Project Update for May 21st, 2014: So where were we? Ah, yes... April events and development work on the 2011 Mustang. First we ran an SCCA autocross in April on street tires - and all of our runs were during a downpour, so that was fun. There was an informal kart shoot-out we hosted the next week, then we created a new mount for a massive new (AJ Hartman) rear wing. Let's play catch up!
Texas Region SCCA Solo at TMS Bus Lot, April 13th, 2014
So there was a Texas Region SCCA event in April that we wanted to use for dry weather BFG Rival autocross testing with the new MCS coilovers. Amy and I co-drove in the 2011 Mustang on this rainy Sunday in April. We both ran in the first heat, in a steady rain that left little grip on for the BFG Rival 200 treadwear street tires. We both raced in the local "MAM" class (Modern American Muscle - a supplemental class to the new "CAM" Classic American Muscle class).
The club had 122 registered entrants, which was pretty dang good for a day everyone knew would have rain. We got there and it was still dry, unloaded the car and applied the
hastily made "MAM" class letters that I hand cut the night before. I had Olof mount the same set of 315/335mm BFG Rivals that we used at the USCA/Optima event weeks before. The tires still looked good but the rears were flipped and run inside mount, since I kind of mauled the outer tread blocks on the right rear in my 90+ laps on track at the USCA event.
We had 5 runs each and Amy took 4 of hers first, then I took a couple of runs, then she took her last, and then I took my final 3. The rain was pretty hard at the beginning of the 1st of 4 heats and we still had to run the wipers on our last runs in the heat. It rained even into heat 2, stopped raining finally sometime in heat 3 and by heat 4 it dried up completely and times dropped by 10 or more seconds.
I worked in the trailer in heat 2, announcing, and took lunch with 2nd place MAM finisher Jay Payson from HP Tuners. He was in town for business and rented a Penske Mustang GT, which he enjoyed running in MAM. Since we left the rain gear box at the shop I still goat soaking wet, while taking pictures of Amy while she drove in heat 1.
Just a sample of the results showing how slow MAM was running in the wet compared to CAM that ran in the dry
I ended up getting fast time in the 4 car MAM class with the rental Penske 5.0 Mustang in 2nd place and Amy in 3rd. The Penske car had fresh Goodyear 220 treadwear tires and Jay said it was remarkably easy to drive. He normally races an M5 in FStreet class but he said liked the Mustang a lot and we discussed the merits of an E92 M3 and an S550 2015 Mustang for F Street at lunch.
Normally I -love- racing in the rain but as usual, the conditions varried too much to compare with other classes/run groups. And at this particular event we were definitely at a disadvantage here, with too much power and tires with too much width. See, in the rain it actually
helps to have more pressure on the tires, just like in the snow, so you want a narrower tire with deep tread voids - which we definitely did not have on the well worn 315/335 Rivals. The new, deep tread, 255mm tires on the rental car were what you wanted in this instance, as strange as that sounds.
And Jay almost whipped me in a car he had never driven, so I felt lucky to come out ahead. Everyone else in the class ran their fastest run on their 5th and final attempt, except me. I was 3 tenths quicker on run 5 but stepped on a cone, so I had to settle with my 4th run. I had to drive on my best behavior in these conditions, which was driving me nuts, but I managed to "throttle" my normal tendency to over-drive and just did the rain dance. Tip-toeing on the gas and smoothing out my inputs as much as possible. We also ran a tick more tire pressure than normal, and dumped the compression damping on all 4 shocks to zero.
This was the slow in-car video from my 5th run. Its not very impressive, trust me.
The rain lessened all day and by the 4th heat we heard it was completely dry and times dropped dramatically, so the PAX results aren't very representative for everyone. Heck, the only group I'd want to compare any times with was the first heat, of which I think there was one car quicker than us in the 59.8 second range (STS winner JJ). It got progressively drier in heat 2 and 3 but by heat 4 it turned into a beautiful day and was fully a dry weather autocross. That would have been fun to make a few blasts around the course, but you run in the heat you are assigned. Oh well.
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