UGO UGOCHUKWU

Formula 3 champion Ugo Ugochukwu

Over the weekend, the United States gained a new world champion! Nineteen year old Ugo Ugochukwu won the Formula 3 championship in Madrid Spain, and is now the first driver from the USA to win the title? What is Formula 3? Who is Ugo Ugochukwu? Glad you asked!

Formula 3 is part of the international driving competitions, that is lead by Formula 1 at the top. Yep, and Formula 2 racers are the next lower level, and Formula 3 is the third lower level. Believe it or not, there is also a Formula 4 series, and in fact there are many different Formula 4 racing car series around the world, since some countries sponsor their own version. This year Formula 3 raced at seven locations, typically with a Sprint race on Saturday of the weekend and the main race on Sunday. All the races were held as part of Formula 1 weekends, on the same tracks, so the fans attending these races usually have several races to watch during the days of a race weekend.

With the "minor league" Formula races below Formula 1, they try to hold down costs by requiring all cars to use the same body, which is built by Dallara. If you haven't heard of the Dallara company, they also build all the car bodies for Indy Cars! For more info, look up Mr. Dallara and read about his career too! Here's the link to Formula 3: 

FORMULA 3

As for the new champion, Ugo Ugochukwu is a nineteen year old driver from the US. He won two of the races this year, and took seven podiums (top three in a race) as well. This was Ugo's second season in F3, and in addition to winning the driver's championship, he led his team Campos Racing to winning the team title too. One challenge he faced was going into this last weekend in Madrid tied for the championship, and needing to have a good qualifying and races to win the title. That is exactly what he did by out-qualifying and finishing ahead of the 2nd place driver Freddie Slater in all three races. 

It's still too early to know what is next for Ugochukwu, but most likely he will move up to Formula 2 in 2027, and just maybe in the future we will have another American driver in Formula 1. Also of note, Ugo is tall, about 6 foot 4 inches tall, which is unusual for a race car driver!

Here is a short interview with Ugo after he won the F3 championship:

UGO ON F3.COM

Gastonia Cars and Coffee

This Camaro will get your attention!

In my search for new Cars and Coffee events, I drove up the road to Gastonia NC, and found a lot of folks at the mall. Well, in the parking lot of a mall, hanging out, checking out the cars, and enjoying a Saturday morning. Some of these events tend to have more 50s and 60s classics, like in York SC, but this was definitely the younger crowd, with tons of Hondas, Mustangs, Japanese market right hand drive cars, and lots more. Whatever your taste in automobiles may be, I'm pretty sure you're always welcome at any event. 

Hey, fun trivia, Gastonia NC is the home of Wix filters, ever since they started back in 1939 by Mr. Wicks! Now you know. 

McLaren 720S

Mercedes C63s AMG interior. It looks mighty comfy in there!

Nissan GTR

On top of those cars, there were a few more exotic cars, like a McLaren, a few Audi R8s, I think three or four Japanese market Nissan Skyline GTRs, and even a Dodge Viper. Here's a look around. 

Nissan GTR, AKA "Godzilla"

Audi R8

Right hand drive Nissan Silvia!

Nissan Silvia, probably Japanese or Australian version.

Mustangs

Dodge Viper

Dodge Viper, what a classic logo!

Flames

Matthews NC Cars and Coffee

Packard automobiles started out in Ohio, just like NMS!

You will not BELIEVE it, but on a recent weekend, I visited a Cars and Coffee! This is a monthly event up in Matthews NC, which is part of Charlotte. This gathering seemed to be mostly older classics, so take a look!

1957 Corvette

1951 Ford F-1 pickup. I really liked the lunchbox, and used one just like it when I worked for Nixon Builders. The curved top holds your thermos!

Camaro RS

I'm sorry I don't know my 1930s era cars, but this thing just looked cool!

Another classic from Ohio, a Ford 351 Cleveland engine.

57 Corvette interior. I hope you like RED!

Another nice hot rod with FLAMES!

Let's go with "Ford V8" on this one!

Just another Sunday afternoon in Matthews NC!

Pontiac. We build excitement!

NMS Visits Exomotive

Kevin the owner says go ahead and sit in it. So, I went ahead and sat in it! Not shown is a piece that covers the engine compartment and front corner. 

We recently announced that NMS will be taking on an Exocet build in the future, so here's some more info about the Exocet. NMS drove over to Rome Georgia to visit the home of the Exomotive Exocet! All the team members that are NOT retired stated that they felt this was even more fun than going in to the office for work! All retired members concurred 100 per cent! 

Brian checks out the Exocet as Kevin explains. The orange car has one roll bar behind the seats, and other models have a full cage. Sorry for the glare from outside, things are just brighter in Georgia!

The Exocet is an exoskeletal kit car, that NMS will be building with a Miata running gear. We went there to learn more details about their Exocet kit car for the Mazda Miata, talk directly with the head of the company Kevin, and learn as much as possible. You can check out the company at this link: 

EXOMOTIVE EXOCET!

Rear view, with the cover over the gas tank and etc. in the back. Fuel filler port on top and of course rear lights in the back. 

Since you build it with your own Miata, plus the kit from Exocet, there are a LOT parts of the car that you can customize in dozens or hundreds of ways. If you don't like the round tail lights, try something else. If you don't need cruise control and air conditioning, remove them from the Miata. If you want to add a drink holder for some reason, fabricate something and add that too. 

Here you can better see the cover over the engine and front corner. The hole on top of this one is to allow space for a V-6 non-Miata engine. The number 27 is on a polycarbonate panel. Below the number panel is another longer panel that helps keep pebbles from coming into the cockpit. When we raced a go-kart on a gravel track, there were a lot of little rocks flying around!

The Exocet kit car started in Great Britain as the MEV Exocet, and Exomotive was founded in the US 15 years ago to bring this car to the US. Like other kit cars, the idea is that you can start with a basic running donor car (in this case a 90-05 Miata) and then use it's running gear to build the kit car. There are lots and lots of ways to customize it too. You can even put a V8 LS or V6 motor in if that's your thing. NMS plans on keeping the Miata 4 cylinder stock in our build.

This silver car is the race version, you can see the full cage over the cockpit. There's still room to slide into the seats from the side. With an optional wing on the back, you could leave that off. Yes, the sides are just the steel frame, hence the exoskeleton concept. 

Basically a full cage placed on top of a Miata. For driving on track, the race seats and full harness system are the way to go. The Exocet can be race only or made road legal, of course depending on your state registration laws. South Carolina doesn't have any vehicle inspections, so it should be fairly simple to register.

Here's a detail of just one way to mount the headlights and side mirrors. This light is clamped around the beefy 1.75 inch tube, and the mirror is bolted into it (out of view.)

The orange and silver cars are finished, and the yellow frame is ready to go to a customer. 

They can powder coat the frame if you want it, with tons of colors available.

The gel coat covers for the engine and rear can also be in color. 

Kevin with lots of steel frame parts in the shop. 

Close up of the top perch for the coil overs. You can build it with the stock suspension, or upgrade and modify as desired for track or off road use. Look for the NMS Exocet to be track built. 

Frame welding  tables. While Exomotive has the frames engine and gas tank covers built off site, and the metal frames get powder coated elsewhere, each frame gets welded together right here. This way you can order the frame in several different configurations. NMS plans on using the full Race set up, basically a roll cage with lots of protection for the driver and passenger. Combined with race seats and harness systems, this should make for as safe of a car as you can take on track. Well, unless you drove a tank on track, I guess that would be pretty safe. 

NMS Announces Project M2E!

NMS sits in an Exocet
Front hood not shown. 

We're here live at the NMS Center for Unknown Licensed Liveries (NMSCULL) with the unveiling of a new NMS-Racing project proposal. Code named M2E, let's join the announcement, already in progress. 

(NMS Spokesperson) Good morning, and welcome to the NMS HQ. Today, we are unveiling not just a new project car, but an entire project that will involve three different cars. We're titling this as PROJECT M2E, and will explain the name as we go along. This project will have four distinct phases. We've creatively titled these PHASE 1, PHASE 2, PHASE 3, and PHASE D. One of the guys in charge of titles isn't very good with numbers, so somewhere along the way the phase after PHASE 3 became PHASE D. Anyway...

PHASE 1: This is ground zero for M2E, and will provide the critical funding to proceed with PHASES 2 throughD. In PHASE 1, NMS will sell the current car number 77, which is a 2009 Porsche Cayman. The budget and number crunching team thinks that the math adds up so that we'll be able to proceed to PHASE 2. If their math is wrong, then we'll be transitioning to the "eat ramen and drink water" PHASE. 

PHASE 2: With the proceeds of PHASE 1, NMS will purchase a 1990-2005 Miata Mazda. Sure, sure, we all know that NMS has run three previous Mazdas in the past, but this time will be different! Trust me, you'll see. Also, never trust anyone that says "Trust me!" Starting with a Miata gives us the letter "M" in the project M2E name. 

PHASE 3: This is the real secret-weapon-double-probation-ghost-protocol part of this project, and this is where we take a RUNNING Miata, and disassemble it. At first we thought we'd just "take it apart," but the IT and Engineering parts of NMS say that "disassembling" is even better than "taking apart." Go figure. Hey, if nothing else, it's a bigger word, so maybe we can use it in the New York Times Spelling Bee or Scrabble some time. This gives us the 2 in the name, where 2 stands for "to" because we're turning a Miata into something else. Pretty creative, huh?

PHASE D: Purchase an Exomotive Exocet kit over in Atlanta, and then combine the Miata major parts (engine, transmission, suspension, etc) with the Exocet tube frame to make a 1,500 pound racecar. And that wraps up the nomenclature part of our briefing, turning a Miata inTO an Exocet! We probably spent a good 10 seconds thinking of this great name too!

The Exocet people have been building these kits for quite a while, and how else do you make a Miata even better than by reducing the weight? OK, yeah, more power is an option, so maybe we'll throw in a turbo, but the initial NMS M2E plan will focus on getting the Exocet to run, and then see how it drives in autocross and on track. The NMS Prediction Department estimates that project M2E will wrap up sometime in the middle of 2027, so stay tuned!

You can read all about the Exocet at their website here:   EXOMOTIVE EXOCET USA