Join the NMS Formula 1 Fantasy League!

Pre-race festivities at the Miami Grand Prix in 2023. Three time champion Sir Jackie Stewart in the tartan pants and cap center (with I think Mercedes driver George Russell.) Four time champion Max Verstappen right rear. Now driving for Cadillac, Sergio Perez left rear in the Red Bull shirt. 

A new season of Formula 1 kicks off on March 8th in Australia, so that means that NOW it's time to join our FREE F1 Fantasy League! Maybe you've played fantasy football, or baseball, or enter a pool for the March Madness college basket ball playoffs. Or not! One fun part of the F1 Fantasy League is that it lasts a long time, like from March to November, so that leaves a LOT of time to trash talk the other players!

You can now sign up at this link:    NMS-RACING LEAGUE 2026

Just use the NMS League code:      NMS-RACING CODE

Just pick your 5 drivers and 2 constructor, and you're all set. Shoot, you can make up to 3 of those teams too! If you're a fan of the Ferrari team, go with them. Is 7 time champ Lewis Hamilton your favorite driver, pick him too! 

There's no prize money in the NMS-League, BUT, if you finish the season with the most points out of the hundreds of thousands of people world wide that play this game, you'll win tickets to an F1 race in 2027! Sounds good to me!

We can't give you $2 a gallon gas, so how about $300 MILLION DOLLARS????

Maybe you want to support the brand new Cadillac F1 team, so go ahead and pick them, they're probably pretty cheap! You only get $100,000,000 dollars for each team, so don't say we never gave you anything! Shoot, if you fill up 3 teams just tell your friends we gave you $300 MILLION DOLLARS! 

You can take this very seriously and pick the best bang-for-the-buck, or pick the highest placed drivers from last year, or come up with your own strategy. Since this is a brand new season, with new cars, new engines and etc; there's no telling what might happen in this first race. 

I used my same strategy from last year, and picked 1 team with my best guess. Then I picked a team with very cheap drivers, but the top level most expensive teams. For team 3, I went with the most expensive drivers and cheap constructors. Anything is possible. Maybe you want to pick the two US constructors, Haas and Cadillac! Go for it!

From the official F1 website: 

    "Here’s how it works:

• You get a $100m cost cap to pick five drivers and two constructors.
• Create up to three teams… Maybe you want one 'serious' team, one for the fun of the chaos, and one experiment, but it's up to you.
• Once the season starts, you’ll have two free transfers per Grand Prix round for each team, so you can react without overthinking every move.

Your drivers and teams score points based on what happens across the real-life race weekend, so the results, positions gained, and key moments all feed directly into your Fantasy total. Make sure to keep a close eye on the season to stay ahead.

What the Heck is a Porscheplatz?

Ferris wheel at the 24 Hour infield. No, we didn't ride it. 

What is a Porscheplatz?

A) A Porsche Place

B) Where you sit on the front of your house in Germany and say "GET OFF MY L AWN."

C) What you eat your Porsche food on. 

D) One of the shortest known German words. 

The correct answer is A, it's just a Porsche Place. At the Rolex 24 Hour race we visited the Porscheplatz and it was just a tent with chairs and tables, and some free water and sodas. Not a big deal maybe, but in the midst of a 24 hour event with thousands of people and noise all over the place, it was a handy spot to sit for a bit. They had some big screen TVs, so we could actually see the race too! 

Walking through the tunnel to go from the grandstand to the infield. 

Porsche sponsors these at all the IMSA endurance races, although you have to be a Porsche Club member to get in. While I was kind of hoping it was a super fancy place with free steak, lobster, and champagne, just sitting down and drinking a cool beverage was fun too! Maybe they had champagne and caviar over at the Ferrari Club? We'll probably never know!

NMS Visits a Caterham Dealer!

2025 Caterham, only $72,000

Cater Ham? Do they cater parties with lots of delicious Ham and ham products Catering? No!

Cat, er, Ham? Are we confused with having a pet cat or a pet pig that turns into ham? No!

Did you mean CARTER-ham? Nope!

Carhart-Ham? Rugged outdoor clothing made from pigskin? Nah!

Well, then what in the world IS a Caterham? Glad you finally asked! 

The Caterham cars are the descendants of a British make of car, the Lotus Seven. When the Lotus folks decided to discontinue the Seven, one of their dealers Caterham Cars bought the rights to the car, and have been building them as Caterhams since the 1970s. Currently there are only seven Caterham dealers in the US, so it's not that they are super duper fancy, just a very small maker. Here's their link in the USA: 

        CATERHAM CARS USA

Christopher Jones dealership in Daytona Beach. The note on the door says they are closed, but has a phone number if you need something! Good timing on our part!

The website lists only SEVEN dealers in the entire USA, so yeah, I'd call that a small number! According to the Internet, there are about 2,800 Ford-Lincoln dealers in the country, so that gives you a little perspective! For another comparison with small British auto makers, there are about 37 Rolls Royce dealers in the USA, and about 26 McLaren dealers.  

While planning our recent visit to the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, I happened to find out that one Caterham dealer, Christopher John LTD, was right there in Daytona Beach, so we stopped by when we got into town on the day before the race. 

OK, so they were closed, but we took a peek through the windows! Here's a Morgan in the foreground, another cool British car that is still built today. 

On the Caterham website, I also looked at a dealer down in Miami Florida, and now I need to go visit them too. Walt Grace Vintage in Miami sells cool cars AND cool guitars! Now that's a combination that has to be a winner! Here's their website: 

        WALT GRACE VINTAGE

Back at Daytona Beach, out in the parking lot there were a few other British classics, like these MGBs. 

It's BACK! Drive to Survive!

Ran into the "FERRARI POPE" at the 2019 Austin F1 race!

On Friday February 27th, a NEW SEASON of Drive to Survive will magically appear on NETFLIX. This show has been around for a few years now, and will feature episodes that tell the story of last year's Formula 1 racing season. Thanks to this series, there are a lot more F1 fans in the USA and other places, so that's a good thing in my book. Some serious race fans are NOT big fans of the series, and think it just spices up the rivalries and invents controversy to make a more interesting TV show. As far as I'm concerned, who cares? I enjoy watching it and getting some behind the scenes info on the races and the people that make it happen. 

First Track Event Report 2026

Frost on the Coronet windshield? 
Welcome to South Carolina in February!

Over the weekend I drove on track at Carolina Motorsports Park here in South Carolina, and had a BLAST! The driving was one reason, but also big fun was hanging out with the Bunch of Idiots team, like Brian Nixon, Kyle Ray-Smith, and Adam Powlas, who were testing the 1972 Dodge Coronet, instructing, and competing in Time Trials (Adam.)

On top of all that, the local MOPAR expert and Army buddy of mine Mike Rooker stopped by to share his experience with the Coronet team, and we managed to talk over some old times too! If you have questions about MOPAR cars or drag racing, Mike is your guy!

Driver meeting on Saturday. 

Once I got to the track early on Saturday, things started with a driver meeting at 7:15 in the morning, and it was around 30 degrees, so I knew my first driving session at 8 was going to be chilly. Chilly temps means that the brakes and tires will be cold, so I planned to start nice and easy so that I wouldn't slide off track or spin. That worked out great, and over this first 20 minutes of driving I managed a best lap of 1:53. That was a bit faster than my last weekend at CMP in November, so hooray! Just maybe the changes on the car made things a bit faster. 

Unfortunately I don't have any video of driving during the weekend due to a technical glitch with the app that I use in the car. I'm  not sure why it didn't want to record video and log the times. Oh well, the driving part was still the most fun anyway!

Ready to drive on Sunday morning. 

Later in the morning my next session was even better, with the temperatures rising and the lap times coming down a bit. For the second go-round I got down to a 1:52.89, with six laps in this session under 1:56! Keep 'em coming I was thinking! When I drove at CMP in my old FIAT 500 Abarth, I think my best lap was a 2:06 or so. Apparently, having more  horsepower in a better car helps!

No video, but here's my best three laps Sunday morning on the AIM Solo 2 data logger. Top speed on lap 8 was 113.4mph.  Going that fast it's good to know that your brakes will work!

For the third session of the morning, well, it was warmer, and I went just a tenth faster, a 1:52.79, so it was a happy morning at NMS! The new rotors worked just fine, and when you install parts yourself, that's a good thing!

After a lunch break and getting the car gassed up, my driving group had a classroom session with our instructor. We covered the basics of driving on track (flags), and everyone had a chance to ask any questions on how things had gone in the morning. Oh, there were a few things that had come up, so we hashed all of that out.

Here is Adam's #99. He is faster than me in his silver 350Z. Kyle is faster than me in his silver 350Z. Brian is faster than me in his silver 350Z. There seems to be a pattern here. Maybe I need a silver 350Z
. 

After the classroom time, we had a final 20 minutes on track to run a practice drill. In this case, each driver drove laps where for an entire lap they stayed on the right side of the track, and then did a lap all on the left side of the track. This drill is a good way to get more familiar with the ENTIRE track surface, and to be better prepared for driving side-by-side on straights AND corners with other drivers close together. Since each lap was NOT the ideal racing line, the times were slower, but I still felt good about running a 2:00 lap for this drill! We're not racing or winning any prizes out there, so working on driving skill is the theme. 

It's not a Dodge Coronet Super Bee, because it's theTeam Coronautski SUPER KGB!

Right after getting down to that two minute time, I had a very soft brake pedal going into the final corner of the next lap, so I pulled into the pit and stopped to figure this out. All day long the brakes had been just fine, but not having brakes is BAD; VERY BAD!

Old Mustang? No problem. 

After consulting with the gang of friendly smarter-and-faster-than-me drivers, we bled the front brake fluid, and guess what? The brakes were fine! Probably I had just over-heated (boiled) my brake fluid at the end of the day, and that results in getting air in your brake fluid. Air does NOT compress in brake fluid, so that means your brakes don't work (normally with hydraulic fluid pressure pushing the pistons to make the brake pads hit the rotors and slow you down.) 

SO, NMS-North  (me) will do a better job of bleeding brakes before going on track, and I'm planning to upgrade from my current DOT 4 to a higher temperature brake fluid for the next track event coming up in March. 

Yes, that's a Mini Cooper. 

Sunday we had just a drop of rain for the first driving session, and a whole heaping bunch of rain predicted for the afternoon when the rest of my driving time was scheduled. My first session at 8:20 was just damp enough to slow things down a bit, and sure enough I saw a few people slide off track, but it wasn't really too slick yet. It's always good to practice in the rain and react to the conditions, but it didn't help my time at all, so this was just a good practice session, and yes the car was just a bit "slidy" in a few spots! My best lap of 1:58 didn't set the world on fire, but for my skill level, weather, and tires, not bad. 

After that early morning drive, my group wasn't scheduled to drive again until about 1PM, and with a 100% chance of heavy rain, I called it a day and headed home. On the good news side, the brakes were great on Sunday, so things are good with the NMS Cayman. Unfortunately, the Bunch of Idiots Coronet had a few engine issues all weekend, and may not be up to the 24 Hours of Lemons Race in April. More to follow on that one, and some braking upgrades are in my future too. 

More New Rotors

One day this week it warmed up to 70 degrees! Let's get to work!
Last week in the snow it was down to 35 in the garage!

Not long ago we replaced the cracked front rotors, so we went ahead and replaced the rear rotors also. The rears were not cracked, but it made sense to me to have all four corners of the car match. 

Parking brake inside the rear wheels. 

One PRO TIP to pass along: When you are removing rear rotors, you just might want to release the parking brake so that they will come off! OK, not just "might want to," let's say you MUST release the parking brake!

You know how the doctor will write on your body parts just to make sure they operate on the right (or left) side? I did that with the rotors just to be safe! Here's the new one on the left!

Compared to the previous photo, this shows the two set screws inserted to hold the rotor in place. 

Brake caliper with the two brake pads inserted. 

Circled in black are the two caliper bolts, they are Torx 55. Very easy to work on these.
Inside the yellowish boxes are the brake pistons. The two on the right are a little easier to see than the two on the left. The pistons push on the brake pads, into the rotors, to make the wheel stop spinning.  

Here's all the tools I used on this brake rotor job. The new to me cart made it easy to just wheel all those loose tools over to the other side of the car too. Maybe someone like McGyver could do auto work with just a toothpick, but not me. 

Porsche Cars and Coffee

The NMS Cayman visits Charlotte Porsche Northlake. 

On the first Saturday of February, Charlotte Porsche of Northlake hosted their 2nd monthly Cars and Coffee event, and they had CARS! The also had FREE COFFEE (and food!) so it was a BIG HIT!

I think I need a big screen like this in my garage at home!

2025 Porsche Taycan, all electric, 429HP, $134,175!

Porsche T Hybrid.

And I need about 28 bays in my garage at home too! There's even a new red Corvette on the right hand side. 

Upstairs lounge, with simulator!

Porsche 911 GT3 RS. One of these in the garage at home, sure!

GT3 RS

This sure looks like another Ruby Red Metallic color to me!

A classic 911. 

Your choice, the NMS Cayman, or a Honda S2000 with BIG WING!

Acura NSX

This Lamborghini parked in front of the red warning signs kind of looks like it has rabbit ears!

NASCAR Practice at Rockingham

With the NASCAR season kicking off at the Daytona 500 next weekend, we just happened to see an ad on Facebook from Rockingham (AKA: THE ROCK!) that they were hosting two days of NASCAR practices in late January! Not a race, not qualifying, and no fifty dollar tickets! It was just a couple of plain old NASCAR teams running cars and trucks around the Rockingham oval for practice and testing. Open to the public! Food trucks! FREE! I'm retired! Let's go!

THE ROCK!

STOP! Wait a minute. Some dumb winter storm rolled over most of the USA, and the Rockingham practice was moved to February 3-4. OK, no big deal, so NOW let's go!

Not a large crowd, and it was chilly, but there were cars and trucks on track!

STOP AGAIN! ANOTHER dumb storm rolled in to the Carolinas and dumped nearly a foot of snow on the track, so it was moved AGAIN and then combined into one day on Friday February 6th. This storm was so bad it ALSO forced the NASCAR kick-off in Winston-Salem to move from Sunday to Monday, and then to Wednesday of this same week.  NOW LET'S GO! 

I drove up to Rockingham and enjoyed just cruising across some non-Interstates and listening to the radio. Sure enough, they had FREE parking. They had FREE admission! And they had FREE noisy trucks and cars running laps on track! Did I mention it was all FREE? That's some pretty good entertainment for not much money right there! 

In the first hour for the cars, smoke on the track...

So the trucks would have the track for an hour, then the cars, and etc. I admit I didn't stay for all day, but I enjoyed seeing the cars on track. In the very first hour for the cars, one driver had an issue as judged by the big cloud of smoke on the front straight, and that he pulled over in turn 1. This brought out the yellow caution flags (really electric lights) and all the cars came off the track. The track crew did a great job of getting out there, taking care of the driver, and towing his car off the track. They also spread kitty litter (or whatever they use) to soak up a line of fluid from the start/finish into turn 1. Then a big sweeper truck swept that mostly up, followed by two blowers that cleaned up the track. Once the track was clear the cars got back to green light running, and they missed very little time on track. 

Putting down the absorbent material, sweeper truck ready to go, and then a blower truck to clean it all off. 

In the next hour of truck running, there was an even shorter yellow, for one truck that lightly grazed the wall coming out of turn 2 and pulled into the pit. In this case the other trucks came off the track, and one truck drove out to the wall to make sure it was ok. There must have been no damage, because the green light came back on very quickly, and the sound of trucks running at full speed soon returned.