Super GT Cup - Round 3 WSIR -Streets of Willow

By: Tommy Parry

This Super GT Cup at Streets of Willow attracted a new collection of drivers from vastly different backgrounds. As a testament to the class’ standard of competition and the camaraderie in the Super GT Cup pits, these newcomers were able to reach their potential relatively quickly. The supportive environment, top-tier equipment, and eager new drivers all contributed to one of those unusual race weekends where the excitement seems to float mid-air, thick enough to be bottled. 

Though Mark Luton is relatively new to road racing, he made one hell of a competitive debut. I suppose it’s unfair to introduce him as a novice because he’s been immersed in motorsports for decades. Owner of MMR, Mark knows just about everything Ford and holds numerous records in drag racing.

It was Taylor Fenstermacher, MMR’s sales manager, whose wide smile after a race weekend caught Mark’s interest. Taylor had been tracking for seven years, and through the help and motivation of his coworker Greg Seth-Hunter, he had really gotten serious recently. 

Just getting a whiff of the buzz those two brought back into work every Monday got Mark thinking. After a while, the three amigos decided to make their weekend time attack more of a work-family affair.

Plus, it was convenient. Compared to the cross-country drives for a few seconds of straight line speed, a long, flowing track in their backyard and twenty minute driving sessions sounded pretty simple. 

The moment Mark stepped—leaped—out of his car at the end of the first session at Willow Springs, which would come to be his home track, he knew he’d found his new happy place. “Honestly, it’s so much better than drag racing,” he enthused—a statement Taylor nodded in complete agreement with. Adding to their newfound excitement: the realization that they now had a work-related reason to visit the track. 

With the vast number of Mustangs at any given lapping day, they saw a new segment of gearheads to build modifications for. Unlike a 4,000-horsepower dragster, a basic Mustang is far more relatable, too. Their R&D team was soon after saddled with designs for a full suspension for the modern Mustangs. 

With Mark and Taylor heading out nearly every other weekend, they soon learned the details of Streets of Willow inside and out, and, inevitably, Mark started to feel those competitive juices bubbling up inside him. Well, you don’t drag race for a couple decades without a competitive spirit, and he had to find a suitable outlet. He gladly followed Taylor to a series that would showcase his talents—both as an engineer and a driver.

For this event, Mark brought a new piece of machinery: a GT350 with a sequential gearbox. He’s quite familiar with the GT350R platform, which he’s addressed some of the shortcomings, namely the weight. Without any interior from the a-pillars back, plus a pretty serious diet, he’s dropped the car’s weight to a respectable 3,460 pounds with him in it.

That’s only part of it. Though he’s relatively new to road racing, being a detail-oriented guy, Mark really made all the right changes. Perhaps the most exotic addition: a Hollinger sequential gearbox, which not only trims forty pounds from the total weight, but makes it more reliable and much, much quicker than incremental power gains would. This Coyote is stock—maybe only another ten horsepower due to reduced drivetrain losses, and yet it’s one of the best accelerating cars at the events it attends. That’s the power of a real racing drivetrain.

The weight problem was obvious from the start, but the handling problems weren’t as apparent. It’s a well balanced car from the start, but he saw the sense in stiffening things up a little—there’s already a whining sequential installed, so forget trying to make it comfortable. The level of noise, vibration, and harshness is well past whatever is considered acceptable for a street car. 

“We also realized there was a chance to put together our own suspension parts. We have our own castor and camber plates on this car, as well as our control arms, solid bushings, and adjustable swaybar endlinks.”

With a set of Goodyear 3Rs, 305s and 325s front and rear, plus the factory aero, Mark had strong grip, but not so much that the systems weren’t getting involved. “I had to fight the nannies throughout, but they’ve only been a problem recently. For a while, they helped me get to terms with the car.”

The stagger and spring rates helped the car edge towards understeer most of the time. For Mark, this is an easier setup to learn with as it allows him to lean a little more on the car without it biting. 

“I’m familiar with the rear when it slides, but you lean on the car differently on the road course. It takes a little to commit and trust the car when it’s getting a lot of angle,” he admitted. 

The car was prepped, and the team came prepared. Fully aware of the scorching temperatures they’d endure that weekend, they made sure all of the four MMR cars were prepared accordingly. “We took extra fans to keep the cars cool and kept our laps to a minimum. The approach was: get a good lap and bring it back in,” Mark explained. 

‘Having Frank (Pacheco) in front of me out on track encouraged me to push harder than I would have alone. Honestly, even though we prepared well for the event, Frank’s pace probably was what was responsible for the 0.7 seconds I found.” 

After one scruffy lap in pursuit of Frank, he thought it’d be sensible if he tidied everything up. Rather than commit to pushing harder, he strove to drive cleanly and accurately. Incremental changes in his lap added up, and by the time the two had reached the final corner at the end of the second lap, the gap had decreased—in fact, Mark was now nipping at Frank’s heels. 

“I knew that was a good one and when I saw it pop up on my Garmin, I thought that it’d probably stand throughout the weekend.” As the heat climbed past 100°F, Mark realized he was well and truly safe; nobody would challenge his time the following session.

Taylor’s weekend in Mod started with borrowing a friend’s car. Because the gearbox broke a few days earlier in his ‘16 GT, he had to reach out for a loaner. Thankfully, their ‘19 GTwas specced almost identically to Taylors; the full MMR suspension catalog, MCS two-ways, solid bushings, an MMR differential cooler made it a familiar thing to hop into. 

While the car was comparable in most senses, a dirty track, different tires, and different gearing kept him busy for a minute. Once he sorted that out, he had a very impressive rival to deal with. 

Christopher Carlton had had an event like Super GT Cup on his horizon for some time, but only a few weeks ago did he begin planning for his first competitive time trials event.  

“Last October, I had my first track day. I’ve been running pretty regularly since; I went to Streets of Willow a couple times before this. I wasn’t sure where I’d stack up in a competition, but after Michael Koldus said I should try Super GT, I at least had a basic time to shoot for.”

While Chris has only been at time trials for nine months, he’s had a solid foundation for motorsport. Though he’s a truck driver these days, he was once a rig driver and tire guy with the Achilles Drift Team in Formula D. 

He’s been around motorsports long enough to get a sense of what to do to make a car quick, which is reflected in the sensible build list accompanying his ‘17 Camaro 1LE. It helps to start with as potent a platform as this, so the list isn’t long, but it addressed all the important aspects of road course performance. 

He retained the stock Magride suspension, but fitted a set of Eibach lowering springs. Ride height addressed, he sought the right sort of alignment with a set of SPL arms. With 3.5° of camber in front and 2.7° in the rear, the car edges ever so slightly towards understeer in the fast section, which Chris prefers. “It gives me a lot of confidence,” he added. 

To get a little more urgency from the car, he added BMR swaybars at both axles. Of course, a heavy car like the Camaro needs a lot of tire underneath it, so he went with a set square set of Gram Lights 57DR wheels wearing 295-section Falken RT660 tires.  

In conjunction with the tires, a set of Powerstop Track Day pads give him sufficient braking performance. Even at the end of a session, the Camaro isn’t suffering from major fade—maybe only a little bit. For something pushing 3,700 pounds with fuel and driver, that’s a testament to the capabilities of the factory braking system.  

Interestingly, the powerplant hasn’t been touched yet. Not that it needs a lot more—430 horsepower is plenty. He was more concerned with learning the correct lines. So, like any dedicated student should, he hit the books. 

“I kept watching the footage of other quick guys there and taking notes. It was Frank Pacheco’s lap that was the one that was best—and I basically memorized it.

He had one track day a few weeks before the event to see if studying like a Jesuit had actually paid off. “I Compared my lap times from the second trip there to what the guys in Super GT Cup were doing. I felt so confident!”

His reassurance was only bolstered by conversations with everyone else in the paddock that day. Bouncing ideas off other drivers in the same class felt easy, familiar, and fun. It just turned out that one of the main people he was jiving with was his biggest rival in Mod: Taylor.

The two went out on track together, and the two new friends had someone running nearly identical times to test and try little tweaks. It was clear that the difference in cubes between Taylor’s Mustang and Chris’ Camaro gave the latter a real advantage in the slow stuff. Other than that, there was little daylight between them. 

Sideways moments over the blind crest and all the little bits of overdriving that came later in each session were thrilling, but he couldn’t actually better his time driving in this style. For a big car with a strong motor at a track with long straights, making sure he got back to throttle early and with minimal wheelspin paid off at Willow. 

With a wisdom that belies his experience, Chris was adamant not to overthink things. “Wing it” Though he wasn’t conscious of it, he was wise to do so. Even if he’d taken a more analytical approach to driving, he wouldn’t have had much time to apply it. The heavyweight would inevitably run its best in the first couple of laps before the tires just faded a little past their prime. 

Analytical types tend to work up gradually towards the limit. Chris’ throw-it-in-and-react approach worked. The very first lap of his first session, he recorded a 1.21:658. The first lap the next time out: a 1.21:650. Trailing behind by less than a car length was Taylor with a 1:21.837.

“I was totally validated after that,” Chris laughed.