Sunday morning started very early due to a mandatory quite time of 10-12pm at this track. So the first cars were out at 8am with our race group scheduled for 8:20. This session would be qualifying, with the grid based on yesterday's best race lap. I was making some other updates including switching out my ACD unit and last track of time. I made it to grid in time, and the session was hot! I quickly discovered I missed a few things:
1) There was something rolling around in the car (later found a 10mm socket)
2) I didn't torque my wheels - only as tight as my rechargeable drill got them
3) I neglected to plug in my ACD after the switch
4) I neglected to put up my driver's side window net!
Apart from all the above, I just ran like 2 laps quickly and safely and came in. I managed a 1:41.5 which was slightly better than my qual time from Sat while still taking it pretty easy. I weighed 3266 I believe; having made 0 changes to weight since yesterday's race when I was claiming 3244. Meaning I was probably 4-5 laps to the good after Sat's race but I was also coasting into the corners to work with the higher than normal oil temps.
I checked over the car and realized my passenger rear that was previously showing some spots of cord decided to let go and wasn't really safe to run for a race. Maybe I could have flipped it and run it for a short session but that's not the safest to do. So it was time to switch to my other set of even more HC'd 245 Hoosier R6's and change forms. With a huge gap, there was plenty of time to take care of that and pull all the ballast I had put in the previous day.
The forecast for Sunday's race would be about the same. Right around 90 and solid sun. After happy to literally survive and finish on Sat, I was determined to push everything today and see how it turned out. I started in the same spot; 9th out of 12 in the first wave. After watching my vid, I was again not aggressive enough getting in line for the start. I held with all the leaders for 2-3 laps this time and settled into a pace of 1:42x (compared to 1:45-46 Saturday). The car slided a lot more but also rotated better, probably due to the combination of having less tire and less weight. Around lap 10 the brake pedal started getting longer, so I backed my pace down and did some LFB prior to the bigger braking zones just to make sure everything would be there. This slowed my pace enough that the CMC cars were difficult to get around (see pics above) as I didn't trust the brakes nearly enough to stick my nose down to the inside. And I definitely learned the CMC guys cornering speeds sucks on those Toyo's! Next time I'll know that my car can stick much better in the turns and make the pass more aggressively, so all good information.
This race was scheduled for 25min, so I knew it'd be less than the 17 laps from yesterday. There were a few local yellows again, but nothing to slow us down. There was more attrition than Sat with a few cars pulling off full of smoke; 1 catching the ground on fire nicely. I believe 14 laps was the total. The Evo pulled through with flying colors in this race; just the pads wearing down about 3/4 of the way through but that wasn't unexpected given the width I started with and only having 2" ducting still.
I was called in for weight as I finished 3rd of 4th and made weight easily. So I got my first podium in a Sprint race. But there's work to do and it's time to get serious! I pulled off the passenger side from tire to do a little TLC to the fenderwell and found an issue:
Overall my mind was racing with data. While I had oil temps on Sat just over 280 and I babied the rpm's, I pushed it hard on Sun and it never really went higher. I was also able to run 4 seconds faster consistently on even worse tires which was also a good sign. With the old saying that new tires are worth 2 seconds; I'd been knocking out 1:40's on better tread which is what most of the class had listed for their fastest lap actually. Keep in mind; I'm running 1 class higher that my setup too! So there's a lot of positives and a lot of small changes I can take away from the weekend. Which honestly was the entire plan from the beginning.
I've gotta thx Buschur Racing for a quality tune that was put through it's paces all weekend. It's been great this year so far! Also thanks to AMSOIL, KNS Brakes & ACD Tuning.
No comments:
Post a Comment