Vorshlag 2011 Mustang 5.0 GT - track/autocross/street Project

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In-car video from Day 1, Session 3 laps... best of 40.66 seconds.

The track layout looked simple enough - eight turns and very little camber change, but with the ample rumble strips and high speed offsets it was pretty tricky. Many GTA drivers had offs and there was even one pretty good sized crash (Mustang lost brakes and backed into a tire barrier, totaling the car). Ken and I were pounding out 15-20+ laps in each twenty minute GTA session, whereas the other Time Attack series regulars would take three lap stints and call it quits (warm up, hot lap, cool down). And when you see the insane turbo cars that GTA caters to, it kind of makes sense. In their unusual categories they have Enthusiast, Street, Limited, and Unlimited, with further FWD/AWD/RWD segregation in each class.


The Unlimited AWD and Overall winner, GST's "Subaru" with 670 whp and 2500 pounds with a composite body and lots of aero.


Showing the GST's rear mounted radiator and diffuser, plus the massive driver & controls setback.

So what moves you up a class? Your tires. Almost 100% of the rules revolved around tire treadwear, something I have never seen before. That meant that the even the lowest preparation level Street & Enthusiast cars running on 140+ treadwear tires still had 600whp or more. I'm not making this up - these GTA cars are no joke when it comes to power. There isn't much difference in preparation/power from there to Limited and Unlimited, just the tire compounds. Limited was 60-140 TW and Unlimited was 0-60 TW. What did I bring? 40 treadwear Kumho V710s, which moved me all the way to Unlimited RWD. In a street car that weighs 3540 pounds... oh boy.



Well nobody else showed in Unlimited RWD, so I had a class to myself. But that meant there would be no payout for a win either. Still, I wanted to compare my times to the overall fastest, if I could be close. Surprisingly Ken and I weren't doing half bad on the first day, with the 2nd and 3rd fastest times in the earlier sessions (we ran more laps per session and I guess figured the course out sooner?). By the end of day one, I had fallen to 4th quickest time overall. The Mustang was VERY loose on all corners and I was chasing the set-up all day. Turns out all of these handling complications were from the tires. Two new tires up front overpowering the very worn out rears. I'm such a dummy... I know better than to run old tires with new tires!



After a big delay getting into the gate at TMS (they wanted to keep us out until 10 am!), we finally got back inside by 9:15am for the Saturday portion of the GTA event. I had stopped by the shop and grabbed the used 315/30/18 Hoosier A6's that Amy and I had run at the Solo Nationals a couple of weeks earlier. They were half gone, but still in better shape than the rear Kumho's, and laughably the A6's had a higher treadwear than the V710's! (using treadwear as an indicator of grip is a mistake, IMHO). So we were going to ask the "tire guys" that follow the GTA circuit to swap tires on the Forgestar wheels for us, but their machine would have trashed the lips.



Ed and JasomM instead took the wheels to a local Discount Tire, swapped the V710's for the A6's, and made it back with six minutes to go before our first session of the day. With air tools, two jacks, and many hands we got the wheels bolted on and took to the track in time to get in some quick laps.

I made three laps, came into the hot pits for a tire bleed... nobody was there. Crap! Drove into the paddock, bled the tires down, then had to wait in line to get back on track (since I left the hot pits). I finally made it back out and within a few laps I had busted off some 39 second runs. Woo! That was my goal - break into the 39's and I did it in the first session. I did another four or five 39 second laps just to make sure, then I came in. My original goal was once I ducked under a 40 second lap, I was going to stop for the day and try to preserve these semi-fresh A6's for some additional autocross use later this year, before we switch to the 2013 GT for our ESP thrills.

I felt great and was thinking I was sitting in 3rd place overall, against some crazy ass race cars. The GTA crew didn't have the official times displayed for another hour and right before session two was about to start, the printout was displayed for session one... and my name was nowhere to be found. WTF?!


In-car video from my Day 2, Session 1B runs... which don't count, because the transponder was tuned off!

Oh no.... (lightbulb) Oh no! I quickly ran to the car, opened the hood, and immediately realized that I screwed up and left the wired AMB transponder turned off for the entire first session! GRRR! I was so mad at myself and had wasted the only cool track session on the A6's we would have that day. You see I had turned the transponder off overnight, while the car was parked in the trailer, to save the car battery. So none of my 39 second runs were timed by the GTA folks and I only had my in-car AIM Solo to go by. Well crap.

Then the transponder switch, which is backlit when "On", started flickering. Then it went off right before my eyes. I tapped it and it came back on. Tapped it again and it went off. The switch was dying?! So Ed quickly hot-wired the transponder literally seconds before the second session started. I got at the front of the line and waited. And waited. After 10 minutes they told us that a car had gone off and hit a tire barrier, and the flat bed was bringing it in.



Yeeesh, that looked ugly. The driver was fine, but the car was toast. The clean-up took the entire 20 minutes and the second session was cancelled. Meanwhile the temperatures climbed from the high 70's into the high 90's and we had our 1.5 hour lunch break. The whole crew piled into the MegaCab and we got some food a few exits down the highway. I was fit to be tied as I watched the temperatures climb. Matching that 39 second time seemed impossible as the track temps crept up past 120°F, but I was bound and determined to get a sub 40 second lap. We got back from eating and I went out in session three and started using every inch of the track. Here's some of the last laps in that session, where I finally cracked off two 39 second laps! This was after three previous sets of three laps that resulted in a best of only 40.12 seconds. Whew!



That took everything I had and as you can see in the video, I was using the "Green Line" - with the inside two tires over the lipstick stripe and maybe even a tiny bit on the grass. Hey, we asked in the driver's meeting and they said "only one wheel has to be inside the lipstick", so I keep eeking wider and making my line at the start/finish offset straighter, and wasn't using as much "green" as one particular driver who shall remain nameless (cough... Ken... cough). I never got all four off (which would result in a DSQ for the entire session) and managed to squeak a couple of high 39 second laps in, with the results showing a best lap of 39.975 seconds. It wasn't as quick as I ran in the morning, even when I was taking no chances and barely touching the lipstick, but it was sub-40 and I was happy with that. The ambient temperatures were 100°F and I knew I wasn't going to find more than a tenth better lap than that, with as overheated as I and the tires were both getting.



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We came in and let the car cool off and the crew started breaking down the trailer equipment while I walked the Hot Import Nights car show area quickly. Wow... I cannot describe this scene at all. I felt like I was on another planet. Cars with 15 degrees of negative camber, "poking" and "tucking" and "thumping". I don't "get it", none of it, so I guess that means I am getting too old. I did see the local Enkei rep and got to talk about upcoming new wheels for the FR-S/BRZ twins, which was cool. By the time I had made a lap of the HIN show, the Mustang had the spoiler installed in place of the wing, was loaded in the trailer, and the sun shade was rolled up. I talked briefly with the Mustang driver that wrecked and had the worst kind of day, then we rolled out by 3:30pm. I wish I would have stuck around for the 7pm awards ceremony, complete with video/pictures/champagne, but Amy and I had another day of racing on Sunday and we needed to go home and collapse. We used that saved 3.5 hours to catch some ZZZZs.



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Overall, the GTA event was intense and a lot of fun. We had a crowd watching and cheering, which is rare at any track event, even if they were mostly there to see the drifters (and I gave them some of that on Friday). I got to meet some cool racers, talked face-to-face with more of the Whiteline folks, did a video interview for them, and just had a great time. Before this event I was worried that I would be super slow and way off the pace, but the big 3500 pound Mustang did all right, placing 5th fastest overall and one of only five cars to break the 40 second lap barrier.

For the "class of one win" I banked $300 of Whiteline product credit, a pair of Oakley Sunglasses from FIAT, and get to go down in the record books as the Unlimited RWD track record holder for TMS (shrug). Congrats to AST/Vorshlag Tester KenO for his big win in Enthusiast RWD (he banked $800 in contingencies and the free sunglasses, too). Another local NASA TT racer with Vorshlag camber plates, Jeff Tan, managed to win Enthusiast AWD in his EVO X, also netting $800 in contingencies. I gotta give a big thanks to all the folks who came out to help crew - Ryan and Brandon on Friday, and Amy, Ed, Jason and PaulM on Saturday. The car was rock solid and had zero drama, doing nothing more than eating fuel and gobbling up more track miles.

SCCA Autocross, Dallas Raceway, 9/23



After two days of brutal heat (99°F), we were now supposed to spend a third day in the same heat at an autocross. These three day race weekends never work well for me and this time was no exception. Because we were already fried, we left the house late and arrived behind schedule, limiting us to one quick walk-through on a very complicated, busy, poorly flowing course (sorry JJ!) on a brand new event site that we were unfamiliar with. The site has drainage down the middle that fills with water and then algae, and this section is SLICKER THAN SNOT. The course that day crossed this section on the outside of a corner in an acceleration zone, which made for tail-happy driftoro. Then it got into it again during a heavy braking zone at the start of a tight slalom, which caught me out again many times.

• Results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_resul..._final.htm#ESP
• PAX results: http://texasscca.org/2012_solo_resul..._final.htm#ESP
• Picture & Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...andall-092312/

Can you tell I'm setting this up with low expectations? After the wing was swapped for the spoiler (end of day Saturday at TMS), we kept the now well abused A6's on the car and just ran it in ESP as-is. Barely had time to adjust tire pressures and then we had to work first heat. I was the announcer and Amy worked the computer, which tends to run a bit long. We had to run over and grab the car and our gear, then hustle to get into the "two driver lane" in the very compressed grid area. By the time we pulled up they wanted us to run, so I hopped in and took a run. And promptly DNF'd.



OMG it was slick and the course was very ... quirky. Nothing flowed well, you came into turns all crossed up and pointing the wrong way, and the slaloms were tight. The 180° turn-arounds were also tight tight tight for this big car and I was fighting the course and the car all day. The "slick patches" also caught me out badly on four of my five runs. On my first run, the car got so crossed up that when it hooked up, it kicked the steering wheel back FAST. My thumb hooked on a spoke and when the wheel kicked back it ripped my hand so hard it damn near broke my left wrist. Two weeks later and it still hurts. So I finished my first run one handed and favored my right hand all day for driving. Excuses ... I gots em!


In-car video of my 3rd run is linked above, with ample mistakes.

We also had to rush rush rush to get the driver & numbers switched and barely had time to check tire pressures and spray them a bit to cool them off (it was HOT). Luckily Ed from Pirtek was there and helped us after every run. And who else was running at this event? None other than Jason McCall and his BMW Z3M LS1, which made its debut race at this event!


Jason McCall's Z3M LS1 - It Lives!!!!

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Long story short, I drove like crap and wasn't well prepared for this event. Our 8 time ESP National Champion, Mark Madarash, was there in his flyweight Firebird and he schooled the entire ESP class, taking the win and setting Top PAX for the event as well, using only four of his allotted five runs. I fumbled my way through all five runs - getting lost, blowing corners, late into slaloms, DNF'd, double-apexing turns, and generally driving like a total ass hat. On my fifth run I almost put one together, but still lost the brake booster into two turns and blew my lines. Would I have caught Madarash with a miracle hero run? Probably wasn't going to happen, even with a better driver. Our Mustang is still 400 pounds too heavy and needs a lot more to keep up with that proven ESP winner.



The issues we had were also too numerous to count. The brake booster assist failure cropped up for me on all five runs, so that lovely problem has returned. We have yet another replacement vacuum check valve coming from Ford (and another as a spare!) as this seemed to fix the problem after the Optima event in June, where it was a big hindrance.


In-car from my 5th and fastest run is linked above. It is still terrible.

Might not seem like a big deal - losing the vacuum assist - but in this car when the booster goes away, suddenly it really throws you for a loop and blows your concentration. The pedal works fine, but after a long straight with high rpm usage it would intermittently lose assist and you felt like you were stepping on a brick, the pedal doesn't move, and the car won't stop. It wasn't consistent, but it did happen to me on every run.


Looks like much less lean here than at Nationals thanks to the new, stiffer spring rates.

When this happened at the Optima Challenge I luckily had a dozen autocross runs to put one together, and many laps on track to adjust my braking zones. You have to press the brake pedal with both feet and PULL on the steering wheel to get enough pedal movement to stop. It was exhausting at ECR back in June, but after we replaced the check valve in the booster it went away completely at the next ECR event in late June. So... just like the S197 front wheel hubs (we're on the third set in two years), the vacuum booster check valve has become a wear item, with spares to be kept in the race trailer. Live and learn.


Amy's 5th and fastest run is linked above.

Amy had a pretty good day, finishing third in class and 25th out of 126 in PAX, but she was a solid 1.4 seconds back from me. Just not driving aggressively enough? She got caught out by the slick spots and slalom timing on her best run also, but as always she still looks a lot smoother and cleaner than my hack driving runs. She is adjusting from street tire to R compound grip, slowly but surely. We need to keep getting her more and more seat time - when we all ran in STU for years she would regularly be on the same half second as Brian and I.

I think I need to avoid racing on three consecutive 100 degree days. I never do well in that type of prolonged heat. By Sunday I was sporting a massive headache and muscle aches, which meant I was low on water and salts. Stupid mistakes were abundant. As well as I felt that I drove on Friday and Saturday, I more than made up for it on Sunday with terrible driving. I really wanted to run GTA and this SCCA event, but probably shouldn't have done both.

What's Next?

This weekend, October 6th-7th, is the annual NASA race weekend at Eagles Canyon Raceway - which is what I consider my "home track". We had planned on running the red 2011 GT in TTS and the blue BMW E46 330Ci in TTD, but alas, the painter was delayed and the E46 will not be ready in time. Sucks, because we had run times 3+ seconds quicker than the old record (set by Costas in this same BMW in 2010, on street tires) with the 285 Hoosier R6s we can run in that class. Oh well, we will run the black 2013 GT in TTB (and get slaughtered) and the red 2011 GT in TTS and just have fun. I could get lucky and beat the existing TTS record at ECR (1:58.2), as I ran almost that quick back in June on the old Kumho's with the steering shudder and the old clanking PHB, but who knows? If fast Corvettes show up or the existing 350Z record holder are there, I'm sure they will be shooting to beat that record, too.

After the NASA weekend is a SCCA Club Race and PDX event on October 13th-14th. We had entered both Mustangs for that HPDE-like event, but will likely run the 2011 and the blue BMW there instead. Once the blue BMW gets back from its fresh paint job and gets some on-track laps/video/data, we will put it up for sale. We never drive this car and with seven cars and only room for six at our home garage, we need to "reduce the fleet".



I also have to get caught up on some pictures and text for the initial 2013 GT "ESP" thread. We have already done a lot of weighing and planning, parts are some coming, we have 18x10s on the car, and camber plates are going on today.

More soon!

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Project Update for Oct 11, 2012: We drove both the 2011 and 2013 Mustang GT's at last weekend's NASA Time Trial event at Eagles canyon Raceway (ECR). I had planned to wait after this coming weekend's SCCA Club Race/PDX event but they cancelled it, so I will share what we have learned now instead. I'm still writing the 2013's first post in its own thread, but it is coming soon. We also did some dyno pulls on both Mustangs and the 2013 BRZ yesterday at True Street Motorsports, so I can share those as well.

Pre-Race Prep

As mentioned in my last post the '11 GT needed surprisingly little prep before this NASA race weekend. We had just run it at the Global Time Attack and a local autocross just 2 weeks prior and all of the then newly added Whiteline rear suspension bits were working perfectly - and with two weeks of silent street use we were all smiles. Other than two more new Kumho V710 tires, an oil/filter change, and the swap back to the winged trunk and race tires, it was an easy prep.



That shot above shows all of the Whiteline goodies. These changes + the slight bump in spring rates are all that were different from the car in June when we ran ECR and I knocked off a 1:58.2 lap, using Hanchey's AIM Solo in-car lap timer. We were back to running Kumhos again, and otherwise on the same suspension (Motons + Vorshlag plates) and running the same power level (430 whp) and aero (our custom mega wing + LS splitter).



The black '13 GT, however, needed much more track prep help - but we only had one day to do it, with the sudden change of schdule on our E46 BMW. While the '13 started out life 45 pounds lighter than the '11, it was much less equipped, and missing the much-loved 14" front Brembo brake package - which also includes wider wheels, and different shocks/bars/springs (we think). We had planned on taking our 2001 BMW E46 330Ci to run at ECR in the TTD class, but our painter needed more time so the car wasn't going to be ready, so we hurriedly put the 2013 GT into some sort of track-ready form.



It was still bone stock, with the craptastic 235/50/18 all seasons, 18x8" wheels, stock non-Brembo brakes, stock pads/brake fluid, and stock base GT suspension (which I think is different than the shocks/bars that come on the Brembo equipped cars). I couldn't bare to run this car this stock, as it would shred the tires and be laughably slow, so we threw some parts at it on the Friday before the event. A set of Vorshlag camber plates took the front camber from 0 to -1.7° (with lowering springs the max negative number is closer to -2.8°), threw the old Eibach front bar from the 2011 on, and slapped on a set of our Vorshlag 18x10" wheels and that old set of 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s that I ran at the Optima Challenge.



As you can see, switching from the skinny 8" wide wheels and 235mm tires to the 10" wide D-Force wheels and 295mm Nittos actually helped the car lose over 27 pounds of unsprung weight/rotational inertia. That is a huge win, but the +60mm of tire should add more grip, too. The crew here tried to convince me to get a set of track-worthy pads for the '13, but I veto'd the idea, as we are chucking the whole stock brake set-up into the trash very soon and I didn't want to waste $300+ on track-worthy pads for a single event. I said "Hey, they are 13" front brakes, how bad could they be?!" I also blew off flushing out the stock brake fluid with some better Motul RBF600 that we stock and sell. Turns out those were two crucial errors in judgement on my part...

NASA @ ECR, Saturday Oct 6

We loaded up the '11 in the trailer Friday night. JasonM made new number and class graphics for both cars and we applied those at about 6 pm - right as the weather went from 80°F and sunny to COLD and overcast. Uh-oh... the forecast looked bleak but I towed the trailer out to ECR early Saturday morning, with Amy following me in the '13. Had to park in the gravel as the place was packed with NASA racers (something the SCCA club racers are sorely missing - more on that in a minute). The HPDE groups were loaded up, as was the Time Trial group, and three big W2W race groups. Pretty good, considering the crap weather and late event date in the year (over a month after the NASA Nationals).



We quickly unloaded and fueled up the 2011 and got our butts to grid. Amy was the lucky driver of the 2011 on Saturday and she ran in the TTS class against a very well prepped C5 Z06, an S197 Mustang AI car with big aero on Hoosiers, and many other quick TT racers. I was the unlucky schlub in the 2013 GT for the day, woefully under-prepped for TTB class - running against TTB fiend KenO and his Vorshlag/AST sponsored E46 M3; he already owned the previous TTB ECR track record at a 1:59.8, which he reset this past weekend by over a second - and he drives the car to and from the track, with a full interior. Anything sub-2 minute is QUICK at this track, too.



Let me back up a second - before the Saturday TT event even began I heard about a fellow TT competitor that crashed coming out of Turn 4 on Friday's practice event. A little tank slapper off into a 2000 pound hay bale that pretty much totaled the right side of this EVO X. So that's two totaled cars in two weeks from local Time Trial competitors - the Mustang at GTA and this EVO here. That sucks, but this is what can happen when you track a car at 10/10ths (or 11/10ths?) Don't forget the potential consequences, and don't short change your own personal safety. Luckily this driver also walked away unharmed, just lighter in the wallet.

Our Previous Lap Times at ECR

So back in early June I ran a 2:03.9 at the Optima Challenge on the 295mm NT-05 street tires, bitching about tires the entire time. The rears would overheat on the '11 within half a lap and I had to baby the throttle everywhere. That was with all of the same aero and the Moton Club Sports but an aftermarket PHB and the softer 450/175# spring rates. Then when we went back in June 23rd at the Five Star Ford track day I ran the big 315mm Kumho V710s, but otherwise the same suspension and aero, and turned a best lap of 1:58.2. Both June events had ambient temps exceeding 100°F. That 1:58 time in June was actually faster than the old track record for NASA TTS class, which was a 1:58.4, set in 2011. So we had thought all either Amy or I had to do was match or better that time from June and we could set a new track record in our street driven Mustang.

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Amy went out in the first session, and in the Texas NASA Region the 1st TT session on Saturday doesn't count for the competition, only for gridding the cars in order of speed for Session 2. Kind of weird, but we all know it. Normally the quickest times happen early in the day, like this first session, due to excessive track temps. But this day was COLD, and it only varied from 47-50°F during both days, so track temp wasn't a problem!
She went out and busted off a 2:01 in her first session, which wasn't bad. Then in the 2nd session (or the first one that counted for competition), with no changes other than driving she popped off a 1:58.8!


Amy's best lap in TT session 2, at a 1:58.8

I was floored. She was leading TTS class over some other TTS drivers in real race cars, but in this overweight full street car. I asked her what she did different and she said "I pushed it a LOT harder!" She got out of the car shaking a little but with the BIGGEST smile I've ever seen. Oh man she was HOOKED on R compounds now. This was by far the fastest I've ever seen her run on a road course, and come to find out it was her very first time racing this car on R-compound tires on a road course (I kinda hogged the car at the previous events where we ran sticky tires). "I want some more..."



After her second session we made some lunch, then she hit the track again in session 3, but she only managed a 1:59 lap. We talked to Mike Patterson at lunch about a ride-along for some pointers for her. Mike is a long time AI racer, NASA race director, and one of the gurus at Moton/AST-USA. They went out in an HPDE3 session right after TT session 3 with Mike riding shotgun, giving her advice.



He knows pony cars and this track very well, and showed her a few places to tweak her line, where to track out farther, and some places to brake a tick later in the high speed braking zones. But overall he was impressed with her smoothness, ability to take advice and alter her driving quickly, and the car's lap times. He also raved at how well our 2011 GT soaked up some of the more notorious bumps at ECR, stating "That's the best handling street car I've ever ridden through turn 8 in at this track!" Gotta give credit to his own shop's custom Moton shocks (with DDP pistons + custom valving), and the new Whiteline S197 suspension bits.



So after this 4th session for her that day she went back to the trailer and we fueled up the 2011 once again. She was ready to try some of the new tricks Mike taught her in TT session 4, and the weather was still chilly but otherwise conditions were unchanged. Her main rival in TTS for the day was in a yellow C5 Z06 Corvette had just busted off a 1:57.5 but she felt she still had some left and was going for it....



During her warm-up lap I saw her arm go up, signaling "pit in", and she came into immediately to the hot pits. I went over to see what was up and she said the rear brakes were making a horrendous noise - and I looked at the rotors, and both were split! It probably happened between her 4th session on track while the car parked down at our trailer, sitting in the cold wind cooling down. We had heard a slight noise going up to grid in TT session 4, so I got out, walked next to the car, and listened... then it went away. Couldn't see anything. But as soon as she braked hard once on her warm-up lap the rotor splits opened up. Just a single half speed lap like this wiped out the nearly new rear Porterfield R4 pads, too.

• Saturday TT Results: http://www.nasatx.com/resultspoints/...aturday_TT.pdf
• Vorshlag Photo and Video Gallery: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...SA-ECR-100612/

We quickly put the car in the trailer and bombed back across town to Vorshlag. Ryan met us at the shop with a pair of new rear rotors he picked up at O'Reilys and he swapped those + some used Porterfield R4S pads we typically used for autocrossing/street use, just on the back. The front 14" brake rotors and pads looked fine. We reloaded the car and got some sleep.

How About the 2013 in TTB?

Yea, about that. Well we had nobody there shooting pictures for us all day Saturday, so I don't have any "action pics" in the '13, and with only one video camera we didn't get in in-car vids of the '13 either. That's probably all for the best, as it was pretty terrible on track. I cannot describe in words how awful this car turned and braked. It was rather remarkable. Sure, the 5.0 Coyote V8 made boatloads of power, and the NT-05 tires worked "OK" in these frigid conditions (finally didn't overheat!), but the brakes were atrocious and the handling is best described as "boat like".

ECR is a little bumpy. OK, it is a lot bumpy, but with good shocks on our various track cars (ASTs or Motons) we don't notice the surface humps, heaves and bumps at this track almost at all. This 2013 GT was on the OEM shocks, and I'd swear they were 200,000 mile blown shocks and struts if I hadn't seen the odometer reading 600 miles with my own eyes. The front end was porpoising up and down about a foot all down the back straight. Even the corner workers we talked to at lunch remarked at how bouncy and floaty the car looked. First session best time was only a 2:10, but that session doesn't count for times.



Even with maxed out camber, which did help me from shredding the outside edges of the front tires, this car was a hot mess. Like driving a guided missile - all kinds of power, but with minimal turning and no way to stop. The handling was like this: it would turn in, then keep rolling, then bounce through the corners and flail around, seeing both top and bottom of suspension travel several times per corner. Just awful. The base GTs must have a set of noodle shocks and springs. And we even had an Eibach front bar set at full stiff, to try to fight this massive bodyroll. And big 295mm tires on the thing, up from 235s. It was all "lipstick on a pig" with the stock suspension, though. This car needs better shocks and springs BADLY.

By TT session 2 the base GT's 13.2" front brakes were going away quickly, and by that session I realized the brakes only had ONE hot lap in it at a time, then needed a really slow cool down lap to get the brakes to come back. I was braking the '13 a solid 50 to 100 feet sooner than in the '11 but it was still barely staying on track. And one time, it uh....didn't.

I was coming down the back straight in TT session 2 at what the (second, borrowed) AIM Solo later said was 115 mph. I go to brake for turn 7, down shifting from 5th to 3rd... but there were no brakes. Pumping madly, nothing happening. I could say I was still "getting a feel" for the stock pads and braking system but I was abusing the crap out of the car, to try to make better lap times due to the abysmal handling. It was too much and the front brakes just didn't have anything left. I won't blame the equipment, because I bought the car on purpose without the Brembos, then left the craptasic stock pads and fluid on there, then over-drove it; I have to blame myself for not having the forethought to replace these critical OEM bits + the extra abuse I was laying on the car.

So in TT session 2 on Saturday I went WAY off the end of the back straight, still doing about 80 mph, even though the entry speed is about 50 mph (according to the data I was doing 123 mph and slowing down to 51 mph in the '11 GT - lots of braking). The corner workers had a good laugh at lunch. "We thought that car would never stop!" I was a good 100 yards off in the dirt, but the tall and soft 4x4 stock suspension at least soaked the off-roading up well enough. Only evidence was a little stalk of grass in the grill, and otherwise zero damage. I got off lucky.

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Turns out the front brake pads were done by the end of TT session 3, as shown above. Went from brand new full depth OEM pads to a hair off the backing plates in three sessions. Half of the pad material seems to be sitting there inside the front wheels, where I parked after coming off track! Since we had no times in TT session 1, and I earned a big fat DSQ for TT session 2, I had to go out and nail down something in TT session 3. Surprisingly, with much attention paid to the quickly fading brakes, I nailed down three laps in the 2:07s with a best of 2:07.33. By then my nerves were as shot as the brakes and I changed my role for the rest of the day to "Amy's support crew". I finished 3rd out of 4 in class, well behind KenO's 1:58.678. Oh well, not very shocking... since the car had no shocks! :P

I am glad I got to experience the nearly bone stock '13 on track, so I can be better informed when I talk about how important suspension upgrades are for this S197 chassis. After running in the beautifully handling '11 GT all day, Amy had zero desire to drive the '13 on track for Sunday, so we drove it back to the shop, following the truck and trailer pulling the '11 in for rear rotor replacement.

NASA @ ECR, Sunday Oct 7



Sunday TT Results: http://www.nasatx.com/resultspoints/..._Sunday_TT.pdf

Sunday we pulled up back at the track and quickly unloaded the '11 GT. I was driving it that day and Amy was support for the day - but secretly she hoped for a session or two in the car. She was still REALLY pumped after tracking it all day Saturday. We put in a little fuel and got to grid in time. The weather was again 47°F and warmed up to a balmy 50, with a little less wind than the day before - but still plenty cold. The schedule showed the same cars entered, with Michael Perkins TTS C5 Z06 the biggest threat, who won Saturday's TTS class with a best lap of 1:57.5. TTA was a good 2 seconds quicker that day, so I was worried that a certain EVO might jump up to TTS to reset the track record in this class - but they weren't listed in TTS (yet).



I went out and pushed hard in Sunday's TT Session 1 and got a best lap of 1:57.354, and was the quickest TT car in the session. Out again in TT Session 2 and ran two nearly identical 1:57.14 laps, only a couple of tenths faster. Mike Perkins took his TTS Z06 to a 1:57.390, so it was close! I didn't know at the time (they didn't get his class right until session 3 results were posted) but Josh Dunn's TTA classed gutted EVO had jumped to TTS for Sunday and was already running a 1:56.471.

For TT Session 3 I pushed a bit harder in a few spots and managed two more 1:57.11's, with one of those watching the AIM having a Forecasted 1:55.8 lap, right until I put two tires off exiting corner 11 onto the front straight. GRR! I knew the car had a high 1:58 in it but I couldn't even break the 1:56s in three sessions, which was very frustrating. It was in this session that Josh Dunn had cinched the TTS class with a 1:55.326, and the results finally showed him in TTS, so I knew I was out of contention for the day. Oh well, I took to TT session 4 with a vengeance, determined to get that 1:56 lap, just to make that personal milestone.


Click the image above to see in-car video of Terry's best lap of 1:56.33

So the two hot laps from TT session 4 in the video above were hectic. I passed 3 cars in traffic to a 1:56.9 lap, then had a semi-clear lap of a 1:56.343, with a car spinning off track in front of me (I lifted a bit there to make sure he wasn't coming back on track). I talked to the driver of the black TTS S197 Mustang, and it is a soon-to-be-AI car but he was running on Hoosiers, makes 400 whp with a 351W, and the car was about 200 pounds lighter than our '11. It looks like I was only catching him under braking, and most of that into turn 7.



By the end of the weekend on Sunday Amy and I were both utterly exhausted, but we both felt really good about our lap times. She wanted one more shot at the car on Sunday but after seeing how close to a 1:56 I was she let me take all 4 sessions. For Sunday I finished 2nd place to the EVO, a full second back, oh well. I beat the old TTS track record by 2 full seconds, so damn the new record! A 1:56.3 is still pretty darned quick for a full weight street car with good suspension, some aero, and two engine bolt-ons, I feel. We have had a lot of racers tell us the same thing in the past week, too. Mark Smith reset the American Iron track record at ECR with a 1:59.848, in a Boss 302-S, for comparison. The best ECR lap I had run prior to this was way back in 2008 in the E36 LS1 Alpha car, with a 1:57.2 in a gutted 2500 pound BMW with the same 315mm R compounds. We discussed our lap times and any ways to improve them in this car over excellent TexMex food from Fuzzy's Taco Shop in Sanger, TX, located at the interstate outside of ECR. This is the perfect post-race meal!

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Explain The Gains

What made the 2 second improvement in this car since June 23rd? That is a BIG jump in time for a car that is otherwise unchanged, and one that we have driven so much at this track (I am not really "learning to drive the track better", having made many hundreds of laps here in the past five years). The only changes to the 2011 GT since our 1:58 laps were the slight bump in spring rates (which I detailed in my last post) and the addition of the full suite of Whiteline S197 components. I might sound like a broken record but this Whiteline stuff really has transformed the car, which we have noted at the Solo Nationals, GTA at TMS, and at NASA at ECR this past weekend. The Watts Link is the big game changer, but their swaybars, LCAs and rear relocation brackets helped, too. This stuff works, and more importantly, it doesn't make any racket on the street.



I am very, very impressed with the Whiteline parts and apparently you guys are responding to our positive results, with a lot of Whiteline S197 (and BRZ!) sales in the past few weeks. Thanks.... because in the end, that helps us keep doing what we're doing: trying new products, designing our own parts, and racing on them to prove what works and what doesn't.

Dyno Testing

So on Wednesday of this week we took three of Vorshlag's project cars to True Street Motorsports in McKinney for some dyno testing.



Nothing earth shattering here, just a routine "check-up" dyno pull on the 2011 GT and a first "Baseline" pull on the still stock 2013 GT and Matt's 2013 BRZ. Weather kind of sucked, with 100% humidity plus spitting rain, and even with SAE standardized corrections the 2011 tested a tick lower than the 430 whp pull on the same dyno back in Spring, but still pretty close at 424 whp.



The 2013 also made exactly what I thought it would make at 376.9 whp - within 1 hp of the 2011 GT when it was in stock form (378.5 whp). Ford re-rated the Coyote 5.0 in 2012 with an additional 8 hp (412 -> 420) but it didn't show up on our dyno test. Me thinks it was marketing fluff.



Still, 377 whp is nothing to sneeze at, and most of the reason why the 2013 was able to knock down that 2:07.3 lap at ECR. Like I stated above, the only thing it had on track was horsepower, as the brakes and handling were pretty much crap in stock form, in my view. It was a big floaty missile, that once you got it pointed in the right direction would gobble up straight-aways, but sometimes fly off the end of them. We were a solid 4 seconds faster on the exact same set of 295mm street tires with just better suspension/brakes in the '11 GT, and the 47 hp difference between these cars wasn't where we made up 4 seconds. Then we were fully 11 seconds faster with the tweaked '11 GT on slightly wider R compounds. And driving the '11 GT was much easier and confidence inspiring.



The overlay dyno chart above is showing all three cars: the 2011 GT with headers and a cold air (plus a custom tune by True Street), the bone stock 2013 GT, and the bone stock 2013 Subaru BRZ. Look at the shapes of the dyno curves for the stock vs modded 5.0 GTs - they are remarkably similar. The big 1-7/8" Long Tube ARH headers and the Steeda cold air added torque and horsepower EVERYWHERE, with zero loss of torque at any RPM. In fact there is an extra "torque hump" on the '11 at the extreme low end (2500-3200), which is very noticeable street driving both cars back-to-back. For the 2013 GT's headers I am again going with the bigger of the two primary options on the ARH long tubes, as it is simply a win-win over the 1-3/4" primaries (as ARH told me, the 1-7/8" full length units "make more power everywhere" than the smaller primary option).

The little BRZ made 167 whp, which was more than I thought it would. About right for a car rated at 200 hp (meh, so it is about a 16% drivetrain loss). And yes, our 2013 GT stickered ($31K) almost the same as the BRZ ($27K), but the GT was actually purchased for several thousand dollars less (with that $1500 rebate, + it is domestic and therefor they deal). But you don't buy a BRZ or FR-S for horsepower, you get one because it is a nimble RWD chassis that weighs almost 800 pounds less than the solid axle GT. Completely different animal. You can read more about our exploits with the "FT86" chassis in this thread on VoMo forums, also located on NASIOC, 'Carvers, RRAX, and SCCAForums.

What's Next

I swear the 2013 is getting it's own thread very soon. We have been removing parts, weighing things and gathering all sorts of interesting data on this car, so the new thread will have some new information worth reading. Our 2011 GT project thread here will continue, as we plan to keep tracking and street driving the red car.

The next event for the '11 is the Five Star Ford track day on Nov 17th at ECR. Vorshlag will be there with our trailer and some of our race crew to help support the many Mustang drivers likely to attend. We can help check your alignment, help set tire pressures, and will be giving ride-alongs in the red car with me or Amy driving. That should be fun!



The 2011 was back to street duty on Monday after a wheel swap. After we leaned on Wednesday that the SCCA PDX event was cancelled the crew here at Vorshlag swapped back to the stock trunk, too. The 2013 GT is badly in need of a bunch of suspension parts, to rid it of the 4x4 look and parade float handling. The uber-light brakes we will use are another three grand, and there's the LS back seat delete kit that is only another $900 more. Another set of custom Forgestars would be help, then we can get to cutting the fenders to make the big tires fit. I really need about five grand to build or buy what we need to get started. Hopefully my 2001 BMW E46 330 will sell for good money in the next couple of weeks (it just came back from the painter yesterday and looks flawless!) and I can use some of that cash to throw at the 2013.

I am almost done writing our "How To Build your 2011-2013+ Mustang for Track Use" article, too. Our entire crew is helping contribute to that one. We have had customers asking us for "the wish list" so we finally put it down on paper. Err... electronically. In that article we will finally list out which modifications we think help lower your track times the most, and in which order we recommend doing them in, with some budgetary numbers along the way. We also will list out what options to look for when ordering or buying a 2011-13 Mustang as well - "How to Buy a Mustang The Right Way".

More soon,