World Racing League @ Texas World Speedway 12/2014

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I had the opportunity to rent a seat in a car that my team has competed against a number of times.  The early 90's car is based out of Kansas.  The race was held by World Racing League at Texas World Speedway.  This event gave me a couple opportunities.  One, to race a Miata (might as well start figuring out how to race one) and two, this race track it to be torn down and developed into town homes or other such nonsense; the very last race at TWS will be another WRL event in early summer 2014.  

This was actually my 2nd time at TWS, the first time was for the inaugural Formula 1 race at COTA (Circuit Of The Americas), we went down early and Joey Todd, the track manager let us use his playground.  Thanks again for that Joey!  TWS is roughly 2.9 miles and 15 turns.  

I believe the final count was that 56 cars took the green flag on Saturday, 12 of which were Miatas.  Our little Miata would do about 110mph on the main straight, while Corvettes and Porsche Boxers would do about 140mph, however both cars would stay in the Miata's field of view until the next time on the main straight. 

This one was taken the very last lap Sunday, sadly I got passed just under the checker flag! :'(

Car owner Rodney in the foreground...notice the matching shirt!

Smoke'em if you got'em!  :)

Checker flag Saturday.

We ran a good race both days.  Saturday we got hit with two penalties for passing under yellow.  Saturday was a 9 hour race.  The Miata was about to get roughly an hour and 50 minutes per fill up.  There would still be over a gallon of fuel in the tank, but it would fuel starve soo bad in the turns we had no choice but to pit.  I was the last driver on Saturday, and the decision was made to keep me out for the remaining 50 minutes or so of the race, a quick pit stop was made just for one jug of fuel and back out again.  I don't have the official standings but we finished like 10th in class and 17th overall.  Somewhat ironically we more or less finished in the same position on Sunday as well.

  One of our drivers, Marcus, whose home track is TWS was able to muster a 2'09" lap time, much faster than any of us.  In comparison there was one Miata that was able to do a 2 minute flat time, which was about even with the Corvettes and Boxers.  That Miata had more tire, aero, suspension, less weight than us.  Oh and they run a Spec Miata shop!  Soooo!  

Here is a picture album on FaceBook

This video is from the start of Sunday's race.  Just after 13 minutes into the race a Mustang catches fire, if one looks very closely one can see that the driver is out with a fire bottle attempting to put out the fire, soon followed by the corner worker.  Then there was roughly five laps of full coarse yellow.