Really? Another Miata thread....

[rherold9]

Long write-up with no TL;DR deal with it

Another track weekend in the books. This one has me questioning getting a TT check ride. Car felt great as always. Not too many updates on that front. I think the RE-71R's are finally seeing their last days end heat cycle wise. I ran 7 sessions. Gave 5 rides. Drove one damp/rain session. Had one session on my own. This was my second time at VIR in this car and I had a blast.

The week started off interesting with the damage to the truck. The truck got estimated and picked up Friday morning for repair. I decided to book a U-Haul on Wednesday for 1:30pm on Friday since I didn't want to drive the Miata due to the curse of Hyperfest. The hard top delivery had a window of 9am-1pm and of course showed up at 1:45pm on Friday after calling them at 12:50pm wondering where it was. I rushed over to U-Haul and of course I noticed it was wired with a 4-pin and my trailer has a 7-pin.



Side Note: The people at this U-Haul place were some of the nicest people I have had to deal with. They helped me find a 7-pin female to 4-pin wiring adapter about 20 minutes away. They made sure I had everything I needed. They knocked off one day when I returned on Monday. They even dropped me off at my place on Monday morning so I didn't have to take an Uber.



Anyway, rain started pissing down as I run to grab the connector. I drop my Miata off at the U-Haul, grab the truck, load the truck, ratchet the hard top in the bed, grab the trailer, and go load the Miata all while it's pouring. During the entire process I questioned just not going multiple times haha. The trip there was even more fun. 4-5 different white outs of rain. Giant puddles of water everywhere. Tires on the U-Haul spinning from a stop even with light throttle. Took about 3 hours and 15 minutes vs the normal 2 and a half. I'm happy I decided to stick with it and go. Hyperfest was awesome and the weather cleared out Sunday and stayed mostly dry Saturday vs the floods of Friday.



When I arrived Friday night I had to drop the trailer off in wet/muddy grass in the dark. I thought I was going to get stuck in mud/slide into other trailers since it was on a hill. The tires on that U-Haul were a joke. I then proceeded to install my hard top alone for 2 hours in the rain. DJ was very kind enough to let me back in slightly under his trailer's canopy. Helped a lot with keeping mostly dry and I really appreciated it. I had to bend the hard top brackets with my dead blow. Took quite a few attempts on the first bracket. The 2nd bracket took about 5 minutes vs the 20 minutes of figuring out the first bracket. Got it finished around 11pm  



Saturday there were three damp sessions with one session that where it was slightly raining. The last session was dry on track!



Sunday was completely dry thankfully. Started enjoying the car more and the hard top helped a lot with keeping me cooler out of the sun. It also helped with speed. Car easily got over 110mph now. Was hitting peaks of 120mph some laps on the straights. Hitting 110-113 at the top of the esses. 125mph+ in this thing will be here in the near future.



Fast laps below. Looks like I ran a 2:20:xx but easily can run easily a 2:18 as the car sits with my driving ability. Oak tree, T3, T4, back/front straight brake zones, hogpen, and south bend are a few places I can gain some time:



Packed up and headed out Sunday after the 3rd session once I helped tech close up



Here are some small battles with other cars:





Trying to keep up with a fast TTC driver (Edgar):



Here are the struggles of having a Miata in HPDE3:



Benny Hill song edit of the point-by video above:



So, I'm thinking I should get a check ride for TT. I haven't done so yet as I'm competitive and don't have the money to spend to build the car fully out. The way I sit now I'm down 14 points in TTD. Still have street exhaust, street brakes, etc. So, obviously I won't do well. I'm curious though of times I put down now vs future as I get faster and seeing that improvement.

I didn't proof read, try coherent English, and kind of just plastered my thoughts, so I hope you enjoyed.

Last but not least Kaan "tea-bagging" DJ