GRM Evaluation offer

#1

To all Norcal and Socal Spece30 racers:
NASA National Chairman has extended an offer to all SPECE30 Racers:
The GRM car evaluation is Monday Feb 11th at the Streets of Willow Springs. It should be from 9A-4:30P. Please let me know if any of the NorCal or Socal guys would want to bring their car down for the evaluation. The editor would need to drive the car to gain impressions to write about in the article.
This is not an open day for SPECE30 and NASA. Also the car needs to be currently competing in SPECE30 and 100% compliant with the rules.
If you are interested please email back as soon as possible.

#2

That’s cool that GRM is doing this…but a 400 mile tow after Sunday’s race to get to Lancaster on Monday at 9am would be brutal. Just curious…who pays for gas, food & lodging?

#3

I am confused, what is this?

#4

yeah, GRM already has a Spec E30 being built by one of their editors - what are they evaluating?

#5

They will be evaluating all cars availible for entry level racers under 15k. GRM as far as i know will not be bringing their car. My team has agreed to transport our #10 car to the evaluation.

#6

I’ll see if I can take some time off from work to check this out. This should be interesting.

So, NASA race cars under $15K:

  1. Spec E30
  2. Honda Challenge H4 car
  3. Spec Miata
  4. CMC car
  5. Pro-7/Spec RX-7
  6. Spec Focus
  7. Legends race car

Streets of Willow is a great track but is probably more stressful on a car than the big track.

#7

and 944 Spec which is booming in the RM region due to the 944 spec series director being here. There are also AI cars built for under $15K here.
bruce

#8

Yep, how could I have missed the Spec 944.

They are popular out here, too.

#9

I don’t want to steal Steve’s or Alex’s thunder, but I stopped by during lunchtime and saw a bunch of different race cars tooling around Streets of Willow. Here’s a short writeup on what I saw in the 45 minutes that I was there.

For those not familiar with it, “Streets” is the smaller technical track at Willow Springs and is used often by various car mags for car testing. It’s a fun track for momentum cars as it favors light and nimble cars and not 400HP monsters. Lots of turns and some elevation changes.

I met Alex Kang (nice guy) and saw his black Spec E30. Alex and the car looked good out on the track. I may have seen Steve, too. My apologies to Steve for not saying hi. I was trying to stay out of the way when it got busy in the paddock.

It seemed as if almost every NASA race class was represented there. In addition to Alex and Steve’s Spec E30, I saw two Honda Challenge CRX’s (one driven by NASA bigwig Ryan Flaherty), FFC Cobra, a few Mustangs (CMC and American Iron), a Spec Miata, Spec Focus, Spec 944, and a few street cars (BMW E36 M3, '08 Civic Si Sedan, and a street-track Miata. The SCCA was represented by an open-wheeler (Formula Ford?) and Spec Racer Ford. It was like being in gearhead’s candy store!

I even ran into GRM writer/driver Scott Lear. Scott’s a really cool guy. We talked for a few minutes about airplanes. Willow Springs is very close to Edwards AFB where the Air Force tests a lot of its aircraft. Think of Chuck Yeager and the movie “The Right Stuff”, except that these days the test pilots have master’s degrees in engineering and drive minivans.

I’m sure Steve or Alex could tell you far more than I could and hopefully one of them will. But I’d have to say it was the best lunch break I’ve ever taken! I can’t wait to see the writeup in a future issue of GRM. No, I don’t know when that will be.