Hey guys, I just wanted to share with the road racing enthusiast some results from our past weekend. Forged had a really great weekend at Carolina Motorsports Park, in spite of the 6-8 inches of snow that fell on Friday night which made for a VERY exciting haul from Atlanta to Kershaw, SC. We arrived to the track on Saturday morning, to the sight of a half foot of snow over the entire track. Surprisingly by noon, the snow melted and the track completely dried out. By the end of the weekend, we set the fastest lap recorded at a NASA Time Trial event at CMP, with a hot lap of 1:36.8 http://www.mylaps.com/results/showrun.jsp?id=1404823 This bested the previous record for over 3 full seconds previously held by a 996 TT back in 2008. Thought I would share the results, and include a quick video of one of the faster laps. The track was a handful to say the least and very green after all the snow. Grip was lacking, and the track was very inconsistent through the day. Setup: Stock turbos About 525whp (Dyno Dynamics) JRZ Triples Hoosier A6's (295/315) Aeromotions R2.Two Active Wing The Nissan GTR was Piloted by Sharif Abdelbaset. Enjoy the Video!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnuty1xc0Ns
I love to see threads from you guys because I forget there's a local shop out there spending so much money without actually entering races and getting sponsors. Who's paying for this? Why? I also like that the mods are bolt-on and anybody with $120K+ could build the same car at home in their garage. I guess my problem is that TS (although I do NOT like them and only went there because of SS) built their car from a pile of turds using typical parts. All you guys seem to do is buy freakin' awesome/fast cars and bolt some stuff to them. But cool video! Keep 'em coming.
We have some pretty healthy product sponsors... Sharif often instructs, so there is no entry fee. We usually transport customer's cars to the track, so they cover a lot of the travel costs. Nearly every event that we attend DIRECTLY results in customers coming here to have us build there car. These builds more than offset cost of the events. We feel that there is excellent return on the "marketing" done at the track. Many of the GT-R customers LOVE knowing that we can easily build them an identical car to what we race. We can say, "with these parts we set x track records, and we can build yours just like it." It gives them confidence that we have tested the products that we're recommending to them. The mods on our GT-R is exactly what we recommend to the "typical" GT-R customer that wants to get on track. If it was wild and extreme, it wouldn't have much to do with what our customers want. Our 370Z is another story. It's intended to show "what we can do." We will be developing a number of products on it / for 370's. I don't understand the animosity toward a shop that's actually getting out there and testing stuff and supporting our customers that get on track... Siegel
Sponsors contribute to our projects, or else their decals would not be on our cars. We make an investment in our shop projects and hope to see a return on that investment. The purpose for time attack and track events is R&D and testing of new platforms and the marketing exposure this gives our company which translates into tangible business for us. It also happens to be a lot of fun and it's a personal interest of many of the folks that work here. We don't hire professional drivers, unlike most other shops....it's just me behind the wheel. It's the same reason that many of the other top shops are competing in Time Attack. Thank you for your comments.
Props to hitting the track! We wish we had time to do that more. PS ADDED: I'm still rolling the Porsche to Buckhead She is hardly a race car...yet.
Flat-rate Subaru tuning here is $450... No strap-down fee, no "risk" if it takes a long time (other than mechanical issues). For people that prefer, we can do $150 per hour... Siegel
I think you are better off staying with your flat rate because it usually takes you 2X-3X as long to tune a car than anyone else I have seen. Not saying that is bad...well I guess it is for the customer..... just saying....
We don't have GT-Rs or mega $ to buy them. We may as well change the thread title to "look at what Forged is doing with the extra money we're charging for a SS tune!" My original post before I revised it was something to the effect of these threads are better off in a GT-R forum, or somewhere that people have a lot of money to spend. I'm WAY more impressed in countless hours of work to their average (AKA: not already "supercar") car, trying new parts, customizing things...
Forged FTW! W00t! Good job out there! The video was a nice touch as well. Camera placement was excellent. What kind of camera?
Well the thread started out nice, my post was positive, then poop started flying. WTH?! Stop throwing sh*t around! It makes your hands smell. Or so Matt tells me.
Look on the bright side, at least people are posting on this board again. Better than having nothing to read at all. My .02
Thats what I thought, but wasn't sure. The 1080p looks awesome! Looks like there was a bit of over steer as well.
I hadn't seen the HD version yet. It looks a lot better than my old HERO Wide. Good thing I bought mine a week before the HD came out... :unamused: How's the sound? I'm home with a cold and grumpy so I'm being a jerk today. That's my excuse. Plus, I don't care if anyone likes me.
The GoPro Hd is a huge improvement. The old gopros were convenient but had very poor quality video. Good stuff.
Congrats!!!!! I remember being on the road rippin' it up for like 6-7 years with parts only sponsors (back in that boat again now). Gosh does it suck. Lord knows how many houses we could have had in Jamaica if we didn't race all of those years. The ROI, that is debatable. The fun you get to have, totally not debatable!
Thanks Tracy. Because the motorsports program is wrapped up into trackside support of other cars/customers we really don't spend as much as people may think. Most of our track fees are waived or discounted since I instruct, and many of our fixed costs are spread out over several customers that goto the track with us. If it wasn't contributing overall to our bottom line, we would be doing it for very long. I have seen companies nearly bankrupt themselves by racing, so the business model needs to make sense. Our customers want to see the work we do tested and proven on track, as it gives us more credibility. And based on the number of projects that are a direct result of our track and racing exposure, we feel it's effective for our business. Sure beats buying magazine ads.
Agreed. What I really meant is it is kind of hard to technically measure the return. Obviously, we justify it by chalking it up as a marketing cost and it definitely keeps you in the eyes of your consumer. Magazines are whack now a days anyways. Not to mention, there isn't much fun to be had in a magazine shoot. I don't keep up with how often y'all travel and how far, but for us the cost wasn't entry fees (that was the LEAST of the costs). It was traveling, hotels, gas, race gas, on the road food, etc. Of course we traveled 70 weekends in just 2 years (sometimes 3 weeks straight) traveling all across the US...sometimes from the East Coast all the way to the West Coast and back. That and we had 2 cars to tote around the country, so that doesn't leave any room for sharing expenses. Either way, you are right. The model has to make sense. Apparently it does for us because we keep at it. Apparently it does for you, because you are doing it. Now if we could keep Dan from getting bored with cars, we might spend a little less money. Alas, that's my baby and I just do what I am told!
Makes sense. We only make one or two trips out west, and most of our events are within a few hours drives. Our travel expenses are far less than making a full spring of Formula D, Grand Am, or other race/drift series. In most cases, we leave Friday night after work, and return on Sunday night, so it usually doesn't even cost us productive days during the week. When we make the long trips, we don't stop. We drove to California in one shot of 36hrs. We only take one tech with us, so the other 10 lucky people are still at the shop working away while we race.
Congrats guys for a great outing! Geez fellaz can you F'ing grow up and quit acting like high schoolers.