Project Turbo Miata: We Survived Road Atlanta

Going into our very first American Endurance Racing event at Road Atlanta, we didn’t have high hopes. Well, we did, but we didn’t actually expect them to pan out. Our Miata had suffered a catastrophic failure at each of its last two races, and we feared the same fate would befall us again while racing with AER.

Fortunately, AER’s format was a big help. At most races, they use Friday for practice and then qualifying, with the actual races held on Saturday and Sunday. That meant we had an entire day (Friday) to sort out any remaining bugs and get comfortable in our car. We even took some time to install a new driver cooling system, courtesy of Fresh Air Systems Technologies. Unlike some of the other chilled-water-in-a-t-shirt systems we’ve tried, the F.A.S.T. system had a neat trick: a potentiometer, which we mounted next to the shifter, acts as a thermostat for the system. We faced weather between 50 and 70 degrees during the weekend, and it was awesome being able to have only 1/3 of the system’s cooling capacity working so we didn’t freeze to death.

Fortunately, we didn’t have many bugs to sort after a day of practice. We’d taken our time before this race, working on the car, testing the car, and preparing the car. Finally, it had paid off. Our only issue during practice? The radiator fan wouldn’t turn on, leading to some fairly high coolant temperatures at some points around the track. A quick run to the parts store for a new universal fan fixed that issue, and we were back in action. We swapped on a brand new set of Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R tires, then put the car in the trailer for the evening.

Then, it was time to race. Saturday morning’s race start went well, but just a few laps in our Miata came back into the pits. We’d broken a front sway bar end-link bushing, causing a bad clunk and effectively disconnecting the front sway bar from the car. We flipped the link upside down so it wouldn’t be able to separate from its bushing anymore (Miata control arms have a steel tab on each side of the link, while their sway bars have only a bolt on one side of it), then went back out on track. The result? A fun, easy day at the track, though our car’s limited fuel capacity meant we were pitting way more than our competition in class 1 (the slowest AER class). We finished Saturday towards the back of mid-pack. It wasn’t a victory by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly a personal triumph: We’d finally rehabilitated our turbo Miata, and it had completed a day at Road Atlanta without any major issues.

Next came Sunday. AER treats each day’s race as a separate event, so we were back in the running for a solid finish, provided the car would cooperate. We drove through the morning without issue, though we watched in horror as each pit stop knocked us down another position or two. AER requires only five stops per race day, but our Miata struggled to drive for more than an hour before fuel starvation set in. That meant we were pitting far more often than the other cars in our class, and we finished a trackside PB&J lunch with our car running in mid-pack. We were consistently running laps around 1:49, which we thought was pretty darn good for a Miata on mostly-stock suspension with 200-treadwear street tires.

Then, Mike Skeen walked past our pit stall. The professional driver has a resume that exceeds his humble personality, with podiums in NASCAR, the FIA World Endurance Championship, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series and Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge Series, as well as the SCORE Baja 1000 and the Pike’s Peak Hill Climb. We asked him a simple question: “Do you fit into a Miata?”

As it turns out, he did–mostly thanks to the Advanced Autosports drop floor kit in our Miata, which lowers the driver’s seat an additional 1.25 inches. Mike went out on track, and almost immediately posted a 1:45.6-second lap. Wow! We watched our car climb a few positions, passing cars we’d only dreamed of catching before. Then, he needed gas just 45 minutes into the stint. We refueled the car, and he ran another hour clicking off laps nearly four seconds faster than we could manage.

All good things eventually fade away, and Mike was no exception. After nearly two hours in the car, he had people to see and cars to drive, so he left with a smile and a wave. We soldiered on for the last few hours, though the car was noticeably down on power by this point. 20 minutes before the end of Sunday’s race, we pulled it into the pits: The turbo wasn’t making boost anymore, and the left-side tires had clearly had enough of Road Atlanta’s turns. We finished the weekend in fifth place out of 12 entrants in our class, and a quick post-race inspection confirmed our fears: Our turbo broke two of the studs holding it to the exhaust manifold, and stretched the rest to the point that we were pumping more exhaust through the gap than through the turbine.

What’s next for our Miata? Well, we finally made it last (nearly) an entire race, which is a big improvement from where we started a few races ago. It has a few glaring needs–mostly stiffer springs, which explains the aggressive tire wear–but there’s a method to our madness. We ran the car at AER Road Atlanta in full 500 point-legal ChampCar trim, because we’ve already entered our next event: We’ll be returning to Daytona International Speedway with the ChampCar Endurance Series on April 7. We blew up the car just a few laps into last year’s ChampCar Daytona race, so that will be our chance to right our wrongs and set the record straight.

Looks like we need to get back out to the garage.

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