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Noob here. Endurance racer looking for more power but working within a rule book
I run a Miata in Champcar. Rules, not too many but enough to restrict how I'm going to go about adding power to make my Miata a podium contender. So I'm here to figure out how to turbo my racecar and if it's the best option to keep my car at 500 points or less.
I've been racing champ. I just dont see a turbo making it that long. 8 hrs of continuous abuse does crazy things.
I think the manifold, whatever one you choose, will have a hard time. I dont know how your drivers are on equipment, but our car, I'm surprised the wheels stay on.
Every 10 points over 500 costs you a lap
1 to 10 = 1 lap
11 to 20 = 2 laps
Etc.
The na8 miata has a base value of 300 points. Plus my current mods which are headers (25) front sway bar (10) and radiator (10) and I'm currently at 345
I'm in the process of putting on 30 points of aero (air dam 10, splitter 10 and wing 10) so 375 points
Add a "fast back" type thingim working on which I'm not sure of point on yet 375 + ?
A turbo is flat 100 points after that but I get 25 back when I ditch the headers. 450
Add an intercooler for another 25 points
475 + the fastback points
I'll be under 500 and can tune in HP as I want and think will survive.
A motor swap is 50 points plus a HP increase multiplier and cant go over 169hp on the new motor and stay under 500 point AND I would have to use the miata gearbox.
I've been racing champ. I just dont see a turbo making it that long. 8 hrs of continuous abuse does crazy things.
I think the manifold, whatever one you choose, will have a hard time. I dont know how your drivers are on equipment, but our car, I'm surprised the wheels stay on.
My current car is crazy reliable so I'm really hesitant to make changes. However, I'm a mid pack car down here in the SE region so I'm looking at my options.
Overall. I don't really care about class racing. It's the main reason I chose champcar over the other endurance series. Champ does have classes though and I'm in A but it's not my focus or the series primary focus either.
The Ecotec swap Miata's are fast, it may be something to look into. Remember that with more HP, you burn more fuel- and you're marginal to begin with in tank capacity. Check this guy's build: https://forum.champcar.org/topic/190...ger-miata-630/
I don't need to tell you this I'm sure because you're already out there racing, but a lot of what it takes to run well in one of these races has nothing to do with your lap times. You certainly don't want to do anything to sacrifice reliability (such as a turbo, just forget that idea now). I've been Lemons/ChumpCar racing for 8 years now. This past December's race at VIR was the first time we've put together a "perfect" race, meaning all we had to do was put gas in the car. It was an 8 + 7, Saturday was flawless and Sunday was close- our upper radiator hose popped a pin hole leak that took 5 mins to replace. Get all the weight out you can, I took 90# out with the plasma cutter over the past few days.
@ryansmoneypit thought we had a sticking caliper when he saw the smoke rolling off the brakes during his driver change, but I assured him that's quite normal.
We had an amazing race this day. Lost just under 20 minutes fixing a really stupid exhaust issue early in the day otherwise we just put fuel in and changed drivers. If we didnt have the mishap we'd have probably have finished in 15th. I'm not scoffing at this finish, I'm actually quite proud of it but we were 33 laps behind the first place finisher. That's a lot to over come. I've done some reading and, realistically, for the cost of a proper turbo setup it might better decision to pick a different platform and start over. Lol.
Last edited by WastedAccounts; 01-31-2020 at 05:11 PM.
Please don't take any of this the wrong way, I'm simply at work on a slow day with Excel in front of me and I do this sort of analysis on my own team after every race.
If I throw out any lap over a 3:30, your average lap time is a 2:55.2 with your fast lap being a 2:43.8. Your average deviation from the mean is 6.1 seconds, and the average lap is 11.4 seconds off the fast lap pace .
Now, if we look at the winners KSR, their average lap is a 2:42.5, with a quick time of 2:35.5. They have an average deviation from the mean of 2.7 seconds, with the average lap 7 seconds slower than their hero lap.
Now some of my data is almost assuredly flawed- I have no idea if there was/wasn't rain, which laps truly were cautions, etc. But, if your lap times were as consistent as KSR you could realistically be +4 laps better. It also looks like your pit stops could be 30-60 seconds faster. Are you arriving at pit out with time left on the timer? That could be another lap or two. Obviously none of this relates to making your car faster, but 5 laps is about 3-4 seconds a lap, which is a pretty big leap.
From our last race. I do this after each one, and also have full live telemetry and data acquisition for review. Oddly enough it’s usually only my fast drivers that want to see the data. Strange...
This is awesome. I love data. Thanks for throwing it together. There was no rain, FCY at sebring are usually 5+ minute laps and I thought our pit stops were pretty good.
I wish I could get consistent drivers and teamnates though to take advantage of it. I have one teammate who's pretty new still and my other two seats are always going out to renters. I'm chronically short handed at races. This makes pit stops tough as I'm always teaching people what they need to do. I cant get any body to even check the timer lol. We were running really good stops this day compared to previous races which was nice. It blows my mind how difficult it's been trying to find people who seriously want to go racing and building a race team.
I started with three. Tons of drama so down to two. More drama then just me. Back to 2 now and I've been successful finding renters luckily but I wish I could just get 3 committed ***** to take this seriously with me.
01-29-2020, 10:06 PM
Noob here. Endurance racer looking for more power but working within a rule book
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