Fun times testing at the autocross!
If there's one thing to take away from the weekend, it's that this new car has SERIOUS potential. More so than we've seen with any previous generation even. ND on hot street tires sets top 3 time out of 80 competitors?? I drove the thing and even I am in a bit of disbelief. It's that good... read on for the details.
So Brian took the ND down to the SCCA event last weekend and came away predicting QUICK times with good tires, with the car only a few seconds off the hot street-class cars.
A week later, now we're out here with the BMWCCA. Lots of non-BMWs here as well, and many SCCA competitors who use these events as test n' tune opportunities. In fact several guys today were prepping for Nationals, so lots of good benchmarks.
This time we were equipped with the Bridgestone RE71R in 205/50/16 on Enkei wheels; this is the current "street tire to have", but still fairly conservative in width. We have our new 6-piston front caliper upgrade fitted over stock rotors, and also some new chassis bracing being tested. All in all, not thaaat much changed from stock. We're still experimenting with spring rates, with current springs stiffer than stock.
So now to the driving. Traction control OFF, stability control OFF, slip the clutch a bit and GO. First impression shifting to second is the appreciated fact that finding gears even when shifting fast with motor revving high is completely intuitive. That gets reinforced when I go for 3rd gear in the middle of a high-speed sweeping right - something my NA does not do quite so effortlessly. The suspension is SOFT, even with our stiffer test springs. That's being exaggerated by the fresh and very sticky tires. Driving at speed takes a very gentle touch. There is much we can improve here to make the handling much more direct and responsive and easy seconds left on the table as it sits right now. The brakes are great! Half way round the lap I'm feeling very thankful that we put the caliper kit on the car as I drop 30mph in a blink for a sharp off-camber left hander. Nice firm pedal with tons of stopping power, at least that's so right up to the moment I overheat the pads on the third lap. For our front calipers we chose to use the mildest pads on our shelf so as to not cause an imbalance with the factory brake pads in the rear, and they just don't have the heat capacity needed for this kind of use. Thanks to a plethora of tried and true pad options for these calipers, this will be a piece of cake to remedy. And the largest factor of all - torque! Like no Miata before it. Forget comments from keyboard racers that it should have more power. I chose to leave it in 3rd gear where in any other Miata I'd have downshifted because the car had no problem jumping from apex to apex even when a little out of the power band.
That's all well and good but how did it drive?? Well, once I adjusted to how the car needed to be driven with suuuper gentle inputs to let the car settle on the outer side and take a set and then carve through the turn, I could look past the body roll and focus on experiencing the balance that Mazda has given us with this new chassis. And boy did they hit this one out of the park. Couldn't have said this back before we "fixed" the alignment, but the car now has that perfect "tail follows the nose" rotation, with every little input from your hands and feet giving you precisely what you're expecting.
Enough of the touchy-feely stuff. That's water under the bridge if it turns out to be slow! But slow it was not, my friends. Check out the results, this just a snapshot of top 25 out of a full field of 80. At the top we have our very own Brian setting the bar in his silver NC that is current points leader in SCCA XP class (heavily modified) on old race tires. 2nd place taken by a very well set-up NB with all the go-fast suspension and differential tricks in the book on wide BFG Rival S tires (comparable to RE71R) . And wait, what's that? The ND in 3rd, just half a second back! On a preliminary testing setup using prototype parts and still just figuring out what the car likes and doesn't like. And 4th and beyond? 76 other cars from mild to wild on a combination of street and race tires. Of this snapshot of top 25, the three LEAST modified cars are the Porsche Cayman, the Corvette, and our ND: