Race Track Equipment Auction

Unfortunately, the Pitt Race track complex up near Pittsburgh PA has gone out of business, and they are auctioning off just about everything at the track from cars, karts, tools, miles of track fencing, shop equipment, and furniture and bathroom fixtures. This is an online auction that started  December 2nd and ends TODAY, on December 9th. You can go to the web and check out all the items now. 

Here's the link to the auction.  PITT RACE AUCTION

Tire Buying Made Simple

Firestone tire on Project INFINITI

Yes, we can reveal how to make tire buying "simple," but we don't recommend it, and your mileage may vary! Let's look at what we'll call the Tire Purchase Method (TPM) #1: 

The simple way to buy tires is to just drive into your nearest Whatever Is Close To Your House Tire Store (there's one near you!) and ask them to put new tires on your car, ideally one on each corner. Pay them whatever they ask, and hey, it's just that simple! You drive away with new tires, and YOU ARE DONE!

If you follow TPM #1, the odds are that you'll get one of two kinds of tires:  

    1) You might get a good tire at a good price!

    2)  Or you might not! 

This startling conclusion at the NMS Skunk Works of Big Brains in South Carolina (NMSSKWBBSC.) You can buy a t-shirt with that name on it, but they only come in extra large to fit all the letters on the back. That leads to a lot of opinions on what makes a good tire, and what makes a good price. 

A red car. With at least 1 black tire. On a blue lift. 

My gut feeling is that the average person pretty much goes with this simple method, with the added gut feeling that they also buy the cheapest tire available. Hey, no problem, I can't tell you how to budget your money, because if I did I'd include a little item called "give money to people with race cars" part of your budget that you may not like! Oh make no mistake, the "People With Race Cars" (People With Race Cars is Trademarked 2025 by NMS-Racing.Net) would LOVE it, but there's always two kinds of people in the world. 

So, we have a lot of people driving around on the cheapest tire, and that works, and that makes for a very simple blog post. But wait, there's more!

Michelin tire on a Czinger. Michelins are considered good tires, and you'd expect good tires on a car worth over a million bucks. 

Another very simple way to buy tires leaps out at you if you move on to Tire Purchase Method #2. 

With this method, you decide that you want to do a little more research and learn more about tires and prices before you buy. To do this, scientists suggest using what they call "the Internet" to find a local or a mail order tire shop. Once you do that, you might want to look at different brands, different prices, and make sure you're looking at the right size tires that fit your vehicle...BUT... one thing to look out for, is that a lot of tire shops have a little button or feature on their website that says something like "SCHEDULE NEW TIRES HERE." They're probably getting a lot of customers this way, because if you're shopping for tires it might be because you need them NOW, as in "I just had a flat tire and have to get to work/school NOW!" 

Actually this is a very creative and great method for a shop to start to close the deal, kind of like a salesman. They don't settle for you saying "yeah I'm thinking about tires" and try to nail it down and lead you down the purchase path of "How much do you want to pay? When do you need them? I have an opening for service this afternoon how about Two O'clock?" and BAM you've got an appointment and are spending money. I love spending money and buying car parts too, but I also love SAVING money while buying car parts. So...

The NMS recommendation is to go with the research the Internet part of TPM #2, and find a good price. I was working my way through method #2 in November and found some Black Friday sales at a national chain that was BUY 2, GET 2 FREE. My math may not be exact, but that comes out to about half off! Oh but wait, there was a catch in the small print. You also had to pay $30 per tire for installation, and tax, and tire disposal fee, and who knows how many other fees. Bottom line, once I looked into this one, it wasn't the bargain that it first seemed to be. 

Red Car. Black Tire. Orange jack stand. 

A similar deal I found on line was at a large store that rhymes with Mal-Wart that has a name brand tire made just for them, at pretty much the same price as the BUY 2 GET 2 FREE deal! Those were the two lowest priced sets of tires I could find that were also brands I have heard of before. Yes, there are cheaper tires out there, and they'll fit the car and roll around and probably work fine, but with tires and safety the NMSSKWBBSC suggests you stick with brand name tires if you can afford it. Another thing I learned here is that a famous US tire company that rhymes with Food Gear makes a specific tire for the store that rhymes with Mal-Wart, so that's what I bought. 

The third lowest price I found was from an online tire seller that I've used a lot, but these tires were a brand I've never heard of, and even being a cheap import still didn't beat the price on the first two deals that I found. Oh well, it was free to do the research and look around. 

The bottom line is that there are plenty of ways to buy tires, like buying cereal, or lunch, but with tires you're buying the only part of your car that touches the road as you move along, so your safety is counting on them a little more than what kind of Super Crunchy Yummy Flakes cereal you eat for breakfast.

2025 Autocross Statistics

During 2025 the NMS-North Cayman participated in a second straight year of competing in all six of  the Porsche Club of America events in the local region, and in seven total autocross events that stretched from April to November. Locations included the Michelin Proving Grounds twice, the Greensboro Coliseum twice, the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds two times, and one final event at Hickory Motor Speedway. Since the team (in this case "team" means "me") is based in Rock Hill SC, just a few miles from the NC border, it's no surprise that these events included five in North Carolina and two in South Carolina. Shoot, if there were autocross events in West Carolina and East Carolina we'd sign up for those too!

All but one competition was with the Carolinas Region of the Porsche Club of America, with the other sponsored by the Triad Sports Car Club. Over the past 10+ years of auto-crossing, we've driven with six other clubs in a total of five states, so it's always fun to see how different clubs run their events. These seven autocross events attracted 362 drivers (some multiple times) so that's an average of 51 per event. The six Porsche events totaled 249 drivers with an average of 41 per event. Really it's 41.5 drivers per event, but I had a hard time finding half of a driver. On the other hand, I didn't WANT to find a half a driver either, so I didn't look!

Statistics wise, NMS is happy to report seven class wins out of those seven events, although the number of cars in the same class ranged from no one else up to four other cars in one event. Against all the cars at any one event, the best place was 7th out of 34 drivers at Greensboro in September, but probably even better than that was taking 8th overall from 70 drivers at Hickory in November. While there might have been a lot of novices at that event that were trying autocross for the first time, placing in the top 10 of any event is always our goal. Maybe I can write a book about "How To Win at Autocross Against No Competition!" Like a lot of things in life, the answer is to "show up!"

Always hang out with drivers that are faster than you. Say hello to my little friend. 

For the Porsche only competitions, the best NMS event of the year was at Hickory, taking 2nd fastest Porsche of the day out of 25 drivers. In the other events NMS took a 3rd, 4th, 6th twice, and an 8th fastest Porsche on the day. That puts my average overall Porsche placing at 4.8th, so let's just call it 5th. While this year didn't include a fastest P-car of the day, this still marks the NMS 2nd best event placing ever, only behind a fastest RAW time Porsche at Michelin two years ago, and a fastest PAX time Porsche at a New York Metro Region event in 2023. 

Waiting to go at a Greensboro Coliseum parking lot. 

During the course of this season, sometimes other drivers signed up to be car #77 before NMS did, so the car also appeared as #4, #7, #411, #77, and #777. As long as you have some extra number magnets or good old blue painters tape, you can run any number you want! I bet the fancy NASCAR and IndyCar drivers don't have to worry about changing their numbers like us normal people do!

The funniest thing of the year, all these made up company stickers. 

The first half of the season was run on Michelin tires, but when the front tires started wearing through, the pit crew switched to Continentals for the last three events. Other than that, the only other set-up change in mid season was an alignment that fixed some bad front toe settings, and maximized the negative camber all around. Future plans for the car may include even more suspension work, and ideally a lot more negative camber for competitive driving. As is, the car meets the Stock category, and changing the suspension would move the car into a Modified or Improved category according to the Porsche rules. For events run under the SCCA Autocross rules (which is just about every other club on the planet) the car runs in the B Street category. 

Added up, this year totaled 56 runs, 6 cones knocked over, and 1 run where a driver mistake meant a Did Not Finish on a run. Each cone knocked over adds two seconds to your time, so that is BAD. It's not so bad for your day or your car, just bad for that one run. If, on the other hand, you never knock over any cones, you're likely not driving fast enough. 

Within my class for the five events that I have data, I averaged winning by 4.301 seconds per event, with victories ranging from 0.956 to 8.225 seconds. The location with the longest course run time for me was at Michelin, my time was 60.098, and the shortest course was on the Hickory Speedway at 44.904. Even with up to 10 runs at an event, that gives you only a few minutes of actual driving per event, but I'll guarantee you that it feels like more, and it's a lot of fun!