George's Turbo Miata: Far From a Momentum Car
Photo credit: George’s dad. A regular supporter of his son’s efforts, George’ dad is often at the track lending a hand and snapping this level of photo.
For a kid in his early twenties, George Koustoumbardis is unusually accomplished. Few youngsters accumulate such a wide array of racing experiences unless they’ve had serious financial support from their folks, but George is almost single-minded about motorsport.
George hasn’t had it quite that easy. With the money he made from his high school lifeguarding job, he picked up this NB2 Miata around five years ago. Aided by abject frugality and a near-total dedication to building his car, its rate of evolution is impressive by anyone’s standards—only professional shops get their cars together faster. When you consider he’s been a college student most of those years, the rate of progress is astounding. Then again, when you focus on cars and racing over partying, it’s not too hard to outperform a lot of college kids.
Rather than fine tune the footwork, George was more interested in finding horsepower first. From the start, he’s prioritized getting the right parts on early with the hope that he wouldn’t have to replace them down the road. For that reason, he splurged on one of the best paved routes to forced induction with this particular motor. The Trackspeed Engineering kit utilizes a BorgWarner EFR 6258 turbocharger—a top-shelf item with a lightweight set of impellers that help this little 1.8-liter feel more like a big V6. Modulation and response are as important as peak power with a road course car, so its 260 horsepower, enjoyed over a relatively wide powerband, add more to the experience than the on-paper stats might suggest.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before he craved more, and so he fitted the motor with Manley rods, Supertech pistons, ACL bearings, and APR hardware. With a Megasquirt MS3 tying everything together, the motor made a respectable 330 horsepower at the rear wheels on kill mode. Not bad for a 2,400-pound car.
Harnessing that took more work than the short list of supporting modifications suggests. A 949 twin-disc clutch, Flowforce 980cc injectors, Radium FPR and fuel rail, 6 A/N lines everywhere, and Deatschwerks DW300 pump round out the rest of this E85-capable setup. It sends all that torque back through a stock six-speed and a rebuilt Torsen. Incredibly, the driveline has held the power for nearly three years at this point.
The other collection of goodies which help set this Miata apart from the typical track fare is its aero. An APR GT250 wing now sits at the rear after a frustrating stint with a NASCAR wing. Up front, things are more extensively reworked. “I basically tore the front end off the car to help resolve a cooling issue. I checked the IATs one day, and I screamed. The gauge read 230°F!”
After that, he was compelled to chop the front end, remove the crash bar, and reduct just about everything. After relocating the coolers to better positions, he fashioned a front air dam with a quick release that allows for setup changes done in just minutes. Now, it’s able to run full sessions without pulling timing, and it doesn’t require much time when playing with front splitters to quell the car’s tendency to understeer.
Powerful, reliable, and pretty agile, it only made sense to get the best available shocks for the car. Suspended on Xida coilovers and sitting atop 15x10” wheels occasionally wrapped in Hoosier slicks, the cornering speeds matched the straightline speeds—and both were enough of a cause for concern to have the car caged. In George’s no-compromise style, he hired TC Design to build him a cage with all the fixings aside from the shock tower tie-ins.
Just inside those bars sits a Racetech halo-style seat with a recessed mounting pan to help him fit inside the detailed cage. With full fire suppression and an AIM digital dash, the Miata’s cabin is bonafide race car.
And race it he has. After a year of respectable performances in time trials, he moved up to Gridlife Touring Cup. After loading the trailer and hauling it halfway across the country, he rolled up to the gates of COTA and tried his hand as a wheel-to-wheel racer.
After a weekend of worrying temps and some contact with a dive-bombing rival driver, George packed up and left dejected. The weekend should’ve gone more smoothly—the lap times weren’t really there, and the car left less attractive than it had arrived. Nevertheless, the experience sewed the seed for more of the same.
“Racing is where my heart’s at now,” George gushed. “It’s gonna take a little more to get it into competitive shape, but I think that some more work could make this a contender in NASA ST4. If I’m going off lap times alone, I’m still about two seconds from where I should be at Sonoma if I wanna do it justice and not just participate.”
To get there, he’s been playing with the bars and the front end to try and minimize some of the understeer that’s plagued him for ages—something he’s occasionally thought might be caused by a flawed chassis. “I’m gonna replace the worn poly bushings with sphericals all around, get a better alignment, and play around with the front splitter. If all that fails, it might be time to take it to a chassis specialist,” he groaned.
The long and ever-growing list of modifications isn’t made up of minor pieces and parts for fine tuning. This car has never really been about taking small steps, anyways. First: a MK60 ABS system from an E46. This will allow him to tune the brakes to suit whatever tires he’s running. After that, he wants one of the famous OS Giken differentials to help rotation. Last, he wants to swap his current Trackspeed Engineering Dynapro brakes for a set of Afco F88 calipers and their 299 x 32mm rotors. Both the calipers and rotors with this kit are larger and stiffer than the Wilwood Dynapros, which ought to make this even less of a true momentum car.
Realistically, there’s bound to be another few major items added to that list soon. It’s just the nature of the beast. George’s happy to admit that he’s constantly tweaking and changing things; he’s the kind that rarely sits still, even if it’s a headache from time to time. He’s mentioned throwing in the towel, selling it online, and starting fresh with a newer chassis, but he’s stuck it out this far and, in doing so, gotten a plain ol’ MX-5 to something far from a momentum car. Big power, downforce, and brakes to match make this Miata machine that has more than entry speed to rely upon. How many get their Miata to ST4-spec without a major shop behind them? That’s a commendable achievement and, if this hard-charging twenty-something is honest with himself, just a glance at this gleaming silver scalpel is a source of great pride.
For that reason, don’t expect to see this on Bring a Trailer anytime soon.
