continued from above
Brandon did his picture thing all week and got hundreds of amazing pictures, and even some external videos, of our car and many others. He was hustling around the track, going from corner to corner to get several views and angles. We also did a "garage crawl" on Saturday afternoon where he followed Ryan and me, oogling over race cars and pointing, "Shoot this!" and "Get a picture of that!". I felt like a kid in a candy store.
We looked at a lot of trick aero ideas, too.
The weather we saw at Miller over those 5 days is hard to describe, other than tho say it was psychotic. It would be calm and beautiful one minute, with white puffy clouds and amazing blue skies... then some storm cell would roll in over the mountains and all hell would break loose. It rained on no less than 3 of the 5 days we were there, which shot my "Tire Strategy" plans full of holes. We saw some HOT sessions (96°F), some very WINDY sessions (40 mph wind gusts, which blew apart all manner of EZ-up tents and we ALMOST lost our roll out sunshade), then some sessions where it was 70° and calm, and some that were raining. Going to the airport Friday afternoon to pick up Ryan and Brandon we drove through a sand storm. Like, a bad one - I was "looking for the Worms on planet Dune" bad. We saw it all that week, I tell ya.
We met and talked to a lot of new folks that week. NASA's Todd Covini brought Mark Wilson and Bruce Smith from Ford Racing by our paddock to meet us and look at the car. Bruce immediately pointed out the issue we had with our oil separator lines (PCV valve - thanks, Bruce!) - nothing gets by these engineers. I tried to grill them for hints on the 2015 Mustang, but they played it cool "Wait, there's a new Mustang next year?". Haha, two funny guys. I also got to finally meet people face-to-face such as Lex Carson of Motion Control Suspension, Jack of Maximum Motorsports, Paul and Brian Faessler of
Paul's Automotive Engineering (a father and son team who campaign the amazing AIX/STR1 Mustang below), and many others. Met a ton of racers and competitors in various classes, too.
Our lodging situation at this track was a learning experience, too. If you ever go to race at Miller,
don't stay in Tooele. Like I said, the town has too few hotel rooms and they jack the rates up when racers come in. We eventually found
one good place to eat (a new place called The Brewhouse, where we dined with the Maxcys), but other than that it was down to "Taco Time" or some other skeevy looking fast food joint. The track had an outdoor cafe (meh) but better food at the Clubhouse, which overlooked the track. We watched some races and ate lunch up there twice, and the food was pretty darned good for track fare.
Amy had booked us at 2 different hotels for the week, and I thought she was nuts - but it turns out I'm glad she did. Since the little hotel in Tooele was sold out of "double queen" rooms (for when Ryan and Brandon arrived) and the prices were insane anyway, she had booked our last 2 nights at an Embassy Suites in SLC, near the airport. It was a solid 25 miles away from the track (instead of 5), but it was well worth the drive. These nights cost HALF what the dumpy hotel in Tooele did, but the rooms there were
immense (suites with a living room, bathroom, bedroom) and better appointed than my own home; they made omelets and other items to order at breakfast; and there was an open bar with hors d'oeuvres every day from 5-7 pm. Which we made use of both nights we stayed there - four rum and cokes will "calm the nerves" if you happen to be 5 seconds back from the leaders in your class. If we ever go back to Miller, we're booking at the Embassy again. Brandon did his foodie thing and found 2 great restaurants in SLC for us to eat dinner at, both nights they were in town:
Red Ginger Bistro (Japanese) on Friday night and
The Red Iguana (Mexican) on Saturday night. Mmm, MMM! Both of these places had long waits but for good reason - they were excellent. Who knew SLC had such a diverse selection of good food? And to have great Mexican food - in Utah!? This joint had 9 different mole sauces...
Nine. Never would have believed it if I did not see it first hand.
Vorshlag Losing Employee #1
So as I wrap up this post I need to give a shout out to an employee who is leaving us. Back in 2008 we hired our very first employee, an E36 LS1 kit customer named Matt. He was a college student at the time and wanted to work for us part time answering phones and such. We put him to work and he eventually became phone support, an order builder, our IT guru, then our Operations Manager, Meanwhile he graduated college and stuck with us for several more years after that.
After 5 years of service, Matt is leaving the Vorshlag family at the end of this week. He has a great opportunity at a new start-up company and we wish him well, but he will be sorely missed. Matt had 4 different cars we used for here for Vorshlag, AST and MCS product development over the years, including a Golf GTI SMG, a 350Z, a 95 M3 LS1 and a '13 BRZ. He will still be a tester for us on those last two cars, too.
Adios, amigo!
Matt wore a lot of hats during his stint as Ops Manager here and we're splitting his old position into two new jobs. The
Vorshlag Jobs page on our website had those two openings listed, but we already filled one of them (who starts tomorrow). If hard work in the automotive aftermarket, constant deadlines and low pay seem appealing to you, go to that link and apply.
Until Next Time
Yep, I'm running a bit long in my post again, so let's call it a day (well, each of these posts takes me about 2 days to write). As usual, a lot of these things I wrote are our observations and shouldn't be taken gospel. Like the notes on places to stay and eat in Tooele - we have only been there once, and could be missing a gold mine of options hidden behind the mountain of crappy fast food joints. If you have better suggestions for us about anything, feel free to chime in. But for the car/prep/aero stuff... we're still working out some kinks and know that the splitter was too long, the flares look a little goofy, the car is too heavy, and that it is silly to bring a street car to a National championship race. We will learn these lessons eventually. Its still a work in progress, too.
My next post will finally cover the racing action we saw on the 4 days of competition at the 2013 NASA Nationals, during which Time Trial ran 9 timed sessions. Only one fast lap is needed to win, and we had a lot of chances to get that - and many of us put in our best laps on that last session! I will also talk about a few race groups we watched, such as GTS, AI/CMC, and some others. Then I will cover what we have in store next for our TT3 car, for future S197 development, and the
new car(s) we are moving to for the 2014 season. What?! No more red 2011 GT? Well, it depends on a few factors and is currently a solid "maybe"... but I think you folks will like the potential replacement.
More soon,