NASA Texas hosted the seventh and final round of the 2016 season at Texas World Speedway on October 14-16, 2016. It was finally time to attend Competition School to obtain my provisional racing license. Comp School consisted of both classroom and on-track exercises on Friday. After an initial warm-up session, we did some side-by-side running, a passing exercise and finished with practice starts. Adding the elements of racing (multiple cars in close proximity) to the effort of trying to drive the car fast was almost overwhelming, so I'm glad we had an opportunity to practice in the relatively small group in Comp School. Below is a quick video of one of the practice starts. Upon completion of a written test to confirm understanding of the Club Codes and Regulations, I received my provisional competition license and will be classified as a rookie until I complete 4 races without incident. Saturday's schedule consisted of a warm-up session and qualifying in the morning, with two 20-minute races in the afternoon. Warm-up and qualifying weren't too different than any of the other events I'd attended previously - cars were just trying to find space on the track and get a fast lap. I qualified towards the back, as expected - rookies start at the back anyway. The races were a different story! With approximately 40 Spec Miata's registered, it was busy in Turn 1 and Turn 2! I was a little too conservative and ended up at the back of the main field, but ahead of a smaller, slower pack of cars. It was quite an experience to not be able to hear your own car down the main straight and watch the large field funnel from 4-5 cars wide to 2-cars wide by Turn 2. I finished 33rd and 24th in the two races on Saturday. Towards the end of each of the races, the tires felt really greasy - a combination of high ambient temperatures and working the tires harder. Tire management will be an important part of the longer race on Sunday. Here's a video of my first ever racing lap! Sunday's schedule was warm-up and qualifying in the morning, with a 40-minute race after lunch. The practice session for all car classes was combined, so the short session included a huge number of cars with very different speeds. Qualifying was much the same as Saturday - my pace put me near the back of the pack. 40 minutes feels like an extremely long time when it's hot, humid and your brain is working overtime to both drive fast and deal with all the other cars. I found myself running at the back of the main pack again, but a little further behind two cars that were racing each other. Unfortunately, I managed to miss a shift exiting Turn 9. While trying to shift from 3rd to 4th, I managed to shift from 3rd to 2nd, which locked up the rear tires and caused me to spin. I dropped two places and finished 25th. It was an incredible experience to finally start wheel-to-wheel racing. I have a lot of learning to do - I'm still not very fast and have to deal with with all the other cars as well. It's going to be exciting to start a full season of racing in 2017!
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The 15th annual Targa Newfoundland took place from September 11-16, 2016. For those who may not know, Targa Newfoundland is one of three major "Targa" events in the world - the others being Targa New Zealand and Targa Tasmania. Competitors race on closed public roads, across rural highways and through small communities, trying to better a "base time" established by the organizers for that "stage". The cars "transit" on open roads under normal laws between stages to cover about 1600 km (1000 mi) over 6 days (or "legs"). Don and I arrived in St. John's on Thursday, September 8, at around 5AM, and so did our gear - I had over 160 lbs of tools, spare parts and safety gear in tow for this trip, including a suitcase that had nothing but brake rotors and brake pads inside. After grabbing a Tim Horton's coffee to offset the lack of sleep, we went straight to the Targa High Performance Driving School at the Flatrock Community Center for a bit of a refresher. The 2-day Targa school was a chance for Don and I to get back into gear since we hadn't seen each other since the end of Targa 2015. It was great to see Don pick up right where he left off last year as we did a little navigation practice and talked about how to better communicate in the car. We also met a number of new competitors, a number of whom said they'd watched our in-car videos from last year to get a better idea of what to expect. Registration and technical inspection took place on a busy Saturday, September 10. Fortunately, our one-man support crew (and my cousin), Adam Penney, had arrived to help with the pre-race maintenance that needed to be done. Forced to work outside during cold drizzle, scattered showers and gusty winds*, we changed engine oil & filter / transmission fluid / differential fluid, lubed the brake caliper slide pins. replaced brake rotors and pads, flushed the brake fluid, checked and tightened all the major nuts and bolts, and removed / replaced the decals. It was 4 hours of steady work before we breezed through the tech inspection. We did learn that Mimi is about 150 lbs over the minimum weight (which, for our classification in Targa, is based on the original curb weight for the car). I'm not sure there's much that can or needs to be done to change that. * Note the ratchet straps in the photo below holding the hood in each direction... The Prologue stages on Sunday, September 11, are practice stages for driver and co-driver to test themselves and the car at speed without any scoring. The town of Flatrock hosted the first two stages and we moved to Bauline for stages 3 and 4. Despite all our work the day before, the brakes on the car just didn't feel right. If you watch the video of Stage 1 below, you'll hear me say "brakes are soft" right after the very first braking zone. As soon as we'd completed the two Flatrock stages, Adam was standing by to bleed the brakes again to see if that would help. Unfortunately, it didn't. We managed to get through the two stages in beautiful Bauline - where, thankfully, they'd removed the long downhill section from the stage - and parked the car for the night. Here's a link to the YouTube playlist with all of the Prologue videos. With our braking issues unresolved, we continued to struggle during the first scored leg of Targa 2016. We made our way from St. John's towards Clarenville, with the day starting a little damp and drying out after the first stage. While waiting for Stage 4 to start, I was poking around under the hood to see if we were leaking brake fluid. That's when I discovered the problem - the little bracket that holds the brake fluid distribution block was mounted incorrectly. It was placed between the brake booster and master cylinder, creating a gap in the mechanical linkage - that small gap was causing a full inch of play down at the brake pedal. Unfortunately, we weren't equipped to make the fix on the side of the road. Knowing it could be resolved that night was comforting, but the inability to modulate the brakes would still cost us 28 seconds later that day. When we didn't slow as expected going into a hard left on Stage 5, I pushed harder on the pedal and locked up all 4 wheels, sliding straight off the road. We backed up, but I was fuming and not thinking clearly - thankfully, Don was calm and rational and got us moving again. We limped through the rest of the day without taking any additional penalties, but that wasn't how I was hoping to start the race. Here's the YouTube playlist with all of the videos from Leg 1. Brakes are awesome became my favorite saying as we got back to having fun on Leg 2. Each stage was 16 km (10 mi) or longer, over generally good roads, which allowed us to hit a top speed of 190 kph (118 mph). There was a little bit of excitement on Stage 6 heading into Terranceville. Towards the end of the stage, there's an acute left after a crest. We think the route book distance may have been out a bit, but in any case, we missed the turn and again, slid straight off course. If there was an award for "fastest to put the car into reverse", I think we would have won it. A large number of cars made the same mistake and it made for good entertainment for the local fans. We discovered another small issue with the car under full throttle - it would cut out at 5500 rpm, drop to 5000 rpm, and run again. Based on a quick search and a few text messages, it seemed to be a wiring harness, timing belt or sensor issue - none of which would be fixable during the week, so we'd just have to live with it. One of the highlights of the week was the lunch in Terranceville. The stage coordinator, Joanne Brinston, had done an amazing job of engaging the community - we felt like rock stars as kids wandered around asking for autographs and adults were checking out the cars. This is how Targa should aim to be received in every community! The YouTube playlist with videos from Leg 2 is here. We only raced one of the first 4 stages on Leg 3 due to an accident. Unfortunately, one of the local teams damaged their car beyond repair, but driver and co-driver escaped with relatively minor injuries. We encountered the first of the town stages later in the day, arriving in the beautiful, tourist town of Trinity with the instruction "crest into medium right, between houses, narrow". While we stopped for lunch, Adam discovered the actual cause of our engine hesitation issue from the previous day - a nut securing ground wires near the cam angle sensor had worked its way off. A quick reach into his pocket for a standard Miata 10mm nut, and another problem was solved... The last two stages of the day were really rough, including a "bad ditch" running across the road. You can hear the car hit hard several times between 1:35 and 1:45 in the video below. Each hit was followed by a quick glance at the oil pressure gauge. Unlike last year, where the tight, twisty bits caught us off guard, we ran really well. We took 37 seconds of penalties, losing only 13 seconds the top team in Targa Classic division on the day. All of the videos from Leg 3 are included in this YouTube playlist. Leg 4 was the only wet day of racing at Targa 2016. Unfortunately, Leg 4 also saw the end of the road for a couple of teams - our friends in the other Miata had what seemed to be a minor incident with a deflated tire forcing them into a gentle spin, but it left their car unusable with some sort of suspension issue. Another car missed a turn and ended up damaged beyond repair, while the driver and co-driver were unharmed. We were one of two cars in Targa Classic to finish the day with no penalties. We initially took time on Stage 9 as we slowed due to an oncoming car (!!!), but after submitting an inquiry, that penalty was zeroed. The video below doesn't quite do justice to the sensation of seeing headlights coming at you while racing. The rest of the Leg 4 Youtube videos can be found here. Targa Newfoundland 2016 wrapped up with Leg 5 on Friday, September 16. After a few longer, flowing stages, the event wraps up with two repeated town stages - Cupids, Brigus, Cupids, Brigus. After a mistake on the first pass through Brigus, I was really happy with well recovered and how hard we were able to push through the last two stages. We took only 9 seconds on the second run through Brigus - by comparison, we took 24 seconds in 2015. The video for that run, Stage 8, is embedded below. Click here for the rest of the YouTube videos from Leg 5, We wrapped up the week in 4th place in Targa Classic overall and 2nd place in Targa Classic Group 3. It was a little disappointing to know that we could have finished higher if it weren't for the braking issues at the beginning of the week. That said, I'm proud of how we kept pushing such that a podium was still within reach on Friday.
Megan Best from Megan Marie Photography moved on to become the official photographer for Targa Newfoundland this year. But she still captured a number of photo of the Underbite Racing team in action and we'll post those as soon as they're ready. We've already registered for Targa Newfoundland 2017 and hope to get ourselves back onto the podium. Mimi, our '91 Miata, will some well-deserved rest and TLC before her next race, while I move on to Competition School at the next NASA TX event in mid-October. The long summer break ended with the Labor Day Weekend Bash at Motorsport Ranch Houston on September 3-4, 2016. Since I don't own a pick-up truck, I've become very efficient with packing my little 2-door coupe. 4 wheels, 2 fuel jugs, a cooler with water bottles on ice, basic tools and all my driver gear - no problem! This was my last weekend of Time Trial before Competition School in October, and the last new track to learn on the NASA Texas circuit. I was unable to attend the Test & Tune session, so Saturday's warm-up was my first time around the track. I was quite slow and managed to have even those slow times disqualified by mowing the grass at the exit of Turn 8 instead of proceeding around Turn 9. At the end of the day, I was exhausted from the heat (the same heat that kept my cell phone from recording any lap times) and the tires were down to the cords. With fresh rubber on Sunday, I was able to get my lap times down into the 1:54's - still 4 seconds off the pace of the fastest Spec Miata's. Unfortunately, the heat was still affecting my ability to record data and video, so the only lap with data and video is a little slower, but will still help me recall the track and think about my line. NASA Texas heads back to Texas World Speedway in College Station from October 14-16. In the meantime, we're headed to Targa Newfoundland - news from that event in the next post!
The NASA Texas Summer Shootout was held at the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit on June 10-12, 2016. Hallett is located in Jennings, Oklahoma, about an hour west of Tulsa, and about 9 hours north of our home in The Woodlands, Texas. The drive up on Thursday, in a U-Haul pick-up truck with a friend's car in tow, was fairly uneventful other than some mid-afternoon traffic while passing through Dallas. I guess I wasn't the only one not working that afternoon! The track has more elevation change than any of the locations I'd visited so far. After arriving on Thursday evening and unloading the cars, I headed out to walk the track. It quickly became apparent that there were some fun / scary turns here. The entry to Turn 2 is a downhill braking zone into a second gear corner, while Turn 7 / 8 should be flat out in fourth over a blind crest into Turn 9 where you're down to second gear again. Like our stop in NOLA, I deliberately didn't install a laptimer or camera in the car on Friday or Saturday. Instead, I took time to learn the track and try different lines based on feel / exit speeds. Since I was "competing" in Time Trial, I did have a transponder installed and found that I was sitting in 3rd place in my classification on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, I ran out of brakes in the last session of the day and fell to 4th place going into Sunday. On go new Carbotech pads with fresh rotors... With fresh brakes on Sunday, it took some time to adapt to the extra stopping power. I was able to scrub another second off my time, but so did others, and I remained mid-pack in my TTE classification. Not bad for a rookie. Below is a video of my fastest lap from the weekend. While I'm not as far off the pace of the Spec Miata field as I once was, I still have a lot to learn. It was pointed out that I'm turning in too early for a number of corners - there's an initial turn-in, but that only serves to tighten the corner and I have to turn more and slow on the exit to stay on the track. I need to learn to be patient and trust that the car will grip when I need it.
We're on summer break until the next event here in Houston on Labor Day weekend. In the meantime, there's work to be done to get the car ready and build up my spare parts inventory (hubs, brake calipers, etc.). We'll also be busy getting Mimi ready for Targa Newfoundland 2016! Please "Like" our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates between major events. |
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Bryan Bursey, driver, founded Underbite Racing in 2015. Categories
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