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Every year my sister Mia gives me Swedish Fish in my Christmas stocking. This year I’m in Florida (I’ll be racing Sebring next week), and I won’t get any candy. Instead of getting something Swedish, I’ll give something.

The other day, Torbjörn Linderson (I’ll call him Torb hereafter), from Sweden, asked a question on the Miata Race Prep group about aero modifications vs weight and should he do them. The question started vague, and with limited information I said do the wing, based on the fact that in every racing simulation I’ve run, a car with a wing beats a car without a wing. Another person with more knowledge and less science said that a low-drag wing (like my 9LR) doesn’t do anything until 80-90 mph, and that he wouldn’t use one.

That’s an interesting statement, and it begs the question, at what speed does aero start working? To see if aero helps at a lower speeds, I’ll do a quick simulation in OptimumLap. Using a stock Miata (with windows open) and some round numbers: .50 Cd, -.50 Cl, 2450 lbs, 1.1g static grip. I’ll run this car through a low-speed corner (T1 Pineview) and it goes 66.25 mph. Now I’ll use a Miata with airdam (no splitter) and 9LR wing for .05 Cd and +0.68 Cl (OptimumLap reverses the lift number). Now the car goes through the corner at 66.80 mph, a difference of .55 mph.

You might be thinking that half of a mile-per-hour is nothing, but it works out to 104.58% more grip, which is not nothing. But I’m citing a car modified with airdam and wing, not just simply the addition of a wing and no front aero. But at least we answered the question of, is aero useful at less than 80 mph, and the answer is yes.

Torb gave us more details on his car and the rules he races under, and that made things even more interesting. Blog post interesting.

The rules and the car

Torb races under the Roadsport C rules, which are a bit like NASA ST/TT rules, using kgs/hp with allowances for minor tuning. Without getting too deep in the details, his car would be at the class limit with 147 hp and 2367 lbs. That’s a pretty decent Miata, right between NASA TT5 and TT6.

The rules allow aero mods that don’t protrude from the body as seen from above. This is a lot of leeway, and would allow him to use an airdam, or an OEM-style front end with a splitter, as long as the splitter doesn’t protrude beyond the front bumper. He can also use a spoiler and flat bottom for free. So right away I’m thinking this: build a Supermiata with a flat floor! I’m a big fan of spoilers myself, and that may yet be the conclusion, but let’s move on.

The rules don’t allow him to change the roofline shape, and so a chop top or fastback are not allowed. But he could remove the rear window from a OEM hardtop and get the slightly better lift value of the chop top.

But Torb is interested in a wing. The wing needs to be mounted within the shape of the body as seen from the top, which is about 60″ (same as my wing). The wing needs to be 2″ below the roofline, and I can’t simulate that and will just use the roofline. The end plates can measure up to 10×10 square, which is within an inch of mine. The major problem with a wing is that it incurs a a 5% weight penalty.

As the car sits, Torb can just squeeze below min weight limit. However, it would be really easy to add weight. Starting with a 40-lb lead-acid battery instead of the 2-lb race battery he has now. The wing and stanchions are about 20 lbs, and a flat floor made out of metal could easily bring the weight up, and ballast would do the rest.

Front end options

Torb needs to keep the front-end aero within the lines of the stock bodywork, when viewed from above. In addition, if he adds rear downforce, he needs to balance that in front. The two obvious front-end options are a vertical airdam, and an OEM bumper with a splitter that extends only to the front bumper.

That’s exactly how my car is currently set up, see the pic below. In addition, I have a splitter extension I can add to this, it bolts on underneath. This can be easily adjusted so that the length is flush with the front bumper, when viewed from above, or to any length I want.

Such a front end would have more drag, but also more downforce, than an airdam. I haven’t tested this myself, but CFD from Hancha/Velox came to this conclusion. Compared to the airdam, they said it would have .01 more drag and .07 more downforce. These seem like reasonable numbers, I’l use them.

Swedish tracks

Torb sent me details on the three tracks he races on. If you follow the links below, you’ll see different cars with lap times which lists the power/weight ratio of the car, and what kind of tires the car is using. Hallelujah for good data!

• Kinnekulle Ring is a short 1.28 miles, lots of flowing corners, very little braking. The best Miata lap on slicks is just under a minute. At the other end of the spectrum, a 1990 Miata with 19 lbs/hp lapped at 1:06.17, which is another useful data point. So far this is looking a bit like Lime Rock, which is slightly longer (1.47 miles) and faster.
• Mantorp Park is 1.93 miles, with a long uphill straight. Watch a Civic K20 do this in 1:26.55. It’s a bit like Thunderbolt without the chicanes, but the speeds look more like Summit Point.
• Gelleråsen Arena is 1.57 miles and Torb does around a 1:17 lap. The track has three 2nd-gear corners where aero wouldn’t do much, but it starts end ends with a complex of of 3rd gear corners where aero would help. Waterford Hills is 1.4 miles and tighter, but this is probably the closest approximation.

Car builds and simulations

There are four configurations worth testing here. I’ll name them so it’s easy to follow.

1. OEM – Open windows destroy a Miata’s drag and lift numbers. I’ll be kind and call this Cd .50 and Cl -.50, 147 hp, 2367 lbs.
2. SuperM – I don’t have real numbers for the Supermiata formula of an airdam and spoiler. I do have comparative data from my car, plus drag and lift numbers from cars that have similar aero. I’ll call this Cd .50, Cl .40. 147 hp, 2367 lbs.
3. Sp-SM – As above, but with an OEM front end and splitter (not the airdam). Cd .51, Cl .47. 147 hp, 2367 lbs.
4. Ad-Wing – This version uses an airdam (no splitter) and wing. This is actual data from my car with OEM hard top. Cd .49, Cl .68, 147 hp, 2485 lbs. This version should also use a flat floor, since Torb needs to add weight anyway, but I don’t know what that would do for drag and lift, so I won’t factor that in.
5. Sp-Wing – As above, but swap the airdam for an OEM front end with a splitter. Cd .50, Cl .75. 147 hp, 2485 lbs.

In all cases I’ll use 1.3g grip. Torb sees spikes higher than that, and the class limit is 1.4g, but in steady cornering 1.3g seems a good value.

At Lime Rock (which I’m using to simulate Kinnekulle), the average speed is around 90 mph, and you can see that the airdam-wing setup is almost a half second faster than the airdam-spoiler version. In addition, the OEM front end with a splitter is another .1 seconds faster.

It’s not really worth mentioning stock aero, because it sucks. All of the aero options beat the OEM bodywork by over two seconds.

At a lower speed track, like Waterford (which I’m using to represent Gelleråsen) average speeds are around 70 mph. But it’s pretty much the same relationship with the wing coming out on top, despite the extra weight. The gap isn’t as great, however.

Another thing worth noting is that on the cars with a spoiler, the OEM front with the non-protruding splitter is .12 seconds faster than the one with the airdam. It’s weird that it’s the same time difference at both tracks, but the airdam is always slower. I’m not sure this would bear out in the real world, though.

Oh shit, OL has Swedish tracks

I went looking for more track maps and OptimumLap has seven Swedish tracks! Among them is Torb’s home track, Linköping, and his favorite track, Kinnekulle Ring. I re-ran the simulations again, and while the results were the same for Kinnekulle Ring, at Linköping the wing versions did not win!

Conclusions

In all but one of the scenarios, the wing wins. But that’s making the assumption that the wing is not affected by mounting it 2″ below the roofline, and it might be. And even though this is a simulation based on scientifically acquired data, it is a simulation. YMMV.

If this was my car, I might choose an adjustable spoiler, primarily because I’m lazy. The car is already at the class limit, and a spoiler is less work. The wing is more expensive, and would require modifying the car. Although that would provide an opportunity to use a flat floor, and add ballast where I wanted it. If Torb adds a flat floor to the spoiler version, he needs to remove weight to offset that. If that proves difficult, the wing is the obvious choice.

Torb had also asked about using a hardtop without a rear window, and if you’ve read my results on that, the answer is yes if you’re not using a wing, and no if you are using a wing. I don’t know what the answer is with a spoiler, but it would be fun to A/B test it.

Regardless of what happens at the back, I would use an OEM front end with an adjustable splitter and vertical end plates, rather than an airdam. While the airdam has slightly less drag, the adjustability and extra downforce could be more useful. It’s also easier to load on a trailer with less overhang. And let’s face it, everyone can use .12 seconds.

Last year’s Pineview Challenge Cup had a unique (and flawed) set of rules, using only tire treadwear to class cars. The “Race” class was any tire under 200 UTQG, the “Track” class was for any 200, and the “Street” class was for 300+. On the plus side, we had no rules lawyering or protests throughout the season, and it was easy to manage three classes. On the downside, the rules didn’t take into account power, weight, tire width, or the fact that there’s a great deal of variation within each tire class. In the end, the racing wasn’t always close.

We need a better set of rules for 2020, and so I took it upon myself to do some research. First, I put all of the lap times from the Pineview races into a spreadsheet, and noticed they fell into four groups. I figured that whatever rules we come up with, they should place people into four groups.

• Under 1:14 – Just three people were in this group.
• 1:14-1:17.2 – Fast cars and fast drivers, but only five people in this group.
• 1:17.8-1:19.7 – Fourteen people, diverse cars and drivers, close racing.
• 1:20.1+ Six people, some newcomers, a wider spread of times.

I then ran hundreds of simulations in OptimumLap at Pineview Run, using different cars, power/weight ratios, tire grip, and aero. I put all of them into a spreadsheet, and analyzed the data. Let’s take a look at what I did for a Miata with various power and grip values.

You can see that tire grip is the most important factor. For example, a Spec Miata on 1.3g tires will beat a K-swapped Miata on 1.2g tires. The lbs/hp ratio is also very important, especially as you add more grip. But on shitty 1.0g tires, power gives diminishing returns, and cars with better than a 12:1 ratio are pretty evenly matched.

Existing time trial rules

With this data on hand, I then reviewed the rules of nine time trial series to see if we could leverage them, and learn how others are doing it. Here’s a quick synopsis.

• NASA PT/TT – The old NASA rules listed and ranked every car and trim level, and everything you might do to it. It seemed like a fair system, especially how they ranked tire compounds and width. But they abandoned it for a reason.
• NASA ST/TT – The newer NASA TT rules are much easier, and seem very fair, based mostly on lbs/hp. My main gripes are 1) everyone needs to dyno their car on a Dynjojet. 2) Many common modifications are not allowed. Why not just make them a point value instead of making them illegal? 3) The new tire system favors race tires, not tire choice.
• SCCA Autocross – 36 classes and a 387-page rule book?! I didn’t wade into this tome; this is the exact opposite of what I want to do.
• SCCA Time Trials – I’ve got some issues with how cars are classed. In the “Sport” category, all Miatas from 1990-2015 are in the same class. If you know Miatas, you know how stupid that is. If you’re going to do that, you may as well put the BRZ/FRS in the same category as a 1990 Miata. Which they fucking did. I should have stopped there, but kept reading and found that in the “Tuner” category, they put E30s in with S2000s and ND2 Miatas. Ha ha ha ha. Anyway, there are five main categories with subdivisions that make 20 classes. The stock-ish categories are based on a car list, while in the modified categories, cars are classed by displacement divided by weight (as if displacement is a good indicator of power). These are new rules and maybe they need a few seasons to refine them, but the rules look unbalanced and unfinished.
• EMRA – Kudos to them for making a 12-page rulebook! As such, it’s sparse and open to interpretation. There are ten classes based on a car list. You bump up a category based on modifications, but there’s not a lot of balance to the mods. The only thing they say about tires is that they must be DOT. There’s a world of difference in there, I guess everyone shows up on A7s?
• Porsche – PCA has a great system of ranking their cars and various points for modifications. It looks very fair and complete. But they have only one brand of car, and they split them into different 28 classes. We can’t afford to give out that many trophies or manage that many classes. BTW, if you ever wondered about the comparative performance of different Porsches, look at the point values, it’s great data.
• Speed SF – The classing system is calculated from a relatively simple worksheet that puts you into one of six classes based on a list of cars and modifications. The classing rules are simple, and because of that, there are going to be inequalities within the classes. Tires are easy: everyone is assumed to be on 100 TW or higher, and you take a slight penalty for using race tires. I like this system for a lot of reasons.
• COM – Corvette Owners of Massachusetts have the best rules I’ve seen. It’s a bit like the old NASA system, and takes into account tire compound, width, and really anything you want to do to your car. This puts you into one of ten classes. The 98-page rulebook is a tad long, but they have a great spreadsheet calculator that makes classing easy.

After all that research, I’ve come to the following conclusions.

• Creating a fair classing system is difficult, and nobody does it the same.
  • One starting point is to list and rank every car .
  • Another starting point is pounds per horsepower.
• Tires are a very important factor.
  • Many rules evaluate each tire individually.
  • Tire width is a factor, and often relates to weight.
• It would be easy to use another club’s rules, but impossible to manage them. Our time trials are run over 2 hours, and we simply can’t have more than 4 classes.
• I poke fun at some of the rules above, but I applaud any effort to make racing fair and fun. Every system is full of good ideas, this is just a really difficult problem to solve.

Creating new classing rules

So with all of that knowledge, I went about creating new rules. My guiding principles were:

1. I need to end up with only four main classes. Ideally these should correlate roughly to the lap time groupings observed in the 2019 season.
2. The classing rules must be fair, and allow people to run what they brung. It should be easy for people racing in other series to cross over.
3. The rule book should be short and simple.

Pounds per horsepower

I started with pounds per horsepower, because that’s easier than ranking every car in existence. For people who dyno and weigh their car, getting lbs/hp is easy, but most people won’t do that, so the rules allows using factory values.

lbs/hp = (Factory weight + driver weight) / (Factory HP * .83).

Of course people modify their cars for less weight and more power. So they must declare, on their honor, what their modified weight and power are. This is obviously a place someone can cheat. However, I would make the class worksheets public, so anyone obviously cheating would be publicly shamed, a-la Game of Thrones.

For people racing in the NASA TT series, which is based on lbs/hp, they can use their class minimums. Meaning TT6 is calculated at 18:1, TT5 at 14:1, TT3 12:1, and the faster classes at a 10:1 cap.

For other racing series that don’t use lbs/hp, I’m experimenting with some crossover rules. These would let people bring their race car on their spec tire, and fit into a class. But more on that some other time.

Tire grip factor

I used the tire point values from the old NASA series and COM, and then cross listed with recent tire tests, forums, and various web pages to come up with a hierarchical list of tires sorted by grip value.

I then assigned a point value to each tire, so that I could try out different formulas that would make lbs/hp and tire grip meaningful. I tried a few different ways to balance lbs/hp with different tire grip values, and make that correspond to real and simulated lap times, and simultaneously group people into four classes.

In the end, classing is based on a simple formula: FLOOR(Lbs/Hp/Tire). Or in plain english, the weight of the car with driver, divided by the wheel horsepower, divided by tire points, rounded down to a whole number. This usually results in a number 1 through 4. That’s your class.

Low-powered cars on hard tires may evaluate to more than 4, but they still must run in Class 4. We aren’t making a 5th class, there’s just no way to run that many groups in a two-hour session. For the same reason, there’s no Class Zero. So that makes Class 1 basically a no-limits class. Whatever car, on whatever tire, bring it.

Examples

To see how this works, let’s take a look at a Honda S2000. Weighs 2850 lbs with driver, dynoed at 200 hp = 14.3 lbs/hp. Different tires would put this car in a different class.

• R7: 14.3 / 8 = 1.83, round down. Class 1
• RE71R: 14.3 / 6 = 2.38, round down. Class 2 
• ECS: 14.3 / 4 = 3.75, round down. Class 3
• S.Drive: 14.3 / 3 = 4.76, round down. Class 4

Let’s take a look at a Spec Miata, which would be at the 20:1 lbs/hp cap.

• Hoosier A7: 20/10 = 2.0. Class 2
• Toyo RA1: 20/6 = 3.33, round down. Class 3
• Dunlop Z3, 20/5 = 4.0. Class 4

Or using a car crossing over from NASA TT4, which has a 12 lbs/hp minimum.

• Hoosier A7: 12/10 = 1.2, round down Class 1.
• Toyo RA1: 12/6 = 2, Class 2.
• Michelin PS4S: 12/4 = 3, Class 3.
• BFG SC2: 12/3 = 4, Class 4.

So that’s how it works, pretty simple. But is it fair? I ran a bunch of simulations using four different cars that I have data for, and the lap times come out pretty close to how I had them grouped.

One thing I found out was that this formula works best for cars in the middle range. Cars with high lbs/hp ratios, like Miatas were going too fast on sticky tires, and so I put a cap on all cars at 20 lbs hp. If your car is slower than that, you still have to use that value. Likewise, high-power cars at the other end of the spectrum were treated unfairly by the classing formula, and so I put a 10 lbs/hp cap on that. So if your car is 6 lbs/hp, it’s classed at 10. With these mins and maxes set, the simulated laps fall very close to reality.

Caveats and final thoughts

The rules are based on real laps and simulated laps at Pineview Run; I don’t know if this system would be fair at any other track, that was never my intention.

I was trying to place people into four groups, and the rules work out for that. If I doubled the number of classes, there would be more equality between cars in the same run group. But it isn’t logistically possible to manage that many classes in a 2-hour evening session.

Here are some final thoughts, in no particular order:

• This is the first year we’ll try these rules, and we might need a mid-season addendum. This should be pretty easy by changing tire point values, or adding a tire width factor.
• To keep things simple, I didn’t take tire width into account. But an easy calculation is to take the average tire width, and divide by 245, and multiply that by tire points. This means that every tire under 245 width would get some advantage, and a width over 245 would get some penalty. As an example, a 195 RE71R would be evaluated the same as a 225 RS4. The average tire width could be anything, I’m speculating on 245 because it seems right. This could also go by class, so that Class 4 has a 205 width average, Class 3 has 225, Class 2 has 255, and Class 1 is 275.
• I’m not stuck on tire point values, or integers. For example, we might find that Z3s and R1Rs should be evaluated at 5.5 points instead of 5. Or that RC1s are really a 7-point tire, not 6. We need real-world data before making any adjustments, tho.
• I didn’t take into account modifications to suspension, brakes, aero, or really anything else you might do to a car. All of these are important, but not as significant as lbs/hp and tire grip. Not at Pineview, anyway.

We are still working on the final rule set, which includes things like points per race, and how the season points add up to who gets to put their name on the Pineview Challenge Cup. But I thought people would like to see the classing system ahead of time. The first race isn’t until Saturday May 2nd, so there’s plenty of time to break out your calculator and figure out the optimal tire for the class you want to run in. Or if you’re doing it the other way around, figure out how many pounds to remove or horsepower to add, so you can use your favorite tire.

I’ve been thinking about what to build and test in 2020. It’s a long winter here in upstate NY, and I’ll have some time on my hands. I just got my barn floor poured with concrete, and now I have 950 square feet to let my imagination run. Here’s a list of what’s on my mind. Leave a comment if there’s something in particular you’re interested in.

• Underbody aero – Is it worth doing on a Miata?
  • Flat bottom – I’m very curious about this one, not sure if I’ll do this on my race car, street car, or both. I installed a canon subframe brace in my 1.6 specifically so I could hang the flat bottom off it. So… it’s fairly likely this will happen at some point.
  • Side skirts – The race car lost one side skirt spinning out at Mid Ohio. I’ll make new side skirts, which will be wider, and fit next to the pinch welds, reinforcing the jacking points along the entire car.
  • Diffuser – I made a diffuser out of aluminum street signs (I must have been in a Lemons frame of mind), but I haven’t mounted it yet.
• Misc aero projects – Some projects are partially done, some are just drawings and ideas.
  • DIY fastback kit – I’ve been thinking about building a fastback kit for a Miata. This would be for race cars only. It would be a bunch of parts that can ship flat, and then you assemble it at home, fiberglass the seams, and paint it. My main problem with creating a product is I don’t want to support pain-in-the-ass customers.
  • 3D wing visualizer – This is a series of pivoting airfoils that I can mount on any car, just like a wing. It shows the shape and angle of air where a wing would be mounted. This would be great for setting wing height and angle, and also figuring out what’s the ideal shape of a 3D wing for just about any car. For science!
  • eBay wing 2.0 – Continue modifications to my cheap eBay wing to reduce drag and increase downforce. I’ve already started on this project because it’s a total fucking waste of time and that’s how I prioritize things.
  • End-plate mounted 9LR wing – This would require building new wing stanchions that mount to the rear quarter panels and come up vertically. Think Ferrari F40.
  • Shooting brake – I didn’t finish the shooting brake top I started earlier this year. Theoretically, it could have less drag than my fastback, and better visibility. And it’s unique looking.
  • NASA TTop – The TT6 rules allow convertibles to change the roofline shape, but the roofline must terminate at the front edge of the trunk. I have some ideas on how to build a roof with those limitations, but they are all sort of weird looking, like a Lotus Europa or Porsche 914. But they would have less drag and would work well in conjunction with a rear wing. From a practical standpoint, the trunk would still be functional.
  • Mazda RX500 top – This would be a custom top for 24 hours of Lemons. It’s almost like a station wagon, and would be simple to build.
  • Shark fin soup – Make a LeMans prototype-style top, complete with shark fin. If it works, race it in AER. If it doesn’t, race it in Lemons.
• Aero+ tests – To do these properly I need to hire Jeremiah again. Without him, it’ll be just Aim Solo data which is a lot less accurate.
  • Underbody aero – Test different combinations of flat bottom, side skirts, and diffuser.
  • Front end aero – I didn’t get to test a stock front end vs R-package lip vs airdam. I have all the parts. I think we all know which is best, but how much better?
  • Low-speed aero – It’s easy for me to test low speed aero at my country club, Pineview Run. I just need to get my shit together, bring all the parts, and do it.
  • Spoilers by the inch – There’s a neat website called Ballistics by the Inch, where they start with a long gun barrel and progressively cut it shorter and record the resulting velocity. My test would be like that, but progressively a taller spoiler and record lap time. What’s the optimum spoiler height?
  • Tires – Pineview is a great place to test tires. I have some ideas in mind, like using one tire, and trying different widths, to see how much just tire width changes things. For example, I could test RS4s in 195, 225, and 245, on 7.5, 8.5 and 9″ wheels, respectively. I’m not sure how useful that is, but I’ve always been curious about this.

What’s on your mind? Leave a comment.

A Miata and a Porsche 914 are somewhat similar in size and shape, and there’s some interesting studies and CFD data on the 914 that could help fill some knowledge gaps that exist in the Miataverse.

They have similar frontal areas, but the 914 has a better coefficient of drag (.363 vs .38). I suspect this is partly the front end, which covers the tires completely from airflow. The 914 canopy might be better as well, since a vertical rear window is better than one that slopes back at 25-35 degrees, which is the worst possible angle, and about what a Miata hard top has. But in many ways, these cars are not so different, so let’s take a look at the 914 in more detail.

Published drag data

I’ve been digging around and found a few pieces of interesting data on a Porsche 914. In the May 1978 Porsche Panorama magazine, there are drag figures for a Porsche 914 in various configurations.

• One of the things I didn’t test at Watkins Glen was the effect of pop-up headlights (because I removed them from the race car). Miatas have slightly larger headlights, but at least this is a ballpark figure I can use for simulations in the future.
• I also wasn’t able to test the difference between windows open and closed. Again, because race car. However, the windows open drag figure published here is very good compared to a Miata. I think it’s the Miata’s wider rear canopy that’s the culprit. The 914 canopy doesn’t stick out into airflow the way the Miata does, and it’s probably a significant drag factor when the windows are open. The 914 also has turn signals mounted on fender bulges, which redirects airflow along the car. But more on that later.

Scientific experiments on a 914

Chris Cassidy works at UCSD, in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering department. He also raced a Porsche 914 in autocross, and sponsored a project where his students used his car to do aerodynamic experiments to reduce drag, which would make his car faster in autocross. Much of this blog focuses on his work, thank you Chris and students!

Chris had several groups of students over a few years, each group doing a slightly different project, from preparing a scale model, to validating the model, and then doing computer analysis. His second group of students did the CFD vs water tank experiments, summarized in the table below.

From the scale model and flow visualizations, they concluded that the CFD model was accurate enough. And from this, they could test a few different configurations, and see how drag affects HP at 50 mph.

Now I’m grateful to Chris for allowing me to use his data, but I think the primary supposition is wrong, which is that drag reduction equals speed in autocross. The students concluded that the standard car with no airdam or spoiler would be the fastest, because it had a 2.1 horsepower advantage due to drag reduction.

However, I’ve done plenty of computer simulations, and I can tell you that at low speed, drag reduction isn’t that important, certainly nowhere near as important as creating downforce. If Chris wanted to go faster, he should have had his students work primarily on downforce. But let’s not skip ahead, let’s check out what they did.

CFD studies on a 914

Chris’s third group of students put 40 different configurations into CFD analysis, totaling over 400 hours of computer simulations. You can check out his website for all the results, but I’ll hit some of the higher points and relate this to a Miata.

First, take a look at the following image. The body styles are listed in order by the amount of HP gained in each configuration, which roughly (but not exactly) corresponds to the least drag. Not surprisingly, the most streamlined version, #15, gains the most HP. Being wing shaped, it also has the most lift. In the downforce column, the lower the number the better (a positive number is lift, negative number is downforce). The last two configurations are missing from this image, but are on the poster. All of this makes me wonder which one would be fastest on a race track….

Before I get to finding out that burning question, I’ll need to figure out the coefficients of drag and lift from Newtons.

Figuring out drag and lift

OptimumLap uses coefficient of drag and lift, and Chris’s students used drag force and downforce in Newtons. How am I going to convert this? I wish I paid more attention in math class, but here’s a formula I can almost get my head around. Solving for coefficient of drag Cd, Fd is drag force, p is the density of fluid, V is velocity, and A is surface area.

Cd = (2*Fd)/p*V^2*A)

For each configuration, the velocity is the same (50 mph), as are the fluid density (air) and frontal area. (17.8 sq ft). So it looks like the Cd is directly based on the drag force. This means I can set up a simple ratio, and get the relative Cd.

Likewise, I need to convert downforce in Newtons to a Cl value. I’m sure there’s a formula for this, but if I call the stock body .30 lift (a reasonable guess), I can figure out the lift of other body styles by a straight ratio using the downforce value.

OptimumLap simulations

Let’s see which of these is fastest on an autocross track using a 914 with stock weight and power (94 whp) and tires at 1.1g grip. I’ll also throw in Watkins Glen to see if anything different happens at high speed. Some of the configurations in the big image above make no sense (like the car resting on the ground), and so I’ll use only some of them. I’ve reordered these from mild to wild:

The students theorized that the stock configuration, with the least drag, would be fastest, but it doesn’t come out that way in OptimumLap. Configuration #22, which had the most drag, won on the autocross course. It also placed second at Watkins Glen, but got beat by the spoiler, Configuration #5, which has less drag.

A conclusion you can draw from this is that at low speed, ignore drag and go after as much downforce as possible. At a high-speed venue, go after the best L/D ratio. Most tracks are somewhere in between these two, and in this case, I would maximize downforce as long as it doesn’t require an extra stop in an endurance race.

There are some strange discrepancies in the data, like why is an airdam and a spoiler worse than just a spoiler? And why didn’t the wing perform very well? I don’t have the answers, and this is just CFD, so we have to take all of this with crack-rock sized grain of salt.

What can we apply to a Miata?

Well that was fun to see what happens to a modified 914, but what can we apply to a Miata?

Spoiler alert

The CFD study here shows that a spoiler is very effective on a 914. I’ve written about Miata spoilers before, and mine works really well. There’s really no downside.

Directing airflow below the window

Although the 914 front end directs air under the car just as a Miata does, it covers the front wheels nicely. But that’s not the part of the front end that’s the most interesting, take a look at the turn signal bulges. They look like a styling feature, but in fact they work to pull air down the side of the car, and away from the windows. These days you see this done with canards, but the 914 does this with a very simple forward bulge for mounting turn signals.

Most of us race with open windows, and keeping air out of the cockpit will reduce both drag and lift. For top-up-windows-down driving, it should also mean less buffeting inside the car. I may have to build some of theses bulge-thingies and yarn test it, this could be a great way to reduce the amount of air going into the open window.

Roof spoiler

I’ve always wondered if the Miata roof spoilers were anything more than cosmetic.

If you look at configuration #24, they added a small roof extension to the 914. It reduced lift but increased drag, both by a tiny bit. Performance-wise, it was a wash. Maybe I spent too many years in California, but I like the way they look, and I certainly wouldn’t fault anyone for using one.

Miscellaneous drag reduction

In the CFD study there were a number of small things that reduced drag. If you did all of them, it could prove beneficial for endurance racing.

• Removing the 914’s mirrors (configuration #19) reduced drag quite a bit. If I use the RSR calculator to calculate the power used at 50 mph, then the mirrors contribute about .035 to drag, which is a lot. Note that 914 mirrors don’t have the rounded aerodynamic shape that Miata’s have, and so it’s not apples to apples. (For more on mirror aerodynamics, you have to check out this lesson in Flow Illustrator.) A more accurate figure is probably half, or around .018.
• Covering the rear wheels with flush covers (configuration #35) reduced drag by .02. If you use the HP Wizard tool, you get a similar value (.022). This is something I’ve been meaning to do to my brother’s Yaris, because the rear wheels don’t do much except keep the trunk off the ground. We can run skinny wheels with less offset, and get them flush underneath a side cover. However, I don’t know if it’s as practical to do rear wheel covers on a Miata, since the wheels are wider than the bodywork. Rear wheel covers that aren’t flush with the body would be configuration #17, and you can see that did nothing for drag reduction.
• Slotting the pillar (#29) reduced drag by .043, which is a very significant amount. This directs air into the vacant area behind the rear window. We don’t see this much on street cars, I guess because they are ugly. But slots like this or guide vanes could be useful when you have an abrupt back end and turbulent wake. On a Miata, I’d figure out how to do this with air rushing past the window, and duct that internally to fill in the wake behind the hardtop, or behind the bumper.

The other day I was chatting with a guy about his bitchin Miata with ITBs. He put them on his BP engine and got a lot of power and cool sounds. Forced induction would probably have been cheaper, but I totally understand wanting NA power and better throttle response. I also understand doing things just to be different, and thought I found someone who was a kindred spirit. So I asked him about putting ITBs on a 1.6, and what kind of power did he think I’d get from that? He said the 1.6 head doesn’t flow enough, and I should be swapping in a 1.8 anyway.

I’m so fucking sick of that. Everyone says don’t tune a 1.6, swap in a 1.8. But I don’t want a 1.8! I already have a 1.8 in my race car, and I don’t want one in my dual-duty street car. It won’t make sense to most people, but I’d rather have a 1.6 making 125 hp than a 1.8 making 140 or whatever. Here’s why.

NASA TT6

949 Racing built a Miata for NASA ST/TT race series. The NASA classing is based on power-to-weight ratio, and Miatas typically fall into the TT6/ST6 class, which is 18-20 lbs/hp depending on how you configure it. 949 chose the NB body because the rules give a slight bump in power for using base-trim model bodywork (BTM), and the NB has better aero, than a NA. This calculates out to a car that weighs around 2460 lbs and puts out about 138 hp. These are easy numbers to get from a BP 1.8 Miata engine with tuning. However, they swapped a 1.6 engine into the NB chassis. Huh?

Emilio says “We don’t tune 1.6s, we swap in 1.8s,” but there he went and made himself a liar. In this case, it made a lot of sense. The 1.6 engine is lighter and shorter, and this gives the car a better front/rear weight balance. In theory it should have worked better, but they later abandoned the 1.6 engine project because it was going to be too expensive to hit the horsepower number. But theoretically, a 1.6 should be better than a 1.8 if making the same power.

And so I’ve been thinking about competing in NASA TT6 as well, but I’m not going to build an engine that has 138 hp. First, that’s an expensive build, but more importantly, I want to use aero, and that means the car isn’t allowed the same power to weight ratio. If I use all the aero allowed (airdam, roof, wing), then the engine can make a maximum of 125 hp. I’m guessing my 1.6 has 110-112 as it sits, and so I can probably hit 125 without breaking the bank.

Also, I have a low milage engine. My dad bought the car when he was 69 and never drove it hard, and so the engine has had a low-stress life. Tuning this engine makes more sense to me than swapping in something of unknown origin.

Taking scalps

One of the joys of driving a momentum car is embarrassing more powerful, expensive cars. Hunting down BMWs, Corvettes, Mustangs, and Porches, and passing them (or harassing them into giving you a point-by), is great fun. For lack of a better phrase, I’ll call this “taking scalps”.

You don’t earn a scalp for passing slower cars, only faster ones. But when you’re in a Miata, pretty much every other car on track is a scalp for the taking. If you’re driving a 1.6 Miata, then 1.8 and later Miatas are scalps, as well!

Accentuating the 1.6-ness

I want to build the ultimate expression of a NA 1.6 Miata. The early 1.6s differ slightly from other Miatas in several ways, and my goal is to exaggerate all of these differences.

• Higher redline – The 1.6 revved to 7200 rpm, which was later reduced to 7000 in the 1.8. I have a Megasquirt PNP2 and programmed my redline to 7500 rpm. I won’t go higher than that without modifications.
• Higher compression ratio – The 1.6 had a 9.3:1 ratio, compared to the 1.8 NAs which were 9.0:1. I got a spare head and decked it, which should bring the compression up to around 10.3:1, which is close to what the later 1.8 BP engines have.
• Lighter clutch and flywheel – The 1.6 has a smaller clutch and flywheel, which means less rotating mass and a revvier engine (at least without load). I bought the lightest aftermarket clutch and flywheel I could find.
• Shorter final drive – The NA6 4.3:1 diff ratio is shorter than the 4.1 ratio used in the later 5-speed 1.8s. My original plan was to exaggerate this difference further by using a ring and pinion from a 4.78:1, but I’m fairly certain this will annoy the shit out of me on the street. For my county club track, a 4.1 makes a bit more sense (fewer shifts), so I’m on the fence for which way to go here.
• Hotter cams – The 1.6 has a slightly more aggressive cam profile than the 1.8s. I went one louder and bought Kelford 264 B-grinds with 9mm lift. It will be interesting to see how much power these add.
• Smaller brakes – The early cars came with smaller disc brakes. On a street-oriented car that does the occasional time trial, I don’t see the need for larger brakes (and more rotating mass), so I’m leaving them stock. I’ll duct the rotors, but that’s it.
• Smaller wheels – The NA6 always came with 14” hoops, and it wasn’t until 1995 that 15” was an option. If I’m being serious about performance, then 15s are a better choice. They are available in wider widths and have better rubber selection. But if this is an exercise in nostalgia and 1.6-ness, then 14×7 RPF1s are obviously that way to go.
• Less power – Do you ever floor the accelerator, and then pat the center console or the steering wheel, urging your Miata to giddy-up? The 1.6s have less power and torque, and it leaves you always wanting more. Somehow that’s part of the charm. A naturally aspirated 1.6 is never going to overwhelm anyone with power, so this is a goal that’s impossible not to achieve.
• Less weight – Miatas got heavier through the years, and to keep with the theme I’ll reduce weight where I can. There’s no secret recipe, just concentrate on the ounces, and the pounds will take care of themselves.
• Simpler – The earliest Miatas were the simplest, with fewer electronics and conveniences. Mine has a manual steering rack, manual mirrors and windows, no ABS, and came with only a single airbag (now gone because I replaced the steering wheel). Anything I do to further modify this car will stay in the same theme of keeping things simple, pure, and analog.

People say that the later Miatas are better cars, but the earlier ones are better Miatas. When you add up all the differences between the 1.6 and 1.8, you get a car that has a slightly different character. Those differences are what I’m accentuating. For sure I could make a better car, but I’m building a better Miata.

And that’s why I’m not swapping in a BP 1.8, using forced induction, or whatever else is the cost effective and logical way to get more power. Yeah, I’m tuning a normally-aspirated 1.6, get over it. And all of y’all are scalps to me!

The Occam’s Racer team could use another teammate or two. We currently have a rotating group of drivers, but most of them are essentially arrive-and-drives that live far away, or are too busy doing other things to be a regular part of the team.

I need help working on the car, loading and unloading for races, and all the other things required to make a race weekend happen. Currently I do 95% of this stuff myself, and it’s a lot of work. Both of my knees are held together with metal plates, and the pain of lifting heavy objects regularly reminds me that I can’t keep doing this on my own. Often times I think to myself that I should quit racing, buy a new ND, and just do laps at the country club.

But for the time being, I’m still racing, and I need help. In exchange for your labor, you get the team rate for driving, which is a straight division of all consumables.

The ideal teammate lives near Ithaca NY, knows how to work on Miatas, has some Miata spares, and has lots of free time. But that’s being really picky, and I’d settle for someone who has mechanical aptitude and free weekends.

You should have some wheel-to-wheel racing experience. AER requires that you’ve raced in five endurance races, and I intend to keep racing with AER. But if you don’t have that much experience, I may also race in Lucky Dog Canada, Lemons, and Champcar, so there’s some chance to build up to the AER level.

My racing philosophy is primarily to have fun, and that means we get along with other teams in the paddock, and that starts by being courteous on track. I’m more impressed by drivers who have situational awareness and good decision making than outright speed. You won’t be faster than Alyssa, anyway.

Use the Contact form and I’ll get back to you. It’s a long winter, but there’s a lot to do.

A guy recently contacted me on Facebook to ask my opinion on aero modifications for his Miata. Cameron and his team live in the Great Lakes area and race Lemons. Their Miata has a Star Wars theme, complete with R2D2 behind the seat, with a head that spins, too. The car has an Ecotec swap. Cool build, right?

My first response was to get an airdam and splitter, but the team had already done that. They ripped it off shoveling mud, so it’s not in the pic, but the team intends to put it back on. He was wondering about also adding a wing, and how much would that help?

My reply was that a wing would certainly help. From my aero tests at Watkins Glen, I know that a car with a wing will beat a car without a wing in just about any simulation I run. However, a wing with an open top or chop top is about 2.5x less effective than one with a hard top.

Cameron wanted to know what this would do for lap times at Gingerman, his home track. Luckily that track is in OptimumLap, and Cameron provided me with some data based on a recent race, and that their theoretical best lap was 1:46.65. What would happen if they added aero?

I have Miata models in OptimumLap, but nothing with an Ecotec, so I used Cameron’s dyno sheet to make a new model.

Next I input weight of the car, final drive ratio, and set the tire grip value to 1.15g. This is a bit higher than I use for 225 RS4s, but the point was to get data close to his best lap. I made some guesstimates at drag and lift. His car has a partial roof, so I’ll use my Chop Top data and fudge it slightly because he’s using a stock front end, and not an airdam. Call it .5 drag and .34 lift.

Based on all this data, the simulation shows a 1:47.10, which is reasonably close to what Cameron said was their theoretical best lap, and was in fact their actual fastest lap in the race. So let’s see what happens when I add the airdam, splitter, and wing that Cameron asked about. At this point I can use the data I have (I tested almost exactly the same setup), and Cd is .45 and Cl is -.53.

So that’s 2.38 seconds faster using aero. Pretty substantial considering the wing isn’t going to work very efficiently with that janky top.

My advice was to extend the roofline and support it at the rear with the wing uprights. (While still allowing R2’s head to spin.) I sent him a crude drawing that looks like this: the red is the extended roofline, the blue is the wing and uprights.

The roof extension would provide clean air to the underside of the wing, which is what a wing wants. The roof mod might look silly, but this is Lemons where silly is de rigueur. With this modification he might arrive at values of something like Cd .45 and Cl 1.0. This would theoretically drop lap times by a full second.

OptimumLap assumes a perfect aero balance, but in the real world you can’t just keep adding rear aero and expect faster times. This is just a simulation, after all, but it’s good to know if the trouble and expense is worth it on a Lemons build like this. In this case, I’d say yeah.

The race is over, but we’re still living the race weekend over and over. In this installment, let’s see how the drivers did compared to each other.

Fastest laps

Alyssa made a video of each driver’s fastest laps. Let’s take a look at Alyssa first, because whe set the fastest laps of the weekend, and we’ll use her as a reference for where the rest of us can improve.

From her triple-video overlay, it looks like he’s pretty consistent. However, if you look at the Aim Solo data, her laps vary by .4 seconds above and below the reference lap. On the back straight, his top speed varies by 2.2 mph.

The bottom of the graph shows the time gained or lost compared to the reference lap, which is black in this case. On the lap denoted by the blue line, you can see she had .4 seconds in hand at around 2200′ again at 6000′ and .2 seconds at 9800′. As good as Alyssa was driving, it looks like she could have gone one second faster.

Team fastest laps

Alyssa also made a neat overlay with everyone’s fastest laps. Here are some things I see in the video.

• T1 – Everyone except me initiates the turn sharply, my hands are slower at first, and I must continue to steer through the corner. I’m also a chicken shit in fast corners, and I lose most of my time here.
• Keyhole – We are all very similar through this turn. If you watch other laps in our full race videos, we often take different lines, sometimes diamonding it, sometimes driving a rim shot. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to make a difference in lap time or trap speed.
• T4 – Pat and Sonny are equal through here, but Alyssa trails the brakes the best and this is where he makes up most of his time. From here on, he is GONE.
• T9 – Pat and Sonny are still dead even on the approach to the corner, but by the time they pass under the bridge, Sonny has a tenth.
• Carousel – Sonny takes a wider entry line that seems to work really well.

Team race laps

I don’t have data on Sonny’s best qualifying lap, which he set on Friday. So let’s take a look at the best race laps over the weekend. These are not the same laps as those in the video. The chart below is color-coded thusly:

• Alyssa is Green (think money) – 1:44.637
• Sonny is Orange (think 949) – 1:45.273
• Pat is blue (like his F150) – 145.355
• Mario is red (like his NA6) – 1:47.579

I’m no expert on analyzing data traces, but this is what I see:

• Everyone goes through T1 (1000′ mark) pretty well, except me. I decelerate too much, and this severely impacts my speed down the following straight.
• The chicane begins at the 2000′ mark, and Alyssa (green) is faster and later on the brakes than everyone, and gains time here.
• The Keyhole is at the 3000′ mark, and Pat (blue) has a higher minimum speed, but can’t get on the gas as early at the exit. In the end, we all come out of the Keyhole the same. Notice the time bar on the bottom is flat from 3000-6000′, meaning we are all going about the same speed.
• Sonny (orange) does something interesting in T4. He doesn’t gain time, but it might be a move that’s useful in traffic. Maybe he had traffic? In any case, it didn’t affect him.
• Alyssa ekes out a little bit on everyone in the esses.
• Turn 8 is at about the 8000′ mark, and it’s not really a corner, you just pin it through there. I may have experienced traffic at this point, because there’s no reason for me to slow down, and I did.
• Turn 9 is about about 8500 feet, and this is where Sonny is better than Pat. On every other corner they are pretty evenly matched. Meanwhile, Alyssa flat sails through this corner and his resulting top speed at the top of the hill is where the hash marks are. You can see the speeds in the upper left hand corner. Alyssa’s going 90 mph, which is 3-6 mph faster than the rest.
• Turn 10 is at about 10000′ feet, and everyone else goes through it really well. Except me, I park it.
• The Carrousel is like the Keyhole, we might take different lines, but everyone gets through it at about the same speed.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

It was illuminating to look at our fastest laps, but an endurance race is won on consistency, not hero laps. Let’s crunch some numbers. Better yet, let’s get someone else to crunch the numbers. Alyssa’s partner Bethany did some statistical analysis of our race laps, and it’s so nerdy I have to share it.

In the following box charts, the lower the box, the faster the lap, the shorter the box, the more consistent the driver. The horizontal line in each box is the median lap time. The mean (average) lap time is called out in the inset, and the horizontal line connecting the boxes is a way to visually compare that. Very slow laps (out laps, in laps) were removed from the data set.

Let’s start with Saturday. Alyssa is capable of low lap times nobody else can match. Sonny is a wee bit faster than Pat. All three of them can lap through traffic without dropping into the 1:49s, which is where most of my laps are. Our standard deviations are similar, meaning we were all driving with about the same consistency, but Pat was the most consistent on Saturday.

On Sunday the track was a bit slower, but we all drove better. Alyssa’s average lap is about the same as the day before, but look how much more consistently she’s driving. Sonny had the fastest average lap time, and he improved his consistency a bit as well. Note that we should disregard Pat’s laps, because he only did six, and hadn’t found his groove in that stint yet; he’s over a second off his normal pace.

When I look at the Sunday data, I feel a lot better about my driving. Pat has raced at Mid-Ohio a couple times before, and this was my first time. On average, I’m only 6/10ths off Pat’s faster Saturday times. I can live with that.

Also on the plus side, my standard deviation says I’m the most consistent driver, by what looks like a decent margin. I think this is because I drive with more in reserve. Some examples of this from the weekend are that I avoid contact with other cars (Sonny), I don’t put four wheels in the grass (Pat), and I don’t hit tire walls (Alyssa). But let me not congratulate myself too much. As we saw in the video and Aim data, I’m driving tentatively in the fast sections.

The next chart is basically the same as before, but sorted by driver, rather than day. This chart is a good way to look at driver improvement. (Again, we should disregard Pat’s Sunday stint.)

I’m told that the ANOVA p-value is a test of the difference in the mean lap time for each driver. If the p-value is less than 0.05, then there’s a statistical difference. What all this means is that I drove significantly better each day, and they didn’t. Another way to look at it is that they were all on pace rather quickly, while I took longer to learn the track.

The following histograms give another way to view the laps. Each bar represents half a second. Alyssa (blue) is other-worldly. Pat (yellow) and Sonny (green) both have a rhythm centered around 107-seconds. My Saturday is poop, but I like what I’m seeing on Sunday.

On Sunday I did a lot of 108-second laps, and all of my laps are within a narrow 3.5-second window. If you compare my Saturday to Sunday (red), it’s like two different drivers were in the car: Doctor Jekyll and Mister Consistency.

Racing incidents matter

Endurance racing isn’t just setting lap times, it’s staying out of trouble. Our average pit stop was 3 minutes and 26 seconds, but two racing incidents made them longer.

After Sonny and the BMW clashed, we lost two minutes in the pits. Most of those two minutes were because he caught us unprepared, but that’s what happens when you take an unplanned stop. We also spent some time looking over the car for damage. Those two minutes are the equivalent of adding 2.5 seconds per lap in his stint. On average lap time, this made him the slowest driver of the day on Saturday. As a side note, the impact bent the right rear wheel. That’s the wheel hub that would later break and end our weekend. We’ll never know if the impact damaged the hub and caused it to fail, but it can’t have helped.

When Alyssa hit the tire wall at pit entrance, it took us an extra minute and twenty seconds pulling the bodywork straight and checking over the car. If we add that time to Alyssa’s stint, each lap was 1.5 seconds longer. That single mistake at the very end of his stint made Alyssa the slowest average driver on Sunday (I’m not counting Pat’s handful of laps). Yes, this made Alyssa even slower than me! Racing incidents matter.

In conclusion, our two fastest drivers were also our two slowest drivers. The obvious take away here is that one should avoid contact at all costs.

Driver weight [updated 11/6/2019]

When I originally wrote this section, I compared data traces of Alyssa and I, and showed that 65 lbs was very significant for acceleration and resulting lap times. However, after going through the data some more, I think this was probably time of day. Alyssa’s first run on Sunday was cold, and the engine would have made more power. There might have also been a headwind. Whatever the case, there’s just no way 65 lbs amounted to .4 seconds on the back straight.

I then went and looked at many other runs, comparing the same driver on a full tank and then an empty tank (same stint), which is a difference of about 100 lbs. Even with that larger weight amount, it was hard to find any correlation between weight and speed on the back straight. Go figure.

OptimumLap simulation

Another way we can look at the difference weight makes is to do a simulation in OptimumLap. On the pro course (no chicane), the simulator says my car should do a 1:41.57, and I’ll add two seconds to that for the chicane, so call it 1:43.57. (Incidentally, this is the same lap time Alyssa would do if she dropped the one second we saw in the Aim data.) So then, what happens when I add 65 lbs?

According to the simulator, a difference of 65 lbs is worth .36 seconds. I typically trust OptimumLap, but in back-to-back tests at Pineview Run, I’ve noticed that the time difference is in OptimumLap is about half of what I’ve logged in the real world, and I would expect about .7 seconds.

So let’s split the difference and say 65 lbs is worth .65 seconds. That makes every 100 lbs = 1 second, which is a rule of thumb I’ve heard before. It may not be accurate, but it’s easy to remember.

6/10ths of a second would be a big deal at the pro level, but not at my level. I have a lot of things to work on before I start using weight as an excuse. But Pat could argue that he’d be faster than Alyssa and Sonny if they weighed the same. Start your excuses Pat!

I was up before sunrise, waiting in the parking lot for the Summit guys to deliver my parts. It was dark when they drove in, and I was the only one in the parking lot. I greeted them with a creepy “Where’s my drugs, man?” and they chuckled and handed over the parts. I got back to the RV and woke everyone up, telling them we need to get the brakes done, and why is the radiator water all over the floor?

We checked everything in the cooling system, swapped an overflow bottle, blew out all the water we could find, etc. We started the car and pressure-tested the system. But we just couldn’t figure out how all the radiator water dumped out. We vowed to keep an eye on the temperature and check the water level in the pits each time, and just trust it.

The brakes were another issue, Summit gave us the wrong parts. I later went back to them to figure out how this happened, and apparently the Hawk product info says that these brakes work on a 1994-2005 Miata. I politely explained that this is not the case, and that 94-97 are different than 2003-2005, at least in the USA.

I’ll get my money back, but the point is we didn’t have fresh brake pads, and must use the 3.5 hour old StopTech Sports that nobody is really trusting to go the distance. For braking power and feel, both Pat and Alyssa liked them more than the Porterfield R4E. More StopTech converts? In any case, Sonny gaves us new team orders: coast slightly before braking zones and use less brake throughout the race. As if.

Race start

Alyssa has never started a race, and so we gave it to her. She started in 32nd position. The Audi R8 in first was going slow and bunched everyone up, which made for a tight group as the green flag dropped. There was a brief heart-attack moment as one of the cars had a mechanical, but everyone avoided the incident well. See for yourself in the clip.

We can set fast laps, but not in traffic, and on the 5th lap, we’d lost four places. But as the cars got spaced out, Alyssa got her head down and after 54 blazing laps, we were in 23rd position!

Alyssa is our fastest driver, but he’s also our youngest driver, and young people do stupid shit. For some reason she thought a good place to make up time was on the pit exit (WTF), and so she came in too hot. She had to make a split second decision between running over the RFID gate or hitting the tire wall. She chose the wall.

We lost some time in the pits pulling the bodywork straight and checking the car for damage. Initially we thought there might be radiator damage because of all the water on the car, but a quick car wash is one of the benefits of hitting tires. I learned that earlier this year in a Lemons race when a teammate did the same thing (but while racing, not while pitting, for fuck’s sake).

Sonny went next and started in P30. I went through his footage and found a cool clip. In the video below, Sonny points by a faster car quite early in the Carousel, which shows what an aware and courteous driver he is. Keep watching the full lap for a surprise ending for the faster car.

Sonny banged out 50 fast laps, safe and consistent, and brought us up to 22nd position overall. This put us nine places ahead of where we were yesterday at the same time, and things were looking really good when I got in the car.

A few cars passed us in the pits, and so I was out in P27, but was feeling my oats and got us up to P21. I had some good racing in this stint, real wheel-to-wheel action that was fun and intense. I’m still replaying some of those in my head.

I had planned to run the car out of gas in my stint, but I thought I saw Pat with his helmet on, indicating that they were ready for me to come in (my radio wasn’t connected). But when I pitted, Pat didn’t have his helmet on, Sonny wasn’t prepared, and Alyssa was nowhere to be seen. Must have been some other team that was ready! Still we managed a decent pit stop of 3:22, and when Pat got in, we’d only lost two positions.

Six laps later, all hell broke loose. To be more specific, the right rear wheel hub broke loose.

Pat was going 83 mph through T1 when the hub flange broke. This took out the brake disc, the entire wheel, and spun Pat around 720 degrees. Luckily there’s a big sand trap there and he slid safely to a halt. That could have been a lot worse, and I really only care that Pat is safe and unhurt. Damage can be fixed, and I’ll replace the rear hubs every year now.

Post-race thoughts

Some thoughts in no particular order.

Miata hubs. Miathubs!

Everyone knows Miatas have weak hubs, and most of the time it’s the front hubs that fail. Alyssa examined my hubs before the race and declared they were crap. So I ordered a pair of Miatahubs at the very last minute. Justin Lee was also racing at Mid-Ohio (in the Finish First Racing Scion FRS, Class 2), and so he hand-delivered the new Miatahubs to us, and helped us install them on Friday morning.

Miatahubs aren’t cheap, but I was feeling pretty pleased with myself now that the car has a bulletproof solution for the front hubs, and they should last forever. Of course it was the rear hub that broke.

Aero vs power

Nobody had less power than we did, but we routinely out-handled and out-braked most cars in the field. A lot of that comes from a better aero package that give us more downforce and less drag. Case in point, here I am in a dead heat with a 1.6 Miata, the other slowest car on the track. I eventually pass him because my car has less drag, and I brake later.

The other NA/NB Miatas in the field were on RE71Rs, while we were on RS4s, and they probably had more mechanical grip than we did. But aero works better the faster you go, and that’s where we could take them.

Hankook RS4 225/45-15

The tires worked predictably throughout the weekend. At first we were on RS4s that had about 16 hours on them I’d guess? They were only about half worn, and didn’t wear appreciably the entire day. On day two we started on stickers, and we put down times that were 1/10th slower on average. The difference was down to warmer weather and has nothing to do with the tires. Anyway, Hankook RS4s are great tires, and I see no reason to use anything else for endurance racing. The fastest NA Miata team was on RE71Rs and we saw them changing tires after only 6.5 hours. No thank you.

No full-course yellows

We didn’t have a single FCY the entire weekend. Compare this to a race at Watkins Glen, where you can expect over an hour of parade laps each day. We had plenty of accidents, but the wrecking crew managed the entire event without stopping the race. They cleared the incidents quickly, and the flaggers were on their game. It was orchestrated perfectly time and again. Thank you Mid-Ohio staff.

Speed differential

I’ve heard some people complain that the speed differential in AER is extreme. The Audi R8 car was about 10 seconds faster than us, but it was easy to see coming and stay out of the way. There were other fast cars, and they did occasionally dive bomb us in to T1, T4, and T11, but you learn quickly to accept that.

So you drive your mirrors a bit more, and there’s the occasional “holy crap” moment when a car suddenly appears next to you. But most of the Class 4 and 5 cars were really well driven, respectful, and safe. The speed differential was actually a shit ton of fun. Those cars take different lines, and so you can still play with them in the tight sections, and even show them your tail from time to time.

Here’s a clip of me going though T1. I purposely don’t track all the way out so I can point by the horsepower car behind me. I stay on my line going into the chicane, he takes a different line, and we trust each other to dance the dance. It might look like a close call, but it isn’t.