Grassroots Motorsports Magazine

The friendly folks at Grassroots Motorsports magazine have included a few tips in their November issue for upgrades to the FIAT 500 Abarth. If you can follow the big red arrow in my photo and read the tiny print, it really does say FIAT ABARTH on the cover. Inside the magazine, look for the article titled "Zesty Italian"!

Inside the magazine they talked to a few folks that know a few things about the Abarth, like the Europcompulsion tuners (read more at their website: Eurocompulsion)  and John Montgomery of South Carolina. John works at Benson Fiat and Alfa Romeo up near Greenville, and in his spare time is the president of FIAT Club America. https://www.fiatclubamerica.com/

There are plenty of other articles and lots of photos in GRM every issue, so we can highly recommend this magazine to be on your reading list!

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Dead Man's Curve Volume 3: Pavement!

While we're signed up and ready for the next South Carolina Region SCCA autocross on September 27th, and waiting for this coming Sunday's Formula 1 race from Singapore, let's take another look at the road work closer to home.

 

On a cool misty morning I managed to go down the still closed section of Rimer Pond Road and see how the road improvements are coming along. Big news this time, we now have pavement all the way through the construction zone! The road is still closed, and will likely get some more grading, another layer of pavement, and just maybe some stripes, but this is a big step forward! You can click on the photos to get a better view!

Starting on the east end, there you have it, nice new dark smooth pavement!

Straight section, a gradual cure downhill, nice view with the trees and no lines on the road. This will be a great improvement in safety with better visibility than the old road! 

Here's my favorite part, soon to be a gradual curve to the right that goes down,  then up, then down again up around the bend! 

Even the small and wicked FIAT Abarth couldn't fit through this gap, so the road is definitely closed!

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National Drive Electric Week 15-21 September!

A few weeks ago we attended the Blythewood Electric Vehicle Demo Day and wrote about test driving electric cars such as our favorite electric, the new BMW i3, shown here with Brian Nixon behind the wheel:

We're going to try and follow that up with some more electric car news at the Columbia SC National Drive Electric Week Event on Saturday, September 20, 2014. This event will take place at the Lincoln Street Garage, 820 Washington Street, Columbia, SC 29201 from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

As part of the 4th annual National Drive Electric Week, this will be one of many events in over 100 cities coast to coast this week. Over 200,000 new plug-in vehicles have been sold in the United States to date, and several new models are coming soon. Just today I read that Tesla will be installing a few hundred recharging stations in China, so the electric vehicle bandwagon seems to keep gathering steam. Well, not steam, or gas so let's say momentum!

Here in Columbia the event will consist of:  event t-shirts, electric vehicle test rides, event giveaways and electric vehicle informational packets. That all sounds like my favorite flavor: FREE! 

Cars  such as the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt,  Mitsubishi iMiEV,  Ford Fusion Energi, 

and other models will be on display and available for test driving. we've driven all of those but the Ford, so look for a report on the Fusion Energi from NMS. 

For more info on this event in Columbia, the website link is: https://driveelectricweek.org/event.php?eventid=270 or you can email the point of contact at this email address... LetsGoGreenSC@gmail.com

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Formula E: First Race!

Have you heard of Formula E racing?  If not, check out their website at this link:  Forumla E

While most auto racing is focused on huge horsepower, high speed, and thrilling performance created by burning a lot of gasoline, Formula E will be state of the art high performance electric cars. These cars will not be electric cars that are already available, but full on race cars with bodies built by Dallara, the makers of Indy and other race cars. Some of the other heavy hitters and big names in auto racing are also supplying parts and expertise to this series, such as F1 companies Williams Advanced Engineering providing the batteries, and electric power trains coming from McLaren. Tires will be provided by Michelin, so with standardized chassis and other components you can see why it's a "Formula" type of race, meaning all cars have to meet the same specifications. Throw in technical partner Renault and there are some serious players behind this new series!

Formula E plans on holding ten races in cities such as Miami, Long Beach, London, Berlin, and the opening race this weekend in Beijing China. Each race day will have two practice sessions, qualifying, and then the race. With the time difference from here to China (without drilling through the center of the Earth), you can tune in on Fox Sports1 at 3:30AM this Saturday for live coverage, or sleep in and watch the rebroadcast on Sunday from 1-2PM. If nothing else, remember our favorite website for tracking motor sports on tv: www.TVRacer.com

Several of the twenty drivers are experienced in Formula 1, Indy Car, and other top level racing, such as Bruno Senna, Nick Heidfeld, and Jarno Trulli. With two drivers in each of ten teams, it should make for an interesting season.  According to the website, there will be a race about once a month from now into next summer. The Long Beach race will be in California on April 4th 2015 with free admission, so it looks like they are working hard to bring this new electric racing to fans.

To be honest I've just learned way more about Formula E by spending some time on their website for a few minutes than I'd heard anywhere else, so now it's starting to sound interesting. Why not check it out?

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Sunday in America

Apparently something called "football" has started again, so I imagine that's what most folks are doing in the US today. My college team got beat yesterday, so that's just about all I want to say about that!

Here at NMS in South Carolina, we got the day off to an early start because it was Formula 1 race day, live from Monza Italy on the NBC Sports Channel. They've been doing a good job of bringing us coverage of all the F1 races this year, and with the time difference, the TV coverage came on live at 7:30am, with the race at 8am. That is way better than some of the other races from around the globe that get carried live here at 2am!  For more info, click on the Official Formula 1 Link.  If you don't know what team to root for, why not pick my favorite team Ferrari!

Not a great day for the Ferrari team, with Fernando Alonso retiring with mechanical issues with his car, and Kimi Raikkonen finishing in 9th place on the day. Hope they do better in two weeks in Singapore.

This afternoon, it was on to oil changing time on the Toyota Camry!

OK, back from the store with a new oil filter and a couple extra bottle of 0W-20!

Just get the car up a bit so I can crawl underneath...

Drain out the old oil... 

Take out the old filter, and...

Well crap! Turns out I bought the right oil filter for a 2011 Camry HYBRID, but I don't have a hybrid and now have to go back to the store and exchange the filter! Several minutes later...

After draining the oil, this silver plug (round part with square slot for 3/8th wrench) comes out to get at the filter

NOW we have the right filter. 

The black filter holder still has the old filter in it, the silver part on the right is the special tool to take this thing off. 

This car takes an internal cartridge like this, not a normal good old easy to use kind!

Other than my mistake of buying the wrong filter, it's not a complicated process, as long as you have a 15mm socket for the oil drain plug. 

Do real mechanics do stuff like buy the wrong parts?

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TODAY: The New MIATA Unveiling: September 3rd 2014!

The most popular car in autocrossing has to be the Mazda Miata, now celebrating it's 25th anniversary. In honor of this accomplishment, the Mazda folks have a special world wide unveiling of the 2016 Miata scheduled for TODAY, September 3rd.  It won't be on TV, but you can catch it on their special YouTube website from anywhere in the world at the following link:

YouTube Miata Unveiling

Over the years the Miata has gone through several generations of updates, but remains a really great and fun car if you're looking for a convertible two seater.

Tune in on line tonight at 9PM Eastern, 6PM Pacific time to see the next generation of Miata.

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E Street Report from Darlington

This weekend I officially kicked off the hunt for the 2015 season replacement for the Mazdaspeed Miata.  I was co-driving a stock 2001 Miata owned by my friend Kyle, who chairs the autocross program for our region and who has been finishing a solid second ahead of me at each event all season.  

Kyle and I were taking turns knocking out a lot of cones, but he was still consistently about 1 second faster all day.  We each slowed down a little bit to bring the 4th run of our 5 total in without hitting any cones and I wound up with a top time good for 3rd place in ES of 35.8 second.  

During fun runs I knew I could at least match Kyle's best time.  The first fun run I ran about the same as earlier at a 35.5.  Time to keep the right foot down more.  I overcooked the back half of the course and lost a lot of time, no improvement.  I pulled past the timing van and could see Kyle leaning out the window "Do it again!" and it seemed the whole SCR crew was egging me on. Alright, one more.  I lined up at start, focused down through the first stretch of cones and floored it.  This time I managed to keep my right foot down through more of the course and nailed the back stretch to come across the line in 34.2!  Bam! There's the time I needed to see.

After 6 events I'm solidly in 3rd place in ES even though fun runs are showing a pace much quicker than the official points would suggest.  Must keep driving.  Keep learning.  Keep the right foot down!

At Cars and Coffee last weekend I met a father and son who had a Mini Cooper S and I let them know about the Darlington event and encouraged them to come check it out.  Sure enough, they showed up bright and early and jumped right into the mix, getting numbers taped on the car and walking the course.  They both did really well in the novice class and said they were absolutely hooked and would have to come out again.  It was pretty cool to help other people find the sport that the NMS team also has gotten thoroughly addicted to since our first event right there at Darlington almost 2 years ago!  Looking forward to seeing the little blue car out there at the future events.

I took a quick break from running timing inside the van just in time to take a shot of the Abarth crossing the finish line.

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G Street Report From Darlington

Today was a fun autocross event held at Darlington Raceway, and I'll just have to emphasize the FUN part because it seems that almost everyone in my class was driving faster today! You name it, Ford Fiesta ST, Ford Focus ST, Honda Civic Si, and a VW Golf GTI, they all went faster than I did. With just a few more points on the day, I'm solidly in 3rd place for the year.

 Oh well, here's a few photos that can be good without being fast! You can find more photos on our NMS Flickr page, linked over there on the right.

Among the cool cars that were driving today were a Dodge Viper, a Lotus Exige, an old Volvo wagon, a kart, about a bazillion Miatas, and one other FIAT Abarth in addition to mine!

Also this nice old Porsche:

Maybe you like the look of an old Lotus 7 type of car:

I felt like I was improving with each run, and for the first 4 that was true as I knocked off a few tenths per run, so while I ended up nearly last in my class, out of all 79 drivers I still managed the 31st fastest PAX time, so well into the faster half of the field.

Here is Brian heading out for one of his runs in Kyle Ray Smith's Miata, and I imagine he'll be posting more info and photos on how his day went over in the E Street class.

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Dead Man's Curve Update: PAVEMENT!

 

 

It's been a few weeks since we showed you the current state of a safety upgrade on Rimer Pond Road.. AKA...Dead Man's Curve Part 1, the section I call Dead Man's Curve, so let's take a look at how it looks now.  The first photo is from right near where I live, just a little reminder that it takes months to make these kinds of changes to roads, but in the end the increased safety should make it all worth it.

Starting in the east, we're going to walk westward (like Columbus sailing the ocean blue) down the graded dirt path, and just maybe we'll find some new fresh pavement along the way! Remember that we're heading downhill here, and up ahead you can see that there has been more grading and clearly showing where the future pavement will be. The old road was straight ahead on the right, close to the tree line. The port-o-let probably won't be permanent!

Ahh, freshly graded dirt!  Great for walking and running on. Judging by the tire tracks, a few of the locals have been driving thru here too. Everybody wants to drive on a new road!

 Still going downhill, approaching what will be a kinder gentler curve, instead of the previous abrupt almost 90 degree tight bend. Safer, faster, smoother, sounds like a new razor from Gillete!

Since we're approaching from farther to the left, yep, it will be a smoother curve, and probably result in cars able to go faster here. As long as the road is designed the right way, faster can be safer...otherwise I guess the national speed limit on interstates would only be 10 MPH.

AHOY....PAVEMENT AHEAD CAP'N!!!!!!!!!!

 

You can see above that the construction guys have parked their vehicles like this on the weekend to prevent traffic from coming thru here. Not 100% effective, and I'll show you why in a few more photos when a driver snuck up on me! Up ahead you'll see the new pavement!

(cue DREAM SEQUENCE music, as the following image appears.....)


Artist's concept for a new Formula 1 race, the
BLYTHEWOOD GRAND PRIX OF SOUTH CAROLINA!

(fade out dream sequence music, return to regular blog post....)

Right about here we're at the lowest part of the section, heading uphill. The corner up ahead is still going to be partially blind, meaning we can't see all what's coming up. Can you smell the ashphalt?

A quick glance to the right shows you the small lake close to the road. Scenic view while I'm walking, but not recommended for viewing while driving a tricky bit of road.

At the top of the hill, we have an improved view of the next curve to the right!  The old road is now over on our left.

 A quick look to the left as we go by the church. I guess they will have to extend their driveway since the road is now farther away.

Just over the hill and now we can see the end of the construction zone...and the day I was taking this photo was 1 day BP (Before Pavement) right about here the guy kicking up dust came up from all the new road we just walked. Not sure how he got his SUV and trailer thru the tractor that was blockinthe road, but he did it!

Day 1 AP (After Pavement)

The latest word I've seen is that the road will open again in October, so that will certainly make life a lot easier for those of us that have been taking the detour for several months.  At least the guy that cut thru the construction zone put the "ROAD CLOSED" barriers back in place after he went through!


One last look back, and yes Virginia, there is new pavement down there!

 

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It's Autocross Week!

It's Monday and that means there's only a few more days until NMS hits the pavement at Darlington for more SCR-SCCA autocross on Saturday!  Over the weekend I put some time in with a few other club members to run through the registration and timing/scoring software and system so there will be even more of us ready to support the events and keep things running smoothly. I plan to continue on stepping up and taking a more active role in the club to help run these great events, so I'm really looking forward to this one.

This weekend, with the #86 Miata still for sale (and sadly back to looking naked without it's stripes and numbers) I'll be co-driving another Miata in E Street to continue the 2014 points campaign so look for the blue #189 car out there!  The Abarth will continue to run without any modifications from the last event and look to score more points in the G Street class. You can see the current standing on our cleverly named "standings" page listed above. (Hint: we're both somewhere in between 2nd and 4th place)

Yesterday was the F1 race in Belgum, the first race after a few weeks of their summer break and it was a great way to get back into thinking about driving fast after having EVs on the brain last weekend.  Unlike some F1 teams, the NMS drivers will continue to not crash into each other this weekend!

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