Yes, I won the PT race overall from the back. And I won TT. Second overall. Only ran 1 session... Track records in both.
Car was bitchin fast. Still for sale and the car is still in Cali.

Just boarded a flight back to FL but I'll post the whole weekend story later...

 

Congrats!

 

Congrats on both! GLWS.

 

Cool stuff. It's good to know guys from our forum keep kicking *** at these levels.
Congrats are in order!

 

Congrats Eric! It was pleasure to meet you. Car looks just as good in person as the pictures.

 

Thanks guys! Great meeting you too k24! I'm sorry I don't remember your first name...

So as you guys know, I shipped the car out from Florida. I actually sent it to Laguna for the runoffs with a team from Daytona and had the team that was helping me run it at Sonoma pick it up from them there.
Anyways, after road Atlanta I didn't have much time to check things on the car. I basically put the aero back on, switched tunes and shipped it out.
When I flew out and saw the car for the first time in the trailer I looked up from underneath (stacker trailer) and immediately noticed that the diff housing was broken clean in half. On top of that one of the axle boots was ripped clean open. Luckily this was on Wednesday before the test day early in the morning while we where in staging already at the track. I went up to TFB, spec Miata team located at the track and they sold me a diff housing and axles that we where able to replace right there in the trailer thanks to the "lift".
After that was completed I took the car on a paddock drive where I immediately noticed something strange in the steering. It didn't feel very responsive. I checked toe and anything else obvious and was fine so I though it may have just been the tire bugars or something. It wasn't hard to figure out what the problem actually was in the first practice session on Thursday. The steering rack was completely loose!! Haha
All that out of the way we started tuning the setup and got the car pretty good by the end of the day. I slept on it, reviewed data and video, came up with some changes to the car and to my driving for the morning and the car was awesome by Friday albeit we where still just running sm7's past their prime. I had brought 2 sets of sticker a6's for TT and 1 set if sticker r7's which I was saving for Sundays race.
I won pole in class and overall on Friday and won the PT race overall. However I was sent to the dyno and went over my oh limit and was Dq'ed. It made 10 more Whp than it did when I tested on the dyno on Thursday...
I put in another tune and reclassed the car, added weight.
Sat I started 7th in class and 11th overall and still won overall.
I then decided to go out for the last TT session of the day on sticker a6's, did two laps and that was it. 1:50.1 and a 1:50.2.
They then sent me to the dyno again and I was legal by 7hp and was more than 50lbs overweight.

I decided not to go out for Sundays 8:15 TT session even though I knew that would be the money session and I probably could have went a second or more faster. I needed to conserve the car...
I started 7th in class and 13th overall for the championship race and won easily in class and overall. The Hoosier R7's are awesome! Not quite the grip level of a6's but pretty damn close and have more longevity. They are definitely faster than the sm7's by a second or more at Sonoma.
Crazy, but great weekend overall!

 

Link

Found this article kinda funny. Talk a lot about two guys in PTD, but don't mention the other miata that won until they covered all the results...

Anyways, what happened with the diff there? something during the towing? diff housings don't just break randomly...

 

Which dyno? TFB or MCE?

 

FWIW our BMW M3 was

352whp @ TFB 10-31-14 SAE CF 1.0
358whp @ MCE 11-7-14 SAE CF 1.0
351whp @ MCE 11-9-14 SAE CF ???

NASA Scales were 45lbs lighter than ours Saturday.
Sunday AM they were only 5lbs lighter than ours. It stayed that way all day.

 

The diffs break sometimes lik that. I've seen several broken ones. I'm not sure how it happend to mine unless someone tried strapping from it in transit. I would have thought I certainly would have felt it if I finished the race that way in road Atlanta. But you do poind the curbs super hard there and I also went off on the exit of 7 one lap and did the "jump".

PT/TT was using the MCE dyno. I dynoed 4 different times over the weekend in various conditions and it was a 1.00 correction every time

 

The scales where a little odd. I didn't have my own to compare them to but after Saturdays race I went over the scales and then immediately went out for my one TT session without adding fuel and went to the scales again afterwards and it said the car was 8lbs heavier... So I don't think they where very consistent

 

Inconsistent numbers from the MCE mobile dyno? Unfathomable.

 

LOL I got screwed by MCE at east nationals... twice.

 

I've seen their dyno walk up 12whp in 90 minutes on the same car. It's a joke, and NASA makes a joke of themselves by continuing to contract with him despite knowing full well the issues (and their exact causes) with that dyno. I have no qualms with publicly ragging on MCE, either, because they know exactly why their dyno gives inconsistent numbers (poor weather station setup) and they refuse to do anything about it. It's been a problem since 2012, it was a problem at Miller in 2013, and it's still a problem today.

 

Yeah. Mine went anywhere from 107hp-120hp at road atlanta. Cost me a 2nd place in PTF

 

Is the TFB Dynojet more consistent?

 

That makes sense. The SAE correction factor remained 1.0 all weekend. No way that's possible. My butt dyno tells me the crisp morning and late afternoon air was faster.

I think they need another decimal place to fine tune the SAE correction factor. I remember it's only two places. That's a big jump IMHO.

 

It probably also helps to have someone operate the dyno that isn't an asshat that doesn't give a **** about what is going on. I would imagine that would also be an important part of the selection process of the dyno company by any event organizer who gave a ****. And then if the company was operating in a spurious fashion at the event things would quickly be remedied and/or the operator canned and the results thrown out. Especially when entrants are taking it seriously enough to spend tens of thousands of dollars on preparation and attendance. Maybe I just don't know enough about putting on major national events but I always thought legitimacy was a big deal.

 

Tim Barber is a very competent individual, so I would expect his dyno to produce more consistent results, yes.