“There is no Honda Without Racing” - Mr. Honda

I spent most of today touring the Honda Performance Development facility in Santa Clarita, CA. My visit home to my parents and 94-year-old Grandfather conveniently coincided with the open house, so I took advantage of the opportunity and headed over to Honda’s “top-secret” race headquarters.

The massive, high-tech123,000 square foot building is where the engines are built for Honda’s ALMS and Indy car efforts. They do take security seriously as evidenced by the large quantity of guards—we were not allowed to wander unaccompanied or photograph anything other than the stars drivers Helio Castroneves and Dan Wheldon (who are great sports).

As you would expect the whole place is operating room sterile, with a separate part of the building for each part of development, building and testing. All parts that enter are first put into quarantine, and then weighed and measured before being approved.

One of the coolest parts of the engine testing area were the different “rooms” for dyno testing the engines, parts and transmissions. Each room is soundproofed, and has complete climate control for replicating the altitude and humidity of different track locations, and of course has a complete ventilation system. The test is video taped and is run by a technician that sits outside the explosion-proofed glass at the computer. I can only imagine the increased performance they could coax out of our stock Civic motor.

The best part of the days was of course the people. It was good the meet the Honda team that I’ve been talking to on the phone, and other racers, quite a few that I’ve met at various tracks. Also, Helio and Dan (I’m definitely too tall for Indy).

A racer himself, Mr. Honda, based his company on the belief that racing is the ultimate proving ground. Mr. Honda also said "I've failed 99% of my trials, in order to succeed in the remaining 1%". Thank you Honda for continuing to make racing a priority!

Grand-am Has Released the 2010 Schedule

How did I miss this? I've been watching for it. There must have been too much good racing on TV! They have not released the TV details yet.

Top Gear at Laguna Seca in an NSX

I'm a little behind in my TV viewing, today's Rolex and ALMS races are still waiting on my Tivo, but I did catch an old Top Gear from season 7. Jeremy Clarkson decided to find out if he was faster driving the video game or on the actual track. He drove an NSX at Laguna Seca both in the game and in reality. This made me pretty nostalgic for my NSX, but that awesome car has funded a few race cars for me, so it's now a happy memory.

I've often thought about learning a new track this way. It does work for some drivers, but I can't even figure out which button to press on the little controller, let alone look at where I am going. My kids think I am lame, but that's the way it is, and I just can't see putting more time into figuring out the game when I have laundry to do and a garden to weed. Jeremy looked to be comfortable with the controller and drove the virtual NSX around with a fast lap of 1.41 —not bad. On the real Laguna Seca, in the real Acura he couldn't get within 15 seconds of that time.

His explanation for the difference was that he couldn't stop thinking "What would happen if the wheel fell off now? or What if a metior hit right in front of me?" He doesn't believe that real race drivers have any of those thoughts while on track. That was a relevant question since I did have a wheel fall off at the most inoportune time (between turn 8 and 9) during the 25 hours of Thunderhill in 2006. I guess that's probably true, there's no time for questions like that when you're thinking about car behavior, turn-in, placement, the car next to you. I don't know, maybe if my brain processed a little faster I'd have time for that—do you?

This all tied into all the media I've been reading this week about Forza 3. The images are amazingly life-like! It makes me want to give it one more go. I'm not sure which "real" tracks it comes with, that would be the selling point for me. That and the fact that it might be a cheaper way to go, but hey if a wheel can't really fall off, what's the point?

F1 without Flavio is like Miller without Vesko

Ok, maybe that's a bad analogy, but I just couldn't resist. Lest you go down the wrong path here, I'm not talking about the cheating thing, it's the whole interesting personality thing. I love the story behind the race, the interviews, the characters, of which motorsports has plenty. I look forward to the Acura Pre-race Show, and I have to admit Flavio is always one of my favorite interviewees. He's passionate about F1, I guess spending several million will have that effect, or being passionate about it will allow you to spend the millions it takes. Either way, good or bad, motorsports has a story.

This month seems to have had more than usual. Flavio and his "crash-gate", APR and the motor tear-down after the Miller Koni race, (Did you follow the forums about that? If you didn't it's too late, the Grand-am forum has been taken down). Then the news yesterday that J.C. France was pulled over for street racing, and subsequently arrested for driving under the influence and also charged for possession of cocaine. Grand-am has banned him from racing but I don't think we've heard the last of that. Brumos, need to fill that seat? I'm available this weekend :-)

I'm curious about the APR caught cheating story. I first heard about it from a reliable source the day after the tear-down, someone who had been there. Their info was that there were many rule infractions, enough that the Grand-am officials were shocked. APR's statement on the forum was that it was only a minor intake modification that did not increase the Volkswagen's power. Having been passed by those cars on track I have thoughts of my own about their power . . . The Koni Grand-am officials believed that even though they threw a bunch of changes and restrictions at the APR team they were just so talented that they were able to consistently go faster regardless of the rule changes. I have to say that my favorite quote on this comes from Subaru 111 driver Andrew Aquilante "Those APR cars really handle well in a straight line." I can understand the Sube team's frustration, if I were Carl T of Compass 360 I'd be adding up all the prize money lost to APR. Grand-am has been pretty quiet on this story recently—sanctioning bodies don't appear to believe the PR view that "all press is good press" APR's site and blogs have not updated since the press release about the win. Grand-am did fine APR $10,000 and the Violation List says this:

Jeff Mishtawy - (one per car)
Violations of General 1-1 and Koni 3-3.3
Unauthorized engine modifications. Each car must conform to standard configuration as delivered to US customers by the manufacturer except where regulations allow or require modifications. $5,000 Loss of All Team, Driver, MFG. Points and
Purse. Grand-Am will retain ineligible parts.

Grand-am has also added regulations for monitoring engine data. I can't wait to see where it all shakes out in 2010, my guess is the new Mazda's will be fast, but the street model does start with 263 hp. Can we just get the Civic over 200?? Please!

Now I've been accused of being to, umm, of the non-male gender in my appreciation of the background story, but after following the forums on the APR story I am certain it's not just us women who appreciate the human interest angle. Maybe the reason there aren't as many women fans of motorsports is the lack of coverage for the whole story, and not the just story behind the race, but the whole race story. SPEED, we don't want to only watch the top three or four cars in a race, especially when they are going around lap after lap with no excitement. Show us the other battles on the track—I know they are out there.

More Race Pics

Thanks to Wes Dunkel for the great photos.

Koni Race - Brakes, Brakes, Brakes

The race started out well. With a poor qualifying position of 14th, I was able work up into the top 10 pretty quickly. Sara got on the radio to remind me to be easy on the brakes, as we knew that would be a limitation. I thought I was, but at the same time I didn't want to loose any position. In early laps I had slight contact with someone and my left mirror was pointed skyward, which gave me zero visibility on the left side. After an hour or so we were into our fuel window and I thought it would be better to pit early and fix the mirror to avoid contact with the GS traffic that was headed my way. Vesko got into the car and was driving very conservatively to preserve the brakes, even so he realized they were basically gone after about half an hour.



We decided to keep him out on track and try for a decent finish. He did finish the race —13th — but what impressive driving! I know in theory how you could drive a car without brakes, but in actuality I don't think most of us could make it work. Certainly not for 30 minutes. Good job Vesko, thanks for bring the car to a finish safely. On to plans for 2010.



Thanks again to all of our awesome volunteer crew!

Koni Challenge at Miller Motorsports Park - Pre Race

All week we've been busy preparing for this race. It's great to be racing on our home track, but that hasn't seemed to make it less work, or make it easier to go faster. The competition is tough, several teams were here racing the NASA event last week to prepare for Koni / Rolex, and of course most of these drivers have been here many times before.

Yesterday was an exceptionally long day for me. I arrived at the track at 5:30 am for a brief news interview and a rigged session in the go-karts with the news guy. I also did an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune who printed the article today, and tomorrow have a live radio interview. Thanks to Grand-am for the media support, I'm sure CityDeals.com is getting some good exposure from all of this.

Yesterday during the promoter test day we lost the throttle body and missed a session. Compass 360 was kind enough to share a spare with us, and we have another arriving today. The car was completely different to drive once again, but better this time.

First session today went well, our times put us in 10th overall.

MPRA Race 6

Patrick Long (of ALMS and Rolex) had his first victory in the Camping World West NASCAR race at Miller this past weekend. The Miller race was his third start in a stock car, but he made it look effortless. I was impressed to learn that 81-year-old Hershel McGriff was racing, and looking good, although a flat tire close to the end of the race gave him a 19th place finish. Way to go Hershel!

But enough of NASCAR, lets talk about MPRA. Many things went wrong and the early race found Sara and Vesko out. I found myself at the back once again because of rev-limiter issues during the start. Jeff Morgan drove to the front to battle the Porsche and Corvette collections in Super Sport, while Aaron Morgan and Mark Keeton took their BMWs to the front of the GT groups. (I'm not actually sure what group Aaron is in, the cars have been switched around a few times.)

Ben Crossland in the Mustang group managed a 2:10.9 with Keith Rossberg right behind him. The drivers that impressed me were John Hanson, our strategist and Zach Rossberg, driving to what must have been their fastest laps to date. Great work!

I was happy with the changes Vesko made to the Koni Civic during the weekend. The car is much happier now and I look forward to Grand-am's weekend at Miller in September. I find that the Civic is no match for the 400-700hp in Super Sport, but there's always a race going on somewhere in group 2 and that makes for fun racing.

The Group 1 race was a good battle and enjoying to watch, especially the trophy presentation.

NASCAR Camping World West and MPRA round 6

Miller Park Racing Association round 6 will be run with the NASCAR Camping World West series this weekend. Because NASCAR is not my usual motorsports series of choice — I find it interesting to see the cars up close and find it entertaining to watch them navigate the road course. For anyone in Salt Lake interested in NASCAR this is your best chance to watch the cars an meet some of the up-and-coming drivers.

As for MPRA, it's always a lot of fun, I get to get on track and hang out with friends.

Here's a link to the schedule

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