Ryan Passey’s Amazing Miata

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The car originally had a flat bottom and rear diffuser but these were removed so the car could compete in the Limited Class.  The rear of the car is too short to support an effective diffuser without the flat bottom.  With no rear diffuser, the back of the car was left open to minimize entrapped air in the rear wheelwells.

Here is some of the interesting Limited Class legal underbody aero that we were not allowed to take a good picture of.  We think that this is some part of the Miata chassis that has been enhanced with end plates or something.

The Hyper Miata is super light at 2275 pounds with driver and a 55/45 weight distribution which is 1% better than when it had the stock 1.6 4 cylinder. With 325 hp, good brakes and aero the car is fast nimble and super fun to drive.  It punches way above its weight class.

When the Hyper Miata was conceived, no one thought that the car could even be competitive in time attack. Ryan set out to change those perceptions and he has. He sought to enhance the Miata’s good points and add to them while stepping up the power game with no sacrifice in reliability.  We would say that he has achieved this nicely!

Ryan’s near-term plans for the car are to continue to work to improve the cars aero and weight distribution, adapting some of the lessons learned from the Blackbird Fabworx Morpheus Miata that we have featured previously.

According to Ryan, the elegant simplicity of time attack is that it is first and foremost a contest between one car/team/driver against a record, and that can turn into a journey of years and thousands of hours trying to achieve that single goal. Rivalries between other cars may arise on the day, but ultimately time attack is against the fastest time anyone has ever gone in the class.

Ryan has his sights firmly set on the Limited RWD record at Buttonwillow. It’s a big goal, set at a time before the class regulations became more restrictive, and he is pursuing it with a chassis that most didn’t think could even be competitive in Time Attack. Ryan says he will just pretend we didn’t get that memo and keep on pushing.  We bet its a goal that he is going to attain soon and we will keep tabs on it and report as the car progresses.

 

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