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The Road to UTCC 2015

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Epilogue:

A few weekends later I drove the car to Mach V's Annual Charity Car Show. I won their "Car We'd Most Like to Drive" award which I'd also won a few years back. Car almost caught fire from an oil leak that I seem to have near the turbo which I'll need to fix soon :)
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Btw, please feel free to share whatever you want from any of this. Any sort of awareness we can have for the effort really helps with sponsor support and so I really appreciate any help in this regard. I'm sharing here primarily to give back to the DSM community in hopes my experiences are of interest and of use to everyone, but sponsors are a key contributor into keeping these racing endeavours going.
 
For those not familiar with VIR (which is likely... most everyone) this coverage from last year's Tudor's race there has some great footage showing much more of the track than my videos:
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Here's some in-car from Mike Skeen, a pro driver, in... I forget, some stock-car thing :) At one point when he took it out he came back in with the rear smoking because someone had forgot to put the rear diff fill plug back in and it was drained of fluid., Completely destroyed the rear diff. Gears were all gnarled (GRM photog showed me pictures). I don't know if this happened before or after this vid. He ended up placing second to the Viper with a 1:48.
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Mike drives in many events, but I think his main focus is the Pirelli World Challenge series driving this beast:
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Mike also drove what I think was a relatively stock Volkswagen Golf R to a 2:18. He actually spun off track once with it because when he went into tripod mode (i.e. a tire lifting in a turn) the car thought he was on ice and went into "ice mode" causing the ABS to drastically reduce braking force (I guess this is a "feature"?). Caused a little body damage but he kept driving on it the rest of the day.
 
How are you liking the DSM76? I'm looking at changing to that turbo over my current 50 trim for my road racing/hill climb car. I want a little more spool and some more flow overall. From the videos it looks like you were getting a couple mph higher on the back straight from last year and I believe you said that you hadn't even tuned it for that turbo yet. Are you seeing the drop off above 6500rpms like you thought?
 
Could you explain a little more on how sponsorships work? Ive seen your car a few times at Summit Point and VIR, the pics don't do it justice.
 
How are you liking the DSM76? I'm looking at changing to that turbo over my current 50 trim for my road racing/hill climb car. I want a little more spool and some more flow overall. From the videos it looks like you were getting a couple mph higher on the back straight from last year and I believe you said that you hadn't even tuned it for that turbo yet. Are you seeing the drop off above 6500rpms like you thought?

I don't think I have had enough time to explore the turbo fully as I haven't tried to see how much hp/torque I can pull since I haven't seen its maximum boost yet. This is because the highest I ran was something like 25psi on track. Per FP it should flow up to 59 lbs/min, which is like 12 over the FP3150's supposed max, so I should be able to turn up the boost a good amount still. Power wise it felt very similar as my FP3150 (50-trim dual ball-bearing in an FP housing) at that boost level. The fastest I got on the back straight matched what I got last year at 147mph, but that partially could be carrying slightly more speed around the Oak Tree turn with the hoosier A6 tires, so the jury's out there. The car's 100+ lbs. lighter than last year too so overall I wasn't making more power but rather less in the vids you see here.

About the only thing I noticed was it spools about 250rpm quicker than the FP3150, which can be a tiny benefit in a few turns where I stay in a higher gear but start throttle in a low rpm.

I can't say if I'm seeing the 6500rpm dropoff honestly... I might see it if I could read data better but I don't, and my butt dyno didn't notice it. Maybe I'll look at the data again.

Could you explain a little more on how sponsorships work? Ive seen your car a few times at Summit Point and VIR, the pics don't do it justice.

Well, there is no universal way they work because a sponsorship really is a business relationship with a company or individual and you plus your car. Each can be totally different. The idea is you invest in each other.

What I generally provide is advertising mostly via the car (but in the case of Motul also on me), either directly on the car with stickers, in pictures shared via social media, in videos, showing success while using their products, and attending events (car shows and races in my case). I then provide on a periodic basis media and write-ups directly to sponsors for them to share as well. Generally the idea is to give some return on investment for their support by increasing sales.

In return some sponsors provide discounts on parts. Some give me free products. You can get cash, event entry fees covered, or even kegs of beer (all three a friend of mine gets through sponsors, lucky bastard!). It all depends on your arrangement.

Setting up a sponsorship is just like any deal... you have to have some way to contact the sponsor, and then have a pitch showing what you can do for them. If they're interested, they'll tell you what they can do for you and you can go from there (usually you take what you can get, but sometimes there's room for negotiation). Much of my sponsors are from cold calling or emailing the company to get my foot in the door, and following up with a more formal proposal in email. Some are just from being friendly with vendors and flat out asking for help. It helps a lot... actually I'd say it's critical these days where sponsorhips are few and far between... to have some activity and an exciting offering all ready at the point of approaching companies to show you are active, are already winning, and are likely to continue to do so. In my case I had a magazine spread, a few car show wins, and an entry in the Ultimate Track Car Challenge all on my list of activities before I reached out to anyone and that helped a lot I believe.

You were at Summit and VIR? Did we meet? What car did you drive?
 
If anyone's interested in watching my primary competition, here's the Element Tuning Toyota FRS' fastest lap of a 2:01.7, 1.6 seconds slower than me that weekend. He currently holds my class record with a 1:58.8:
https://video.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-x...=1c846b858f74554c7ce4ff81f324d929&oe=55D4D445

I watched the video side by side with mine... it kind of looks like while we go slightly back and forth in most of the track we're even somewhat right up to the last turn before the front straight.
 
Yea we met briefly last summer at VIR. I was talking with Steve Walker and I believe you guys were paddocked together. I was telling him about my boost spike problem and borrowed a gap gauge from him. I drive a silver Galant.

Thanks for the info
 
Yea we met briefly last summer at VIR. I was talking with Steve Walker and I believe you guys were paddocked together. I was telling him about my boost spike problem and borrowed a gap gauge from him. I drive a silver Galant.

Ah ok, I remember. Good to see you on the board :)

If anyone is interested in a copy of the UTCC issue of Grassroots Motorsports magazine you can get it for FREE by signing up here by September 25: http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/try
If you'd like to subscribe, you can save $3 by entering promotion code DISGRM at http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/discount.
 
Came across this while looking for members in this community in Time Attack/Road Racing, I'm highly impressed. What is your current class and what plans you have for 2016?
 
Came across this while looking for members in this community in Time Attack/Road Racing, I'm highly impressed. What is your current class and what plans you have for 2016?

I race with NASA Mid-Atlantic in TT2.

2016... hmm. Off the top of my head the things that I'm debating are:
  • Fiberglass roof and hatch
  • replacing KW V3 with custom-built Ohlins
  • Migrating some suspension bushings to sphericals
  • Finally switching to speed density
  • testing out the cast Magnus cast intake manifold for the 2g head (I have one)
  • Playing with gear/rpm based boost control (to let me run higher boost for possibly more torque, yet staying under hp limits for my class)
Not in any particular order. Some are more likely than others..

If you meant events... well, I'll do mostly TT2 stuff, but plan to be at Hyperfest/UTCC (they're combined this year at VIR in May).
 
I think I'd rather let this sit on its own. I can reference threads like these in the build thread that I plan to start... soonish.
 

New roof looks good on there John. Glad I could help with that project. :hellyeah:

Quick question for you on the install though. I see that the edges of your roof are black after being installed. Did you have that part of the roof painted? I know Dave said that the roof would need some kind of coating on it to prevent UV damaged to the resin.

Just curious what you did there. I have no time frame for getting mine installed and was wondering on how you did it.
 
Let's chat about this in the original cf roof thread. I really don't want this thread used for build conversations, it's just confusing.
 
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