Here are 236 photos from last Saturday. As soon as I get out of work (shockingly, I have a day job), I’ll get through the Sunday photos, and do the write up. In the meantime, enjoy these photos. Also, buy some prints so I can buy better equipment to take better photos with more pants.
Words by Michael Chandler, photos by Michael Chandler and Gavin Pouquette
WE’RE BACK RACING!!! Yes, our long local nightmare is finally over. The 2015 NASA Utah season opened up this past weekend on the Outer Loop of Miller Motorsports Park, and it. Was. Glorious! Let’s kick off our coverage with the TT groups, where the action was.
Joe Sim brought out the Turbo Labs turbocharged Acura NSX and ran a blistering 2:00.305 to take the win in TTU. The NSX made an appearance at Round 6 last year, and was even running around at GT Live back in 2007 and 2008! Coming in second place was TW Racing in the familiar Audi R8 LMS. Can the former GT3 car out pace the local legend? Will we see more of the NSX period? And what about the Lyfe Motorsports GTR? Will it defend its title as TTU monster? We have the better part of the season to find out!
After a late night tuning session at Ziptie Dynowerks, Greg Valdez took his WRX STi atop the podium in his first TT1 event. Shawn Murphy, who had an impromptu barbecue on the front straight last year, came in second and retired early with car troubles. Third place was occupied by Dave Gilliland.
Alex Whetman broke the Focus of Doom, but won the TT3 class in the process. The 2:06.2 he ran was a full 4.7 seconds faster than the second place Team Emerald West Porsche 911! Jon Carver put his #49 Corvette in third.
In TT2 we saw a battle between Robert Rathbone’s 911 and Frank Wilson’s C7 Corvette Z06. In this battle, the Porsche pulled out the win.
Paul House came out for one TT4 session in his Spec Z, and won himself a nice bottle opener.
Richard Thiessens took some time out of coordinating HPDE instructors to take the class win in TTB.
TTE is looking to be a hotly contested class. Ben Lamberson and his Audi barely squeaked by Jeb Brown’s Subaru for the class win.
We had some new faces in Open Wheel! And those new faces actually won! In Super Formula David Lockwood in his sharp, livery free car took race one; and Terry Biner, in the familiar Rodizio Grill car took race two.
Formula is also seeing a new face. Literally. Bruno Carneiro (who is fifteen years old. 15!) has jumped from karts into a Formula Mazda car prepped by Ian Lacy Racing, and won race two after finishing behind Troy Duffin in race one. Steven Costello took third in both races.
Bruno and David weren’t the only newcomers to the Open Wheel group. Askew Motorsports was out in a Radical for qualifying and a few laps in race one. I, for one, would like to see Formula and Super Formula grow as fast and as large as Spec Z has.
Speaking of Spec Z, it is huge! There were six competitors for Saturday’s race, and a total of seven cars registered for the day. In the race Arthur Golebiowski topped the podium, with Tom Kaminski in the Dip Kings 350Z in second, and Chad Aalders in third. Shay Chappell, last year’s TT3 champion, has left his Porsche 911 Turbo at home and hopped into a Spec Z. Shay can wheel, as is evidenced by his championship, so he won’t be in the basement for long. With fellow newcomers Richard Fitzgerald and Askew MotorSport, this series is only getting more contested.
In Spec Miata, David Sherman qualified on pole with Mike Ferrara and Allan Anderson behind him. In the race David Sherman brought home the win, with Mike Ferrara and Allan Anderson behind him. In other news, David Dingman was back out on track in a blue and yellow Miata! David’s a great guy, and we’re glad to have him back out on track.
And in the last Spec class, 944 Spec, Samuel Kapp and Otto Silva began what is always a season long battle for the championship. These guys duke it out every round, and it’s always a good clean fight.
In GTS2 Chris Haunold, in the red #9 Porsche, beat out Jim Miller, in the red #9 Porsche. Oh man, watching that red Porsche cross the finish line after seeing the red Porsche retire with mechanical issues was something else. Red Porsche.
Bill “Wild Willie” Noblitt jumped from PTB to GTS3 and took the win over “Good Guy” Gus Stribakos in another all Porsche battle.
They may have been the only ones in their respective classes, but Todd Green (#58 Paul Mitchell Miata) and Douglas Turnquist (#421 Porsche 944) took their wins and battled with the entire Lightning race group.
Bad Luck Brendon Stewart detuned his Evo so he could drop down to Super Touring 3 and have some competition. Long time ST3 competitors Travis Tidball (whose blue Corvette is getting wide) and Gary Free (in the Race Co FR500S Mustang) put up a fight against the newcomer, but in the end they couldn’t stop him. Brendon won the battle, but lifted the cylinder head in the process.
Les Long ran away from the GTSU field, and the rest of the race group in fact. He posted a best lap time of 1:59.411 during the race.
In GTS5 Russ Timmons held on to a lead of less than a second over Darrell Troester to take the class win. Chris Vivolo and his blue and white 996 911 rounded out the podium.
Byron Smith pitted his BMW against the 370Z of Lara Tallman. It was a close battle, one in which neither driver could put much distance between the other. By the time the checkered flag dropped Byron was ahead by 0.593 seconds, and took the win.
Unfortunately not everyone had playmates within their class. Dan Worley in the Tatum Racing LSX Porsche 944 claimed the ST1 win. Mike Mielke showed up to ST2 just in time to take over as lone ranger, ironically while driving a Ranger. And in GTS4 Shawn Tatum held court (see what I did there? HILARIOUS!) in the Dell & Schaefer Porsche Cayman.
And that’s all she wrote. It was a solid opening to what’s going to be a great season. A great season that has an event every month through October! There’s no excuse to not come out and catch one of these events, and there’s plenty of time to start working your way through the HPDE program so you can start competing with the a fore mentioned drivers.
The next event is April 24-26, and it’s on the West course. It’s longer straight sections favor the higher horsepower cars, so be prepared to see some blistering lap times in the Thunder race group. Grab some friends, pile into the car and make your way out to watch some racing!
It wasn’t the most ideal day for racing: It rained. It hailed. It was cold and miserable for a while. Not everyone had rain tires. But eventually it did dry up, warm up, and nobody (that I saw or heard about) had a serious wreck. It ended up being a good Saturday.
The TurboLabs S2000 had some issues with Clubhouse in qualifying.
HPDE Groups 1 and 2 got to run in the rain. For some this was a bit hairier than it was for others.
A legitimate Aplina B9 was out running. Might not have been the best tool for the job, but it might have been the prettiest.
This LS7 powered SLP Camaro made the trip down from Idaho, making it the second fourth generation Camaro to race this season!
Sally broke her transmission during the first TT session. We were all a little saddened. Being unable to race left her plenty of time to instruct Megan and give me the peace sign!
There was more. Much more. Too much to jam into a post here, so we dumped the photos into a MASSIVE Facebook album for you to enjoy. The next event is May 3-5 on the outer loop. Head over to NASAUtah.com to see the full schedule and to register.
Words and Photos by Michael Chandler
*Article and Photos are copyright of CAMAutoMag.Com and their respective owners. Images and words may not be re-posted, re-distributed, modified, or copied without expressed written consent from CAMAutoMag.Com.
Great news! This past weekend had a gaggle of stuff going on at Miller Motorsports Park! Sad news. If you want to see the photos, you’re gonna have to look at them on our Facebook page. You already spend more time on Facebook than you do working while at work, so really this is just a heads up. Anyway, on to the stories from the day!
Brendon and his Evo were there, but his head gasket wasn’t. At least it isn’t a mystery problem.
JDP Motorsports brought out their Camaro, and proceeded to place 1st in their class. It does better on the West course, like all higher power cars do; however, it still looked right at home on the East course.
Super fan Sally was out, making hand gestures and generally being quick.
Max brought out the Evo, and reached into his growing bag of skills and laid down some seriously quick times.
Porsche’s natural enemy is Corvette, but Mustangs can be just as formidable.
*Article, Video, and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners. Images and words may not be re-posted, re-distributed, modified, or copied without expressed written consent from CAMautoMag.Com
Twas a busy wekend at Miller. The Euro SL,UT fest was going on in the paddock, drifting eventually got going later in the day, and on the main stage (all four and a half miles of it) were your NASA Race groups, HPDE and LapBattle.com Time Attack sessions. The fields for the NASA race groups were stacked and rather competitive.
Open wheel featured a deeper field, which skewed toward more action which was nice.
HPDE Groups 1 & 2 featured a nice diversity. A Factory Five Racing Mk4 Roadster shared the track with the former COBB Tuning Time Attack R35 GT-R (the car now belongs to a Race Co. customer who also owns another R35 GT-R), a pair of C6 Corvettes and a 993 911.
Race Groups 1 & 2 were lumped together, which meant the Porshces and Corvettes would encounter traffic made up of Miatas and one EF Civic hatchback. This didn’t stop the pink and white Snow Porsche from turning three minute laps. Also of note: George Smith annihilated his right front tire and fender well in the morning session, which forced him to fabricate a new fender well before the heat race.
Words and photos by Michael Chandler
*Article, Video, and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners. Images and words may not be re-posted, re-distributed, modified, or copied without expressed written consent from CAMautoMag.Com
Another oppressively hot warm Saturday meant the NASA Utah guys were hosting the monthly Lap Battle/HPDE/Racing sessions. We’ll discuss the Racing in a couple of days, today is all about Lap Battle and HPDE.
The big news, other than the first Lap Battle session not getting timed due to transponder issues, involved two long awaited cars: Park’s all black C5 Corvette and the return of Brendon’s Evo. Last year Park was running around in one of the FR500S Mustangs, but now he has a very evil looking (and sounding) Vette. Brendon lost his brakes during a Lap Battle session last year, and put his orange Evo into the tire wall. The Evo was busted, but not gone!
HPDE brought out a mess of Corvettes (including a C6 ZR1), a brave soul in a Jetta 2.5 SE, and a handful of Mustangs.
We haven’t seen one of the Subie-yota twins take to the track, but we have seen them there. We’ve also seen them doing…well, whatever this is:
We’ll see you track rats in a little over three weeks for the next event!
Words and photos by Michael Chandler, video by Trent Bray
*Article, Video, and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners. Images and words may not be re-posted, re-distributed, modified, or copied without expressed written consent from CAMautoMag.Com
In addition to the NASA sanctioned racing going on (which brought out all of the Snows and Magnus Racing’s 996 911 Cup car) they also threw a little HPDE session which brought out it’s own awesome collection of vehicles: an NA1 NSX, R35 GTR, STi swapped GC Impreza, and a pair of Mustang Cobras.
The HPDE group quickly made way for the NASA race groups, which dispatched with the pleasantries and got down to racing. Now, a quick aside about Martin Snow’s Porsche (the white and blue one) and the Magnus car: from what I’ve heard they aren’t elligible to compete for points. Technically they qualified first and second, but as far as the actual points race went first place qualifier was Madison Snow, then Melanie, then George Smith in the yellow C5 Corvette. That didn’t stop the non-qualifiers from turning fast laps.
-Michael Chandler
*Article, Video, and Photos are copyright of CAMautoMag.Com and their respective owners. Images and words may not be re-posted, re-distributed, modified, or copied without expressed written consent from CAMautoMag.Com
