Track Day Recollection: AAS Round 11 @ Crows Landing

Hey there Guys and Gals and welcome to FJD Performance’s newest edition in Track Day Recollection. This past weekend FJD Performance found ourselves at the one and only NASA Crows Landing to do some Test N Tune on the Mare before we send her off to get the official tune at Caliber Customs. We went out Saturday with our good buddy Rob and his 1999 Mazda Miata. Helping him with his driving experience is also helping us to further our knowledge of other cars and driving characteristics. I believe his fastest time was a low 74 second run; our own was a high 70. We finished the day with some good news, bad news, things to work on and much needed seat time.

So, Whats the good news?

The good news is that the car did phenomenal out there on the Autocross course! Great throttle response, low engine temps, the perfect amount of torque to get out of corners quickly, the perfect amount of horse power, and the brakes still bite and bring the car to a quick stop given the new engine’s capabilities. Nearly everything about the car out there was perfect!

Well then, what’s the bad news?

Well… one thing, and we knew this coming in, is that we need new front tires, but we said screw it, send it anyways! So yea…we need to get new tires. In addition to the tire situation — which we found out about after the event there was wire showing — we noticed some additional body roll out there on the course which was eating into the times a bit during the slaloms. We were always planning on getting the rear finished up, but now we need to make it a priority in addition to the seats, harness, cage and new wheels and brakes. We feel like so much work needs to be done in what seems like such little time, but such is life.

While out there we worked on pushing the car and testing some limits which you can see by the times we put in on course. Seeing that we haven’t had any seat time in the Mare since April, we knew that some Autocross time was needed, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. FJD Performance will see itself back out at Crows with AAS for the next couple rounds, and we will be back at Thunderhill this October 1st.