continued from above
Looking at close-up shots of the tires under load it appears we were a bit low on tire pressures, even for this lot. I was guessing and ran 36 psi front, 32 psi rear. I should have been closer to 40 psi from the carcass deformation seen above. This new set-up might need some additional spring rate as well. A real test day with a box full of springs is probably needed.
In-Car Videos + More Race Analysis
The weather was
perfect with temps in the 70's to high 80s, breezy and cloudless. We worked 2nd heat and ran 3rd (last heat), so we had the cleanest course of all heats - but it was still pretty dirty. Amy and I both ran in ESP class and alternated driving every 2 runs. She took a rider on her first run and I forgot and left the shocks at full soft, so it was 3 sec slower than her best run. I also noticed that the
LF tire had corded on the outer edge by the time she came in after that run, not good. Oh well, we would just have to know it would be pushy and have less grip in right turns - luckily there was only really one big right-hander.
Left: Video of Terry's Run 2 (ESP winning time). Right: Video of Amy's 4th run (2nd in ESP)
So the video from our best runs are linked above. Amy is a bit less aggressive on the throttle but is amazingly smooth (as she always is) and managed to get a 42.2 sec run. That's pretty good considering she was doped up on the same medications that
I am now on, since she had this same cold/sinus/whatever thing that day (I started symptoms that night). So, kudos to her for driving well with a splitting headache and coughing fits. My 1st run was a 41.5, my 2nd run (my fastest - fail!) was a 41.0, and I ran 41.1 on 3rd, and a 41.0+1 on my last run. I edited and uploaded
video from my 3rd run because the first sector (our region like many others has sector timers) was 0.5 sec quicker than my best run. I had a huge mistake going into the last 2 corners that blew the run - and still almost matched my best time. Combining my best sectors gives me a theoretical 40.6, which would have been 5th in PAX instead of 8th. Meh. I was consistent (running within the same 5 tenths on all 4 runs) but not exactly "Blisteringly Fast".
Watching all 5 of my runs (my 1st look at the course I stopped for a downed cone + errant course worker) I am making lots of mistakes, and mostly driving the car like its still on street tires. I'm not pushing hard enough in slaloms and corners, and I'm tentative on the throttle (paranoid). There's also a front end push in steady state corners that needs to be dialed out (testing/spring rates/square tire set-up?) as well. All of the rear traction issues seem to be completely gone/hidden with 305mm Hoosiers, which wasn't much of a surprise either. The old "R compound crutch"?
Yes, we enjoyed running in ESP but we're going to keep the car legal for running car in
both STX and ESP for a bit longer, and keep working on rear traction improvements (which will be more evident on street tires). I will resist the temptation to add ESP-only mods for now, like the Boss302 intake manifold. Yes,
it needs more power if we stay in ESP, as there there were almost no traction issues on this 2nd gear course, even with these old R compounds.
After leaving the event our trailer had a blowout on a busy tollway that took out the fender and some aluminum paneling, which kinda sucked. And the trailer had no spare so we made some hasty road-side repairs to remove the bad wheel and limped on 3 wheels to a parking lot of a tire store a few miles away. Stupid not to have a spare or the proper tools to do a trailer tire extraction quickly - mistakes that were all mine. We got there right at 5 pm (closing time) on Sunday, so the only open tire store around had nothing in stock and no way to get the right tire until the next day. This all made for an interesting evening, but we managed to get unhooked and still made our dinner plans (a bit late). On Monday morning returned to the trailer with a pair of new BFG Commercial T/A E-rated truck tires. Now I'm searching for nicer aluminum 16" wheels to replace all 4 steelies with (and turn 2 into spares). Never a dull moment.
Next Up?
There are two big competition events we plan on attending in this car in April: The Mineral Wells (TX) Pro Solo April 20-22 and the TWS NASA weekend April 28-29. We have a 2nd trunk that just arrived so we'll make an ESP legal rear spoiler for that. Eventually we want to make wing uprights for this trunk to mount the GTC300 wing for use in NASA TTS, but I don't know if we'll have time before TWS. I'm having a coughing and sneezing fit so I'm going to stop now before I choke to death at my desk.
Medic!
More soon,