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Written by Kevin Adolf of Performance Autosport:
The PAS Racing crew rolled their Mustang RTR racecar out of the trailer early Friday in hopes of getting some test sessions in after making some suspension changes since the last race. With the limited amount of free time from their driver and NASA Mid-Atlantic Regional Director, Chris Cobetto, they didn’t get much. Hyperfest is the busiest event for Cobetto and driving his racecar almost takes a back seat to making sure the entire event goes smoothly, so getting him in his racing suit and strapped in is harder than one would think.
From last months race at Summit Point to this race we have sent off the rear Motons for some adjustments and added a Kenny Brown Performance AGS 4.0 K-member and control arms. The car understeered pretty significantly during the last race and we were very hopeful that this next round of changes would get the car more balanced so Cobetto could jump on the power a little earlier and have the nose of the car stay nice and planted.
Having said that, Friday morning the car was actually loose and our new issue was on-throttle oversteer, quite the opposite of the last time on track, but the PAS team went to work with the feedback from Cobetto and made some changes to the car to try and make it a little more balanced. We were still very pleased to see these new parts make a dramatic change in the car’s handling. The car turned in extremely well towards the apex and Cobetto had the confidence to really charge through the corners. The very next session was cut short due to a stock rear brake caliper failure and luckily Cobetto could get the car slowed down on the escape road to the outside of Turn 1 with as little drama as possible. This ended all testing for the day and had the team scrambling for parts to get the car ready for Saturday.
Saturday morning the car was put back together and needed to be tested before jumping into qualifying. PAS took the car out on track without Cobetto to make sure everything was good to go and tested the brakes over and over since Cobetto was off playing Regional Director somewhere. The car was ready and waiting for him to strap in for qualifying.
After qualifying PAS’ Chris Matthews got even more feedback from Cobetto and made some additional minor tweaks. With traffic effecting most everyone in American Iron during qualifying, we placed 3rd for the race.
Saturday’s race was a close one. Beau Dunnivant is always quick at Summit Point in his Foxbody and its just hard to beat something much lighter than our car through all the slow technical corners that Summit Point has to offer. Beau and Chris changed position for the lead quite a few times, but at the end of the race the PAS Mustang RTR finished out front in 1st!
Sunday was similar to Saturday. PAS was still tweaking on the suspension to always try and find more speed and we ended up qualifying 1st by about a tenth of a second. The race was practically a repeat of Saturday, except twice as long. Beau and Cobetto raced, non-stop, for position for 40 minutes. Beau never gave Cobetto an inch and it was a great, clean race between two very different Mustangs and two very good drivers. Once again, at the end of the race the PAS Mustang RTR came across the finish line 1st giving us the sweep for the whole weekend two years in a row at Hyperfest! The car handled great, all the changes made the car go faster and at the end of the weekend the only change Cobetto wanted was the addition of a cool suit!
These wins were even more sweet since we had the entire RTR family in the house all weekend. PAS is very happy to be able to give RTR and all their sponsors 2 more wins, leaving us with a 7 wins out of 8 races so far this 2012 season!
The next race for the PAS Mustang RTR team will be at VIR on July 20-22, including running in the Grassroots Motorpsorts Ultimate Track Car Challenge with both the Mustang RTR American Iron racecar as well as the PAS 2013 Mustang RTR Shop car!
As always huge thanks to all our sponsors and everyone that helps support this team and allows us to stay out front!
- Mustang RTR
- Moss Muscle
- HRE Performance Wheels
- Ford Racing
- Kenny Brown Suspension
- Moton
- Hawk Performance
- Baer Racing
- Sparco
- Exedy Clutches
- C&R Radiators
- OG Racing
- Grassroots Motorsports Magazine
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