Unfortunately, in 2006 I was involved in a serious accident and broke my back badly. This would be the end of my more serious competitive racing. It was also the end of the SE-R Cup which got absorbed into NASA’s PT4 class. Since the car was now not tied to a power to weight ratio class I could get more creative with the engine and I built a 200 whp SR20. Now the car suddenly had close to power parity to the Hondas who could rock 225 whp easily.
I had also installed a highly engineered rear wing designed by my friend John McNulty. This wing only had 9 lbs of drag while making over 150 lbs of downforce. You could actually feel the reduction in drag! At Cal speedway, the car would come close to topping out 5th gear at about 130 mph.
Since the car got more power the brakes were once again inadequate and had to be addressed. I installed a new front brake kit by Fastbrakes with a bigger caliper and larger in diameter and thicker two-piece rotors.
The car was ready for MotoIQ’s MPTCC class. This class had a pretty open ruleset and fast cars. It was sanctioned by Redline Time Attack as a wheel to wheel race series. Since I didn’t really want to race wheel to wheel, I had Dai Yoshihara drive the car.
I decided to race one race for that season. It was at Cal Speedway. I drove the newly completed Dog II in the event and Dai drove the original Dog Car. Much to my surprise, I was fast and out-qualified Dai putting the Dog II on the pole next to Dai who qualified 2nd.
I got center punched by a dummy on the first lap in the first turn and by the time I got back on track I was in last place. Dai was in second place behind a TSX who got past the carnage.
Dai chased down the leader and got past him. Meanwhile, I battled up through the entire field!
It was a pretty exciting race. At least it was for me, coming from dead last.
I ended up coming in second and set the fastest race lap. It was to be my last race ever. I figure it was a good way to end my driving career in sanctioned wheel to wheel racing.
10 comments
whats the replacement?
E46 M3!
I am glad to see the Dog car has found a new home. I am also glad I got to see her in person when I was in SoCal earlier this year. I have followed this car for many years and it will be a shame to see her go. I have been building my sentra for the past 20 years, slowly trying to get to the same level as the Dog twins. Great write up, and great job on a great car. Good bye Dog car!
Some of those photos reminded me of the old “robot vs monkey” articles in SCC. Its fun to see a longer story to tie it all together rather than what could fit in the magazine.
Poor Jared, his performance was so poor the series didn’t continue. The monkey was so bad, he never made it past the morning warm-up! They never did get the story because his car always broke before qualifying.
That was a superb intro/out-tro to Dog Car at the end of it’s tenure with you. I think even for long time-ish readers of MotoIQ, the story of this car is not known. The stories from its development of a crap car into a competitive car with good handling and good aero would make great articles.
If they are already on print somewhere, I hope they can be brought together here for your global readers.
In the last picture, you can see the Sentra has a well balanced suspension with minimum roll, while the Acura appears to have an oversized rear bar, and low roll stiffness up front. Great job on developing that car Mike !
I believe it had no front bar, really stiff rear bar and rear springs which is popular with Honda racers. Although this was a competitive car in a higher series I was proud that the Dog Car with its crude suspension was much faster in the turns. A lot of this was due to Dai’s driving as well.
I remember reading about this car in SCC. Jared’s B13 too. Great memories. Thanks for sharing this car with us for so long Mike!
What a send-away.
You never forget your favourite car and the racing stories with it!