Well, it was kind of a staggered day with Team Maddox showing up in the AM and doing a bunch of testing laps and one full rotation race. Shaylin Maddox won the only race we did, which I think is her first full race win–Way to go!
Abe Maddox seemed to be a bit distracted but wasn’t too far off. He also won a heat or two. Shaylin and Abe were both running Viper V-SPEC cars while I was running a bone-stock MegaG+ with a “paper” Whelen Modified body.
Normally, a V-SPEC Viper would blow the doors off a stock MegaG+ 1.7 car. However, with the paper body, the chassis is much faster and handles significantly better. Still working on the paper body design for the 1.7 MG+ but I am getting close to a simple and easy-to-install version. I’m focusing on a USAC Whelen Modified style first and will look at other designs once I sort out what works and what doesn’t.
| Place | Name | Laps | Points | Total Time |
| 1 | Shaylin Maddox | 174 | 83 | 2428.881 |
| 2 | Steve Stewart | 178 | 81 | 2443.839 |
| 3 | Abe Maddox | 158 | 76 | 2452.908 |
Later in the day, Aaron Castro showed up to test some MegaG+ cars and got to meet most of Team Maddox as they were getting ready to roll towards home. Webster Motorsports showed up shortly after Aaron’s arrival.
Team Maddox departing was a bummer but they accomplished their goals and had a great track day. The good news was we still had three drivers on the track so we did a bunch of hot lapping and then clicked off one Viper V-SPEC rotation race. The racing was very close with Aaron bagging second place overall and Kevin Webster very, very close.
We decided to tech the cars to show Aaron the process. Both Kevin’s and Aaron’s cars were relatively close in both dyno numbers and downforce, while Home Cookn’s car was substantially better in both categories.
Turns out, both drivers were running out-of-the box V-SPEC chassis’ with only timing adjustments. Kevin’s car was actually running retarded timing, which is good for small home tracks and tight courses. Aaron’s car was running fairly neutral timing. Both cars had stock Razor front ends and stock PST rear tires.
Of course, advancing the end bell timing makes a big difference in off-the-corner and straightaway speeds, installing smaller profile rear tires increases downforce considerably, and an independent front-end improves corner speed.
All this made me realize that most of our Sportsman drivers are probably running bone-stock Viper V-SPEC cars, which can be very competitive but obviously inferior to a properly setup HOPRA SPEC RACER chassis, which are the only V-SPEC rules we run at Stewart Raceway right now.
Maybe we need to revive the HOPRA SPEC STOCK class. Pretty much the same rules as SPEC RACER but is restricted to hardbodies and no adjustable brush barrels. Independent front-ends are still allowed but that is not a big game changer.
Any other ideas out there? I think the SPEC RACER rules are pretty basic but it looks like we need to bring some parity to the Viper V-SPEC class racing.
Okay, shut up and drive!
Darn! I forgot to mention that SR3’s road course was changed this last weekend, which makes Shaylin’s race win even more significant. On Webster Motorsports persistent prodding, I replaced the mostly unnoticed Squeeze lane section with a chicane, or as Brad Bowman calls it, “Fast Esses.” Everybody seemed to like the change, which definitely reduced the hard crashes at the end of the short infield straight. We’ll see how things go with the next race and decide if it’s a keeper.