidAtlantic Summer Breeze Recap

GTS racers descended on Summit Point for NASA Mid-Atlantic's Summer
Breeze event.  Weather was perfect this year with some really close
racing in GTS, specifically GTS1 and GTS2.  On Saturday, DJ
Fitzpatrick would go into qualifying telling everyone he only had old
tires and not to expect much.  Was it just some pre-qualifying
strategy to catch his competition off guard?  Perhaps that was the
case, but in a spectacularly rare event, he would qualify with an
identical laptime down to the thousandths with Michael Dayton.  In
cases such as this, the pole goes to the second fastest lap, which was
held by Fitzpatrick.

The race shaped up to be a good one, with very tight battling in the
early laps.  Dayton hounded Fitzpatrick for the top spot and
unfortunately for Fitzpatrick a bobble in T10 provided some
spectacular sideways showmanship for the crowd and the competition
behind.  Paul Alexadre who normally races Spec986, joined GTS2 this
weekend provided the best quote, " is this E36 M3s at Hypefest? That
is a lot of angle!".  Dayton would have to go four off to avoid
contact which slowed him considerably allowing Jim Khoury to take
advantage.  Fitzpatrick would have to retire early as the incident
would result in some nice cords showing on his tires.  Dayton would
challenge Khoury up until the checkered flag but Khoury held off for
the win.  Jeff Emanuelson rounded out the podium in third place.

On Sunday, the T10 activities continued.  In GTS3, Eric Wong led Josh
Smith for a few laps until a C4 Corvette spun in T10.  Nearly coming
to a stop to avoid contact, Wong would cede the top position to Smith.
 Jeff Curtis, who would finish third joked, "I obviously didn't pay
the vette guy enough".  Forty minutes of hard racing kept the two
close.  The gap would widen and shorten depending on traffic which
proves you should never give up.  A fortunate last minute traffic
incident would enable Wong to overtake Smith in the second to last
corner of the last lap and taking the win by 0.129 seconds in a near
photo finish.

In GTS1, the drivers were turning near identical fast lap times with
Matt Marks taking the win.  Big Joe Boschulte was unable to challenge
the win as he decided to do some heavy lifting by having a power
steering failure.  He could only man handle the car for a lap before
his arms tired out.  At least that was the story conveyed from fellow
competitor Dave Gibson when he recalled after the race, "Joe blew a
power steering belt on Sunday which with 275 meat up front even "Big
Joe" couldn't muscle it around."  Gibson would battle hard with Max
Fischer in a rented Bent Splitter Racing GTS1 BMW.  Gibson would
emerge ahead of Fischer and after the race had some thoughts on why,
"Max came up to me after our epic battle saying what a blast it was to
race GTS-1!  He said he is used to GTS-4 hard breaking and gobs of
horsepower and in 1 its easy on the brakes and carrying speed...which
he said is a little scary!"  Fischer would end up finishing fourth
with Rob Carpenter taking the last podium spot.

Not so Secret Weapons for Nationals

 
In an effort to regain the lead in the bling bling spending wars between myself and Josh Smith, I decided to buy a sexy Bimmerworld Carbon Intake Box.  I was looking for a slight advantage here with increasing midrange torque and at the same time, adding a headlight duct to get some "off dyno" gains.  Ive run two events with this new modification and the car seems faster.  True test will come in about a week at Nationals.  Updates to come!

The dyno plot below is from an unrestricted tune that I have.   As shown, midrange power and torque rises a good deal.  The GTS3 detune pulls out the upper HP and leaves me with nice middle gains!  Unsure what added HP effect the headlight duct adds but even a few horsepower is better than nothing!

Summit Point Testing Update

Last event before Nationals and th car felt more dialed in.  Changed up some spring and alignment settings for this event and the car seemed to handle the transitions better.  Overall I am happy going into Nationals and hope to have something for my competition.  Hoping for a MidAtlantic 1-2 between me and Josh.

Sunday results were not posted online, but Im linking from here.  I got super lucky on last lap traffic to get around Josh.

Sunday Summit Breeze Results

MCS Mid-Ohio Testing

So an update from the last post.  Went to MidOhio to get some testing done with these new MCS gizmos.  My initial impressions are that these shocks absorb imperfections in the track way better than my prior Moton Street Sport Doubles.  Im not a suspension engineer, but the valving profiles might be softer?  The only way I can describe it is that it feels like Im driving a "Cadillac" in that the car feels less upset and smoother.  This allowed for easier (and earlier) power application.  I toyed around with different rear spring rate and that can be apparent when you look at the Sunday video compared to the Saturday (oversteer central!)

I was not able to do a lot of testing since it was wet the first day but I did get enough time under the suspension to finish on the podium in 2nd place behind Josh Smith (who is also on MCS).  On Sunday, I finished the same, but due to a weight snafu, I was DQd!  First DQ ever by the way and it was something nutty (70# under prior day with exact same setup).  

So one more race weekend left before Nationals at Summit Point this coming weekend.  Im going to try to do some more testing and fine tuning.

Here are the race videos from the weekend: 

https://vimeo.com/47432194 (Sat) 

https://vimeo.com/47474764 (Sun)

New Weapons

Welp, I couldnt resist the deal MCS was giving GTS racers for Nationals.  (See here).

Will install and test at Mid-Ohio next weekend and report back my findings.  Hopefully positive as I seek to gain an advantage over the competition and try to win this thing!