MX-1 Dauntless sports racer bodywork update

Does it say something about the how busy we are if I post an April race report in August?

Anyway, the project is coming along. The DSR/CSR homologation certificate for the MX-1 Dauntless is now in hand. I had the car dual homologated so it is actually homologated in FB, DSR and CSR!

The tunnel floors, front fenders, side pods and rear fenders are all mounted and I am working on radiator tunnels and plumbing for the cooling system. The rear wing, rear tunnel extensions, rear bodywork extension and front fender pontoons are still to be delivered. All of these body parts are in fiberglass and as each piece is fine tuned we are ordering up a duplicate set of carbon bits from Dauntless. The air scoop in the photo has been removed so the engine cover is a hacked up version of the FC unit and once finalized will be moulded and created in Carbon. But, that may not happen until after the Runoffs.

The header and exhaust are a problem due to the tunnel height but I have high hopes that Mike Devins and Clark Lincoln's new project will help me out there. George Dean is prepping a full race 08 GSXR for me but I will continue to run my 07 GDRE motor for testing. The Runoffs motor will be wetsumped while my initial motor is drysumped. I am entered for the HPT Labor Day race but it will be close and assuming I make it, will really be nothing more than a very public test drive.

Ignore the dust in the photos, I live in west Texas and not only has it been over 100 degrees for several days, the wind occaisionally blows!

JM

MX-1 F1000 debut

In April we finally got to try this new beast out on the race track. I have homologated the car with SCCA as both an Formula B (or Formula 1000 if you prefer) version which is shown in the picture above and the D Sports Racing version with the full ground effects bodywork. This outing was in the formula car version. The Sports Racer bodywork continues to be developed and will be tested later in the year.

I took the car to Pueblo Motorsports Park in Colorado. Pueblo is a track where I have good experience. The first order of the day was to get the SCCA technical inspectors to look over our creation and decide if it was suitable for a log book and tech sticker. This is usually a routine process but always requires a more detailed inspection when a new design is involved. Luckily, or maybe by design, we received nothing but praise for the MX-1 and the level of interest by all onlookers was very rewarding after all the long hours of work.

Our goal for the weekend was to prove the MX-1's reliability and general characteristics on Saturday during the first race. I planned on running the car at about 80% during the Saturday events. On Sunday I would run the car at a more aggressive 95% while still trying to be cautious and observant of any problems that might crop up.

The SCCA Double National Race weekend saw one of the new Speads FB cars also entered. This car has been run for a couple of sesaons, had home track advantage, and was driven by a very competent driver, so I knew it would give us a good benchmark for our performance. The race went well with the Speads driver leading the race but finally dropping out due to a battery failure. I ran the full distance at a conservative pace and was rewarded with the 1st place trophy. My lap times were slow but I was very excited about the performance of the car.

On Sunday we would run the second national race and I was able to out qualify the Speads while he continued to pursue an electrical gremlin. He got it fixed for the race and we had a good race. I knew he would be coming hard so I aired out the MX-1 for several laps to see what she would do. Here is a photo from the race:



Was I ever impressed by the GDRE GSXR power. I decided to go with George Dean because of his willingness to work with me and his long history of producing big time power in these motors. We weren't lacking for straightline speed. And the car had great pull out of the turns. This was my first experience with the Lee Williams designed WRE differential. The car never had wheel spin. I was amazed!
Lee custom manufactured the diff for the MX-1 which allowed us to mount the sprocket closer to the centerline of the car and didn't require us to make suspension geometry compromises like some of the other designs.

Anyway, back to the race.......I was never threatened by the Speads but eventually all good things come to an end and we lost the drive chain while leading the race. I later found that an aluminum bushing we were using as a spacer was too soft and had ground down allowing some sideways slop on the sprocket and most likely causing the chain to jump off. But once we got the car back and decided the damage was minimal we were cheered up by the official results which showed we had obtained a fastest lap on Sunday which was within a few tenths of the Speads' fastest lap of the weekend. When I looked at the lap times, considered how much more I could have pushed the car, reminded myself that we didn't even have time to put the diffuser on the car and were running a very restrictive muffler - I was pleased.

Now the car goes home, will be stripped of the formula car bodywork and the long process of converting to the DSR full ground effects bodywork with tunnels, massive wings and lots of carbon fiber begins.

Stay tuned for updates!

JM