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!
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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. NASA TX went across state lines to visit NASA NOLA in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 20-22. Heavy traffic and heavy rain made the 370 mile trip from Houston fairly awful. Fortunately, all the rain on Thursday night left nothing to fall on Friday, as had been forecasted, providing a sunny day to learn another new track. NOLA Motorsports Park is a very flat track with very few higher-risk turns. I didn't collect data or record video on Friday or Saturday. Instead, I focused on trying different lines in turns and trying to judge improvements based on speed into or at the end of the next straight. It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I had a breakthrough - if you just drive a little harder, the tire will come up to pressure (and temperature). In the final two sessions of the day, I consistently ran 2.5 seconds faster than I had in my best sessions from Sunday morning. There were just 2 weekends between NOLA and NASA TX Round 5 in Hallett, Oklahoma. I've been busy getting the car prepared with it's new livery. To make the most of the 8-10 (or 12!) hour journey north, I'll be doubling my track time this weekend by running with both the high-performance driving experience (HPDE) group as well as the competitive time trial (TT) group. I'm looking forward a lot of seat time!
NASA Texas moved to Texas World Speedway in College Station on April 22-24 for Round 3 of the 2016 season. After learning some hard lessons at a private test day at this track a couple of weeks earlier, I was looking forward to an opportunity to improve my times (and regain some confidence). With heavy rain and flooding in the Houston area during the week leading up to the event, it was great to start the weekend with a dry track and blue sky. I ran Friday with High Performance Driving Event (HPDE) Level 1&2 - it was the smallest of the 3 run groups that day and traffic wasn't much of an issue. I spent most of the day trying improve my line through Turn 4 and Turns 13/14/15 before the long main straight. The very old tires (shaved Toyo RA1s) were not enjoying the heat and I was working hard to deal with them - skip ahead in the video to the 5 minute mark and watch for the slide about 15 seconds later.
I had my fastest laps on Sunday morning. With an instructor from the Spec Miata group in the passenger seat helping me out, I found 4 seconds relative to times I'd been running on my own on Friday and Saturday. I'm still a full 7 seconds off the pace of the fastest Spec Miata drivers, but I know most of that is driving skill that I'll develop with more seat time (and a small amount is old tires and the weight of my passenger). On the lap immediately after setting my fastest time of the weekend, I ran out of rubber at about 80 mph in Turn 8. The rear end let go and I fell off the track, popping the right rear tire off the rim and wedging a chunk of mud and grass between the tire and rim on the front right. Similar to my incident on the test day, the alignment bolts were also rotated inwards. More video from the weekend, including a clip of me mowing the grass outside of Turn 8 can be found on our YouTube channel. The next event is in New Orleans on May 20-22.
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Bryan Bursey, driver, founded Underbite Racing in 2015. Categories
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