Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project

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Fellow TT racers Marc Sherrin (above) and Todd Earsley (below) were getting quicker all day, and we kept an eye on each other from our friendly NASA TT rivalries. Marc started out fast and lead everyone after the first sessions. He was on only 315mm wide Rivals in his TT1 prepped C6 Z06 (he normally runs a 345mm Hoosier) while Todd was on 265mm Hankook RS3s in his TT1 prepped EVO, and both of them knocked down very respectable laps. Todd has been practicing for this event this year, running NASA TT1 class on his RS-3 street tires just to work on his USCA set-up. That's dedication.



It was a long day, with laps from 10 am until 4:30 pm. Our Mustang struggled with rear grip all day and the car was very easy to step into power-on oversteer. And they had cameras out on course which of course encouraged me to drive like more of a jackass than normal. It felt a little like driving in the wet, but with 447 whp on street tires and a solid axle, what can you expect? I don't know how those guys with 700-1000 whp made do out there - this course definitely took some serious throttle restraint with 200 treadwear tires. Most of the corners were fairly low speed and we didn't have much aero advantage in those. The "switchback" (T2-T4) in the middle of the back section was maybe the only place where our little rear wing was working. Maybe also in the big high speed offset (T6-T7) just before the start/finish line as well.


Fly-by video from the start/finish area. The bark of the Magnaflow exhaust sounds good!

I guess this paid off with the highest trap speeds into the braking zone of turn 1, according to someone who told me they were checking speeds with a radar gun. You can see the cones on the apexes of each turn in the fly-by video above, and the USCA folks also laid cones down in walls to denote brake markers into the big high speed braking zones, of which there were several. They said we were entering T1 at 117 mph (our GPS data showed 114). The next fastest entry was Marc Sherrin's Z06 at 116 mph, also at a power deficit to at least a dozen cars in attendance. What's amazing is there were much more powerful cars in attendance not hitting the same terminal speeds as the two of us - and at least one competitor was SPRAYING NITROUS OXIDE on the straights. You heard that right - Nitrous is allowed in USCA. This is the only series I've ever run on a road course that allows that type of power adder. Crazy, and it gave me some really BAD ideas for future events!


Mike's stock motored Miata (left) didn't need nitrous to best his LSx powered GT2 class competitor on track (right) by 1.5 seconds

One of the tricks I had learned running here in 2012, and that I do regularly in Time Trial competition (and many W2W racers do in qualifying sessions) on certain tracks where it works, is where I would throw away every other lap by taking a very different line into the last corner. This would add distance but also allow for a super late apex which then helped set-up a faster corner exit into the next lap, and this paid off with a savings of a couple of tenths each time this was used. I also knew where to use the curbing, and how much - many competitors surprisingly kept a wide berth of the curbing, which was a "chopped" style of FIA curbing, but was still usable with decent dampers on the car. It didn't even touch my splitter, so the curbing serrations weren't that tall. The USCA was smart and set-up cones to denote the track limits, and we used the curbing to full effect where we could but I stayed out of the grass where they hadn't. I didn't want a corner worker to call in a DSQ after fighting with wiggling cones in the Speed Stop on Saturday.



Todd Earsley started out in his first session at 42.131 but ended up with fast laps in the 40.xx range for sessions 2-6 and easily outpaced his AWD class competitor in a GTR on the Hot Lap Challenge. His best was a 40.268 sec lap on the 6th and final session, and I got well out of his way on his fastest lap. He bested his AWD competitor in 2 of 3 driving competitions (Speed Stop and Hot Lap) but lost in the autocross and design competition, and ended up tying for the lead on points. USCA settles all ties with the design score, so he ended up in 2nd overall. He's not giving up and will be at another USCA qualifier to try to get that SEMA invite!

Full Event Results: http://ultimatestreetcarassociation....ll_Classes.pdf

Marc Sherrin ended the day in 2nd place in the Hot Lap challenge with a 40.236 second best, and that was after only taking laps in 3 of the 6 possible sessions due to a front rotor that came apart. It was a 2-piece StopTech rotor that got a little too thin and showed a massive crack and split apart in his 3rd session. Up until then he and I were battling for the Hot Lap lead in the GT3K class, after he led after the first session. If we would have been able to get him 335mm Rivals (which were on National backorder) and with more laps available he could have fought for top time. His strong showing in the Hot Lap challenge (20 points) and solid finishes in Speed Stop and Autocross (12 points each) led him to a 6th place finish overall in GT3K class, with 82 points. Not too shabby for an otherwise stock Z06 with a built LS7 motor!



So I mentioned that first session, where I was mired in traffic. Luckily they used our best times from that session and each successive session to grid us in order, just like we do in NASA TT. So I started in P2 behind Ryan Matthews for the 2nd session and after a couple of laps of dogging the big white Camaro he pulled offline and pointed me by. Then I laid down a series of 40.xx laps with a best of 40.115 seconds. The cool morning air was working for the rear tires, keeping them from overheating too quickly.


Terry playing around with Lou in the Camera Car C7 during Session 3

In Session 3 I got a little quicker before spending the latter half of that session goofing around with Lou Gigliotti and the camera car C7 Corvette. I had already banked a 40.052 lap but that boiled the rear tires, so after I came back out for the second half of the session I was 2-3 seconds off my previous pace when I was lapping with Lou. I spent time both in front of and behind the C7, trying to get some on-car camera time, and pushed the Mustang's very hot tires as hard as I dared - which you can see in the video above. Almost drove off track on two occasions and our lines were so different that I kept running up on the back of Lou in a couple of corners and had to back off. This is probably where I damaged the rear tires a bit, but like I've said, shove a camera in my face and I drive like an idiot, heh.


Left: This truck had some SQUAT in the rear on corner exit. Right: Doing some lead-follow with Lou's C7 camera car


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The sun came out and drove up track temps in session 4 and I slowed down to a 40.166 best. Session 5 was much of the same but I got a hair quicker with a 40.026 best, only 3 hundredths quicker than session 3. I was beginning to think we'd never break out of the 40 second zone, but the AiM's predictive lap timer kept popping up with a 39.9 every once in a while, but then I'd blow it in Turn 5 - which was the toughest corner to master due to a lower grip surface and an off camber slope. I had to keep the rear from sliding too much in this corner, as oversteer would overheat the rears and they would then lose grip badly. I was also putting a lot of heat into the front brakes, but kept pushing my braking into Turn 1 later and later during each session.


I never stopped pushing until Ryan Matthews came off track for the last time - that Camaro was FAST

By session 6 somehow I was in the overall lead, but not by much. Ryan Matthews had laid down a blistering 40.119, and that was too close for comfort (I was in the 40.0 range by then). Thanks to my faster times I was gridded P1 and out first in sessions 2-6, which let me set the pace on the out lap and gave me clean air for my first several laps. We got into a pattern where where I'd take 4-5 hot laps, 1 cool down lap, then dive into the hot pits and park, check competitors' times and let my tires cool for a couple of minutes.

I would talk to Jason and Amy, they'd check the tire pressures, brake temps, tire temps, and then wait for a gap to send me back out in the second half of the session. Invariably a big portion of the field would quit early, about halfway through each session, then I could go out for more clear laps. This was a good strategy and with such a short lap time (40 seconds) the out lap and cool down laps didn't eat up substantial amounts of track time.


It seemed like the fastest 2nd gen Camaros in the world were all here this weekend!

I knew the car had a 39 second lap in it so I planned on trying to put in a flier on my first couple of laps in the last session of the day. The attrition had taken its toll by days' end so USCA combined the two Expert groups for our last session, but I was still gridded P1 and the first car out, and got my clear laps as planned.


Being this event was in my home town I had lots of friends there giving me advice all weekend

Jason and I talked strategy before the last session, and he and Amy both kept me calm and my mind clear all weekend. We had a plan to use a bluetooth phone call via MySync in the Mustang to set-up 2 way comms, like we have done before in TT events - but only if things got really close and I wasn't finding any time. I was ready to take that call, but it wasn't needed because I went out first in session 6 and laid down the only 39 second lap of the weekend.


In-car video of my fastest lap in the final Expert track session, session 6

Once I saw that 39.77 lap on the SOLO I knew our lap goal was met - faster than even the AiM had predicted. Man, I was PUMPED and Brandon had to bleep out my voice for the entire cool down lap when he edited the above video. The official lap time was 39.803 seconds, which was close enough. As soon as I saw that 39 lap I immediately took a cool down and dove into the hot pits to wait. Jason and Amy were high fiving me, but it wouldn't be over until we saw time expire and if nobody beat that time. If Ryan managed a faster lap time I was ready - strapped in, engine idling, tires cooling, and ready to go back out and look for more time. Where I could find it, I had no idea...



About 10 minutes into the 15 minute final session, after about 4 minutes of waiting in the hot pits, we saw Ryan Matthews' Camaro come into the hot pits.... and turn left into the garage area!!! Jason looked at me and yelled, "Its OVER! You won it!" WAAAHOOO! The rest of the field came in within the next lap as well, but there were still about four minutes left in the final session and a completely empty track. Amy said "put it in the garage", but I told her that it would be a shame to waste an empty track with TV cameras looking at nothing. I went back out and took some victory laps with the ass of the Mustang hanging out so much that it was good enough for the drift circuit. I was hooting and hollering, drifting and sliding around, so excited to have finally won ONE dang event that weekend!!! We cannot show this video at all because the audio would be one continuous censored BLEEP, hehe!


Each driver's fastest session times are shown in the chart above

Looking back in hindsight it appears that my best lap from all the way back in session 2 was just good enough for the Hot Lap overall win, but it wasn't at all obvious to us at the time, so we fought hard all day long to break into the 39s. I took close to 90 laps on Sunday hunting for that lap, but we see now that the fastest laps on these BFG Rivals were taken just like on the Hoosier A6s - they came within the first 2 laps of going out on track with cool tires, or within the first 2 laps after my regular mid-session break cool-downs.

Seems that the BFG tires liked to get their best time when semi-cool, yet the rear tires needed some "slip angle" to get the best out of them. It was tough to balance tire heat with the right amount of tire slip. We had dialed the final tire pressures in at 31psi front and 33 psi rear (hot) on our best laps and the rear wing was set at maximum AoA (about 12 degrees). We dumped the rear shocks' compression to help with corner exit and ran about -3° front camber. My driving technique was simple: keep pushing the braking zones, use all of the available track and curbing allowed, stay off the grass, don't EVER go off track or spin, and focus on keeping the rear tires on the limit of their friction circle.



The chart above shows our placing in the GT3K class, which was quicker than the GT2K and AWD classes. You will notice on the "per session" chart, two above, that Brian Hobaugh had only one session with lap times. This was because he shattered his driveshaft about 5 laps into session 1, miring his times at 7th fasted for the class (see below, right).


Left: Ryan Matthews' DSE-prepped Camaro was 2nd quickest overall. Right: Hobaugh's driveshaft 'sploded during the first track session, which sucks

Danny Popp had no Hot Lap times, due to a CV failure from Saturday. Attrition played a part in the overall placements and worked in our favor. Tucker and Finch ended up 4th and 5th, a half second back from Matthews and Sherrin. This Hot Lap's final ranking ended up being a huge boost for me in the overall points battle for GT3K class, but we didn't realize that until later.

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After I pulled in following my "victory laps" in the final Expert track session there was a camera crew in our garage. I apparently talked to those guys while adrenaline was still pouring through my veins, and I hope I was at least vaguely coherent. I remember nothing of this interview - these pictures don't bring back any memory whatsoever. None. I have no idea what they asked nor what I said! It was probably some Ricky Bobby "I felt like I was in a space ship" mumblings.


Here's pictures from an interview I have absolutely no memory of - thanks, adrenaline!

After we had finished with the Hot Lap battle we waited for the USCA folks to tally the scores after 3 days of competitions. I remember sitting with Jason in our garage and trying to calm down, and I remember Sofi showing up for a while. Amy and Jason and I tried to figure out how we placed, assuming I might have jumped into 2nd or 3rd overall, based on the guesses of where I ended up on Saturday's Autocross, Speed Stop and Design competitions. They purposefully don't show everyone the rankings for each event in real time, so we tried to have spotters watching times and keeping a running score as we went, as best we could.



While we waited Amy and Brandon set-up a group picture of the 8 Vorshlag entrants and cars, other than Marc's C6 which was already loaded up in the trailer for the tow home. This was the result, below - a great picture! Seven cars and eight local drivers who all had the times of their lives! Every one of them said they had a ton of fun at this event, even the folks not battling to win their class.



Michael Minor's nearly stock Miata did well and tied for 1st in the GT2K class. He lost the tie on the design award score - bummer! Shannon, Heather, Jan, Jon and Jerry were all fighting amongst themselves, and compared their times all weekend. Each of them are HPDE drivers that have since found a new reason to hone their autocross and track skills and each vowed to enter USCA events in the future. Jan, Shannon and Heather got the star treatment and we will likely see their many interviews when this episode of the TV show airs - more likely than we will see mine, heh. Marc was excited to have finished 3rd in the Hot Lap Challenge with a broken brake rotor and on skinnier tires than he wanted to show up on, too. My main regret of the weekend was not finding a car for Amy to enter, as she could have fought hard for a win in GT2K or AWD classes, with a bit of luck.



Event announcer Dennis asked to park all of the cars in front of the Optima trailer for a group picture, so after our Vorshlag group photo we motored on over and parked in a big grid. The crowd of entrants and spectators started to gather and we all anxiously awaited the final event & class results as well as the four coveted Optima/SEMA invites.




Jimi went over the closing announcements of the event and talked a bit about the TV series that would air on MAVTV covering the 10 USCA/Optima qualifiers plus the Vegas Optima Invitational. They gave out the spirit of the event award (1 invite of 4 to be awarded) and then they started the individual class awards (1st-3rd for each competition).



They did the GT2K and AWD classes, handing out winner certificates for each event: Autocross, Speed Stop, Design and Hot Lap. It was here that we found out that our friends Todd and Michael, who had both won 2 of 3 driving competitions in their classes, ended up both losing the overall class wins with TIES for 1st in class - due to their design award scores. Doh! That cost them both invites to SEMA, which was the suck. I figured my design score (which I had no idea of) wouldn't help my overall ranking either.



Next up came GT3K awards: 1st through 3rd place certificates for each event, and most of these were a shock to me. I was awarded 2nd fastest in the Autocross, when I thought I had only scored 4th. A 3rd in the Speed Stop was also a welcome surprise, and that got my hopes up a little. Maybe I will break into the top 3? Then our Design ranking of 4th, yet Hobaugh's badass Camaro wasn't in the top 3?? That was a shock. The BFG Hot Lap Challenge win was already pretty well known, as they had live Race Monitor times up all day. By now Amy, Jason and I were frantically redoing the math - where did we finish?!?!?! Maybe we got 2nd overall, which would be great! They started to call out the overall GT3K class winners.

They called off 3rd place: Brian Hobaugh.

Wait... what?!?! He was third. I figured he was the winner... How in the...

Then they called off 2nd place: Brian Finch.

What in the.... I stood up and looked around at Jason and Amy and silently mouthed, "WTF?" My mind was spinning - we hadn't done the math right. I thought that Hobaugh would be 1st and Finch was 2nd, but we got their order backwards and still left out the actual winner. Who in Hell did we miss?! Did I end up taking 4th here, or did I....

No.

NO WAY!

I looked at Jimi, he cracked a knowing smile, and the only possible conclusion now became clear.

They called the GT3K class winner: Terry Fair.

BOOM! I honestly nearly fell over in shock. This was such an unexpected surprise of epic proportions! I had only won the Hot Lap competition, how did I win the whole event?? I was hoping they wouldn't change their minds while I shoved my stuff into Todd's hands and headed up onto the Optima trailer.



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I was still in disbelief as I climbed the stairs. No way this is happening! Jimi Day congratulated me on the overall win and asked me if I'd be in SEMA in Novem... "OH HELL YES!" I didn't even let him finish the question. We would have a lot of work ahead of us to get the Mustang presentable for the SEMA show, tons of testing to fine tune the street tire set-up, and this meant I couldn't sell the car before November, but so be it. The weight of that huge chunk of billet aluminum that the folks at Ridetech CNC machined into the class winner trophies sure felt good in my hands. Its sitting in our lobby and I crack a wide smile every time I see it.



The overall lead was by 7 points, so I could have slipped down a spot in one event and still won. Four solid finishes with steady top 4 placings just added up for the win. The Design Challenge and Hot Lap Challenge scores saved me the most. People were congratulating me below the Optima trailer, but I was speechless. They shuffled the class winners over behind the trailer for more interviews with the TV show's host, Chad.



After a few takes (due to outside noises) we finally got this 20 second interview in the can and I stumbled back to the garage - to see the REAL star of this event, the big red Mustang! I cannot thank our crew here at Vorshlag enough for all of the hard work they put into this car over the past FOUR YEARS to get it where it is today. If a no-talent-hack like me can win against a field with this much talent and top dollar iron, then we must have made one helluva car!



We came up with a package of the right parts that was just easy enough to drive, with a touch of downforce when it mattered and just enough power from the stock 5.0 Coyote engine to get it done. This set-up isn't even remotely perfected for street tires, but I guess it was good enough this time. The Mustang was rock solid reliable all weekend, even when we dumped in E85 ethanol. The brakes worked through 3 days of abuse (after we replaced the very worn front rotors that I let slip by after the last track event), and the Carbotech XP20 compound just laughed at the abuse I threw at them. The stock clutch was solid, and the Vorshlag/Moton/Whiteline suspension handled everything we threw at it and did so with ease.



The most amazing thing was: these 200 treadwear BFG Rival street tires were fast enough that I beat my best GTA time from this track in 2012 when it was on 315mm Hoosiers! Even if you count my un-timed best 39.8 lap from 2012, we were still quicker on the BFG streets here. I guess we have refined the overall suspension and aero package THAT much to overcome a grip deficiency to gumball A6 compound Hoosier race tires. Wow. Sure, I did some damage to the outer tread blocks on the rear 335 Rivals, but most of that was done in the closing "victory" laps of the last session - where I kept the rear tires spinning through most of 3 laps, heh. We flipped these tires on the rear wheels and ran them at another event a few weeks later without a worry. Other than the outer tread wear the tread depth left over after 3 days of brutal abuse was remarkable and I won't bat an eye about using Rivals again at the Optima Invitational. Look for more street tire testing from Vorshlag soon!



When we went to go pull the Mustang back in the trailer after the USCA event on Sunday night the battery to the winch was dead (someone left the interior lights on overnight) so we had to push it up the ramps and a series of moving wood planks we use to keep the splitter from dragging (thanks for the help guys). We've since upgraded to a set of 2-piece foam Race Ramps that are twice as long as before, so the car drives into our rather tallish trailer easily now.

After we were all loaded up the whole Vorshlag contingent of 15+ people met for dinner and Amy and I headed home, utterly exhausted yet elated. There were more events coming up and we had to get ready for them both. We had a new focus for the rest of this year, other than just doing well in NASA TT3: we had to get a second set-up tested and perfected for street tire use in USCA... because we were going to the big Optima Invitational! That is going to be SO much fun. Amy has already reserved a condo with multiple rooms for the week of SEMA and the weekend after. Lots of mods to do, lots to test.

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Upcoming Competition Events YOU Can Enter!

Our next events are fast approaching, and some are crucial for testing our TT3 set-up and/or for developing new parts to sell. Click on the links for the events below (in the dates) to see about coming out to watch, or better yet - to enter your own car!

• NASA @ Texas World Speedway April 26-27th. This could be one of the last ever TWS events, as this speedway is slated to be parceled off into residential home plots. We have this NASA event TWS in April and another on October 10-11th to set and lock down TT3 track records for TWS - possibly forever. This track's high speeds are also good testing ground for NASA Nationals at Road Atlanta in August. It will be a BATTLE as we already have a record SEVEN entries in TT3 class! I sure hope that new wing helps...
• GTA at Road Atlanta, May 9-10th. We loved running with the GTA guys in 2012 at TMS and this is the first time we will have had a chance to run with them again, at this East Coast GTA Pro / Drift event. We will be testing a new aero set-up and learning this new-to-me track for NASA Nationals while also trying to win the Unlimited RWD class at the GTA event. There are some serious GTA cars attending so we might be lucky to get into the top 3, who knows?
• SCCA Texas Pro Solo at Mineral Wells, May 2-4. Due to a conflict (below) we cannot be there one day so we did not enter this event, but Vorshlag is hosting the Friday Night Welcome Party. Amy and I will be manning the grill and talking to local and out of state autocrossers that show up for this drag-race-start, side-by-side two day autocross event. If you are local, and even if you're not, PLEASE sign up for this one at the link here.
• 24th Dallas Spring Nationals Classic Car Show hosted by the Sam Pack Ford Auto Group, May 3rd at the Sam Pack Car Museum in Famers Branch, TX. We will be at this event with our Mustang - yes, we're missing a Pro Solo for a car show. BUT... there will be a 2015 Mustang at this show, and we've been promised "a closer look" since we'll be an event sponsor there. This is a recon mission, pure and simple! Come out and see the show, and enter for only $25. More details at this link.

What's Next?

That was a big event post, so thanks for sticking with me on that massive post-race recap. It was the biggest competition win of my life to date, so that might explain the length, heh. Again, we should see the TV episode covering this event around August 15th on MAVTV, and I'll share the YouTube link for the show after its released. I'm STILL pumped about this one...



The new MCS doubles are on and have been run at 2 events already. We also have a new rear wing in the works that we will show at the end of our next update, a massive 14" chord x 72" wide carbon fiber wing made by AJ Hartman Racing (formerly known as Fulcrum Aeroworks). Vorshlag is now a dealer for AJ Hartman aero products and we will be developing wing mounting packages for a number of new cars - starting with the 2010-14 Mustang of course. The set of our S197 Moton Club Sport remote reservoir doubles is also still for sale, and I've lowered the priced a couple hundred bucks. Had some solid bites but nobody took the plunge yet. We've also now got a new rear adjustable height spring platform solution to work for the S197 Mustangs, which can go with this set of Moton shocks or anything from MCS. And yes, the old APR GTC-300 wing and uprights we built will be for sale in our Clearance page soon - I'll post it up when it is ready to be for sale, so stop PMing me about it already!



Tune in next time when I cover the Track Guys HPDE event at TWS, where Amy drove the Mustang over two days. We also competed in a local SCCA autocross on street tires... in a down pour. Lots of splashing and sliding around. And I'll briefly talk about Vorshlag Kart Fight 3 - a karting challenge we hosted recently with 38 entrants one night at Dallas Karting Complex. It was a tough fight for the coveted Kart Fight trophy, but it went to a deserving winner and fellow NASA TT racer.

Until next time,