:. Racing .:. 2005/05/15 - Time Trials #1
Results: HERE
Bump!
At long last, after 2 years of watching the Time trialers have fun, I finally got the chance to do my first competitive track racing. This is the kind of thing I bought the Radical to do, so it was a great thing to finally get there!
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The week leading up to the event was hectic as heck. I discovered a dying Facet (square) fuel pump and replaced it with my backup soda-can style one, after frantic tests to figure out which component was causing the odd behavior. (Thanks go to Ted Arken on this one!) Thursday night, I discovered that the rod which retains *both* rear toe-links on the car had snapped, so I had to find suitable replacements Friday morning. By Friday at 9:00 AM, I had everything in order, and my heartrate returned to normal. To top it off, Friday night brought plenty of gastric jitter from nervousness, so at least I wasn't going to go into the weekend overburdened with sleep. Good thing I packed Immodium in the trailer!
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Changes I made *not* at the car's behest were to put the springrates at 300/350, since I wasn't sure if the 250/350 combo I had left it with from IMI would keep the front off the ground at the higher speeds I'd be running. At least it's a baseline that Radical uses, I'm curious to try some higher rates for road race driving later in the season. Ride heights were set at 2.0/2.5" (optimistically, as it turns out), and camber at the 1.5/0.5 I measured from earlier tire temp testing. A reasonable baseline to work from.
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Saturday was the F&C school, as well as some track time. I've never been to the Mead track, (In-Car Video) so it was good to see what it was all about before having to race too much. It proved tough to get any clean laps in, as the production cars really are just moving pylons, especially all of the Spec Miatas out there. Most exciting moment of the day was a spin by Jeff in turn 3 as I was following behind - took some creative braking to make sure we didn't hit eachother. As Jeff put it - "The fronts wrote a check the rears couldn't cash!"
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I did dodge a bullet when one of my fuel lines came loose in practice (just after Jeff spun, come to that), and spewed most of the 8 gallon tank out behind it after dying. I'm glad I re-routed all the lines to the side of the car away from the header when I re-did the fuel system. After reconnecting and refilling, the car ran perfectly. In fact, with the various jetting changes I've futzed with, the car now seems to have no running vices at all - maybe I can just leave that aspect alone for a while? Maybe then I can finally forgive Hasty for turning a perfectly good Fuel Injected motor into a Carbureted nightmare! 
The Mead/CDR track is an extremely fun layout, [ Map (Adobe PDF) ] with a huge amount of elevation change, but the bumps certainly hurt the fun-factor, especially as I'm still dealing with very stiffly valved shocks. The most fun (read: scary) turns are turn 3, which is the blind righthander under the bridge at the end of the front straight, and turns 7/8, nicknamed the "Dragon Slide", which bring you wayyyy down back to the track's base level and point you straight into a marsh if you miss your braking. By the end of Sunday, I was taking this nearly flat out after being slowed slightly by the cone-chicane placed at the end of the straight. On all the track, I found myself driving around the worst of the bumps, and it was ultimately a little quicker. Quickest time for the Saturday was a 1:10.35 on the Stack.
Sunday came soon enough, with an even better day than Sunday - probably 75* and sunny. The basic layout for Time Trials is 50-mph limited parade laps in the morning to learn the track. After that, the cars are given 2 flying qualifying laps to set the run order, so as to help separate the fast guys (the B-Mod sportsracer crowd) from the slower guys. Lastly, the competition session is 30-40 minutes in which your goal is to set the fastest single lap time you can, with controlled passing zones down the straights.
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There were four of us in DSR's (Class: B-Mod), including me, Jeff & Evan, and Roger Shaltry in Al Stone's old car.
For Qualifying, finally given some clean laps, I pushed the car very hard (or so I thought), and set a 1:09.0 qualy time, which I was very happy with. I had raised the car 2 turns on each adjuster to try and help the splitter survive, as the bumps were really grinding things down at the end of the fast straight.
As it turns out, Jeff's son Evan set a 1:08.4 qualy, so I was second on grid. Jeff was somewhat further back with a 1:11.xx time, and Roger, taking his first few laps on some old Avons, was in the 1:15 range.
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As with Saturday, it appeared the car still has a basic understeering behavior. Turns 5, 6, and 9 (leading onto the straight) are still excercises in patience, as the fronts run out of grip long before the rears do. Only complete abuse of the throttle will get the rear of the car to rotate at all. It seems like right now the car's handling is curious enough that I'm having to drive like a complete newb - jerk the wheel, mash the throttle - to get it to turn, but right now that's giving quicker laptimes than being smooth. *shrug* On one hand, it's nice, since it's making learning the limits of the car quite safe, but it's frustrating to have to try and nurse the car through a corner, or jerk it a bit to help it rotate and get turned so I can get back on the power. From trying to follow Jeff's lines on Saturday, and noting Evan's lines through the turns Sunday, my car is definitely slower through the corners than their Cheetah. If it weren't for my marked horsepower advantage (even moreso with the sprocket change), I'm not sure I'd be within even a second of Evan's times.
Anyway, based on our qualy times, I was second out on track after Evan, and our run group consisted of about 15 cars. We were given 2 warmup laps, then the green flag flew, and so did that familiar aggression...
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I spent the first four laps treating things effectively like I would a race - doing my damndest to catch Evan up ahead of me. No dice there - we ran into traffic long before I caught up. We then alternated between fast laps and very slow - idling along until a car caught up from behind, and we'd get another complete lap in. Each of us came in a few times to try and wait for traffic to pass, and get a few more clean laps in. After feeling an odd vibration at high speeds, and a strange sound, I parked the car after 30 minutes of the 40 minute session. I saw Evan in the pits a fair amount - it seems the car was popping out of gear with the air shifter.
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In the end, my best time was a 1:07.9, and Evan did a 1:07.3, so we remained about 0.6 seconds apart. In comparing our top 5 times, it seems I'm consistently about that margin behind him. Jeff improved his effort to a 1:10, but says he is still getting up to speed/belief in the car. Plus, having to drive in the second group due to being a co-driver, he was severly hampered in trying to get clean laps. Either way, we're planning some test days together to figure out how on earth we're going to catch the youngster!
So, en toto, it was a fantastic weekend! Great fun, lots of track time, and the car went back on the trailer mostly unharmed (the splitter is lunch - with our bumpy tracks, I *really* need that crushbox/splitter from Phil!). It appears at high speed the splitter was fluttering a bit, so perhaps I didn't have it mounted with enough rivets, or perhaps it was just getting too close to the ground. I also discovered that the front wheels have a clearance problem - apparently the "matte" finish Kodiaks I have fit differently from the polished ones, as they were rubbing slightly on the calipers...eek. I'll investigate that later. Suspension-wise, I'm still going to see if there's any way to tune the understeer out of this car that has been so frustrating thus far.
But these are all just small detail problems, overall, here's a list of all the things I was worried about that went right:
- transponder worked correctly
- worrisome high oil temps at IMI were not realized at higher speeds
- 300/350 springs worked adequately to keep the car basically safe
- The newish fronts and oldish rear tires didn't cause a super-bad imbalance
- All of the fuel delivery issues were OK
- Carb jetting was OK
- Using the new arm restraints wasn't a problem
- The rear toe-links stood up just fine, and had no bolt issues at all
- No Fires! <*grin*>
In summary, I got to race, was faster than I thought I would be, and went home without any overheating, brake, tire, chain, or engine issues of any kind. Now that is good racing! Welcome to competitive road course racing, Jake!
NEW CHANGES:
- 300/350 springs
- Other fiddlements & settings...
Media:
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