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ECR Toy Run - Dec 8th, 2012
People sometimes wonder why we are based in Texas...
"Your summers are so hot!", they say. And while we DO have 2-3 months of a
little heat (okay, a lot of heat), we have
12 months of racing every year. This allows us to race and test every month, and we don't have an "off season" huddled away from the cold with nothing to drive. Sure, we had a couple of snow days around the holidays, but nothing that prevented us from missing a track day or autocross.
Vorshlag picture gallery for ECR Toy Run -
http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...un-ECR-120812/
So, we were racing in December and back on track again a few weeks later in January, like we do every year. I wrote about the December 8th ECR "Toy Run" event twice already: in part three of my
December 28th post in the BRZ Project Thread and in my
December 20th update on our Firebird ChumpCar project thread - some of which I have re-inserted here. All of us at Vorshlag had gone down to Austin and driven Cadillac CTS-Vs all day the previous day (Friday) at the new Circuit of the Americas F1 track. That event was a TOTAL BLAST, but when we finished we bombed back up to Dallas, grabbed the Vorshlag race trailer, grabbed McCall's truck and trailer to tow the ChumpCar, and drove two more cars to Eagles Canon Raceway before dawn for Saturday's annual "Toy Run" open track event. We got there and stacked our trucks, trailers and cars in a big clump and set up shop.
With four cars on hand we were a little busy - luckily we had Pirtek Ed there to help "crew chief" all of us (shown above talking to me in the black '13). He wrangled the five drivers and four cars and kept us all going all day, so... thanks Ed! Matt brought his BRZ, we brought the 2011 Mustang and Amy drove it all day, and I drove our 2013 GT on the new AST 4200-RR coilovers. Two of my racing buddies (McCall and Magyar) and I are also building a
ChumpCar using a V6 4th gen Firebird and we ran it for
the first time that day. Since this was a charity event, they asked the instructors to take passengers for ride-alongs at $5 a pop, and for $10 donated we would ride-along with anyone and "instruct". Between me and about 7 other instructors we raised an extra $600 that was given to a local food shelter, and we gave some kick ass rides to people in some quick-ass cars. I lost count of how many times I went out on track in the '13 and the ChumpCar, or in other people's cars (I drove a GT500 Mustang at one point), but it was a LONG and busy day. Too much fun!
Our 1998 Firebird V6 has been dubbed "F-Turd"... luckily it ran great.
The ambient temps were much colder than the November lapping day and Amy's and some others' lap times were a solid 1-1.5 seconds off their times at the Ford event, when the weather was a bit more favorable. Still, our black 2013 GT, which we base-lined in November, was a solid
FOUR SECONDS faster with nothing changed other than the coilover shocks & springs (which were still pretty damned soft at 450F/225R). The same Vorshlag camber plates, same D-Force 18x10" wheels and 295mm Nitto NT-05 street tires, and same bloke behind the wheel (me). I have taken many hundreds of laps at this track since 2008 and wasn't "learning the line", but instead felt like I was wringing every millisecond out of this car. We went from a 2:07.7 to a 2:03.3. A keen observer will note that this 2013 GT, with no aero, bone stock power and the exact same set of wheels/tires, was faster than our 2011 GT was in June at the Optima Challenge event. A lot of that is probably the difference in temperature, but a lot of it was the fact that the car was
easier to drive with less power. These Coyote 5.0 engines have plenty of
go in stock form, so we would suggest upgrading the suspension, tires, wheels and brakes long before you start throwing more power at your track Mustang. Nobody listens to that, of course.
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