Wreck Racing would like to thank all of our current sponsors for their generous contributions. Without your donations, this club and its members would not have grown as much as we have, both physically and in our capabilities. We appreciate all of your support.

GTE is our local resource for tire mounting and balancing. Gran Tourismo East specializes in tire mounting, alignments, and even suspension tuning. Gran Tourismo East works on both track and street cars. They will even do maintenance service! http://www.granturismoeast.com/

For over 75 years, Bendix has been setting the industry safety standard for commercial vehicle air brake charging and control systems. Wreck Racing thanks you for your generous donation of brake pads and rotors www.bendix.com

MSCDirect.com is a leading supplier of shop supplies, metalworking solutions, and power tools. We thank MSDirect for their generous contributions in advancing our shop supplies. www.mscdirect.com

Caterpillar is a major sponsor of Georgia Tech Mechanical Engineering teams. We thank CAT for generous donations to the Student Competition Center that improve our work environment and productivity. www.caterpillar.com

DIYAutoTune is a local Atlanta supplier of Megasquirt (the engine management system used on our cars). DIYAutoTune has been extremely helpful in any technical problems and is great at customer support. www.DIYAutoTune.com

General Motors sponsors many of the teams in the Student Competition Center and works very closely with the Mechanical Engineering Department. www.gm.com

Harrison Motorsports serves BMW and Mini Cooper owners located near Alpharetta, GA. Check them out for all of your performance needs www.harrisonmotorsports.com

Pirelli Tire North America designs, develops, manufactures, and markets tires for passenger vehicles, motorcycles, and race cars for original equipment and replacement markets. Wreck Racing thanks you for your generous donation of racing tires! www.us.pirelli.com

The Racers Market supplies performance parts for BMW owners in and around the Atlanta area. They also do performance consulting and continually make new solutions for cars with limited performance capability. www.racersmarket.net

On October 8th, 2009, a group of 35 members from the Wreck Racing club drove to Gainesville, Florida to compete in the $2009 Grassroots Motorsports Challenge. After a year of hard work, Wreck Racing had come to the Gainesville Raceway to show off their $2009 Challenge car, the 1991 Mazda Miata.

While heading to Gainesville, several leaders hung back to test the car in a private lot just south of Atlanta. With the exception of popping a rubber coolant elbow, the car was running well and it was ready to head its way over to the competition.

Despite the late night of getting the car prepared, the entire team left the hotel for the competition the next morning. Once at the track everyone buckled down, tying up loose ends on the Miata like wiring up headlights, checking and double-checking fluids, and wiping the car down in preparation for tech inspection and the Concours. Early in the afternoon the Miata was given inspection’s stamp of approval and the team made its way to the Concours area for the presentation to the judges.

The most obvious change to the Mazda Miata was the bodywork: massive fiberglass fender flares which were filled with 13 by 10 wheels, covered with Hoosier rubber. The team had dedicated months to the bodywork and paint prep alone. The custom hood scoop creates a low pressure area that pulls air through the radiator. In light of last year’s electrical gremlins, the car’s wiring was entirely redone such that systems could be isolated and problems more easily diagnosed. Chassis enhancements included some stiffer adjustable struts that were more appropriate for the high spring rates. Finally, a lot of time was spent making the car much more drivable: the changes made to accommodate the Lexus engine and the roll cage had seriously encroached on an already cramped cockpit.

After leaving Concours, headed to the autocross starting line to see what the V8 Mazda Miata could do. After crossing the finish line in 32.2 seconds—a time good enough for 6th place among over 150 laps already run by the other competitors—it was obvious that Wreck Racing was a serious contender. But a brushed cone added 2 seconds to the first run and set the team back. As the driver approached the line to make a second run, a loud pop followed by pooling water below the car caught everyone’s attention. One of the rubber coolant elbows had popped, flooding the engine bay with coolant.

With only ninety minutes left and three more runs, the team pushed the car back to the trailer to replace the elbow and dry out the soaked engine, paying particular attention to the water in the spark plug wells and the VR sensor, which controls the engine’s spark timing. In an effort to keep the engine cool, the team pushed the car back to the start line. Consequently when the car left the line running poorly, it was too late to do anything and the run was wasted. Despite another effort to dry everything, the left bank still wasn’t firing and the car’s final two runs were lackluster at 35 seconds a piece.

The team was back at the track early the next morning, bleeding the brakes, changing spark plug wires, and adding some rake to the car in preparation for some initial passes down the drag strip. With Wreck Racing’s lead engineer and resident stuntman behind the wheel, the Miata eased to the starting line. When the tree went green, the Miata tore off the line through first and second gear. But instead of shifting into third, the transmission controller sent the transmission back to first gear at 60 MPH and the car spun halfway down the strip. Thinking it may have been a fluke, the car lined up a second time, but the transmission controller failed to execute the second shift and the team had to settle for an 18 second pass. After more tinkering with the car back at the trailer, the transmission controller seemed to be functioning correctly again. However, in the interest of safety, the executive decision was made to park the Miata for the rest of the day. The car showed promise of running deep into the 12 second range, but another pass simply wasn’t worth the risk.

While the $2009 competition may be over, the club is hard at work testing the Miata & looking for ways to make the more unique parts more reliable. The club is renowned for its originality, but blazing into uncharted territory (custom transmission controllers on a strict budget, for example) comes at the cost of predictability. Expanding on this year’s wiring initiative, components like the cooling system, transmission, and suspension will be stress tested to identify weak points and opportunities for improvement. The team has made a push in the last year to distinguish Wreck Racing from the typical car club by actively applying knowledge and utilizing tools learned in the classroom and the Miata’s progress is proof of that.

We would like to thank our sponsors for all of your help. Without your generous donations and supplies we could have never made it to the competition with the V8 Miata. We also want to thank you for your interest in the club. We sometimes think that we build these cars for ourselves, but it is nice to know that we have some support out there.