Video: Spec Miata Enduro at Mid Ohio

I owe a lot to my dad. Without him I wouldn't have all the awesome racing opportunities that I've gotten to experience over the years, so it was a real thrill for me to share a car with him this weekend. We entered a 1 Hour Enduro at Mid Ohio as co-drivers with the plan being to have him start the race, do a driver change, and have me try to charge through the field for the remainder of the run.

All in all things went well. We had never practiced the driver change before, so for our first crack had it we did a respectable job and I had a blast trying to work my way up through the field. Unfortunately our memory card in our GoPro HD camera filled up towards the end of the run, so we weren't able to record some awesome battles I had at the end of the stint. Oh well, enjoy the highlights!



Spec Miata Enduro at Mid Ohio from Joey Selmants on Vimeo.

Video: Spec Miata at Mid Ohio

 Great track, great car


Spec Miata at Mid Ohio from Joey Selmants on Vimeo.

Video: Star Mazda Test

 I was lucky enough to test one of John Walko Racing's Star Mazdas at Beaverun's North Course this past Tuesday. John ran a very professional operation and he and F2000 driver Chris Livengood provided great coaching after each of my sessions on how I could further improve my time. With their help I managed to crack into the 55 second range with a 55.9s laptime.

I have nothing, but great things to say about John and Chris and I definately plan on writing a more in depth summary of my test day. It was a great time!

Star Mazda test at Beaver Run July 5th 2011 from Joey Selmants on Vimeo.

Video: Spec Miata Race at Nelson Ledges

 I had my first official Spec Miata race this past weekend at Nelson Ledges and I surpassed my highest expectations grabbing two 3rd place finishes in the feature races Saturday and Sunday. I managed to qualify the car 2nd on the grid for Saturday's qualifying race and I was ecstatic. At the start of the qualifying race I fell back to third at the start, but methodically worked my way up into the lead to put myself on the pole for the feature race later in the day. Enjoy the action Spec Miata has to offer!



quailfy race Sat May 28 P 1 GOPR0016 from Joey Selmants on Vimeo.

Spec Miata at Nelson Ledges

At speed through the carousel (Photo: Bryan Bartzi)

Sorry for the lack of updates, its been a pretty hectic time of year for me! There has been a lot of meetings and work associated with the end of the school year, so I've been pretty busy.

  I've been very lucky to have a dad that loves cars and racing and I have him to thank for getting me in my first go kart at the ripe old age of seven. We started off in the 50cc class at local tracks and eventually we worked ourselves all the way up to the highly competitve TaG class at Beaverun. Last weekend I took the next step on the racing latter and got behind the wheel of a Spec Miata race car at Nelson Ledges for an SCCA driver's school.

 We had bought a "ready-to-run" Spec Miata this January and planned to have it ready for the school, but "ready-to-run" obviously means something different to different people. Needless to say, we had more work to do on the car than we had originally thought, so we managed to rent a car from a friend of ours a few weeks prior to the school.

  During my first on track session I immediately felt comfortable behind the wheel. The experience I gained from karting helped immensely, but I also feel that I owe some of my success to my time spent on iRacing.com racing simulators. iRacing seemed to really help me negotiate traffic and initiate clean and safe passes. The Miata in iRacing really did not feel like the Spec Miata, but I think every driver can use iRacing to improve their race craft and make them more confident in traffic.

On the false grid for a practice session

By the end of the second day I managed to shave 14 seconds off of my first practice session and I got down to a very respectable 1:20.6. I have to thank my instructors to providing great feedback that really allowed me to focus on areas to improve.