K&N Motorsports Mustang RTR Driver Dave Martis Has Successful American Iron Debut at Sonoma Raceway

Dave Martis unleashed the K&N Mustang RTR for the first outing at Sonoma Raceway.

After much anticipation, Dave Martis and the K&N Motorsports team made their first successful appearance in the all new K&N Mustang RTR at Sonoma Raceway on March 15th and 16th. Campaigning in the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) American Iron series, Martis, K&N’s R&D Manager, finished an impressive 4th place in both Saturday and Sunday’s contests.

Martis finished both races of the American Iron series in 4th place.

“The handling needs to be dialed in,” commented Martis after the team’s first weekend of racing, “We were clearly in new racecar territory.”

Packed full of thrilling wheel-to-wheel racing and punctuated by the fiery sounds of V8 thunder, the NASA American Iron class is limited by a power-to-weight ratio aspect and several other key factors intended to keep the cars on an even playing field, despite including nearly every pony car that has been produced in the United States since 1960.

Ford Racing supplied the Mustang body and Martis and his crew built the car entirely in-house.

“The class rules limit the amount of power you can make based on the post-race weight of the car,” Martis explains. “The formula is a limit of 9:1 horsepower and 8.5:1 torque (car’s weight/horsepower and torque).

The RTR’s bold, instantly familiar, K&N graphics running from bumper-to-bumper and side-to-side caught everyone’s attention, drawing them in for a closer look, and then the painstakingly built Mustang’s craftsmanship wowed them. Martis and his crew built the Ford Racing “body-in-white” Mustang from the shell up.

“The car is powered by is a stock 2014 Ford Coyote 5.0-liter engine and it makes 387 horsepower and 391(ft/lbs) of torque to the rear wheels,” details Martis. “The air box was my design and we had it made by the Forecast 3D company using FDM (fused deposition modeling) which is a type of 3D printing. And of course we couldn’t have done this without our partners.”

The K&N R&D Manager designed the exclusive air box and Forecast 3D produced it.

• K&N Performance Air Filter
• K&N Oil Filter
• K&N Fuel Filters
• Ford Racing (the body-in-white)
• Mustang RTR (body parts)
• Cortex Racing (suspension)
• JRi Shocks (shocks)
• Eibach (springs)
• Baer Brakes (brakes)
• Hawk Performance (brake pads)
• Bassani Xhaust (exhaust system)
• Toyo Tires (race tires)
• Lucas Oil (lubricants)
• AEM Electronics (engine management and electronics)
• Optima Batteries (battery)

“For the Sonoma race, I’d like to give a shout out to Filip Trojanek, who owns Cortex Racing. He kindly showed up and provided at-the-track support and advice which helped us improve our lap times. This was a huge help to the team,” adds Martis.

The NASA American Iron series continues April 5th and 6th at Buttonwillow Raceway Park.