We just returned from Sebring Florida after driving 6000 miles plus in ten days!

This was an interesting race - I REALLY wish we could've raced, but it was good to have real competition. We ended up with a small glitch that I've actually seen before, and thought we had prevented from ever happening again! There are a few green relays that control several items, one of which is fuel. They are exposed after removing the kick panel - which is appropriately named. During the bumps of turn 17, that relay was kicked loose, and the car shut down. It was fun up until then, but this unfortunately happened during the first or second lap.

Steve's car was prepped by himself and a couple other great guys, using some handcrafted parts, and some from Madness. It was extremely lightweight, which I think really helped at this long track.

The interesting part for me was going to be tire performance. We have seen this in the past during Spec Miata racing. Steve was running Hoosiers, and we were running Toyos. The Hoosiers always do better in qualifying, but don't always hold up for the entire race.

During the first lap, when the tires were good for Steve, I was inside the car in turn one, then backed off. I again was close into turn 16, and kept that until turn 17 under the bridge when I was alongside Steve. He was able to close the door because the car shut off. I believe he missed a shift going into 17, or he braked quite a bit earlier than I did - as I was able to pull quite a bit under the bridge until the fuel pump relay was disconnected. It took a few minutes to figure out what had happened, then we tore off and tried to just keep running in the hopes something would happen and Steve would have to back off. He held it together though! The funny thing is that I had the relays duct taped, and still managed to kick them off! After shoving them back in, the car ran flawlessly all the way to the checkered.

The interesting thing was the race lap times - Steve's best lap time was less than .2 seconds better than our best lap time. That's something I'm pretty happy with considering the Hoosier early lap advantage - they are usually more than 4 tenths slower by the end of a race in our experience (I've run both tires). We were consistently running 2:36 through the entire race. For comparison, our qualifying time was a 2:38!! I can't get Steve's times as mylaps.com doesn't have times for the event in Sebring, but maybe he has them and can share how he did throughout the event.

We did all this on one corded tire! Needless to say, I am confident with the car's ability to continue winning. Brian ended up winning in his lone car class, again with a destroyed tire - significantly worse than corded. It seems Vegas was much harder on the tires than we thought. The tires I used on the Mule were the same from Second Creek, Laguna Seca, Vegas, Pueblo and Sebring.

I saw that George said Steve was running the CAI with cowl mod - that's one hell of a cowl mod! [IMG]images/smilies/lol.gif[/IMG] He actually has a silicone tube from the throttle body to the headlight area, and runs the headlight opening directly to the filter. It does look like the Madness filter element though. In all, I was VERY impressed with Steve's car. They took the time to do quite a bit of development, including a slick rear diffuser. The car is obviously well sorted from a few years of racing. We look forward to the competition from Steve and hopefully others at St. Louis! We need more cars - so come out and compete if you have a race legal MINI.

I believe we are still ahead in the points, and we will certainly try to continue that trend!

In other good news, we are developing several products based on our racing experiences. We have a belt guard, a relay cover in development, and a few aero bits all coming to market. Stay tuned!!

Thanks to Steve for making this a fun event, and I really look forward to running with you again at Gateway - Sebring was a pleasure.

In autocross news, Our single sponsored car of Craig Wilcox saw quite a bit of action last weekend at the National Tour event. Craig elected to run in DSP rather than STX, and finished second to a very well prepped BMW. I think he would've spanked in STX - next time! The car also ran in STX with a co-driver, but I haven't received word of those results yet. I'll keep you posted.

So, it seems second place is a theme for Webb Motorsports last weekend. Not bad though, and we know what to do to improve our standings next time! To summarize, we took a Class 5 2nd plac, a Class 4 1rst place, and a DSP SCCA Tour 2nd place.

We'd like to thank our sponsors -

www.Unichip.us
www.helix13.com
www.whiteroofradio.com
www.tceperformanceproducts.com
www.uucmotorwerks.com

The next race is in St. Louis at Gateway June 10 and 11 - this is a double event weekend! Hope to see more racers out there .

Randy