7/18 - 7/19 - NASA Midwest at Autobahn Country Club - South course. Great weather; great results!



Video of 2 hot laps in my best session; skip to 2:05 for my best lap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5MB6HAqMKM

Saturday:
I mounted up a set of r-comps that I got used recently in order to save heat cycles on my Hoosier R6's. A friend of mine with a much heavier S4 runs these and told me they'd need a few laps to warm up. I wasn't real happy with the grip level I was getting, so I stayed out late in the 20min session hoping for better grip. Unfortunately I overheated my brakes; lost them completely and suffered a pretty major off. I was pumping my pedal to the floor and using the e-brake to no avail. Top speed on this section was about 115mph; I went off at 90mph and was extremely fortunate there were only tall weeds to mow down. I ended up sliding down a small hill sideways around a barrier and stopped just before the property fence. Yikes!
I came back in feeling extremely fortunate I still had a car. I did a complete flush of the brake system, completely removed my underpanel I had installed, tried to pull out all the weeds I could. I also mounted up my stickier Hoosier R6's while I was at it.
Only missing 1 session, I lined up after lunch with a dirty car and fired a first hot lap that pushed me to first in class. The weather was perfect; sunny, no wind and low 70's - great turbo weather! After just 3 hot laps, I came in to make sure everything was good, check tire temps and check weight. A few minor tweaks and the times kept coming down throughout the afternoon. I ended up with a 1:36.2 and 1st in class out of 4. I also had the 4th fastest time of the day out of 27 cars besting several cars that were in TT classes higher than me.

Sunday:
Weather was again gorgeous. I studied my data overnight and decided to 'brake less' basically! lol. I also looked and I was .7 away from the track record Sat; so I was pumped. In the first session I had some whacko tire temps, but still fired a time close to Sat's best. Not many changes here. I corrected the pressures and tried to dial in more front camber. I set out looking for the track record. I came away with a 1:35.3 - setting a new track record!

In summary:
1 nasty off; 2 TTB class wins and the TTB track record!
Huge thanks to AMS. I know I have said this before, but the 93oct tune I was running was impressive. I dunno it if was the cool temps or the testpipe I switched to (was a HF cat) but it felt like a beast and I really pulled out from the apexes all weekend. Also helping to put that power down was my Mullerized JIC's. The car has remained nearly neutral all year with ZERO adjustments to this point from John's initial recommendations - and that's with running 4 different brands of tires, 3 different tire sizes and 2 different Ecu tunes with ~50whp differences!

 

Congrats! Great lap times!

 

Thx man. I was amazed how much difference the R6's made over the previous events where we were running streets. Of course low 70's vs that nasty 90+ degrees and humidity really helped as well.
Oh, and a lot more aggressive driving!

 

Congrats man, that is an awesome accomplishment! Thanks for the great write up and vids!

 

Great job Nate!!!! That car is a ROCK! It just keeps going man, getting faster and faster. Couldn't happen to a better guy either. Keep it up!

Eric

 

Man, YOU lost your brakes there too?!?! That aside, those are some FLYING laps. Well done sir!

 

Yep. And in the first session no less!! I yanked off my undertray and had no other problems besides a (very) dirty car... those 4ft tall weeds make a huge mess. I posted another thread here in the MotorSports forums about it to try and hash things out.

And thanks guys; it's been a long road.

 

Thanks guys. Yeah, it's got a bit of a storied past already doesn't it! Still all stock engine, cams, injectors, clutch, trans etc though!

3rd set of rotors, 4th suspension setup...yada yada...

 

Indeeeeed

 

Nice work! Keep it up!

 

Congrats Nate. Glad to hear that nothing major happened. Btw, are you considering Nationals? I think you can represent us well in TTB. Besides, given the economy, TTB thus far has a really good entry list of 5 drivers. I know 4 of them because they run with Socal NASA. And youre not far since youre in St Louis. Trust me, 1400ish miles to get to Nationals is a blessing.

 

Thanks man.
And you're not the first person to ask me that - and then try to persuade me! As of right now, I'm not entered for Nationals and don't have any plans to enter before the end of July (next rate increase).
I'm not ruling it out, but I told my g/f sunday night to keep me away from Utah! Oh, and it's just 1200 miles.....

It's right about this time that I - like a lot of others probably - get hammered with real estate taxes. That always hurts as I don't escrow mine; so I feel broke for a few months.

 

Only 1200 miles? Thats even better. I understand the money issue. Hope you can work it out. Talk with your sponsors. Im sure by now they realize youre doing everything you can to compete and to represent them well. Not everyone has a money tree in their backyard. So they should take better care of you. Us little guys need some loving too. Keep me posted and ill help you out however i can. You know where to reach me.

 

Thx for the vote. I believe you're going in ST2?

What's the drive like for you to Miller? Any idea if you'd call this a technical or high-speed track? I figured as long as it is; it's all the above; lol.

 

Yep, ill be racing in ST2. Thus far, i think im the only Evo racing at Nationals. Im all paid for, now i just need to start getting ready. For me, its close to 800 miles to get there. You dont know how happy i am about that. Last year i drove 5,000 miles round trip. If you come we can help each other out. Since you do your own alignments, something tells me youll be the one who is actually doing the helping. I wont have much to offer in return other than some beer.

From what ive gathered, Miller is more of a high speed track. Well that actually depends on the configuration. Since were running the Outer course, its a combination of high speed and technical transitions. Beyond that, Miller is supposed to be a pretty safe track with a great deal of runoff. So if you make a mistake, or go off, youre not in any immediate danger. Here is the configuration were running:

http://www.millermotorsportspark.com...uterCourse.jpg