continued from above
Time Trial Results for Nov 3, 2013: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N...e%20Trials.pdf
Seems like all the of the car breakage calmed down and nothing went wrong on Sunday, thankfully. Times generally dropped significantly from Saturday, except for me, where I ran nearly identical 1:55.2 best laps (either blocked or with serious brake fade) on both days, only a couple of hundredths quicker on Saturday. As I said above, KenO reset the TTB record to 1:57.603 on Sunday. Another E46 M3 customer, TTB racer Jason Covington had his personal best with a 1:58.606 (which would have been near the TTB record last year). Jeff Tan had a personal best, Amy had a personal best, and a
total of four TT records were broken (TT3, TTB, TTE, and TTF) this year. It was beautiful weather all weekend, with high of 76°F on Saturday and a high of 68°F on Sunday, with some brisk 40 degree mornings. Olof and Brandon took off by 2:30 pm on Sunday and Amy and I were loaded up and on the road by 4 pm.
Big thanks to our guys from Vorshlag for coming out all weekend, as there's always something we need help with on our car or customers who need a hand. We had tons of people come by, look at the Mustang, ask for help, borrowing tools, etc. Within TT we have a good group that gets along well and help each other out, even within the same class; Jeff asked for a look at some tire rubbing issues and I gave him tire pressure advice, too. Great event put on by the folks of NASA Texas once again, with some W2W class carnage Saturday but clean racing on Sunday, and no contact in TT. It was a close call on Sunday with me and the TT1 car, but luckily I managed to keep from slamming into him, with inches to spare. I will definitely watch my gaps next year, and if I am in a similar car that has to get the fast laps in early but behind a "faster" car that takes 3-5 laps to get up to speed, I am going to really hang back in the warm up lap to build a big gap. We're not supposed to do that, but you know what, we're also not supposed to intentionally block or brake check drivers behind us, either. Anything I can do to avoid contact, I will do.
Left: Plaid Print Yuri blowing a kiss to the camera. Right: Jason running in TTB in his E46 M3
By the end of the day I just felt fortunate that I
didn't wreck the Mustang into another car on two separate occasions, and just felt lucky to win the class and 2 Hoosier tires each day. In the end, with all of the new track layouts, mistakes, challenges and hurdles to jump this year we still somehow managed to attain our goal of setting track records at all 8 track configurations on the 2013 NASA Texas schedule, which was a big win for Vorshlag.
New NASA TT3 track records set in the Vorshlag Mustang in 2013:
- Motorsports Ranch Houston (2.38 CW), 1:41.544, Jan 19, 2013
- Motorsports Ranch Cresson (3.1 CCW), 2:22.753, March 17, 2013
- Texas World Speedway (2.9 CW), 1:51.530, April 21, 2013
- New Orleans Motorsports Park (2.75 CW North Course), 1:50.535, May 5, 2013
- Hallet Motor Racing Circuit (CCW), 1:24.365, June 23, 2013
- Hallet Motor Racing Circuit (CW), 1:26.786, June 23, 2013
- Texas World Speedway (2.9 CCW), 1:50.675, Sept 22, 2013
- Eagles Canyon Raceway (2.5 CCW), 1:52.250 Nov 2, 2013
All of those records will eventually be broken, and I feel that the Mustang in its current form (it got faster after every round up updates in 2013) could beat all of those lap times if we raced it in TT3 again next year. We took 13 of 14 possible TT3 wins in the NASA Texas series, with that one 2nd place loss at MSR-Cresson where I ran out of sessions, fuel, and talent.
This left me with
1390 out of 1400 possible points in TT3 class, which was the highest of any driver in TT in our region, out of the 100+ unique TT drivers we had in Texas this year. With the 6 race drops we get, that made for a perfect 800 point season, with Amy placed 3rd in TT3 at 553 points, having missed several events. Nationals was a bit of a mess (3rd place out of 11) but I learned two valuable lessons: don't make massive aero changes before Nationals
and bring new sticker tires for each day of competition at Nationals. Overall it was a great year for us in this car and I am looking forward to another healthy NASA Texas schedule next year, hopefully starting in the
ST2 BMW and switching to the 2015 Mustang by April or May? I hope the 2015 Mustang is as solid, reliable and easy to drive as this 2011 GT was.
What's Next: Sell Both Mustangs
In our next installment I will talk about taking the TT3 Mustang to True Street to try to diagnose the part throttle issues, where they made a discovery about to the actual issue. This led us to replace some electronics at our shop, which seemed to fix the issue once and for all. I still want test this fix on track, but this coming weekend's ECR Toy Run event might get cancelled due to snow or ice. Low of 22, high of 33, high chance of snow... not the best track testing conditions. :/
Both this
2011 GT as well as our
2013 GT are
still for sale, just awaiting the right buyers. In the spirit of Cyber Monday I am
lowering the prices on both cars today, so if you were interested before please check the linked ads to see the new asking prices. I've got to move these two cars before the end of the year, so give me a call. I cannot afford to just give either car away, but things are about to get drastic if they stick around any longer. Please, don't make me de-mod the TT3 Mustang... but if the car is still here in a few weeks it will have to happen.
The crew pulled the front of the car apart one last time after the ECR race weekend and finished up some unfinished business, painting everything that was still bare metal and perfecting a few details, which will be covered in my next post. Late next week I'm off to Indy (BRRR!) to attend the 2014 PRI show, joined by 2 other Vorshlag team members, then we will come back and get back to work on several long term custom projects here at the shop. There are some other small changes and new Mustang parts I will show off in the next post, such as the motor mounts we put in after TWS and the throttle body replacement.
Cheers,
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