Performance Racing Industry: What’s New and Cool 2024 Edition

The Micro Sprint is a new and extremely cost-effective offering damper offering that comes in both threaded and smooth body applications. Utilizing a 1.88” spring of up to 600lbs, the tiny packaging of this damper allows it to work in extremely limited space applications, but it’s also popular on Formula V and small British cars. The Micro Sprint is available with both high-flow and digressive piston options, too.

Penske has also been named as the official damper for the Global MX5 Cup series for 2025. This new triple-adjustable damper has an interesting soft/hard high-speed compression adjust mechanism that only offers those two settings via a lever at the base of the shock. The other two adjustments are both low-speed adjustments for compression and rebound, respectively. These shocks aren’t only available to the MX5 cup cars, though. You can have them, too.

I walked past the Evan Racing booth a few times before I stopped to take a closer look at what they had on display. And I was rewarded for the pause. On the left is a super interesting design for an upper MacPherson strut plate. Instead of the traditional screw-type camber adjustment that people always over-tighten, strip, or otherwise mangle, the Evan Racing design features two cams that flip over and lock to allow for quick and easy adjustment of camber.

Continuing in the quick and easy adjustment category, Evan Racing also had this interesting lower locking adjustment, pictured on the right. Instead of a typical double jam nut system, which often gets loose over time, the lower body on the Evan Racing damper features these locking latches that grab flat areas machined into the threaded damper body. By undoing the latches, the threaded body can be easily rotated to change ride height, and the latches re-locked.

That external reservoir on the damper looks pretty cool, too.

In the interesting purpose-built car category, I located this IRC GT in one of the side rooms. Innovation Race Cars is now selling and distributing these self-described “GT” race cars. The cars feature tube frame design, and 550 or 640-horsepower LS3 engines mated to Hollinger MFT 6-speed sequential gearboxes. They have ABS, traction control, and paddle shift with various bodies available. It’s unclear what series these cars will be eligible to race in, but they seem to be pretty rad. They’re also likely really expensive, but they have been proven at Bathurst, which is a pretty grueling event.

It always pays to slow-walk the new products showcase because you’re bound to find something interesting. This digital shock inflation tool was no exception. My fancy Penske shocks on Project SC300 have tuneable gas pressure, and I’d been looking for a way to make sure those pressures were correct. Shock pressures are typically quite high, and this digital gauge system features a 300PSI maximum with 0.5PSI accuracy. That’s pretty impressive.