March 4-6, 2011: Ed Nazarian racing @ ACS Roval (Season Opener)

Ed is completely changing his tire setup this year going to full race slicks. Between this and changing the downforce setup with the added front splitter, this will be a learning year for Ed. He wont be going to the national championships because of some family obligations he has.

Saturday was mostly a disaster dealing with the new tires and pressures. Ed was busy again on Sunday getting his corded tires flipped/mounted/balanced, so he was late to grid again. He didn’t have enough time between his qualifying session and the race to get everything done quickly enough to make it to the grid on time. He had to start in the back again.

At the start the cars in front of him looked confused. Ed was able to capitalize on that and passed 3 out of class cars, and a fellow ST2 racer. He set his fastest lap of the entire weekend in lap 2 with a 1:48.622. Unfortunately, his tires started cording again during this race also, but this time it was far worse than Saturday’s race.

Ed’s Full War Story:

The 2011 season opener was at ACS Roval on March 4-6.  Up until last year our season opener has been at Big Willow in February, but NASA decided to cancel that event this year.  It’s really unfortunate because I love Big Willow.

Before anything I want to say a quick thank you to Mike Welch (owner of RRE), KC from APR, and Art from RRE.  Due to some personal challenges in the off season, I didn’t have time to get ready for our season opener in a timely manner.  I literally prepped my car a few days before leaving for ACS.  Mike, as usual, was extremely helpful and generous.  He even made the time to get my car on the dyno in the midst of a busy schedule to see how things were looking.  KC from APR went out of his way by driving out to ACS on Friday to hand deliver a set of risers, that he installed himself.  Since I had used the GTC-200 wing without the risers, I could feel they made enough of a difference.  As for Art, he was there that weekend crewing for someone else but made time to check up on me.  I was doing some work on my RF fender and had him come over to give me his opinion.  He ended up doing some work on the fender also.

Earlier I said that since I had some personal challenges in the off season I couldn’t get ready in a timely manner.  The major factor I didn’t have time to sort out was getting my alignment adjusted for this event.  And Robi (owner of Robispec) was going to be out of town during this event, so we couldn’t make adjustments at the track like we usually do.  I knew it wasn’t ideal but I figured it was close enough from when I did a test day in November, so I decided I was willing to race as-is.  Besides, I figured it would be a good learning experience.

SATURDAY 

Saturday was a day full of incidents before and during the race.  I qualified P2 with a 1:48.745, but after qualifying I realized I was cording my RF and RR tires.  Since our drivers meeting was after our qualifying session I didn’t have enough time to get my tires flipped, get ready, and make it to grid on time.

For Saturday’s race our group had 2 rolling starts.  Super Touring was with the 1st start, while GTS had the 2nd start.  When I entered the track both groups were long gone.  By the time I was approaching T9 the first group had already taken their start and the leaders were entering T3.  A few seconds later GTS took their start.  My only chance at that point was if there was an incident that entailed a full course double-yellow, or a pace car to collect the field.  Due to a pretty serious incident, that’s exactly what happened.  As I crossed start/finish to start my 1st lap there was a yellow issued before T3 due to an incident in T3.  As I started my 2nd lap the pace car was entering T1 with a full course double-yellow.  What are the odds?  I had to do over 2 laps to catch the pack behind the pace car.  It was unfortunate that incident happened, but it gave me what seemed like a one in a million scenario.  I was in the very back of the pack, but at least I was with the pack.

The race then restarted on lap 5.  After 4 laps I closed in on one of my competitors, but there was another incident at the start of lap 9 which caused another full course double-yellow.  The pace car was deployed again to collect the field, and our race ended as-is with the pace car.  I have in-car footage of this race but there is no point in posting it.

SUNDAY

Sunday was nearly a repeat of Saturday.  I corded my tires again during qualifying and was busy after that rushing to get my tires flipped in time for the race.  This time I just barely made it to grid in time, but as I was pulling in they were rolling out, so I had to start in the back.  But at least this time I was able to start the race with everyone else.

At the start the cars in front of me looked confused, so I was able to capitalize on that and passed 3 out of class cars, and a fellow ST2 racer.  I then passed another Super Unlimited American Stock Car on the outside of T4 totaling 5 cars I passed by T5.  So I started off pretty strong, and set my fastest lap of the entire weekend in lap 2 with a 1:48.622.  I got into a decent groove and was ready to gradually push it a little harder, but I quickly realized something didn’t feel right with my RF tire.  So after lap 2 I focused on trying to maintain consistent and decently fast laps.  Unfortunately, little did I know that my tires were starting to cord, but this time it was far worse than Saturday.  If my tires didn’t cord, I was on pace to run 1:47s all day from start to finish.  And if I had the luxury of having [forum-restricted] there with me, I think 1:46s were within reach.  At least now I know what I’m capable of doing in a race with my new setup.  Unfortunately, we will have to wait until next years March event to see what I can do at ACS Roval.  Here’s a breakdown of my lap times illustrating how badly my tires corded:

Consistent and decently fast laps in the beginning:
Lap 1:  1:54.130
Lap 2:  1:48.622 (Fastest lap of my weekend)
Lap 3:  1:48.747
Lap 4:  1:49.094
Lap 5:  1:49.022

Since my tires started cording I tried to maintain consistent yet somewhat fast laps:
Lap 6:  1:51.451
Lap 7:  1:51.376
Lap 8:  1:51.518

I could no longer maintain those lap times because my tires were cording severely:
Lap 9:    1:53.155
Lap 10:  1:54.272
Lap 11:  1:55.658
Lap 12:  1:57.688
Lap 13:  1:57.187
Lap 14:  1:58.173

March 7, 2011 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: NASA, Race and Rally, RRE Race Team, youtube | Leave A Comment »

Ed Nazarian racing at 2010 NASA National Championship (Super Touring Evo 9)

Ed Nazarian racing his RRE Evo 9 at the 2010 NASA National Championship in Super Touring 2 at Miller Motorsports Park (MMP), in Utah.  This is in-car footage of the National Championship race.  ST2 had about 26 entries, but a few of them broke down before or during the National Championship race.  There were 19 ST2 cars listed for the National Championship race, and Ed was in P10 for the start.

Ed was battling with 5 of his competitors during most of this race.  They exchanged positions several times.  After Ed took the lead amongst that pack, his brake pedal fell nearly on the floor.  Because of that he had to let 2 of his competitors pass him.  Ed had to back off a bit and continued the race one corner at a time.  He had to pump his pedal several times before every braking zone to make sure his pedal would holdup.  One of his competitors he let by was Scott Howard, driver of the white 1st gen Mazda RX7, who went on to take 2nd place.  Major congrats to Scott considering the troubles he’s had the last 2 years at Nationals.  The other was Jim Wagaman, driver of the yellow Mazda GT.  After letting Jim by, Ed was able to keep him within reach.  Unfortunately, NASA ended the race a bit short due to excessive oil spills.  If it wasn’t for that Ed would have had a chance to battle for 5th.  Beyond that, if Ed had an optimal brake pedal, he would have been in a position to battle for a podium, but that’s racing.  As always, a certain amount of good/bad fortune plays a factor for everyone.  Ed ended up in 7th place, so it was a successful finish considering the circumstances.

Ed’s Full Story:

The 2010 NASA National Championship was September 14-19 at Miller Motorsports Park (MMP), in Utah.  We were racing on the Outer course again this year, which is listed at 3.06 miles.  I was there racing my RRE Evo 9 in Super Touring 2.  Last year was the first time I had raced at MMP, let alone driven the track.  And I left MMP with not much interest in the track.  It just wasn’t a track that thrilled or interested me.  I’m really not sure what happened this year, but I left with the exact opposite experience.  I really enjoyed the track this year and left wanting more of it.

The competition this year was fierce and diverse.  There were around 3 times as many ST2 entries this year.  I don’t know how many ST2 racecars were there, but from what I recall there were around 26.  However, we lost a few by the final National Championship race on Sunday.  And iirc, 4 people didn’t finish the National Championship race.  NASA’s Nationals is brutal because on top of it being our National Championship, it’s 3 days of racing.  And the National Championship race is 45 minutes long.  So NASA’s National Championship is more like a marathon of races, as opposed to 1 race.  Despite trying to be well prepared, you really have to be somewhat lucky because anything can and will happen, especially with 3 days of racing.

Last year I was the first to be racing an Evo at MMP for NASA’s National Championship.  This year I wasn’t alone.  A Socal Honda Challenge racer was racing in H2 with his Integra, and ST2 with his Evo 9.  There was also a guy racing an Evo in ST1, who I think is a MMP local.  Although, I barely saw them on track.  I think both of them were having some sort of issues.

As for me, I didn’t have any major challenges.  I started and finished all 3 races.  The only major challenge I had was trying to get used to my new aero on a track that I have very limited seat time on.  As I noted in my previous thread, my new aero consists of an APR splitter that’s coupled with an APR GTC-200 wing.  KC from APR set me up with the splitter.  As for the wing, to help me minimize my expenses for Nationals, my friend Sean Bradley gave me his APR GTC-200 wing off of his STi.  My friend Scott Pennock gave me his GTC-300 wing off of his Evo also, but I ended up only using Sean’s 200 wing.  Sean’s wing is slightly different than the Evo version, but we made it work thanks to Mike Welch, owner of RRE.  The dimensions of the wing are identical, only differences are the size/shape of the end plates, and the location of the wings mounting brackets.

Before anything else I want to thank all my sponsors, RRE, [forum-restricted]spec, Girodisc, South Coast Mitsubishi, and APR.  Without their support I would not be able to do all of this.  My racecars home away from home is at RRE.  I’ve spent many long nights at RRE prepping under Mike’s wing.  For instance, Mike spent a great deal of time fabricating and installing my splitter and wing.  It was a great deal of meticulous work, but he made it enjoyable.  I can’t say enough good things about Mike and his crew.  He is such a genuinely good person.  I truly enjoy working by his side.  More than anything because he is patient, and has the capacity to explain just about anything in the simplest way.  I didn’t grow up around cars, so I’m the furthest thing from a gearhead/grease monkey.  Not everyone has the capacity to teach, but Mike is one of those rare people.  Not only has he been around, but he also has the capacity/wisdom/patience to teach without coming across as arrogant/condescending.

So, did my new aero and brake ducting help?  Yes.  But I’m not sure by how much because I don’t have a comparable reference point for MMP.  I’ll know better when I run ACS in Socal.  I can say that my car feels different with the aero.  And I can tell that my new brake ducting is helping, but it has its limit.  With my experience, I can now say that if I want to maintain faster lap times in a race, I can’t do it with the OEM calipers.  I have proven that the Girodisc rotors work, but they can only do so much.

The dyno situation:

There was 1 factor that put me at a disadvantage compared to everyone else.  NASA couldn’t get an AWD dyno this year either.  Last year they found a MMP local with an AWD dyno.  And I went last year to test on that dyno, but it was malfunctioning.  That dyno was malfunctioning this year also so NASA tried locating another one.  They tried, but they couldn’t get anyone to commit.  So while everyone else (RWD, FWD) had the opportunity to check their power at MMP and to tune their car on the 2WD dyno, I couldn’t.

NASA did however have GPS units that they used to monitor a lot of people, including me.  I requested that they monitor me all day Thursday so I knew where I was at.  That way, if I was down on power I could at least take ballast out of my car.  Problem was that they were busy and fell behind, so they didn’t get a GPS unit on my car until Friday.  That hurt me even more because I pretty much lost any chance I had on Thursday to adjust my weight.  So I basically went into the 2nd day without any real progress on my setup.  Although, they sincerely apologized, and went out of their way to help me out.

They finally got some data of me on Friday, and that’s when I found out that I was down on power.  They told me by roughly how much I was down on power, however, it didn’t really help me because they weren’t allowed to tell me what my actual numbers were with whatever other math they needed to apply to that data.  So I knew I was down on power, but I didn’t know exactly by how much.  Therefore, I didn’t know exactly how much ballast I could remove.  Best case scenario, I figured I could have been close enough to making the power I needed with their calculations, but there could have been something funky happening in my powerband.  Keep in mind that my car was tuned in Socal, so maybe at MMP’s elevation, around 4,400 ft., my powerband wasn’t as efficient as it could have been.  It’s not a comforting feeling knowing my car is potentially down on power by enough of a margin, and I can’t really do anything about it because there isn’t an AWD dyno.  Meanwhile, my competitors have the opportunity to tune their cars at MMP on the 2WD dyno.

The Results:

As I noted before, this year I was able to start and finish all 3 races (Thursday, Friday, and Sunday).  My focus was to make it to Sunday, so my plan was to progressively get up to speed.  We started off with around 26 cars in ST2, but a bunch of them had some sort of issue from the first day.  Conversely, everything worked out well enough for me on Thursday.  I qualified in 13th  place, and finished the race in 11th.  I also improved my time in the race by about 1.5 seconds.  I was basically on track with my plan of attack.  Only issue was that after the race I found out that one of my rear brake pad pins and the clip was missing.  It was a first time for me.  I called Mike at RRE and he immediately shipped me replacement pins and a clip overnight.

Friday started off well in Qualifying, because I improved my time from Thursdays Qualifying session.  I also improved 2 spots by starting the race in 11th, but my race didn’t go as well.  PTA was mixed in with us, but they only had 3 entries.  However, only 2 of them were competitive.  One of the PTA cars, I think it was a turbo Miata, dive bombed a few of us.  He was clearly a fast driver with a really fast Miata.  Since my goal was to make it to Sunday, I didn’t want to tangle with him, or anybody else for that matter.  On the other hand, it didn’t seem like he had the same plan, so a couple of us got stuck behind him.  He was clearly trying to use us to put some distance between himself and the other PTA driver.  We were all bunched up so I kept my distance and didn’t really bother trying to pass anyone.

Saturday was our groups day off, so I spent pretty much the entire day relaxing and getting ready for Sunday.  Everything went smoothly and I was ready to go.  Sunday’s race was a great deal of fun.  I was in P10 out of 19 ST2 cars listed.  For me, it was intense from start to finish.  Since I was hit last year at the start of the National Championship race, which ended my race, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of a 45min race.  All my other races thus far have been 35min races.  You can see how it all went down because I have in-car footage of the entire National Championship race.

What basically ended up happening is that my brake pedal fell nearly on the floor.  In the meantime I was battling with about 6 other ST2 cars.  We exchanged positions several times throughout the race.  I finally took the lead amongst our pack, but my brake pedal didn’t have the capacity to allow me to stay competitive, so I let 2 of my competitors pass me.  One of them was my friend Scott Howard, racing his White 1st gen Mazda RX7.  Scott went on to take 2nd place.  Major Congrats to Scott, especially considering the issues he’s had the last 2 years at Nationals.  The other driver was Jim Wagaman, driver of the Yellow Mazda GT.  After letting Scott pass me, I thought about ending my race, but decided to stay on for a bit longer.

I had to back off and focus on taking it one corner at a time.  The only way I was able to do that was to pump my pedal several times before every braking zone.  For the longer straights I actually had to pump my pedal in 2 sets.  Around 3/4 way down every long straight I’d apply 1-2 pumps to make sure my pedal still had the capacity to rise.  Then before the braking zone I’d start pumping again to prepare the pedal.  All the while I was able to keep Jim within reach, and with about 2-3 laps to finish we closed the gap on Josh Carroll, driver of the Bronze Mazda GT.  Josh clearly had some sort of issue also.  However, NASA ended our race a bit short.  We were told it was due to oil spills.  I remember hearing of 2 cars specifically that dumped a bunch of oil all over the track.  If our race wasn’t cut short, both Jim and I would have passed Josh in that lap.  And since Jim wasn’t pulling away from me, I’m confident that if I had the entire race I would have had an opportunity to pass him again.  Furthermore, if I had an optimal brake pedal, I was in a position to battle for a podium.  Either way I’m happy with 7th place given the circumstances.  If you watch my entire race you will see how busy my left leg gets pumping my pedal before every corner and down the long straights.  It was another great experience.

Beyond all that, a certain amount of good/bad fortune pretty much always plays a factor also.  Here are some examples of people I know of who weren’t fortunate.  Ryan Cashin blew his engine on the first day and never got to race.  Oli Thordarson had a puncture in his oil filter during the National Championship Race and had to pull off on the warmup lap.  John Gordon was dominating all week by winning both Qualifying Races, and also set the fastest lap times.  However, John’s car broke down in the National Championship Race.  I’m not sure but I think it was due to a blown engine.  Basically, anything can and will happen in a race because despite trying to be well prepared, a certain amount of good/bad fortune always comes into play.

Link to the Results of the National Championship Race:

- Group D Race Results (SU, ST1, ST2, PTA)

In-car footage of my National Championship Race:
- 2010 National Championship Race in-car

The SU/ST1/ST2 National Championship race is now online at SpeedCastTV.com:

- SU, ST1, ST2 National Championship Race

Thanks again to all my sponsors:

- RRE:  Mike Welch and the entire RRE crew for everything from tuning, to maintenance, to everything in between.
- Robispec:  Robert Fuller, aka Robispec, and his crew for providing me trackside suspension tuning.
- Girodisc:  Martin Meade for providing me phenomenal 2pc rotors and Raybestos brake pads.
- South Coast Mitsubishi:  Rigo, Sam, Abbas and everyone else for all their support.
- APR:  KC for setting me up with a splitter and all the other little things.
- Friends:  Sean Bradley for giving me his APR GTC-200 wing off of his STi.  Scott Pennock for giving me his APR GTC-300 wing off of his Evo.  And also a thanks to Matt Dennison and Sean Sisco for going out of their way to help me out.

October 10, 2010 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: NASA, Race and Rally, RRE Race Team, youtube | Leave A Comment »