KraftWerks clocked another victory this past weekend at Auto Club Speedway in the highly competitive Miata Challenge Time Attack event! In January we participated in our first Miata Challenge at Willow Springs Raceway. In our first event, William Chen drove his 99 Miata to not only the overall win, but a new track record!

We wanted to get more hard racing miles on one of our 99 Miata test mules. This poor test mule was bought last year for $800 with a blown engine and lots and lots of miles on the odometer. We installed a junk yard engine and, of course, the KraftWerks supercharger system and got it back to a running car. It has endured a tremendous amount of abuse on the dyno during testing of the supercharger base kit and has been great for durability testing of our system. We found some used Falken Azenis tires on a car that we had in the shop and decided to go out for fun laps on the SpeedVentures Autcross course set up in the parking lot of Auto Club Speedway.

What we learned quickly is that 10 year old suspension, used tires, and lots of power makes for a very wild ride. Oscar Jackson Jr. came in after the first run and said “This chassis needs a LOT of work”. But he quickly set fast time of the morning. Shortly thereafter we put William Chen in the car and he lowered the time Oscar Jr. had done. We then put Emilio Cervantes of 949Racing in the car and the time came down again. Then Oscar Jr. got back in the car, and lowered it once more. We repeated this driver switching “fire drill” all day and the 99 Miata mule never complained.

At the same time that the Autocross was being run in the parking lot, Miata Challenge cars were running on the Auto Club Infield course trying to get their cars perfected for the Miata Challenge Time Attack that was to be held at 5pm on Sunday. Our original goal was just to spend two solid days of Autocross testing in the parking lot as we knew our chassis and tires probably weren’t going to be up to the task of a full Time Attack track event. But we could not resist entering the Miata Challenge Time Attack at the very last minute on Sunday afternoon.

So at the last minute, we decided to enter the Time Attack to see how the car would perform on the fast Auto Club Speedway infield road racing course. Keep in mind that you only get an out lap and two flying laps for your official time. Oscar Jr. had not turned one lap around the infield during the weekend and we had serious doubts about the tires after two punishing days of drifting the Kraftwerks Miata around the Autocross course. So we borrowed a used set of 949Racing 6UL wheels and cycled-out tires from Emilio, and sent Oscar Jr. out on an adventure in the Modified class.

Oscar Jr. quickly figured the track out and was able to clock a 1:19.2 lap, a full 1.2 seconds faster than second place, giving KraftWerks the Modified class victory! The second place NB Miata was very well prepared, very well driven and had been testing all day on the race course. Although our test mule had a completely stock exhaust system and didn’t have the cornering prowess of the second place car, the straight line speed of the KraftWerks supercharger kit was just too much for the other cars to overcome.

Overall, it was a great weekend of testing, racing, and overall fun. We encourage you to check out SpeedVentures.com and Miata Challenge.com for the next event.