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NASA Nationals and a Gift
Posted by
Joe (dad) Jordan
,
01-23-2013
·
2,411 views
Well haven't written a blog since the end of 2011 where we ended the season hurting a motor.... 2012 came around and an old crew member of mine Dave Levy had some life changes and decided to gift us his Spec Miata which hadn't been raced in 5 years. We ended up running most of the season with this car and had a best finish of 5th at the California Crown race. We decided on a whim to go to the NASA Nationals. We dug out our transporter from our World Challenge days that also hadn't moved in 4 years and we found a couple of people to split gas with us and we went to Mid Ohio with no expectations.
We built a Frakenstein motor with a home built bottom end with the .10 over pistons and a purchased a race engineering head and went for it. No testing, just the best prep we could do a 40 hour tow and a test day at Mid Ohio.....why not... Amazingly it turned out OK. Joey made progress each day and we got better with Data to give him a predictive lap timer and he learned the track and started mid pack for the qualifying races. He started 27th for the Thursday Qualifying race. Had an OK start and slowly worked his way up a bit.. He ended up 24th in the Qualifying race. Friday Qualifying He went backwards a bit and ended up 33. In the Friday race he moved up to 25th and started to figure it out.
The extra time at the Nasa Nationals really allowed us to analize data go over video and put a plan together. In the race he got a decent start and moved into the top 20. He was picking off cars 1 at a time, got to follow charbeneau which helped him find more speed. He was running 16th when Kyle Webb who spun earlier was coming back through the field. They battled a bit Kyle got by and unfortunately spun in turn 1 right in front of Joey, He almost got around it but impacted Kyle hard with the LF which ended our race. His fastest race lap was within 1 second of the fastest race lap, so we felt that he was making great progress and with some additional racing and analyzing we could improve in 2013
We decided it was time to try SCCA racing in November we went to Firebird raceway and competed in a SCCA regional. We ran Spec Miata and STL to make sure he would get enough races to get a National license. Our intention was to run SCCA Nationals with the hope to qualify for the 50th SCCA Runoffs.
We built a Frakenstein motor with a home built bottom end with the .10 over pistons and a purchased a race engineering head and went for it. No testing, just the best prep we could do a 40 hour tow and a test day at Mid Ohio.....why not... Amazingly it turned out OK. Joey made progress each day and we got better with Data to give him a predictive lap timer and he learned the track and started mid pack for the qualifying races. He started 27th for the Thursday Qualifying race. Had an OK start and slowly worked his way up a bit.. He ended up 24th in the Qualifying race. Friday Qualifying He went backwards a bit and ended up 33. In the Friday race he moved up to 25th and started to figure it out.
The extra time at the Nasa Nationals really allowed us to analize data go over video and put a plan together. In the race he got a decent start and moved into the top 20. He was picking off cars 1 at a time, got to follow charbeneau which helped him find more speed. He was running 16th when Kyle Webb who spun earlier was coming back through the field. They battled a bit Kyle got by and unfortunately spun in turn 1 right in front of Joey, He almost got around it but impacted Kyle hard with the LF which ended our race. His fastest race lap was within 1 second of the fastest race lap, so we felt that he was making great progress and with some additional racing and analyzing we could improve in 2013
We decided it was time to try SCCA racing in November we went to Firebird raceway and competed in a SCCA regional. We ran Spec Miata and STL to make sure he would get enough races to get a National license. Our intention was to run SCCA Nationals with the hope to qualify for the 50th SCCA Runoffs.
