Rubright ready to build on TA3A podium
August 12, 2015
Tim Rubright scored his first Trans Am podium finish at Brainerd International Raceway. Rubright after racing in the TA class for several seasons switched to the TA3 American Muscle Class early in 2015 and drove a Mustang Boss 302 to a 3rd place finish in his first ever trip to Brainerd .
Rubright has been a part time competitor in the lead TA class driving a Ford Mustang. In 2014 Rubright ran 5 Trans Am Series event with a best finish of 9th at Road America. For 2015 he began the season opener at Sebring in his trusty Mustang, but some contact and a crash set the TA car aside. Already planning on a new TA car with the new Mustang body, Rubright chose to wait for that car rather than repair the damaged one.
The problem was that he wanted to race. He pulled a 2012 Mustang Boss 302S model out of his garage. He had never raced this Ford factory race car. In fact he have very little seat time in it. But it was a race car and the TA3a class looked fun.
He started at Road Atlanta and has run 4 straight TA3a races with two top 5 finishes. The new class took some getting used to. "I am not used to driving in my mirror so much." he said. "The TA cars look a lot different from this seat than from the other car. But you can use so much more of the corner driving these cars and you can drive the car with the throttle more. Its fun."
Not only was the class new for Rubright, when they arrived at Brainerd, "It was the first time I'd ever seen it." "That place is crazy. Its a party all night long." Tim said talking about the fans are BIR that tour the facility on bikes, golf carts, atv's and anything else that moves at all hours of the night.
In practice Rubright found a handling issue. "We couldn't get the power down and later we picked up a bad vibration." Turns out that he was running the a fairly deep hole in the dirt on a corner exit with some consistency and had badly bent his left side wheels. Because of the wheel damage he was force to use 9.5" wide wheels. That forced him to use the smaller 295 wide Hoosier Tire option.
Rubright expected less grip and slower lap times with the smaller tire, but he immediately found more grip and he could get the throttle down earlier in each turn. He got faster. "We picked up a second and a half right away. Then dropped another 1.5 seconds on qualifying.
In the race the car handled well and he got faster as the race went a long. The third place finish was the best finishing Mustang at BIR. The podium finish leaves Rubright 5th in the TA3 American Muscle points standings. He is 19 points behind 4th place Chris DeSalvo.
