Time for a break

I’m currently travelling out of country, so I’ll have to take a few month off go fast adventures !  Will be back at the end of the year =)

1st race of 2009, set fastest time in class then crashes the car

My little pit area next to a Viper trailer

Wow it’s been awhile since I updated the blog.  I’ve been busy with random stuff and preparing for a trip out of the country.  Some of you are probably wondering how my season is going.  Well, my 2009 racing season started and ended on the 1st race at willow springs.

Ready For Battle !

Ahh, it was quite an weekend…. On March 7, 2009 I competed in my 1^st NASA race of the year in the Time Trial D class..  Saturday I was on pace right away and kept getting faster every session, the car felt great with the RA1 tires, at the end of the day my time was 1.36.4, 1^st place in TTD, I’m a whole second faster than the 2^nd place car, a spec Porsche boxster.  Got a 1^st place trophy at the award ceremony, everyone was shocked a rookie won 1^st place, esp. since my time was only 1.5sec off the Scion factory backed car in a higher TTC class.  After looking over the datalog over night, I realized a 1.35 is definitely possible, maybe even lower !  So I went out Sunday determined to break the class record that was set in 2005.   Morning warm up session went great, I was already on pace at 1.37 flat 1^st session out.    Session 2 I started to push hard, on lap 3, going through turn 8 I pushed about 90% just barely lifting throttle, the rear end slid out alittle bit at 100mph at the apex, but it was an easy correction, I chuck it up to the track being cold and didn’t think too much of it, the day before the car sticks pretty well going through there flat out.  Actually I was thinking, damn I’m good, I can control any slide this car throws at me….. Yeah I’m an idiot ! I know…  The next lap, I went into turn 8 flat out with no lift.  At the apex, the car slid out again, oops, this time it was a much bigger slide, I caught the slide, but the car was still heading sideways towards the dirt at 120mph, I did all I could, and the car flew off track at 100mph.  I slide on the dirt in what seems like an eternity, and then finally impacted the plastic barrier, probably at about 40mph.

The redflagged the session, emergency crew came out, my door wouldn’t open, so I had to climb out the window.  They tow the car back into the pit, all 4 doors were dented, hood is damaged, front bumper is damaged beyond repair, driver side rocker panel is pushed in, both fenders are gone, quarter panels were dented.  The 3 was a tough little car though, I ziptied the bumper up, and drove all the way back to LA with no driverside mirror lol….  You shoulda seen the look on people’s face as they drove by me !   I’m okay surprisingly, I’m alittle sore this morning, but honestly I’ve had far worse crashes in karts…

So the lesson here is leave some margin for error in a highspeed turn like that, if the car goes in a slide in a place like that there’s only so much u can do.  This is quite an expensive lesson……………..

The Aftermath...

Unfortunately this means I have to say farewell to the car and my racing plans of 2009.  But fear not, the adventure will continue, stay tuned for more exciting projects !

Last but not least, the video of the incident

Mazdaspeed3 Willow Springs Crash

Willow Springs International Raceway Feb. 7-8, 2009

One thing I’ve learned about building Mazdaspeed3 for racing, on an untried platform, racing parts are few and far and in between.  I ordered the Mazdaspeed coilover from Mazda Motorsport back in November of 2008, as of late January 2009, it was still on back order !  Wayne @ Phase2motortrend.com came through after hearing about my coilover dillema.  He had a source that had a sets in stock, and was able to get it for me in just a week !  Go Phase 2 !  The Mazdaspeed coilover is a very high quality set manufactured by K&W, the damping can be adjusting in both compression and rebound separately.  After looking over the coilover, I realized that my front K-Mac Adjustable Camber/Castor plate will not fit correctly, unless a custom top hat is machined.  I called Jeff @ Tri-Point to custom make an adapter, sure enough a week later, I had the front coilovers back in my hand with the K-Mac Camber plate correctly fitted.  Now with only a week left before the track day at Willow Springs, and a busy schedule at work.  I decided to let Ken @ Performance Autoexpress to handle the install.  They are the only shop in this area that I trust to work on my car.  It also helps that they have an inhouse Hunter laser alignment rack, and corner weight scales.  It makes setting up suspension an easy one stop shop !  Just when I thought this saga is over, Ken calls me to tell me that the stock sway bar end links are alittle too long, and there’s very little clerance between the lower controlarm and the sway bar end.  It’s now Thursday afternoon, crap !  I was determined to get this done before this weekend, I called Tony @ AWR Racing, he had all the components in stock and was able to piece together a set asap, I had him overnight me a set of the shortest off the shelf links he had, it ended up being the Protege link.  Thumbs up to Tony for coming through on such a short notice !

The finished assembly, Mazdaspeed Coilover/KMac Camber-Caster Plate

Friday night, I picked up the MS3 from Performance Auto Express, luckily the sway bar end links got there in time.  Ken maxed out the camber/caster and we set the toe to slight toe out.  I ended up with -2.5 camber and 3.9deg castor (3.0 deg stock), not as much camber as I was hoping for, but it’s not too bad, and the additional castor is a nice surprise.  Rear camber ended up being -2, too much !  A Mazdaspeed or SPC camber arm would fix that, unfortunately that’s not allowed in my NASA TTD class next year.  I get home and measure the ride height, turned out the front ride height was too high compared to Mazdaspeed manual’s reference height, darn it, the camber plate plus the new adapter is thicker than stock, so I lowered it as much as I can, and then I realized the abs sensor bracket is unusually huge and prevents the lower spring perch from going all the way down.  I got the front ride height to be 10mm of the reference setting.  Ohh wellz, close enough.  Next time I’ll have to cut the abs wire bracket and lower the spring perch all the way.  The front ride height will still probably be a few mm too high, I’ll just raise up the rear to compensate.  So with ride height out of the way, I put on the Enkei wheels to see if it clears the coilover, oops the lower spring perch is so low now, it rubs the tire sidewall, f me ! it’s Friday night, I have no place to get a spacer.  I decided to just use the stock Potenza re050 tires for the whole weekend.  Next time I’ll have to use a 5mm spacer.  Maybe the little voice in the back of my head was right, Mazda3 just wasn’t build for racing.

Saturday morning, I get to willow springs, and the track is cold and wet.  My favorite !  This is the only place where the 3 feels somewhat tail happy, haha….  So I set off to learn the track that they call “The Fastest Road in the West”.  Being in big willow feels like a step back in time, they still have the original paintings for the Indy car garages.  The track itself is fairly straight forward, until you get to turn 8,  it’s darn scary, it’s a right hander bend taking at close to 110mph, I take it in top of 5^th gear with a slight lift…  I can feel the load being forced into the outside Potenza RE50 tires in a manner that I’ve never experienced at any other track, needless to say, it kept me on my toes the whole day, one small mishap here can lead to disaster !   Turn 9 is even worse, you are slowing down in top gear, while turning into a highspeed decreasing radius corner while keeping up speed, it’s very tricky to get it right.  In fact, I went off in Session 2, because I used alittle too much track on the outside.  LoL, the images of the Mullerized EVO crash flashed through my eyes !  Turn 1 and 2 were abit problematic in MS3 compare to other cars, as the front end is too heavy, and the tire washes out quickly.  It was difficult to carry speed in those corners.  Hopefully the RA1 will have enough grip to offset the weight.  Later in the day I met Sheng the ex-Asia Formula Renault driver, he’s a instructor at Speed Venture and was driving around in his wifes stock E46 M3.  He hopped in my car for a few laps and gave me some excellent pointers on the track.  Fastest lap of the day was a 1 min. 40 seconds.  That’s pretty good on stock tires, as the TTD class record at NASA for this class is 1 min. 35 seconds.  This should be no problem with Toyo RA1s.

Clint's Turbo Focus, possibly the Fastest Focus in the country !

This Ford GT looks incredible ! However the axle bolt somehow backed out... They had a near catastrophe !

A Noble M12 on slick tires with upgraded suspension. There's always some tuner out there to make your car go faster, if you can swing the price tag !

Insane Bimmer with slicks and force induction !

Mazda owner's hang out spot

Sunday morning I get to the track and it’s dry !  Hooray if only I brought r-compound tires.  By now my stock front tires were gone.  The outside front was severely chunked all the way to the cord, probably from the load it took in turn 2 and turn 8.  I decided to swap it to the inside rear, it will see the least load there.  By 2^nd session, I did a 1min 39sec !  yay !  My joy didn’t last long as the car developed a clunk on the right front corner.  This track is no place to risk mechanic problems, I jacked up the right front and looked around.  Turned out the top nut on the strut was loose, WTF !  the shock coulda came off on track !  I borrowed a impact wrench from Tony the crazy mazda6 showroom stock racer, and tightened it back up.  Good to go again !  My right front tire continues to chunk at an alarming rate now that the track is dry, I swap my last good tire on the outside front.  Over the weekend, I eventually chunked all 4 stock tires, lol……  As I tightend up the lugnut, I stripped yet another wheel stud !  WTF…  This time I’m 100% sure it’s not my fault, Mazda just uses seriously cheap material on the studs (or is it FORD?)  I jam the lug nut in, and hoped it will hold for the last few sessions.  I’ll use less torque on the lugnut next time, and if it happens again, I’ll replace them with ARP studs !

Tony the crazy racer drives a mazda6 at the SCCA showroom stock C class, his car has a full cage, it’s his daily driver, and he drives it to the track to race wheel to wheel ! Nuts ! Humm, what if I put in a cage, and ….

Brian showed up in a stock MS3 with Neova AD08 tires. He's building a MS3 for time attack and had camera crew documenting their progress.

I also met Ricardo, who used to work with Mazda rally/road race programs in the 70s/80s, he brought out his friend’s 1st gen RX7 with a Corvette LS1 motors ! the car is a total sleeper, it looks like a completely stock 1st gen rx7, until you start the engine !

It was interesting to talk to him about the rotary engine, he prefers NA rotarys with bridge/peripheral ports rather than turbocharging them. He says rotaries are simply not reliable when turbocharged at high boost level. I told him about my FD at home, and it was good to know that even Mazda gurus hates the FD sequential turbo vacuumlines, haha…

After Speed Venture, I headed over the to streets of willow to meet up with Sam and his Subaru crew.  Race flias got them pretty good, as everyone was having mechanical problems.  Sam somehow hits a cone on the track and it destroyed his undertray !  I met the tuners at Yami sport, who were respected ecu tuners in the Subaru community, they were interested in developing ecu tunes for Mazdaspeed3.  They explained to me that the newer cars are very complicated to tune due to the ecus having additional compensation fuel/igniton maps.  And it turns out the Mazdaspeed ecu has 16 ignition maps?  Wtf????  No wonder people were having so much problem with ecu flashes on the Mazdaspeed3.

Overall the weekend was very positive, I was able to get to grip with Willow Springs quickly and the new coilover is performing well.  Once I optimized the suspension setting, the car should be even closer to neutral.  Stuff to do before 1^st race March 7^th: cut abs sensor bracket and lower front ride height, loctite upper strut nut, dyno the car and submit to NASA for class approval.  Mount new RA1 tires in the front.  Order H&R 5mm spacers.  Replace wheel stud.  Corner balance the car.

Buttonwillow Raceway Jan. 2009

Buttonwillow Raceway Configuration 13 Clockwise

Nestled amongst fields of in Kern County California is Buttonwillow Raceway.  Many moons ago, Yokut Indians used this area as a meeting place identified by a lone button bush that resembled a willow tree.  Now-a-days Buttonwillow Raceway has become the Mecca of Californian go-fast enthusiast.  The track can be run in many configuration, configuration 13 has become especially popular with which several time attack records have been set.  It is therefore easy to evaluate a car’s performance level using this configuration.  Just for reference purpose, the HKS time attack monster EVO set a Super Lap Battle record of 1 min 43.523 seconds in 2007.  The NASA Time Trial D class, which I’m competing in this year, has a class record of 2min 5.96 seconds.  Having used Toyo RA1 r-compound tire for 2 previous track days, I was anxious to see how my Mazdaspeed3 will stack up to the rest.

Saturday

When I arrived at the track, it was enveloped in a thick cloud of fog, yes fog !  I can hardly see 10 feet in front of me.  I met up with go-fast buddies, Sam/Amy/Jon.  Sam just got hooked on the go-fast crack recently, he’s determined, and is upping the pace rapidly with every track day.  Amy drives the EVO X, she’s one of the few girls that actually takes her car out at the track, more props to her !  Jon has been modifying Subarus and coming to track days for years.  His latest project is a 2009 STi.

My MS3, Jon and Sam's STi

Around lunch time the fog finally cleared.  I hit the track immediately to maximize the track time.  The car is still on soft stock suspension at this point, it rolls around quite a bit.  The max camber without camber plate is at -1.3, which is too little for both the car and the tire.  Never the less, the car felt very planted.  I finally figured out a good line through the “Sweeper” corner, I found a patch of square black asphalt right at the turn in point, it’s a very solid reference point, I just have to move the steering once at the right place (right before the black square), fight the urge to unwind steering mid-corner as the radius change deceivingly, hold the line, and it will take me to apex point perfectly.  Saturday ended without much incident, some car got stuck in the mud due to the semi-wet condition, remember to install your tow-hooks for situations like this!  Afterwards, we went to a local Indian food restaurant and had some delicious curry, and washed it down with Kingfisher “go fast” beer.

Drink go-fast beer to help out the F1 slumdog !

Sunday

Ken's S14

More go-fast buddies arrive at the track.  Ken show up in his drifter turned road racer Nissan S14.  His car has been extensively modified,  it’s powered by a SR20DET engine, and every single suspension arm has been replaced with aftermarket pieces with heim joints.  Eddie shows up in his ubber-$$$ NSX, it has been modified with JRZ suspension, Voltex wing, Toyo R888 tire, Comptech header, Tai-Tec Exhaust, and slew of other exotic go fast brands.  Sam ran into a hiccup with his ECU, and had to call it a day early.

Got Wings?

Continuing with the progress I made the previous day, my times kept getting faster throughout the day.  The new G2X data acquisition w/ lap timer is a great help, I can now cycle through the lap times as soon as I get off track.  The display dash can be configured to display a variety of real-time parameters such as (speed, lap time, diff. to best lap, rpm etc.).  Using the MPH display, it was easy to gauge my exit speed coming out of corners.  I’ve found a peculiar way to drive fast with the stock suspension.  On fast corners, the small steering movements made the car difficult to turn in at the right line.  I found that I could turn in early with just a tiny bit of steering movement which presets the stock suspension, and follows that with my normal steering input, this made the car felt much more  responsive, and I was able to hit the correct line while carrying more speed through the fast corners.  My fastest lap time of the day was a 2 min 6.5 seconds.  I was pleasantly surprised, I expected to be in the 2min 7-8 second range on the stock suspension.  Now that I’m already in the 6 second range, I should be able beat the class record easily come race day with coilover suspension installed and more front neg. camber.

The aftermath..

The front brake pads are completely worn down to the metal, I have to use ebrake to get around town right now, lol…..   Need to get a set of rotors asap, already have a new set of carbotechs on order.  I noticed even with the Motul RBF600, my brake pedal still gets soft toward the end of the day, infact at the end of Sunday it was to the floor.   I think it might be the OEM lines, I’m going to replace those with stainless steel lines.

And now the moment you’ve been waiting for

2 Laps Around Buttonwillow Configuration 13

MS3 4 month 5 track days, my thoughts, and 2 laps around buttonwillow

So now that I’ve owned my 2009 Mazdaspeed3 for about 4 month, it’s got 6,000 miles on the clock, I’ve done 5 track days in preparation for NASA Time Trial Competition next year.  The car has exceeded all my expectations on the track, it has no problem keeping up pace with higher class cars.  In fact, it’s main strength is the incredible amount of torque to pull out of slow corners.

Here are a list of simple modification that’ll make the car much more track friendly

1. Brake Pads and Brake Fluid.  The stock brake pads are like endurance pads, they don’t have that much bite, but stays fairly consistent for normal track day usage.  The stock fluid however will boil within a few laps if you are trying to maximize your braking, which is to be expected with OE fluid.  The 1st thing you should do before going to track is flush out the brake fluid with high temperature brake fluids, I like ATE Superblue or Motul RBF600.  Remember that the racing fluid will absorb moisture quicker, so flush them often.  I flush them before every track day.

For brake pads, i’m a big fan of the Carbotech pads, they have very good bite and modulation, very consistent, and very little dust.  I’m using XP8 Front/AX6 Rear pads, these are race pads and are very noisy on the street (imagine a big bus with bad brakes, that’s what it sounds like on the street).  I recommend their Bobcat pads for the street, I’ve used them in the past in my Subaru Autox car, and they were excellent street pads.
http://www.ctbrakes.com

2. Brake pedal.  The stock pedal are spaced too far apart for easy heel/toe.  On track, it’s all about making the driver’s effort easier and more efficient.  I recommend installing SOK07’s custom replacement gas pedal.  It’s a very nicely machined piece that’s curved to match the OEM pedal.  In my opinion every MS3 track driver should have these, they make heel/toe 100 times easier !
http://www.mazda3forums.com/index.php?topic=99230.0

3. Tires.  The stock tires will hold you back big time on the track.  Get some proper high grip tire if you want to run with the fast pack.  Some of the popular streetable tires are “Dunlop Direzza Starspec”, “Falken Azenis RT615″, “Bridgestone RE01R”, “Advan NEOVA”, “Toyo R1R”.  Or if you can bring a separate set of wheels to the track, you can mount r-compound tires on those, “Toyo RA1, Toyo R888, Nitto NT01R” etc.
I’m using Toyo RA1s 235/40/17, mounted on 17×8 +48 Enkei RC-T4 Tarmac wheels.  This setup will in effect make the gearing shorter, requiring you to shift more around the track, however the car will accelerate quicker, and around buttonwillow this places the car in a better power band IMO.  I’m still testing this area of the car, some of the thing I plan to try are narrower width rear tire for better rotation, and 45 profile front tire.

4. Alignment.  Due to the car’s McPherson strut front suspension, it’s dying for more negative camber.  i was able to get -1.3 camber in the front by loosening the top strut bolts, and pushing it all the way.  Max out the front neg. camber to whatever you can, this will make a world of difference on this car.  I recommend 1/8th toe out front, and 0 toe rear, note due the soft front springs, the car dives quite a bit during braking, and having front toe out makes the front end wonder alittle under hard braking.  This should not be a problem if you have stiffer front springs.  If you prefer more stability under braking use 0 toe front instead.  I plan to test out rear toe out in the future, for more rotation.  The stock setting had quite bit of toe in all around, which makes the car safe (understeer), but not fast !

5. Turn off DSC/TC completely on dry track.  I’ve tested all 3 modes, with DSC/TC on, the car doesnt’ rotate well, not fun !  With just the DSC off (pressing DSC button when the car is on, DSC light illuminates in the cluster), the car felt much more neutral handling.  With DSC/TC completely off (holding DSC button with the engine off, then start engine while holding it down, both DSC and squirely car light illuminates), the car felt even better !
On the wet track, it is faster with DSC/TC on.

And now for the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPag1rq2Vgw

Happy motoring !

Randy