2018 Green Grand Prix - Watkins Glen - Friday Apr. 13

[brucepick]

Originally Posted by Xist

A Prius boat tail?! I will believe it when I see it!

Yes, it's true. I should have gotten some photos. Hopefully Jon (Vman455) will send some in.

It's fiberglass, attached to a tow hitch, and stabilized by a pair of scissor-arm assemblies, one on each side. It has a solar panel on the top that feeds into the 12V system, and also a hatch for access to the storage bin inside the boat tail.

[brucepick]

Xist, here ya go!

[Xist]

Was that gap necessary for hatch clearance? Is it lowered?

[Goofy1]

Jon is in NYC and will be back on here soon to fill in all the details. It was too cool and he's done a ton of work on it. Jon clocked in at 64.X MPG if I remember correctly.

My mileage in the MINI was officially 59.8 but when we came off the track at the end of ~80 miles we had 60.6 mpg on the computer. We missed the checkered flag and put in an extra lap which put us at the end of the queue and had to sit for a number of minutes till we got up to the scoring block



What a blast to be there and prove that our mods do indeed work. I had a couple of the students from Alfred State Auto Tech program that were interested and grilled me about the car and what we do. I'd encourage anyone that can make it there to participate next year. As much as I like Watkins Glen raceway I did put in a vote to have the event or a very similar one in a more southernly track like Road Atlanta or Daytona!

[changzuki]

Weblinks copied from Green Grand Prix Home page:
Green Grand Prix - Home
-
View the 2018 Green Grand Prix Award Winners:
http://www.greengrandprix.com/app/do...%5B7389%5D.pdf
-
2018 Autocross Results:
http://www.greengrandprix.com/app/do...%5B7390%5D.pdf
-
2018 MPGs by Class:
http://www.greengrandprix.com/app/do...%5B7391%5D.pdf
-
Good job and congrats to all!
-
~CrazyJerry

[brucepick]

Reviewing the 2018 MPGs by Class sheet, link in changzuki's post above, shows that my modded Insight beat everything there that didn't make use of electrical power from the grid.

Team Ecomodder's scores:
brucepick - 2000 Honda Insight - 88.3 mpg - EPA: 53 mpg combined
goofy1 (Garth V) - 2011 Mini Cooper - 59.6/60.6 mpg - EPA: about 52
Jonathan Young - 2013 Prius - 62.8 mpg - EPA: about 52

[Grant-53]

I saw it too.

[Vman455]

I'm finally back!

The Prius and brucepick's Insight:



The front straight and pit lane:



It really was a blast. I drove way too fast, ~20 seconds faster per lap than ideal, so lots to improve on next year. I'm also starting a new build on the car, focusing on weight reduction. That long uphill on turns 2 and 3 and the back straight killed my MPG; I'm going to ditch the current tail in favor of a lighter design (the hitch and carrier alone are more than a hundred pounds), add front wheel air curtains and wheel arch vents front and rear, and see if I can take a few hundred pounds out of the car. 51 weeks to go!

[Vman455]

Looking ahead to next year, here are a couple of graphics with track specifications.





I have them saved on my computer, so if the links disappear I can repost them. I'll drag them out again when we start the thread for next year's event.

[jakobnev]

The 6-cyl class would be easy pickings to anyone with a Mazda MX-3 GS.

It has a 1.8L V6 and I've done 60MPG+ individual trips in mine.