Archive for the ‘ ChumpCar ’ Category
Doubt, the cold Halloween night air, and my balaclava diffusing every exhalation were resulting in the persistent fogging of my glasses (why hadn’t I thought of this?). I’m the second driver of the Autosport Lab Rats Team that’s about to be sacrificed to the night during the inaugural Chumpcar race at Portland International Raceway. The [ READ MORE ]
When trying new things, friends are always armed with advice on whether you should go for it or not. There are also situations when people advise you when to be strong and when to be afraid. When to jump and when to stay on the ledge. And most often such advice are reflections of the [ READ MORE ]
We Finished! After months of preparation we completed the inaugural ChumpCar Halloween 24 hour endurance race at Portland International Raceway! A fast and durable little LabRat was assembled by our crack team of Miata-owning autocrossers. In the weeks leading up to the race we were faced with the disappointment of having one of our drivers [ READ MORE ]
Friday After months of blood, sweat, tears, and plenty of rivets, one tech inspection could make or break our weekend. Would they declare that the LabRat is a cheater car and give us 500 penalty laps? Would we have spent all this time building a car just for a “nice” weekend at the raceway, watching? They inspected [ READ MORE ]
We love rivets. Rivets are fun. We don’t know when to stop using them- so we usually add 2-3x more rivets than necessary. Really, is there such a thing as too many rivets? Clearly, we will claiming rivets in our race car budget. Brain Dome When you put tall people into little cars you have to accommodate [ READ MORE ]
Our talented artist and driver John Kimball recently invested in his own vinyl printer and used our LabRat as his blank slate. We are loving the results! We’ll let the graphics speak for themselves. [ READ MORE ]
A view from the top In our last installment we showed how we augmented the roll cage to accommodate our ‘over-height’ drivers. Actually, we’re all fairly normal (bodies, not brains) – average Americans driving a small Japanese roadster. So what are we to do for protection against late October elements since we can count on rain, for [ READ MORE ]
We’ve been working full tilt on the LabRat miata, so we’ve neglected the updates. Uh huh, likely story. Let’s catch up. The following is light on wit and dense on information. Lots to share! Cage Modifications Since we have a wide variety of body sizes and shapes fitting into one miata cockpit, we had to make safety modifications [ READ MORE ]
Shortly following our work party we screwed up the nerve to fire up our Miata. We would like to apologize in advance for what you will have to endure here. Furthermore, we want to stress- this Miata contains no technology produced by Autosport Labs. Not yet, at least.. [ READ MORE ]
The more we dig into this piece of junk the more we start regretting this endeavor. But anything can be compensated for by adding drink and food! Our recent work party was partly a chance for the rest of the team to acquaint themselves with the piece of crap I foisted upon them, extract some useful [ READ MORE ]
