Motorsports Club event at Texas World Speedway

January 30 and 31, By Ara Malkhassian

Some background: TWS is a Superspeedway. It is a replica of Michigan International Speedway. Due to it's location in College Station, it has fallen off the circuit for major racing, but is still a popular "test and tune" site and it has several options for road courses. The driving school events are held on a 1.8 or 2.9 mile track. On this particular weekend, the 2.9 mile 14-turn track was being used.

I arrived Saturday at 7:30AM to find that two NSXers were already there and in the garages. They (Alison and John) were nice enough to hold three more spots next to each other so we could stay close to each other. Karl and SL arrived moments after me. I knew most of the gang from the Houston NSX events. It was very cool to see 5 NSXs in one garage, just ready to go out and eat the track up.

Having never met Karl before (I don't think he's THAT Krazy), I didn't know what to expect of him. He turned out to be a great guy, we ended up spending a lot of time together on the track and in the pits.

The first session of the day (Saturday) was interesting for me. I had to contend with the a new car and new tires. Thankfully I had participated in several events on this track with my Miata. My experiences with the Miata were useful and yet caused me a lot of frustration. The driving style I had developed with the Miata was quite different that what an NSX requires. With the Miata, the object is to dive into the turns with as much steam as possible, braking well into the turn, scrubbing speed up until the apex and mashing the gas immediately at that point. Well, as those of you who have driven an NSX hard know, that is not a good recipe for fast times in an NSX.

So after a few turns where the car threatened to swap ends at turn entry and reducing my confidence about 3 notches, I started to slowly build up speed, learning to use the NSX's superior brakes and power to do a lot more straight line speed and braking, easing into the turns in a more classical, progressive motion. Unfortunately, by this point it seemed that I had warped the rotors because I was getting strong vibration under braking. So feeling dejected, I pulled in at the end of the session thinking about the logistics of heading home and swapping the NSX for the Miata. I felt terrible.

While in the pits, I checked the fluids and also checked the wheel torques. To my horror, all the wheel lugs were loose to the touch! I had recently obtained and powdercoated an older set of wheels and the geniuses at the paint shop had not masked off the center bore of the wheels. The paint was preventing the wheels from seating well against the hub. I had tightened the wheels that same morning at my house before driving to the track. I went ahead and retightened the wheels and went on a short test drive and discovered that that was the source of the braking vibration.

During the second session, I started to regain some confidence, but was still learning a couple of new brake zones that are totally flat out in the Miata! I was also learning to ease onto the power. I had managed to get loose on the exit of the carrousel (the slowest corner on the track) and had been black-flagged by an over-eager rookie corner worker. You aren't supposed to get black-flagged for that, so the track officials had to educate the corner worker. So I lost a couple of laps during that fiasco. I went out again, but the session was ending and that vibration was coming back...

In the pits, I decide to solve the problem. I removed each wheel and chipped off as much of the paint (powdercoating is tough stuff!) as I could and bled the brakes too.

In the afternoon session, Karl changed his group to be able to run with me. We went out nose to tail for the entire session. I was driving a hair slower to make sure he could stay with me with his street tires, but he was having no trouble staying in my shadow. It was cool (and a little unnerving) to have another NSX planted behind me the entire time around the track. We went through the entire session like that. The other NSX folks commented that is was a very cool sight from the pits.

Saturday, we enjoyed a night of camaraderie at what all the track folks call the best (some would say only) restaurant in town, Cafe Eccell. We had a great dinner in spite of my attempts to introduce marital discord between Karl and Paige and John and Kimberly.

After dinner, Alison and I begged SL (a Texas A&M alumnus) to take us to the Dixie Chicken. A legendary college bar where animal heads are mounted on the wall and people don't consider men in full leather chaps and a cowboy funny (we did..). Well, after a rowdy night of foosball and the world's longest pool game, we called it a night. After all, it was 1AM and we had to be at the track by 7:30...

Day 2 was much better for me. I continued to build confidence in the car and tires (BFG G-Force R1s are a little darty on the NSX). I started to get lower and lower lap times (Thanks Kimberly for tracking our times). Meanwhile Karl, Alison, John, and SL all continued to pick up faster laps as they learned the track and their cars' limits. By the end of the day, we had all improved our lap time dramatically.

The NSX is truly awesome. The power (especially compared to my Miata) flows so abundantly and smoothly, the brakes are strong (though I was starting to experience some fade towards the end of the sessions), and the handling limits are fairly high for a stock car. The first couple of times I reached the end of the straight under full power, I scared myself. I had gotten used to be traveling close to 110 in the Miata. With the NSX, I was just under 140. Phew.

As far as the lines on the track, I developed earlier turn-in points to be able to allow myself the time to turn-in with the smoothness required with the NSX. I continued to take the less-traveled, low line through turn 1 (at the end of the straight) in spire of Brian St. Denis and other instructors' advice. I will attempt to take the high line next time (Next event is on 3/13&14).

I'm going to have the alignment checked before the next event as I still am looking for some additional confidence and am hoping that some setting is out of spec. Either that or maybe a few more weekends at the track will help me build my self-confidence up. I realize that the NSX will never be as tossable a highly stiffened Miata, but my driving style is changing to accommodate it's requirement for smooth inputs. The Porterfield R4S brake pads feel great on the street, I hope they help on the track too.

Always learning,