Not all race weekends go as planned. Normally these experiences fly under the radar for teams. Often with today’s social media influenced society, only the best experiences are documented and projected to the rest of the world- which we are guilty of as well, however this time we wanted to make an effort to show just what a “real” disaster racing weekend could look like. Our team, Mechanical Advantage Racing made a season plans to campaign 2 vehicles, the K24 swapped unlimited class Mazda Miata known as the ‘Ultra Miata’ and the unlimited class Subaru known as the ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Our goal was to run the Miata in the Gridlife series to try and contend with the Unlimited class points series just as we have in the past with the Slumdog. Our plan with the Slumdog this season was to run in other series including the new SCCA Time Trials program, in addition to the Speedring, and the new Colorado Gridlife Event “Alpine Horizon Festival”.

We began prepping the car this winter installing a new X-Shift sequential gearbox, a 2.7l Callies performance products engine equipped with built cylinder heads filled with Brian Crower valve train. By March all the hardware was in place and the car was off to performance electronics to be completely overhauled with their millspec wiring harness, their electronics and some neat paddle shifting hardware.

The car was finished a few months later and it was time for testing! We brought the car to our local airstrip and were able to begin tuning and taking data. After working through a handful of initial build issues we gave the ok to tow the car out to Colorado to see the tuning guru Harvey Epstein at his shop The Boost Creep Ltd. As predicted, the car made great power and worked awesome on the dyno needing little attention finishing with a final power number of 620whp.

With all boxes checked, it was time to finally head to Gridlife Alpine Horizon Festival. Upon arriving we located our fellow racers, parked the rig and began to unload the car and assemble the aero. Once the car was 100%, we put the car on air jacks to run through the gears and get everything up to temp making sure there were no issues. While going through the gears something gave, and a loud series of noises ensued, the car was then shut down. Underneath the car was a pile of parts, including pieces of bellhousing. The clutch had exploded, and exited the car through the side of the transmission.

The aggressive ignition cut sequence to reduce gear-shifting time had abused the clutch disc and broke the springs from the hub of the disc initiating the series of events that scattered the parts across the ground.

Without setting a single lap time we were determined to get the car fixed. 3 local shops, JC Fab Works, RPM Performance, and TGA Performance all out of Colorado Springs stepped up to help us out in a pinch and were able to get us something to at least go around the track with. They found an Unsprung ACT 6 puck clutch (cant break the clutch disc if its all one piece!), an OEM flywheel, and a starter. Once all the parts were located the process of pulling the transmission and replacing them began. Roughly 4 hours later, the car was back up and running!

Friday qualifiers were finished, so we would go into Saturday with no experience on the track and be gridded in last position. Once on track the car seemed to be performing well, with both the car and the driver settling into the roval. After 3 laps, the car had reached 205 degree coolant temps and required a cooldown lap, of which many other vehicles needed seeing how hot ambient temperature was. During the cooldown lap the lower radiator hose had blown, as result of a weakened hose from the clutch failure (lower coolant hose runs below the bellhousing to the trunk mount radiator). When the hose blew, all coolant (water in this instance) had left the engine leaving the coolant temp sensor exposed to only air. As with many vehicles, these sensors are not designed to read air temperature, so it registered the engine as resuming 180degree coolant temps. This is what led to the inevitable end of our weekend, when the car continued to hotlap with no coolant. It took nearly 3 minutes for the temp sensor to begin actually reading an overheat scenario, at that point it was brought back to the pits with a failed head gasket.

We began packing everything up and organizing repair parts to get the car ready for the next event, not dwelling on the misfortune we were dealt. As debilitating as a weekend like this can be to your motivation it does change the fact that it’s part of the sport. Racing is what we do, and component failures will not hold us from achieving our goals, it’s as they say; ‘Just keep racing’

The UltraMiata is running Konig Dekagram in 15×10 et 25mm squared in Semi-Matte Black (Good-Win Racing exclusive wheel). The Konig Dekagram is Flow Formed.

The Slumdog is running Konig Dekagram in 18×10.5 et 18mm squared in Semi-Matte Black. The Konig Dekagram is Flow Formed.