Pushing his engine-swapped ND Miata to its performance limits at NOLA Motorsports Park in Avondale, LA, Dayton de la Houssaye knew there was more speed to be found. The highly competitive grassroots racer and shop co-owner shifted his focus to aerodynamics and turned to Verus Engineering.
De la Houssaye, who will be driving for the title in the TT3 class at the National Auto Sport Association (NASA) championships in late September, couldn’t be happier with the results. Learn more about the modifications made and how they impacted his times.
Verus Steps In With New Aero
Simulated view of De la Houssaye's ND Miata with Verus V1X wing and splitter.
Verus and Geaux Moto, the Miata-focused shop De la Houssaye co-owns with his father Troy, collaborated to overhaul the aerodynamics. Verus supplied the V1X rear wing and designed the front-end aero, including the Miata’s splitter and tire spats. Geaux Moto crafted the splitter and tire spats based on the Verus design and placed their wing uprights per Verus specs.
“I did every single thing I could to make it faster,” De la Houssaye said. “We tripled the horsepower. We did all the suspension stuff we could. We put 285s on the car. I checked all the boxes mechanically. Basically, we wanted to go faster. I knew the Verus guys made a pretty nice setup, and I wanted to see if they’d be willing to help us out. I’m glad they did.”
Verus owner Eric Hazen said designing a part like a splitter and having someone else do the manufacturing is a notable departure from their usual process.
Underbody view of custom splitter designed by Verus Engineering for De la Houssaye's ND Miata.
“Our process is usually design and manufacture together — that's how we control the outcome,” Hazen said. “Handing off a design means trusting someone else to execute it accurately, and this wasn't a simple splitter. Dayton pulled it off. That's not always a given.”
De la Houssaye came through on the manufacturing side while Verus nailed the aerodynamics, despite the challenges with the Miata platform.
“The Miata’s roofline creates a poor airflow environment for a rear wing,” Hazen said. “You're not working with clean air, so placement and angle matter more than they would on a cleaner platform.”
The front splitter came with its own complexity.
“It's not a simple shape to fabricate,” Hazen said. “Dayton handled the manufacturing himself, which meant the design had to be right the first time. That raises the stakes on the engineering side.”
CFD brings the airflow to life — De la Houssaye's ND Miata visualized in simulation.
What Impact Did Verus Aero Make?
Dayton de la Houssaye competes in a GRIDLIFE event at Pitt Race in his Verus-optimized ND Miata.
In a year’s worth of testing his heavily modified, non-aero ND Miata at NOLA, De la Houssaye was never able to break the 1-minute 50-second barrier. That changed instantly when he added the Verus aero. In his first lap, De la Houssaye posted a 1:46. After fine-tuning with adjustments like tire spats and splitter endplates, he went even faster.
Verus examines all angles when designing and optimizing aero mods for vehicles like the ND Miata.
“It was almost by accident,” De la Hossaye said. “I didn’t realize I was going so much faster. It was an immediate difference. I’ve driven with no aero at NOLA a million times. You know you can’t get on the throttle too early. But now, it feels like a normal car where you can hit apex and almost immediately go full throttle and survive. Before, you would have to modulate until you were almost straight.”
De la Houssaye tested his non-aero vs. aero setups at various tracks, including NOLA, the now shuttered Pittsburgh International Race Complex (Pitt Race), Road Atlanta, and Sebring International Raceway. The results were similar across the board. Here are the results:
Granted, test conditions were not the same, as De la Houssaye wasn’t able to test both aero and non-aero setups at the same time, but the consistent results speak for themselves.
“(Five to seven) seconds per track is not a small number,” Hazen said. “In competitive motorsport, that's often the difference between contending and chasing.
“This is 500 horsepower in a lightweight chassis; the car has real grip limits, and every second of improvement means those limits are being managed better through the corners. The aero is doing what it's supposed to do. The results confirm it.”
Verus Aero Offers More Than Just Lower Lap Times
Verus Engineering's aero helped Dayton de la Houssaye resolve issues with lift when driving his ND Miata at high speeds.
Turning faster laps wasn’t the only goal for De la Houssaye; he also wanted to address the ND platform’s known issue with lift at higher speeds. It’s a concern that came to the forefront when testing at Road Atlanta.
“We couldn’t do the crest at Road Atlanta - the back straight - because we would go sideways,” De la Houssaye said. “I thought ‘I’m going to die if I go flat-out here’. The chassis was making so much lift. Now, it just feels like a normal, easy-to-drive car.”
The Verus aero helped alleviate the Miata’s lift issue. But De la Houssaye said the benefits go well beyond that.
“Some people think they can go faster through high-speed turns - that’s how they justify the aero,” De la Houssaye said. “But they may not realize how much more you can stay full throttle and how much later you can brake just because you have the extra grip. It makes a difference everywhere, not just in the corners.”
At his home track, De la Houssaye compared the time spent at full throttle between his non-aero and aero setups. Without the aero, he spent on average 25.4 seconds at 100% throttle per lap. After installing the Verus ND Miata performance mods, the number ballooned to 36 seconds. He also noticed a big difference in NOLA’s massive brake zone.
“We went 100 feet deeper and still made the turn,” De la Houssaye said. “We literally changed the brake marker from the 3 to the 2 post by just adding aero.”
Dayton de la Houssaye leading a pack of cars on the track at Pitt Race in his ND Miata with Verus aero.
De la Houssaye, 23, competes in both the NASA TTE class and OPTIMA Ultimate Street Car Association events. He won the only two OPTIMA events he plans to compete in this season. He has a NASA event upcoming this summer at Barber Motorsports Park, but the focus is on the NASA Championships later this year at Sebring.
“My main goal is to go to NASA nationals and win the TT3 Class,” De la Houssaye said. “I’m very excited for that one. It’s nationals, so it’s all regions. That’s as competitive as it gets.”