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Check out the outside rear tire - looks like a lot of deformation, but remember: this is a 315mm tire stretched onto a 12" wheel
Overall the car was working pretty well and it was fairly easy to drive. The picture above (Brandon shot some great ones!) shows the car loaded up exiting Turn 16. The outside front tire still has a tick of negative camber with the car fully loaded up, which is what you want. Body roll is within the range we can accept, which with only 600# front springs and a 3800 pound car as raced, is remarkable. There still seemed to be a high speed push, which we feel is completely aero based. The rear APR wing is making far more downforce at speed than the front factory Boss302 Leguna Seca ABS plastic splitter. This was very apparent when taking Turn 8 deep into 5th gear (124-125 mph at corner entry, according to data) and after braking into Turn 1 (with peak speeds of 140-141 mph). Throughout the weekend I was edging up my courage and taking Turn 8 at Wide Open Throttle, then braking significantly for Turn 9 and downshifting mid-corner. Watch my Sunday lap video (in the section lap below) and you can see that it is understeering significantly when cornering at high speeds, as well as real time track speed pulled from the data logger.
NASA's Full Race Results: http://timingscoring.drivenasa.com/N.../4%20NOLA_May/
I believe on Saturday I took a total of 5 hot laps, two of which were screwed up from me over-driving and one of which was salvageable. Having only the one track session on Friday in dry conditions, I guess I was still learning he track, but by day's end I wasn't improving much. Some of that was the increasing heat of the day fighting against the "it gets hot QUICKLY!" A6 tire compound. I was also feeling the effects from an evening in New Orleans that morning, but was feeling much better after a late lunch.
Left: Mike Patterson had the set-up nailed in his AI Camaro. Right: Mike Weathers' TT1 C6 Corvette was the fastest TT car all weekend
American Iron and CMC had some good battles, other than Mike Patterson dominating the entire field all weekend. He won 3 of 4 AI races and often put a straight-away long gap to 2nd place. He lost a tire in the first lap of Race 4 and had to watch from the sidelines, otherwise I suspect he would have made a clean sweep. Mike's car posted the fastest AI time of the weekend, with a best lap of 1:57.151. Sometimes Mike will pop over to the TT grid and run with us, but he was too busy that weekend, working as a Race Director for another race group. Mike Weathers put the hurt on the TT field with a 1:48.747 on Saturday and then low 1:49s on Sunday. He and I had fun sparring together, at least on my first lap when he was warming up his tires. By hot lap 2 he was usually leaving me behind at a rapid clip.
Saturday night after racing was done we stuck around for the traditional NASA Saturday night party, which from what we've seen at NASA Texas events is not to be missed. And this was in New Orleans, so we hoped for some good eats... and we were not disappointed! The party was held in the Events Center (above left), located 100 feet from our paddock spot. Food was amazing, as expected - seafood gumbo and some of the best jambalaya I've ever eaten - and I've eaten this a lot. When it comes to food, NOLA Motorsports Park doesn't mess around! The NASA Mid-South Region and the NOLA folks also had some "awards" for the various class winners - a medal in the shape of a Fleur-de-lis plus a gift card for $50, that we can use at the NOLA Cafe or NOLA Kart Track. Pretty cool, and the 2 free Hoosier tires for the TT3 win were also much appreciated.
The win on Saturday was with a 1.8 second margin, which was unexpected, especially with TT3 being largest in the TT class. John Roberts was catching up rapidly in his TT3 classed LS1 V8 Miata, and he kept switching tires in nearly every TT session on Saturday, which was messing with my head, heh! He started the day on NT-01s, then switched to Hoosier R6s and at the end of the day he had slapped on Hoosier A6s, like mine. I guess he had 3 sets of wheels - not a bad idea. He was dropping loads of time with each tire change and I had no idea if my time from the first TT session would hold up, so I went out in the last TT session to put in some laps - but went slower due to some driver mistakes and added track heat. The day started out in the 50s and windy, but ended up in the mid 70s and sunny. Beautiful weather really, especially when compared to Friday.
After the Saturday night NASA party and dinner we were all pretty tired and after a few beers back at the Vorshlag trailer we called it an early night and hit the hotel. My worries for Sunday ate at me all night - I'd only have one TT session to get in a good lap, as Amy was to drive TT sessions 2, 3 and 4. What if Roberts kept the A6 tires on all day and kept dropping lots of time? This could be a very short lived TT3 track record if he went faster, and/or if I screwed up my one allotted TT session on Sunday.
Sunday May 5th - TT Race 2
Left: Ryan and I washed the Mustang Friday. Right: He also made a swaybar change on Mark's car for Sunday's Mirrorkhana autocross
So Sunday began early once again, but this time at least I wasn't hung over, so that was a huge plus. I was scheduled to go out in the Mustang in the very first TT session then hand over the keys to Amy for the rest of the day. She wanted some track time to make up for the missed Sunday TT session I was taking, so she was going to head out with the TT3/4 folks right after I ran. We added some fuel and I got to grid early, parking next to Mike Weathers' TT1 Corvette once again. Damn that LSx motor sounds GOOD at idle... you can hear that monster idling at the start of my two in-car videos, and it isn't the stock 5.0L V8 in my car, ha! Our A6s were still fresh but wearing quickly, and I wanted to leave plenty of tire left for Amy, so I told her and the guys
I would only take ONE LAP. To keep from overheating the tires on the out lap I also did no scrubbing of the tires (rapid slalom motions) on the warm up lap, and just put-putted along, with just some warming of the brakes. I wanted the A6s nice and cool when my hot lap started. We get the green flag at Turn 13 on our warm up lap, and that's when I laid into it and actually nailed the Turn 13-16 complex correctly on the warm up lap. I was catching up to Mike's TT1 car coming onto the front straight so he let me by right as we took the start/finish on hot lap 1, as shown below...
The video above is my one and only TT hot lap on Sunday, and it was another 1/2 second quicker than my best on Saturday. Hot damn, that was rush! All of the stars were aligned and I didn't over-drive T13-T16 on the previous lap or my hot lap. The temperatures were the coolest of the day (59°F) and that always helps performance with the A6. Brandon was able to get the data from the AIM Solo meshed it to the on-board video this time, using the Dashware software we bought a while back (thanks for the tips, KenO!), but it brought the video quality down a tick in the process (we're working on that). Not much to show other than GPS speeds, a running lap timer clock and the track map. We're working on getting the lateral and fore-aft g readings shown on the next round of videos from a future track event.
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