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 5th 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 2nd 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 1st race March 7th: 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.
Tags: Willow Springs
Track Stories | Randy | 
February 22, 2009 2:07 pm
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