Industry Track Day

So, this weekend KSport headed out of the dry Arizona desert towards California, for the Industry Track Day at Streets of Willow.

Less than 10 minutes after the crews first tweet, catastrophe struck. Oh, but it gets better! With the turbocharged Right-hand drive Honda Integra Type-R stranded in the Sonora Desert, things weren't looking great.

Of course, you can't keep the KSport guys down and by 8 am, Streets of Willow was about to meet its match. By the end of the day, KSport had sealed their spot as the fastest car on the track. Not bad considering it was a brand new track for us!

Thank you to everyone who came out and supported us, as well as our competitors.
Oh, and apparently, the UMS guys are a bit of exhibitionists.

Civic Destroys All. KSport owns Firebird Raceway

Listen_To_This. A month or so ago, Tage Evanson, a local/regional time attack and time trial racer called us up and wanted to talk about suspension parts for his Civic. Usually requests like this are taken lightly, and they have to be, because KSport gets hundreds of requests for sponsorships every week--seriously--and it really takes up a lot of time to determine what's worth it, what isn't, etc. Picking and choosing is tough, so often we'll just avoid the conversation all together, or set aside large chunk of time on a weekend to sift through all the proposals and decide who gets a call back and who doesn't. Tage is based out of Phoenix, just like KSport, and given that he won the 2007 Super Lap Battle and stole the track record away from HASport, who had it for years, we were more than interested in working with him and his Civic.

We'll get into more of Tage's accomplishments, later. Last weekend was the first time up for Tage and his Civic with the new KSport suspension. What that entails is literally and off the shelf Kontrol Pro kit with stiffer different spring rates. No changes to dampening, shock length, etc. Anyone could buy this kit for their EG Honda Civic. The track for the first test was Firebird Intl. Raceway's "West Course", located about 20-minutes southeast of KSport's headquarters in Phoenix.

This event was running with the National Autosports Association (NASA) under their strict, nationally-sanctioned Time Trial rulebook. Within that series there are nine classes; the Civic runs in the "TTS" Class, which is the 3rd quickest. (TTR is fastest, then TTU, then TTS).

Tage won his class on the first day out. Actually, his best lap was set in the first session of the day, first time ever on KSports. Looking deeper, Tage beat the TTS track record for Firebird Raceway, with a time of 1:01.39. It doesn't end there.

Remember how I said there are two faster classes above the Civic in the NASA Time Trial ranks? Tage beat all those guys too. The TTU record is a 1:01.56, and the unlimited TTR class record is a 1:02.41. What that simply means is, Tage set the fastest lap ever on Firebird West for a NASA event, and that is the all-out FWD lap record for Firebird West as well. We'll just say it again... The fastest FWD car to ever set foot (or, tire) on Firebird Raceway's West course, was using off the shelf KSports.

In addition to that, Brady Dohrmann in his BMW M3 set the TTC lap record of 1:05.303. Jeremy Renshaw's TTB class record from 2008 still stands as well, and he was on KSports. Of the nine NASA classes to participate on that track, three of the lap records were set on KSport suspension.

GoPro Camera, Laguna Seca, I-10 is horrible.

So I started experimenting with this GoPro camera that everyone rants and raves about. I bought one at Buttonwillow Raceway back in April, but the lens was broken right out of the box. That, and the next week when we were racing in Phoenix, someone busted out with the GoPro "Wide", which has a wide-angle lense... and of course, that's way cooler. I sent the broken one back to GoPro, then bought a wide angle version which is a lot more fun.

We've been working on perfecting the BMW kits for a while now. Looking for another venue for testing, Laguna Seca served a few purposes aside from seafood, nice weather and a break from the Phoenix and SoCal tracks we've been to a million times. First, Laguna Seca is smooth like glass, so it was a perfect opportunity to experiment with different spring rates and really check the range of adjustability with the dampers on that type of surface. Buttonwillow, Willow and the tracks in Phoenix are pretty bumpy, so we have plenty of that sort of testing under our belts. We learned a lot at Laguna Seca in 2007 with the Type R on damper tuning... before the car blew up, that is.

And as odd as this may sound to most, the 700 miles between Phoenix and Monterrey offer some of the best highway ride comfort tuning situations once can imagine. I-1o out of Phoenix is nice and smooth; I-10 into Palm Springs and LA is like washboard rough, and a perfect setting to try different adjustments in the typical customer market. I know, it's hard to believe, but more than 90% of the customers never see the track. We tune dampers for the street, then get an earful from the guys on the track.. if you tune it for the track, then the street car guys complain. Hard to win these days. :)

This was taken with our '97 BMW M3, using off the shelf Kontrol Pro dampers. 3200lb car, 240hp, Nitto NT05 street tires. Typical tuner car, but it just happens to be fast around Laguna.

Laguna Seca - The Chase from phoenixR34 on Vimeo.