2024 Time Trial Champions Triumph at Utah Motorsports Campus

In many ways, the work of a Time Trial driver is more difficult than in wheel-to-wheel racing. You’re out on track on your own with nothing more than a delta on the lap timer to push you to go faster. Your competitors exist only in the ether of time. You know how your lap times are stacking up against your best, but unless you have radio to a crew, you have no idea how they stack up against the competition.

Without track position to provide immediate feedback of your progress, you are left with your best guess. Oh, and be sure you keep the car on track. Drop two wheels on the same axle and your lap doesn’t count. Racing drivers are under no such restrictions, although dropping wheels usually results in in losing a position or two, if not more.

And then we have the track itself. For this year’s Championships, Utah Motorsports Campus is a 3.048-mile-long ribbon of asphalt filled with tricky corners, no small amount of nuance, hidden sources of grip, subtle elevation changes and a long front straightaway that rewards as much as it punishes.

Rising to the top in Time Trial at the 2024 NASA Championships was a triumph of skill and spirit and preparation. We spoke with nearly all drivers at this year’s Championships competition to find out how they overcame all those difficulties and got it done.

Time Trial 1

Time Trial 1 is one of the quickest classes in NASA Time Trial, and this year at the NASA Championships, TT1 featured an all-Chevrolet podium, two Corvettes and a Camaro. That’s not much of a surprise. The Corvette has long been one of the most popular cars for TT1 competition.

The surprise came in the form of how tight the competition was on the podium this year. All three cars were in the 1:55’s and just .600 seconds separated all three podium finishers.

On the top step was Clayton Yates in his C7 Corvette. Yates made a few changes to the car for the last day of competition, which paid off in his first-place finish, which he won by .249 seconds.

“We put a little bit wider front tire on, so as much tire as we could get on it and get the nice cool session,” Yates said. “We kind of waited to really push and it seemed to work out. That was the first cold weather we had, and it felt really good.”

Team Auto Solve’s Eric Kennel finished in second in TT1 with a 1:55.454. Kennel also changed tires Sunday morning, but they lost the cool morning session in doing so. They improved their time in session two Sunday, but it was not enough top Yates.

“It really kind of screwed us, but we went back out and went actually faster in the second session. I felt like I left it all out there. That’s all I could do and Clayton drove his ass off,” Kennel said.

In the heaviest Chevrolet of the bunch, August Falkner drove his Camaro to within .355 seconds of Kennel in the Team Auto Solve C6 Corvette. Falkner said new tires were the key to getting the time they did, which put them on the podium.

“We went out this morning, our first set of stickers all weekend, so we were able to put something down this morning,” Falkner said. “We weren’t able to put stickers on until this morning, so we were happy that when we were shooting for a 1:57-something and we cracked out a 1:55.8, and we were beyond ecstatic. Things were in our favor for sure on that one.”

Time Trial 2

Time Trial 2 was among the larger TT fields this year, with 11 cars on grid for the Championships showdown. On top once again was Alessandro Sensoli, notching his second TT2 Championship after scoring his first at Daytona in 2021.

“I just had some issues with the suspension, but after that the car went really, really fast,” Sensoli said. “I found another extra second this morning. The car was doing fantastic. Me and my coach Dion went through some stuff. I was early apexing a lot of turns, which I  fixed. That got the time. I was really close to this 57 and then screwed up a couple of turns at the end, but still, P1, we’re happy.”

Keeping Sensoli on his toes was Danny Weller, who races in the Utah Region, so he knows the track well. A few gremlins crept in and kept Weller from going faster.

“It didn’t go as planned. We thought we would be easily a high 57, easily a 58, but unfortunately we had some suspension failures of my OEM Chevy suspension a couple months before the championship. So I got on board with Viking Suspension, got a sponsorship with them,” Weller said. “We used our test and tune day as best as we could, making all the adjustments. We definitely got the car better, but even at the end of the event, I still never beat my PB. We tried to do our best. My driving coach was there, Clayton Yates, who won TT1. Downforce Coaching helped me as best as possible. You can only drive to the limit of your grip though, so we were trying to find that grip and get the car up to the pace that we know it has. And I would say it was difficult, but after that weekend I felt like I left it all out there, and I’m super happy for Alessandro.”

In a class filled with Corvettes, Mustangs and Porsche, Zack Serna was able to claim third in TT2 with his 1994 Honda Civic CX with a supercharged K20 engine. Serna keeps everything cool on track with a lot of coolers and the requisite plumbing. A NASA Utah member, Serna said it gave him an advantage to have driven the track regularly for the last several years.

“I knew I was going to have to, I guess, send it, for lack of another term, to get up to the standings,” Serna said. “I didn’t actually run very many sessions because my car broke. It’s tough to be in (TT2), but I make it work. But yeah, it’s a pretty old car. I don’t have ABS or traction control. I kind of just use my feet to do a lot of that. And then I still have a standard gearbox and that sort of setup. So a lot of it’s just kind the old analog way of driving.

Time Trial 3

Another nail-biter, the top spot in Time Trial 3 was determined by .822 seconds, leaving NASA Utah’s Austin Kent on the top step. Kent had one eye over his shoulder on Cameron Lane, who finished second, but also kept his focus on his driving and car prep. Of course, having home track advantage never hurts.

“I met Cameron back in May and he was super fast. He was within a second of me and I knew he was going to be the one to beat,” Kent said. “So yeah, just building speed, just doing what I usually do out here and being consistent and getting the job done, making sure the car’s ready and that’s pretty much it.”

You would never know it to look at the width of the tires on Cameron Lane’s car, but he didn’t have enough tire on the car and was not able to achieve the times he was shooting for.

“I run street tires. I couldn’t get the tires I really wanted,” Lane said. “So, I’ve been trying and practicing and came untested and so we ended up running a 2:02.9.”

NASA Texas driver Blake Pomykal had to start from the back and spend some time learning the track and getting himself and the car acclimated to the 4,500-foot altitude at Utah Motorsports Campus, but eventually brought home third place by more than 1 second.

“The car was a little unhappy at first. I was a little unhappy at first, but yeah, that was really it. Just learning the track, learning the altitude really,” Pomykal said.  “I took a gamble, I’m on a Hankook tire this weekend and it did great, but I think they fell off a little bit with the heat that this track gets over time.”

Time Trial 4

Time Trial at the 2024 NASA Championships had a record number of entries, and nowhere was it more apparent than Time Trial 4, the largest class in TT competition, with 16 cars on grid. Competition was tight, with each of the podium finishers all within .400 seconds of one another in the  2:04’s.

Team Magic Developed driver Eric Moore topped the podium, a spot he earned by just .334 seconds. Moore came out of the gates swinging and nabbed his fastest time of the weekend first thing Saturday morning.

“My fastest time of the weekend was in round one, the first competition session on Saturday, so that was our plan with Magic developed,” Moore said. “We were like, set a time early, have people chase it and then just cover if possible. That was kind of our game plan going into it because weather was going to be close both days and so we just picked the first one and it worked out.”

Coming second in TT4 was Scott Smith in his E46 M3 powered by the later BMW turbocharged N20 four-cylinder engine. Smith notched a 2:04.759 in round four of competition.

Just .073 seconds behind Smith was Team Vincent Miller who nabbed third place in TT4 by just .316 seconds over the fourth-place finisher. He said the competition helped him up his game.

“I’m here from Utah and locally I’ve been running the region and doing well. But these guys are the guys that honestly pushed me to that next level,” Miller said. “So when they came a few months ago, I changed my setup, I switched to Maxxis tires and I honestly really have just gotten into the data a lot more. And so I came in here with new tires, a new motivation, new strategy, and was able to pull it off. But yeah, the biggest thing was having outside of competition come in that convinced me and pushed me to go to that next level.”

Time Trial 5

Time Trial 5 was filled with veteran drivers from five different regions in a variety of cars. Coming out on top was NASA Rocky Mountain driver Tim Roberts, who was the only driver in TT5 to register in the 2:07s.

“I think it was critical for me this year was to come out and get some practice at an earlier event this year to get a feel for the facility, the feel for the track, get some good data that I could come back and really study and understand and compare to video and other people’s video,” Roberts said. “So I was able to just go out there on the first session of the first day and just put together a super clean lap, just kind of no thinking, don’t overthink it, just drive my heart out, do what I know the car and what I’m able to do.”

That time was good enough to stay ahead of Team Moorewood Creative in another E46 330i. NASA NorCal driver Larry Moore came out to Utah for a race in late July to practice and get a feel for the track, and it was good enough to get him second place in TT5.

“I thought we were doing pretty good there. We came in with some confidence, and we did what we expected to do here,” Moore said. “I feel like our times were great. Our driving was great. We just got beat out by a little bit better driver this time.”

Not far behind Moore was Tyler Mikesell in his Honda S2000. A member of the Utah region, Mikesell decided to try some new things in pursuit of a win in TT5.

“These guys came and just destroyed us, and so I knew I had to do something different. So I had a similar setup that they did, Maxxis with a splitter and I decided to take it off, do no splitter, put Hoosiers on and add 70 pounds just as a hail Mary basically to see if I could keep up,” Mikesell said. “It gave me a second, but I could have probably done that on the previous setup. So it’s probably a testament to the rules working really well that you can completely change a setup in. It’s very similar times, but it was a personal best by a second and so I’m pretty happy with that.”

Time Trial 6

To say that TT6 and ST6 driver Todd Green had a dream weekend would be, well, entirely appropriate. As you will learn in the racing coverage next week, Green scored the hat trick in ST6. He also was quick enough take the win in TT6 over Eric Kennel and Team Mick Blue Racing.

“I kind of put in a banker lap because I had a 2-second lead and Eric was complaining about being held up all day on Saturday, and I’m like, well, maybe he was. Maybe that’s racer talk. He knocked off two seconds today,” Green said. “So luckily my banker was enough to keep me in first place. My flyer was going really well. I was up seven tenths and it felt like there was just fluid in the attitudes my car slid where it’s never slid. And it’s same thing happened to Eric on his second lap. So neither of us got a good second lap in, so we had to stand on our first lap and luckily I came out my three tenths, but hat’s off to him for coming to new track and running that quickly.”

A member of the NASA Arizona Region, Kennel came in and nearly got the TT6 win in his Toyota MR2. He just missed the win by .354 seconds, which put him in second place, the same spot he finished in TT1 in his C6 Corvette.

“We came here and practiced a couple times, a lot of seat time at my home region and we just drove back to back,” Kennel said. “I’m driving a Corvette as well in TT1, so it’s very hard to adjust between, but I just focused in this morning, gave it all I had and got it done for second. I’m happy with that. I don’t feel like I left anything out there, so I’m happy with that. Just gave it all she had.”

Coming in third was Team Mick Blue Racing, who was competing in Spec E30, ST6 and TT6, and doing so without the assistance of a crew, a one-man show.

“After the first session it was kind of clear that Eric and Todd were unreachable, kind of like from the lap times, but I did my best,” said driver Mick Blue. “I’m happy with the lap time I did and yeah, I mean, I couldn’t be any happier to be third here today.”

Time Trial GT

Time Trial GT was a new addition to the Championships this year, implemented to separate the production-based cars from the racing prototypes typically found in TTU. What was not new was the name at the top of the time sheets.

Brian Faessler brought No. 018 Mustang GT and took the win in TTGT, the only driver in the class to register a lap under 1:50. He ran a 1:49.135 to be precise, and he got it in the first session Sunday morning.

“Friday I just did some practice laps with the group, then the TT warmup and Saturday morning in Time Trial session one,” Faessler said. “And this morning, I just gunned it.”

Try as he might, Jimmy Ford learned the track and got up to speed, but could not equal the pace of Faessler and finished second in his Trans Am Mustang.

“One part was learning the track a little bit, trying to get the track down by the third session. We pretty much had down and we were tapped out,” Ford said. “That’s all the horsepower we have to get down to a 1:53. I think the track was good for a few sessions. We were out there later in the day. Obviously it gets greasy, but early in the morning that’s when we ran our 1:53 and that was about as good as we could do.”

Team JPR was working through some development issues with its Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 1LE the week before the Championships, but they got the car sorted and driver John Grow piloted it to third place in TTGT.

“The car was just fully developed in the last few years, and this is its major test run, you could say,” Grow said. “And we just had to put a new motor in it, put a motor back in it on about what? Thursday? Wednesday? Wednesday. So to have it up and running and having a few issues, that’s expected. So, we’re excited.”

Time Trial EV

In TTEV, there were only two cars, and both were Tesla Model 3s sponsored by Revolting Performance. Coming in first was Jordan Priestly, who logged 2:07.660 to take the win.

Coming in second was Koda Atwood, who has taken his former street car and converted it strictly for competition. Atwood experimented with additional aerodynamic treatments, but it didn’t have the effect he wanted.

“We were about 3 seconds slower on my car just from the aero actually the big track with all the drag just being electric in that it was a little bit more of a downfall than we thought it would be. We thought in the turns it would make up for it, but down the big strait and that it was kind of a struggle,” Atwood said. “My second session on the second day was our fastest, just, it was a little bit cooler, kind of got a lot hotter on those later sessions and just tires were getting greasier quicker.

Time Trial Unlimited

Jonathan Finstrom was chasing a repeat performance of last year’s TTU victory at Pittsburgh International Race Complex. He not only got the 2024 TTU Championship but also logged — to no one’s surprise — the fastest lap of the event at 1:45.131.

“My approach was the same as always, just build up to it, get used to the track a little bit, figure out your gearing set up on the car, and then when you feel the weather and the car set up right and you know the track and then you go for it,” Finstrom said. “So, since it was announced at Pittsburgh last year, I’ve watched video of this track every night till this event actually, even while the event’s going on, I’ve watched a video of every night of other cars and other times while different type of cars and stuff like that, and instructional videos, just watching, memorizing the track.”

Coming in second was Andrew Lang, a regular Western Endurance Racing Championships series competitor who has experience at Utah Motorsports Campus. Lang drove his Honda K20-powered Norma prototype to a 1:52.087.

Coming in third in his Porsche, David Lockwood posted a 1:58.993.