Performance Racing Industry: What’s New and Cool 2023 Edition

Sometimes something very simple ends up being quite a big deal. Penske has come out with what they are calling a universal mount body cap, applicable to the 7500, 8300, and 8700 dampers. This system allows Penske to much more quickly come up with clevis mount designs and also provides for options to service new vehicles and configurations.

Pictured is a Nissan 350/370 Z clevis. Notice that the main shaft of the lower mount is cut narrower than the shock body. This helps accommodate all of the “stuff” that goes near the shock on these platforms. Previously Penske didn’t have a good solution for this platform, and while other damper clevis mounts could be made to work, the modular system let them come up with yet another simple solution.

Do you need a shock for a somewhat strange application? Perhaps this new universal mount body cap will allow Penske to adapt a 7500, 8300, or 8700 damper for you.

While I think I have covered MoTeC’s factory ECU replacement options before, for some reason the fact that they exist at all was very surprising to me this year at PRI. What shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, is that the new GR Corolla has gotten the MoTeC plug-and-play treatment. With full support for nearly all the OEM systems, this M1-based ECU is an amazing option for gaining absolute control over your vehicle.

Electric performance is also an area that seems to be under constant development, and MoTeC has both new solutions and solutions in the work. MoTeC is working on a new M1-based development package that I’ll refer to as a “base operating system” for operating an EV. As EVs have no internal combustion systems, all of those building blocks of traditional ECUs are no longer needed, but many of the fundamentals of EV controls have previously been absent. This future M1 ECU will allow the same type of custom firmware development that had previously been available for ICEs, but include a lot of convenient starting points to build off of.

Speaking of electric things, SimCraft has released a new yaw-only rig targeted at the eSports market. The GRID1 unit will land at about $27k for a turnkey sim, depending on the specific configuration. The GRID1 features a full 6″ of yaw travel which matches all of SimCraft’s other units, including their top-of-the-line 6DOF APEX units.