The wait is over! It’s finally the time of year where we shed the car covers, finish our tunes and builds, and make any last modifications to get fully prepared for the 1,320-feet road course racing season. As you can imagine, all of us here at CorkSport now have an extra pep in our step with the weather improving and our goals becoming clear.
Built for speed
Because I live for racing, I’ve built my car specifically for the drag strip. I have a 2009 Mazdaspeed 3 decked out with:
During last year’s season, I was able to lay down a pretty raw pass with my full bolt-ons, stock block, and CorkSport turbo. I was happy with a 12.7 elapsed time (ET) at 115 mph — a respectable number if you ask me! This year with my new built bottom end, I am hoping to have more midrange, spray more meth, and run faster. I have a personal goal of trapping 120 mph on the CorkSport turbo. Just imagine how sweet it would be to have a Mazdaspeed 3 trapping 120 mph in the 1,320 with almost no turbo lag!
Whether a racing victory is your goal, or you just want a modded-out dope-looking ride, we want to make sure you guys think about CorkSport when you are looking for parts. I’m proof that our turbo with full bolt-ons is capable of impressive speed. Whether you need suspension components, turbo components, or you just want to have a chat, you know where to find us!
Cheers,
Luke
2017 Race Season Is Here! February 6th, 2017CorkSport
The conclusion of the SCCA runoffs came in late September and the NASA western conference is all wrapped up. We’re approaching a horribly sad time of the year for us folk in the north: the racing off-season. Here in Washington, it gets a little bit colder and a whole lot wetter. The days get shorter and the racecars get put into the garages. Except for rally, that stuff goes on all year round because they’re bosses. But all in all, the season dies down.
I personally like to take this time to work on all those little projects I’ve been putting off during the summer months. That engine you were going to rebuild or those quarter panels you said you would paint and fix.
For the enthusiast, the off-season is a good time to bring your ride back up to where you want it to be. For the racer, the off-season is a great time to sit down, plan, and make a strategy for the up-and-coming season. It’s a good time to think about your goals for next year and plan out what races you wish to attend.
As much as I love racing, you still need to make good memories with friends and family that put up with your hobbies. So slow down and enjoy the holidays. Spend time with your friends and family because when summer rolls back around, your best friend becomes your steering wheel. And yes, those are chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Photo Credit: gallery.asiaforest.org
So guys, what do you like to do in the off-season when you’re not driving the racecar as much? What plans do you have this winter? Share them with us and maybe I can try something new.
Cheers,
Vincent
What to do During Racing Off-Season September 13th, 2018CorkSport
At CorkSport, we can’t wait for the new 2016 MX-5.
We pre-ordered ours as soon as the sale went live, and we’ve been planning new Miata parts and upgrades since we first heard about the launch. The actual R&D has to wait until we have the MX-5 in our garage, but that hasn’t hampered our excitement—especially when we read the reviews of the lucky first drivers, who all love the car’s new updates.
This little roadster has been turning heads since it first hit the roads. During a recent balance test, Dave Coleman, the Miata Product Manager, said, “The Miata really is the most pure, elemental, simple, straightforward sports car you can get.” Whether you own one or not, it’s hard to disagree that the MX-5 is a beautiful piece of engineering. Just about every Miata model looks pretty and effortless—but at CorkSport we always want to know: How does it fare on the road? (Or better yet, at the track?)
We love speed, power, and handling at CorkSport, and most our products are designed to give your Mazda the most boost and control possible. From all of its initial reviews, it sounds like the new MX-5 engineers had similar aspirations, and from the videos we’ve seen, it looks like they succeeded.
Mazda UK just released a test drive video, showing how the new 2016 MX-5 compares to the original 1990 MkI. Given how much has changed in engine technology over the past 25 years, they gave the original a nice 4-second head start, just to make things fair. The result reveals the beauty of both designs—and promises viewers that the new Miata will be just as fun (and great) to drive as the first one.
If that doesn’t make you want to hit the track in a Miata, nothing will. We can’t wait to do tests of our own, so stay tuned.
Cheers,
CorkSport
How Fast Is the 2016 MX-5? June 18th, 2015CorkSport
Last weekend I experienced my first track day ever, and quite frankly it was awesome. I didn’t really know what to expect because I only knew autocross and track in the context of a Formula SAE race car. In short: Ripping around a track at 100mph is far more exciting than ripping around a cone at 35mph.
Oregon Raceway Park (ORP) is located in Grass Valley, OR in the rolling hills just south of the gorge—also know as “BFN.” Now, that’s not intended to be a negative, just an observation. The location of the track is open and beautiful, which you’ll see in the following images. It’s a bit of a drive, but oh: So worth it.
OK, back to the track. The image below is the terrain track map with the descriptions of each straightaway, turn, and associated components of a fully functional road race course. 16 turns make up this beautiful 2.3 mile loop that has as many elevation changes as a roller coaster.
At the Track
So what was my first track day experience like?
First, let me provided some background information. My car is a 2009 Mazdaspeed 3 with CorkSport springs/struts, RSB, and a handful of goodies under the hood. That’s all great, but most important to a race car are brakes and tires, and mine are lackluster to say the least. OEM calipers and rotors with some old P ZERO NERO All Seasons are not the best combination for a track day, but that wasn’t going to stop me.
The track day was put on by ORP and Team Continental. The instructors were top notch, and the officials made the event a complete success. The actual event was a High Performance Driving Education (HPDE) with 4 levels ranging from beginner to licensed racing driver, each racing in separate sessions.
A Little Advice
My first suggestion: Get off your high horse and go to an event that provides you with an instructor. I’ll admit, I signed up for the intermediate level HPDE because I thought I had enough experience from autocrossing. Fortunately, the officials running the event kicked me down to the beginner level, which requires an instructor. Mine, Brian, ended up being a wealth of knowledge. He knew the ORP track extremely well, and as a bonus, he had a Ford Focus RS, so he understood the FWD issues I would be facing.
Next suggestion: Don’t be afraid to go off track, but do be cautious of it. ORP is very forgiving for noobs, as there wasn’t anything to hit off track; but plenty of tracks out there are not at all forgiving. Below, you can see one of the Nator OR guys, Vincent Pham, doing a little off road adventure after coming into a corner too hot. He got his MS3 stopped, then waited for a clearing in traffic and continued on. No harm, no foul. I’m guilty of this as well. I went completely off track once in turn 16, and I still drove my car home.
My last piece of advice: Go with your buddies! There is nothing more rewarding than passing your buddy in the straightaway and him giving you the one finger salute. Below is a handful of the Nator OR members, and one of the track officials.
All right, one more suggestion: Have fun! That’s why we do this, right? Don’t get frustrated with your driving or your car’s performance, because then you stop having fun. My car was probably one of the more powerful Speeds there, but I had by far the worst tires and most faded brakes holding me back. I decided to focus on my lines and being smooth instead of going for the best lap time I could. My results: Best lap of 2:07 and a day I’ll never forget.
Track Day Outcomes
I highly recommend you participate in a track day, even if you’re only a smidgeon interested. There are two possible outcomes from participating in a track day:
First, you have a good time, but decide one track day in your life was enough. There’s nothing wrong with that, because your daily driving will be improved from just a few hours on the track. Pushing your car on the track lets you find you and your car’s limits, so you’ll be better at assessing and controlling an emergency situation on a public road.
Second, and most likely, you become hooked just like me. You begin scheduling family events around track days, going through tires and brakes like they grow on trees, and calculating your fuel mileage in smiles per gallon. Do yourself a favor as a car enthusiast and participate in the next local track day. I promise you will love it!
Oh! And check out the video below I made from my last session at ORP.
Track Day at the Oregon Raceway Park April 3rd, 2015CorkSport
Have you heard about FSAE? You Haven’t? Well, grab a beer and take a seat. We have quite the journey ahead of us.
The Basics
Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) is an international collegiate design competition held among colleges and their associated student groups. The project is to design and build an open-wheel race car (within the specified rules) to compete in both dynamic and static events.
The dynamic events include:
A 300ft drag race
Left/right skid pad
Single pass autocross track
A closed loop autocross track run for 20 minutes, which is also scored on fuel economy.
The static events include:
An engineering design event
A cost analysis event
A marketing presentation.
The goal of the project is to simulate a new startup company that designs and builds track day cars that are affordable for the average guy. All right. That’s the background. Now, I hope you enjoy my personal FSAE journey.
First Encounters with FSAE
For me, it all started in September of 2011. I had just transferred to Portland State University (PSU) to begin my upper division classes in Mechanical Engineering. The classes were difficult, and I didn’t know anyone at Portland State. One day, I came across the PSU Viking Motorsport Formula SAE student group. I was instantly hooked, getting whatever information I could from the couple of members I met. Before I knew it I was in the student group’s lab, tinkering with the car and asking way too many questions. I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time, and I’ll admit: I’m glad I didn’t because I don’t know if I would have stuck it out any other way.
I attended a second meeting with enthusiasm, which landed me managing the cooling system for the next race car. A mixture of stress and excitement overwhelmed me.
Building an FSAE Race Car
You only have a year with FSAE, which means we had to work quickly. Within a few weeks the 2012 race car was beginning to take shape.
Remember: This wasn’t built from a kit. From concept to 3D computer model to the immense amount of fabrication, we did it all. Not to mention the 12-21 credits of engineering classes, and on top of it all some of us were working an hourly job—myself included. Sounds crazy, huh? You have no idea unless you’ve done it.
With a goal to have an operational race car by mid-February there were at least eight members spending 60-80 hours per week building the race car. There were many late nights—actually, “early mornings” are a better way to put it—that ended like this:
But with every tough time there was a moment like this to remind us to have fun:
The Fruit of Our Labor
By March, only a couple weeks behind schedule, we had an operational race car, and we were feeling pretty awesome (to have an operational race car by then was impressive in this competition) and ready to start testing and tuning. With so much time spent in the machine shop and lab, we were all very excited to get some fresh air at the test track. Who wouldn’t be excited with a view like this?
Our testing and tuning consisted of every aspect of vehicle dynamics. Tire pressure, camber, caster, anti-squat, anti-lift, toe, spring rate, and damping rate adjustment—not to mention the live engine tuning via wireless connection. Testing and tuning days were an absolute blast, but they were packed full of problems and solutions, because that’s the reality of a race car. On top of our private testing and tuning, we would also participate in local SCCA autocross events, because it was more testing and great driver training. These events were usually a bit more relaxed if there weren’t any issues.
The FSAE Competition
Let’s fast forward a few months to the actual competition held in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The most important step was getting through tech inspection. Tech inspection, or commonly called “scrutineering”, involved four stations, each testing a different aspect of the car. First, the car is thoroughly inspected by officials to verify all the rules had been followed. Second, accelerate for a set distant then apply the brakes at full force. All four tires must lock up and the race car cannot rotate out of control. Third, rev the engine to a set RPM for 3 seconds without overshooting the 110dB threshold. Fourth, the epic tilt table. The car and driver are tilted to over 60 degrees to check for leaks and to simulate a 2.5G cornering force. Sound nerve-wracking? It can be, but this is also pretty fun:
To our surprise, we were the third team to get through tech inspection. That may not seem like a huge accomplishment, but you need to understand that some teams never even get through tech inspection at all. The tests are exhaustive, especially for college students who just built a racing vehicle from scratch. With the tech sticker on our race car we were off to prepare for the next few days of static and dynamic events.
The next morning came, and the first event on our schedule was the design presentation. This was my biggest worry of the whole competition. Four very well educated and known motorsports engineers drill you for an entire hour with questions about your design and your decisions to get to that design. It was like standing in front of the firing squad.
All-in-all we did pretty well for being more of a hands-on focused team. The important thing was the most difficult event was behind us. Next were the other two static events, but I didn’t present in these, so we will just move forward to the dynamic events.
Like any good race car it was having issues that we couldn’t for the life of us diagnose. After limping the race car through the drag race and skid pad events, we narrowed the issues down to the fuel pressure regulator and a potential tuning issue. After completely re-designing the fuel system from an in-tank setup to an external setup we had the car running much better. There was still a mysterious tuning issue, but with only minutes to spare we pushed (all race cars had to be pushed to the events according to the rules) the race car to the autocross event in an attempt at least score some points.
The race car was difficult to drive as the throttle response was poor to say the least, but I managed to finish 25th of 90. I later found out that this was the highest score for the autocross event in PSU’s history.
Check out the Autocross event here. (Skip to 3:15.)
Last but not least was the endurance event. This event is worth 40% of the total competition points and is by far the most demanding dynamic event. On average, only 60% of the teams that start the event finish. The most common issues are engine overheating or failure to restart after the driver change, but sometimes you have an unusual issue much like the one we had to overcome. I was the first driver for the endurance event, so I was forced to improvise. The bracket that stops the accelerator pedal broke on my first lap, which resulted in the accelerator pedal being stuck wide open. I couldn’t get my foot around the pedal to pull it loose, and quitting wasn’t an option. With no other choice, I drove the next ten laps throttling through the corners with the clutch, leaving the throttle wide open. As you can see in the video, things got a little out of control for a bit, but I managed to finish my ten laps without blowing up the car.
We changed drivers and proceeded to complete the endurance event with a broken chain tensioner at lap 18. Through all those issues we finished 14th in the endurance event.
With all the points tallied up, we finished 16th place of 90 teams at FSAE Lincoln. This was and still is the highest placing in PSU’s history. None of this would have been possible without the support of my fellow teammates and our extremely supportive adviser, Evan Waymire. Of course we learned a ton about engineering, but also, and maybe most importantly, that life is not about the issues you face, but about the ways you solve them.
Life in the FSAE Lane: A Year-Long Journey March 20th, 2015CorkSport
