Savington

iTrader: (31)

Straightpipe, no cats/resonators/mufflers. It is a little rowdy so I will route the exhaust to the back of the car at some point (dumps at the diff right now).

The last setup was an AEM Series 1, NA motor, small exhaust leak at the back of the header, and a non-functional TPS. It spit big-*** flames on decel, all the way through the full exhaust and muffler. Now it's on an MS3 Basic, different engine, turbo, functional TPS, overrun fuel cut on, and it still spits flames on upshifts and downshifts when the exhaust is hot. I've given up on trying to tame it. The car just wants to be cool.

icantlearn

thats so sick. I REALLY need to go to full 3".

Lexzar

iTrader: (2)

Overrun off + 100kpa fuel levels, 0* timing for full scene points

codrus

Well, for FULL scene points you need a rotary.

--Ian

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Subd

MartinezA92

iTrader: (4)

flames 4 the dames

Savington

iTrader: (31)

Spring Mountain 3.1 "Mansell" course with Speed Ventures and Supermiata this past weekend. Got the course figured out fairly quickly and had a best of 2:35.001 on old rubber. Put on stickers for qualifying on Saturday afternoon and put down a 2:33.719 on lap 3.

After Thunderhill, I added a 13" SPAL curved-blade to replace the 8" eBay fan left over from the naturally aspirated days. The fully sealed ducting and 3000cfm of fan kept everything in check, even in 90-95*F weather. I was able to run full pace for the entire 30 minute race on Saturday. My dad came out to codrive with me and I think we ran 7 or 8 full sessions between us during the day. Thermal cracking in the rotors advanced quicker than expected and I, like a bonehead, did not have spare rotors, so I elected to sit out Sunday's races and get an early start on the 500+ mile tow home.



Next event in 1.5 weeks at Thunderhill.

icantlearn

I wish to be as fast as you. Your an incredible driver. really.

Does rover pass sound at laguna?

Ill bring your harness hardware to t-hill with me to return to you.

Savington

iTrader: (31)

Thanks. I was blessed with parents who supported my kart racing endeavors as a teenager, and equally blessed with at least a little natural talent. I got into Red Bull's Driver Search program in 2004 and 2005 through open qualifiers and finished mid-pack both years at their west coast runoffs. Better than most but not nearly good enough to be offered one of the ~12 Sebring test seats. I briefly considered a driver's ladder or other pro ladder attempt, but after spending 18mos in that environment and talking to some of the right people, I realized the path to being a pro driver wasn't easy or even desirable. I know more than a handful of people who attempted it, far fewer who succeeded.

It's just seat time. The more you drive, the more you learn. I just happen to have far more seat time than one would expect a 28 year old to have, owing to my continuous participation in motorsports for the better part of 15 years

icantlearn

Thats awesome. I wish I could have had the opportunity to race karts when I was younger. Though I am extremely fortunate to have what I have at my age. I had to work for it. And I plan to make the best of it.

Im curious as to why a pro driving career is not desirable? I mean, it's expensive yes, but the reward if it works out will certainly be worth it. At least that's how it seems.

At 17, were you still karting or were you building race cars? Just curious.

shuiend

iTrader: (24)

Because the majority of the time it does not work out. Then you are sort of screwed in life, as those skills do not exact transfer to other career fields easily. People always see everyone at the top and see how great it is to be them, it is the unseen thousands of people who don't make it that you don't think about it.

codrus

Yeah, if you spend your late teens and early 20s paying to drive race cars in the ladder series and then wind up being one of the 95% (probably more) of such drivers who don't make the cut to being able to earn money driving, then you've missed out on a lot of opportunities to develop the skills you'd need for other careers.

--Ian

aidandj

iTrader: (5)

Large sums of family money is usually the fastest path to being a "pro" driver.

Savington

iTrader: (31)

It is hard to become a pro driver. Starting from the bottom, you have to be immensely talented, essentially prodigy-level. In order to prove that talent, you must win championships, which means finding a world-class team to support you in whatever series you elect to run. Starting at the bottom of the ladder in ~2005, when I was looking at doing it, that would have been a series like Star Mazda ($300,000/yr for championship seat). If you won the championship there, you were offered the opportunity to bring ~$1.5m in sponsorship money to a top-level Formula Atlantic team to try and win that championship. In the lower levels of racing, nobody gets paid except the teams. You have to bring huge sums of money, or have it already, in order to go racing. If you can't afford a top flight team, and you waste your money on a mid-pack seat, then nobody will offer you the ability to buy a top-flight seat later on. That game never really stops. In a series like IMSA WeatherTech, I would bet that the salaries paid to the top 1/3 of the field are offset by the fees paid by drivers to teams in the bottom 2/3rds of the field. In 2008-2009, a mid-pack Daytona Prototype seat was $30k per weekend. Even in F1, half the drivers are supported by nationalized oil companies or telcos. IOW, if you want to race even at a semi-professional level, you have to find hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and most pros are dragging in milllions of dollars a year in sponsor fees, the vast majority of which goes to the teams to keep the wheels turning.

Aside from the exhausting task of constantly begging others for money, there's the personal and emotional toll. A lot of people I know who made attempts at it ended up in a European or Asian series (Formula BMW runs both, IIRC), which means you uproot your entire life at 16 or 17 and move halfway around the world. You can google Scott Speed's story to read what that can be like. Scott grew up in Manteca, and he's a few years older than me, but his brother Alex Speed was a world-class shifter kart driver. I would see Alex and Mike (his dad) testing at Sears Point every so often. The way I've always heard that story told is that Alex saw what Scott went through and elected to not even attempt it.

So yeah, being a pro driver is just like being a professional anything. You have to dedicate your life to it in its entirety, give up your friends, your family support, and there's still no guarantee that you won't finish a season with a 3rd or 4th place championship position and be unable to find funding to go further. I have no regrets about taking the path I did.

I raced single-speed 125cc karts through 2004 and 2005, then switched into a 125cc shifter when the Stock Honda class started up at the beginning of 2006. I was 17 then. I had the Miata, but didn't turbocharge it until 2007, and didn't start seriously racing or developing it until 2009 when Miata Challenge became a legitimate series in Socal.

90civichhb

iTrader: (5)

Awesome story man. I watched my uncle try and pursue dirt late model racing as a career in the southeast around the early 2000s. He was able to float it for about 3 years and then lost everything. From his home to his marriage. Now he sim races and remissness about old times.

icantlearn

Thanks for the input Andrew.

I just met a 18yr old kid who was a pro level karter (Carter Williams) that just graduated to formula cars. He said it was expensive, but sponsors usually take most of the cost. But I guess you need to put the cost factor in perspective.

codrus

Well, no bank is going to give you a loan to fund a racing career, so basically the only option if you weren't lucky enough to have a big pile of family money is to hunt down sponsors. What's not said there is that they don't come knocking on your door, you need to go hunt them down, and that takes real work and real connections.

--Ian

RacerJRP

I've won many races, many championships, and held a few track records along the way though karts and cars. I've met some great folks, and some of them even gave me $$$ or supplied product.

That all being said, I will second everything that Andrew has said about the struggles of an aspiring professional driver. All it takes is money....lots and lots of money. Currently a competitive MX5-Cup seat will run you $15k per weekend not including registration fees, travel, etc. Don't forget you need to sign the damage waiver on that $65k Miata too. The prices go up from there and there is no limit! I called it quits, sold everything, and finished college when I couldn't drum up a few hundred K to go race world challenge years ago.

Tough gig.

And to stay on topic.. This car looks like a massive amount of fun! Great to hear it's been so reliable in the hot weather.

z31maniac

"How do you end up with a small fortune in racing?"

"Start with a large one."

d k

iTrader: (4)

I had a short spell racing formula cars in the early 90's with both Skip Barber and just regional arrive and drives.
I realized very quickly that there was no way to earn enough money from a very well paying job to do it full time.

I decided to switch to shifter karts and while it was easy to win local races and championships, it was quite intimitating showing up for supernationals and seeing dozens of semi trucks full of kart frames, racks of fully built engines and enough spare parts to make most kart shops jealous.
And then there were tires....
top teams got 'special' Bridgestones that were considerably faster than the non specials.

Thats why its nice to see a series like Supermiata having control tires and other cost controls built in.