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Congrats to Mr. Sideways 2017 SCCA STR Solo Champion!
Week old news, but I figured we'd give him a shoutout here too =). And some shameless promoting of our Ohlins FPSpec of course! I think some S2000s need some help keeping up now that the ND is in town!
First Mazda to win the ultra competitive SCCA STR Solo National Autocross class in 10 years! Ian and Ed's ND Miata with our Ohlins FPSpec DFV took the class by storm. The STR class was basically dominated by S2000s for the past decade or so. We finally beat them Hondas! Congrats Ian and Ed, we are super proud!
Check out the blog post for more pics and the video of the winning drive. Epic driving =)
In a perfect combination of suspension engineering and world class driving by Ian Stewart, we have taken First Place at the SCCA STR Solo National Championships! After upgrading to our Ohlins FPSpec Long-Stroke DFV, the level of the car was instantly elevated and culminated in a big win for Ian and for us! That makes it the first Mazda to win STR class in 10 YEARS! Ian took the class by storm, winning by a margin .323 seconds. Video of winning drive below!
"Autocross is one of the motorsports that demands to most out of shocks. Often run on rough surfaces and a lot of time time spent in transitions, the shocks play a major role in extracting the best possible lap time. When we started to build a car for STR I knew it was a tall order to build and try to win a competitive class like STR. From the very start I knew we would need Öhlins to pull it off! Every car I own rides on Öhlins and the decision was obvious. SakeBomb showed a high level of interest in helping us build a winning car right up into the 11th hour making slight adjustments the day before. They understood that a class like this wouldn't be won by tenths but by thousandths. SakeBomb built out their custom FPSpec Öhlins for us and the difference was night and day from what we had before. Huge thank you to Öhlins and SakeBomb for helping us though this year to build a winning car with a winning formula. " --Ian Stewart
Congrats again Ian! We're sure bigger things are yet to come!
This gives me hope for my "next" car if the s2k ever becomes a pain in the ass to maintain due to parts availability - ND is likely the replacement.
That ND build looks like a great street track car.
SB spec Ohlins,
Wilwood bbk
949 racing 17x9 wheels
HUGE thanks to the guys at SakeBomb. Ed was very very close to writing the check for the JRZ's for the car and the guys at Sakebomb were genuinely interested in making us a winning car. The support we got for the custom ideas we had and the non-stop any time help at an event site. "hey, it's transitionally loose off throttle, we tired this and this and it didnt' make a difference, got an idea" was invaluable. We wanted to do it on our own and learn about the car and I didn't think in a Million years we'd get it the first year with the car at Nats. But one thing for sure, even though the Ohlins weren't dialed in perfect out of the box, they were 1000 times better then what was on the car that we had been fighting with all season up until that point. Constantly wanting more or less shock even when the shock was at max in the direction we were going. It's very nice having shocks that are in the middle of their adjustment range.
While I love the ND it has some flaws. Ed and I spent all year trying to dial the car in. It's very fickle to site and surface. In fact at Oscoda the car had different behaviors just over the new vs older concrete blocks. It's Balance between front and rear grip isn't small like the S2000. You can have an S2000 that's slightly pushy or slightly loose. The ND seems to either be neutral or no front grip or no rear grip. In fact you can feel the balance change radically during a run as you get heat in some tires and not others (I have a feeling this is due to very temp sensitive tires and a very light car).The car also requires you run a really non-street friendly alignment to dial out the low speed push. Just like the FRS I ran last year it's a real challenge to get the car to work at the really low speed tight stuff. Last year I never got the FRS to do it. This year Ed and I finally got the car to do it and on the right day at the right time. Everyone at Locals Made fun of us for laying under the car all the time changing things but it paid off. Ed and I spent 3hrs and 3 sets of tires on a skid pad just a few weeks before the event and tried some different stuff with tire pressure an alignment to find a lot of grip, we found some tire pressures radically different to what was considered the "norm" and we also found what temps the BFG's make the most grip and how long you need to lay off a tire for it to recover. And everyone made fun of us because we spent the whole day doing circles. At the ProSolo we were running around with a 7 mph lower rev limiter on a course that was mostly rev limiter for us. We looked at Data and saw we were give or take .3 off the lead per side. Looking at the MPH loss from the low limiter we figured we were giving up about .3-.5 per side. David Marcus said if we could get the flash tool from Orlando to Nebraska he would show us how to modify the limiter ourselves. Not in time for the ProSolo but as he said no good deed goes unpunished and had he not done that for us he would have won. Still Feels surreal.
As for replacing the S2000 as a track car, I've driven Ed's car on the street. It's VERY quick to 60. In fact I'd say it will out run "most" S2000's. Put it in 3rd and it's like you just deployed a parachute. I think it's got a fairly tall 3rd gear, but it's not very peppy past 80mph. I don' know that they are going to be beating S2000's on track any time soon. They need a Kswap HEHE. As his car is, I'd end up in jail driving it around town. That punchy torque curve it to much fun zipping around.
Last edited by Mrsideways; Sep 25, 2017 at 05:54 AM.
Congrats to Mr. Sideways 2017 SCCA STR Solo Champion!
