RX-7 Focus Day at MSR

For those that don't know, MSR (or Motor Sport Ranch, located south of Fort Worth, Texas in Cresson) is a country club for sports car drivers. The venue was created not as a competition venue, but as a course to challange and teach hobbiest. The event I attended was a 1 day club event put on by the RX-7 club of Dallas-Fort Worth. They had a couple of open spots so they opened it up to non RX-7 cars and I grabed one. As my Surpa is still down for the engine swap, I ran in my WRX. The RX-7 crowd was incredably nice, providing lunch for all the entrants and just being cool in general.

Before going, I did two very important prep mods to the WRX. First, I got decent tires. Lap sessions of any length put to much heat into tires. I was afraid the OEMs might actualy loose a tread or fail. I chose Falken Azenis Sports. They are very popular in the stock classes in SCCA AutoX (which is where I run) and are priced right. The second was to change the brake fluid out to some real fluid that would hold up to repeated high speed stops. I chose ATE Racing Blue fluid. More on how these two mods worked out later.

The day went as follow (and I gather all focus days are this way). After lunch we all met in the class room for the first class room session. Jack Far (owner, founder and all around cool guy) gave us our first lesson. The lesson mostly consisted of does and don't, basic saftey rules and what we should do during the first session, which would be a lead follow session.

After this session, we climbed into our cars, split up into groups of five behind MSR's instructor cars (a Viper GTS, Carrera, Turbo Beattle, race prepped Focus, Mustang - I jumped in behind the Carrera) and began the lead follow session. The instructor drove the racing line with us in tow. This went on for 15 minutes or about 12 laps. This may sound somewhat boring, but it wasn't. At first they didn't push to hard, but kept a pretty good pace. Towards the end I was pushing at least a little.

After another classroom session, we did another 15 minute lead follow and this time the instructors pushed a little more, to where at times I wasn't sure (I'd never driven the WRX with decent tires, brakes or in a lapping session) if I could follow. Of course I could in the end. No sweat.

Now that the lead follows were over we began the real fun, free lapping sessions. :) It is important to remember that this isn't racing. No times are tracked and passing is allowed only in ceartain spots and never in anger. We did three 20 minute lapping sessions. Mostly this time is a blur. I pushed more each lap. The WRX is a beast. It never missed a beat. It never overheated, never had brake fade and was always predictable.

By the end of the third session I knew I had the car underneath me and how far I could push it. And as luck would have it, the other WRX, a sedan with nearly identical mods (bone stock except for good brake fluid and brand new Azenis tires) ended up behind me about half way through the session. For the last 10 minutes we played chase. I pushed deeper and deeper into every corner. Before long I was 4 wheel drifing each corner (not real fast, but a lot of fun). He pushed as hard as he could to keep up. It was a blast.

Over the lap sessions, when I would get a good run off of the corner before one of the 2 long straights, I would see speeds in the high 90 mph range. Even braking at the last moment for the hard right 110 that is right after the front straight, I naver had fade (during that stop or through the esses that followed) and that is pretty increadable for a OEM, sinlge piston brake setup. The tires also performed well, providing good grip, next to no roll onto the side wall and very little wear for having run 1 hour 30 minutes worth of laps.