Project Update for April 3, 2012: Forgive me if this post is a bit incoherent today - I'm on several medications trying to shake a cold or sinus infection and can barely see straight, plus the tornado sirens are going off constantly (insane storms in Dallas/Ft Worth today). Amy and I ran a Texas Region SCCA autocross last weekend in the Mustang in ESP class. You can read more about the results and our impressions below.
TMS Bus Lot was the site for this past weekend's autocross, which is a sealed asphalt lot very similar to Heartland Park. This is the slipperiest lot in all of Dallas/Ft Worth and on top of that there is now highway construction nearby with a 3' tall berm of soil at the southern edge of the lot (behind a concrete barrier that you do NOT want to hit). Add in the heavy rains north Texas has seen of late, washing dirt onto the racing surface, and we had a dirt covered slippery parking lot. You can see the plumes of dirt in the pictures above and we all felt it on about half the surface all day.
STX Class Results
Even though Amy and I ran in ESP, we still watched STX closely since they ran in the same heat as we did, with a large, healthy class that day. You can see the class results cropped out of the total results sheet above and they were quick. Maybe the unusually dirty surface explains the times they ran that day? Cars on treaded tires seemed to do unusually well in the
PAX standings (2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, and 10th), but the STX crew drove their butts off too. Brad Maxcy was about .8 sec back from my 2nd time for most of the day, but he dropped a lot on his 4th run and got within a tenth of my ESP time - yikes! Ledbetter was also in the same second in his STX car in 2nd. AST/Vorshlag equipped cars were also well represented in PAX results, with 1st-5th + 8th-9th of the top ten.
Sipe and his co-driver in the Texas Tour winning RX8 seemed to struggle on this surface, as did the 325is E30 (below). Maybe this was a good day for us to
not run STX, as we could have been pretty far down in the standings.
How's it Feel to Have Hoosiers??
The Mustang on R compounds was A-MAZ-ING! I cannot describe how much more fun and how much EASIER it was to drive this car on sticky race tires, even on this dirty, slick parking lot. It hooked up in 1st at the launch, it was hooked up coming out of corners, it turned and slalomed like it was on rails. And yes....
"Duh!", right? Everyone has been telling me to try ESP in this thing from Day 1, and I have to admit - once you have that R compound needle in the vein, its hard to stop.
Kids... Don't do drugs!
We were lazy and left the crappy old Hoosier 275/35/18 A6 fronts and 305/30/18 A3 rears on the 18x10s, replacing the one corded 275 with the last A6 I had left. The A6s were only 2 years old but the A3s were 7 years old, so I wasn't expecting to see miracles. But even so... the car was still pretty quick, PAXed 8th, and compared well relative to other cars on R compounds that day that had solid drivers/well prepped cars, such as: ASP, BSP, CSP and SS (see my class mash-up, below).
So my best run straight timed the quick SS and CSP drivers, but trailed the ASP and BSP winners, which wasn't a huge surprise. I've seen 1-2 seconds gained on the same day just going from 1 year old tires to fresh sticker tires, so how many seconds in bench raced results are 7 year old tires worth?
Bench racing is fun and all, but next time we'll have the sticker 315s on the car. Next time is the Mineral Wells Pro Solo, where Madderash and Todd Farris are driving the 7 time Nationals winning ESP Firebired. That should be a better gauge for how competitive (or not) this STX car is on R compounds.
more below...
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