Another Stangwerks Update

Both Mustangs made the recent races at CMP and for the most part a good time was had by all. Jeff G ran the red car for the test day on Friday and we incrementally improved our laptimes each session. One of our biggest issues was tires, or lack thereof, as we were trying to use old tires for the testing thus saving the new tires for the racing. That isn’t a good idea because at a tight track like CMP suspension changes can be masked by crappy tires. Anyhow, we got the car down to some high 50s and figured new tires would improve upon those times.

Test Day Arrival


The weather at CMP was quite nice, 60s in the day and while it was cold at night this took care of that problem.

Fire


We had a couple of enjoyable night sitting around the fire, BSing with friends, and having a few adult beverages. Good times were had by all, even our large furry friend decided to take it easy and not bite Steve Parrish’s leg off and take the beer.



Saturday was race day and the Mustangs were entered in the Carolina Cup at the SARRC race. Given that we had practice sessions for the races, plus qualifying, it was a busy morning and afternoon with little down time considering we had a few unplanned maintenance activities pop up. The morning sessions were cool but both Mustangs were fueling correctly and hitting a reasonable A/F target. Qualfiying came and went, and I was pretty happy with the results. There were not too many ITS cars entered in the CCPS and I was able to get the Mustang on the overall pole for that race with a 1:49.999, the fastest time I’ve ever turned at CMP. The SARRC qualifying was tight with two cars in the 48s and two in the 49s. I managed a 1:49.564 which became my best ever CMP time and put me fourth in ITS.

Steve E was getting it done with a 48, and Ron Munnerlyn gets my go-fast award by driving the damn wheels off his Miata. We all know the ITS Miata doesn't have class-leading horsepower by a long shot but if the car is driven expertly then it can do the job.



The Mustang was pretty easy to drive at CMP but in retrospect we wish we had done more to tune the car for that track. We made changes to the front roll bar, front compression and rebound, and changed the rear roll center as well as rear rebound settings. But I wish we’d have swapped in our softer springs too. Both cars were manageable and very predictable, but were looser than we would have liked and our ability to apply the go fast pedal was limited.