{"id":1253,"date":"2010-09-07T12:19:19","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T19:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/?p=1253"},"modified":"2011-12-17T20:03:33","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T04:03:33","slug":"getting-ready-evo-9-racing-for-2010-nasa-national-championship-sep-14-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/07\/getting-ready-evo-9-racing-for-2010-nasa-national-championship-sep-14-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting ready: EVO 9 Racing for 2010 NASA National Championship (Sep 14-19)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Ed Nazarian – RRE Team Driver<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2010 NASA National Championship is right around the corner, September 14-19, at\u00a0MMP<\/a>\u00a0in Utah.\u00a0 Last year was the first year that Nationals was held at MMP.\u00a0 Cool thing was that I was the first to be racing an Evo at MMP for NASA\u2019s National Championship.\u00a0 This year I won\u2019t be the only one racing an Evo at Nationals.\u00a0 Earlier this year a Socal Honda Challenge racer started racing his Evo with us.\u00a0 Last time I saw he is registered to race in H2 with his Integra, and ST2 with his Evo.\u00a0 Hopefully both of us do well and return without any issues.<\/p>\n

After this year, Nationals is going back to\u00a0Mid-O<\/a>\u00a0for 2 years, 2011-2012.\u00a0 It will return to MMP for 2 years starting in 2013.\u00a0 So it\u2019s sort of my last year at Nationals because, given how things are, I don\u2019t foresee being able to do the 5,000 mile round trip drive to Mid-O and back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As of today there are 21 racecars entered in ST2 for Nationals.\u00a0 That is the biggest field of racecars for a higher class series.\u00a0 There might be a few more come Nationals, but you never know who\u2019s going to make it until it happens.<\/p>\n

Looking at the names that have registered for ST2, the competition is looking really fierce.\u00a0 The racecars are pretty diverse, and it\u2019s been changing, so we\u2019ll have to wait and see.\u00a0 So far there are a bunch of Corvettes, a few of the Mazda GT\u2019s, 2 Porsches, Mazda RX8, Honda Civic, Nissan 240SX, E46 M3, Roush Mustang, my friend Scott Howard in his 1st gen RX7, and so forth.\u00a0 I know most of my competition, and since the National Championship race is 45min, I\u2019ll need all the luck I can get.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the meantime I want to note something we\u2019ve modified on my car…some aero and better brake ducting.\u00a0 It\u2019s the first time that I\u2019m modifying my aero, so bear with me.\u00a0 I contacted\u00a0APR<\/a>, and they set me up with a splitter.\u00a0 And to help me minimize my expenses for Nationals, my friends stepped up to the plate and gave me their APR wings!\u00a0\u00a0Sean Bradley<\/a>\u00a0gave me his GTC-200 wing off of his STi, and Scott Pennock gave me his GTC-300 wing off of his Evo.\u00a0 Then, Mike Welch (owner of\u00a0RRE<\/a>), fabricated and installed pretty much everything.\u00a0 Mike, on his own time, bought all the parts we needed to put it all together.\u00a0 Then over the course of about 3 weeks, I went to RRE where Mike did his thing.\u00a0 Mike is awesome!<\/p>\n

As for the brake ducting, it\u2019s something I\u2019ve been planning on amending ever since I bought a used AMS kit.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t happy with the AMS kit because it didn\u2019t seem beneficial\/efficient for my needs.\u00a0 So I took some basic concepts and incorporated them into my setup.\u00a0 Only thing I can say now is that it came out better than I had anticipated.\u00a0 It\u2019s really cool when something you visualize finally comes together.<\/p>\n

I also want to thank Robert Ramirez, a.k.a. Honda Robert, from RRE.\u00a0 I ran into some challenges one night at RRE while prepping and I needed help.\u00a0 Honda was planning on working on his car but he sacrificed his time to help me out.\u00a0 Then, 2 days later I did a shakedown test day on Sunday, August 15, at\u00a0ACS<\/a>\u00a0with Speed Ventures.\u00a0 Everything seemed normal, but my day ended short.\u00a0 During the 2nd session the coupler of my lower IC pipe popped off.\u00a0 I crawled into the pits and had them tow me to my spot.\u00a0 In order to get to that coupler I would have had to remove the splitter.\u00a0 Since it takes a while to remove\/reinstall the splitter, I called it a day.\u00a0 After the test day we\u2019ve gradually been continuing with our prep work.\u00a0 Now we just need to tweak on a few more things, wrap things up, and cross our fingers for Nationals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Btw, if you\u2019re the type that likes road trips and you\u2019re interested in seeing Nationals, don\u2019t hesitate to come out and spectate.\u00a0 Here is my schedule for Nationals.\u00a0 I\u2019ve excluded my Warmup and Qualifying sessions, so this is just a schedule of my races:<\/p>\n

– Thurs, Sep 16: 1st Race
\n– Fri, Sep 17: 2nd Race
\n– Sun, Sep 19: National Championship Race (45 min)<\/p>\n

In the meantime I want to thank my sponsors and friends:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0RRE<\/a>:\u00a0 Mike Welch and the entire RRE crew.\u00a0 Too many things to note.\u00a0 RRE is basically my racecars home away from home.\u00a0 One thing I will note again is the APR splitter and wing that I added in preparation for Nationals.\u00a0 Mike pretty much did all the fabrication work.\u00a0 And he did it on his own time, even on weekends.\u00a0 Mike is so easy to work with.\u00a0 I truly enjoy working by his side and learning from him.\u00a0 He is such a genuinely good guy.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0Robispec<\/a>:\u00a0 Robert Fuller, aka Robi, and his crew for providing me trackside suspension tuning at my races.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0Girodisc<\/a>:\u00a0 Martin Meade for providing me phenomenal 2pc rotors, Raybestos brake pads, and awesome customer service.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0South Coast Mitsubishi<\/a>:\u00a0 For their continued support.\u00a0 I can’t imagine there being a better car dealership out there.
\n–\u00a0\u00a0APR<\/a>:\u00a0 For the splitter and for all their help.\u00a0 KC was the rep that dealt with me, so a special thanks to KC for being so helpful and swift with everything.
\n–\u00a0 Friends:\u00a0\u00a0Sean Bradley<\/a>, and Scott Pennock.\u00a0 To help me minimize my expenses for Nationals, Sean gave me his GTC-200 wing off of his STi, and Scott gave me his GTC-300 wing off of his Evo.\u00a0 Thanks also to Matt Dennison for letting me borrow his Tactrix cable.
\n–\u00a0 All my other friends and everyone else for their support.<\/p>\n

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By Ed Nazarian – RRE Team Driver The 2010 NASA National Championship is right around the corner, September 14-19, at\u00a0MMP\u00a0in Utah.\u00a0 Last year was the first year that Nationals was held at MMP.\u00a0 Cool thing was that I was the first to be racing an Evo at MMP for NASA\u2019s National Championship.\u00a0 This year I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[39,23,14,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1253"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2309,"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1253\/revisions\/2309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roadraceengineering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}