;I’m pleased to write that the VIR test day came off without a hitch. The car ran beautifully all day. Water temps pegged on 180F, oil pressure 75psi, and oil temps right at 210F. In short, we're pleased.
We arrived at VIR Friday around 7am to get unloaded. After a quick driver’s meeting we learned we were in group four for a 10am start. Since we had spent so much time preparing to run the car we didn’t have anything to do but wait, which of course built up a fair amount of anticipation and nervousness. I hadn’t driven an ITS car in about a year so I was apprehensive of climbing in and hitting the track.
However, I was very pleasantly surprised that within half a lap I felt right at home in the car. I ran the entire thirty minute session and gradually pushed the car a little bit more each lap, eventually finishing up the session with some 2:24s or thereabouts. My first impressions were that the car was very stable, much more stable than my Z and the Lola. It turned, went where you pointed it, and braking was flat out awesome. It did pull a bit on braking but otherwise it was all good and a solid car. Steering effort was damn high due to the huge amount of caster in the suspension, something we should have picked up on earlier, but there wasn’t anything we could do the alleviate that problem. Balance was so-so with respect to oversteer/understeer, but as I wasn’t pushing it a huge amount I wasn’t getting very much data for those handling characteristics.
Once I was back in the pits I conveyed as much info as I could to Jeff G and we made a few adjustments for session two, a change in camber and a bit of a change in toe. We bled the brakes, checked fluids, and we were ready for session two.
During session two I was able to push the car harder and get more of a feel for how it would drive under race conditions. Braking deeper into corners, holding down the throttle more in T1 through T5 and pushing more in the uphill esses. I tried to hang with a couple of the fast ITS Integras out in the test session but no dice there. They had more top end power and were handling and driving better, but it was entertaining to try and chase them. The front end did have a tendency to wash out when pushed, but I attributed part of the problem to the tires that were getting too hot unevenly across the surface and ending up with pressures around 41 psi – clearly we need to start with lower tire pressures and make some suspension adjustments. I ended the session with a 2:20.4 and a 2:21.0 as my best laps. Being as how this was Test Day #1 with Mustang v1.0 I was pretty pleased with it. Back to the pits and a change to ride height, toe adjustment, bar, and camber and we were ready for more action.
For session three I decided to only drive three laps and then convinced Jeff G to get in and take the wheel for the remainder of the session. The session went well and back in the pits we compared notes. Jeff G had a very different impression of the car – he felt the steering effort was too high to be drivable, the front end understeered too much, and the car felt too heavy to drive well. Basically, two sides of the same coin and I think he was pretty disappointed in the way it felt. Now, there is a difference in perspective – I’m comparing everything to a Z car whereas he’s comparing it to a perfectly setup Miata that he owned and raced for years. He wants the car to feel light, precise, and razor sharp, whereas I’m just happy if it brakes without shaking the car to pieces, runs well, and makes it around track without a failure. Clearly, he has the right vision and is where we want to be, but that might be an unobtainable goal.
So, by session four it was late afternoon and Jeff Young had finally arrived at the track. We decided to give him a session in the car to see what he thought about it. He got no forewarning about our experiences as we wanted him to be unbiased about the experience. Mr. Young belted in and off he went for the session. He stayed out the entire time and from what we could tell he was pushing the car hard straight out of the gate in typical Mr. Young fashion. We clocked him at a string of 22s and 21s, then a few 2:20s back to back. Once back in the pits his verdict was “Great, very racable, needs more power but it’s ready to go!” I’ll let him chime in on the thread about the car but his impression was favorable, maybe not as favorable as my rose tinted analysis but not as pessimistic as Jeff G’s. Also, Jeff Y is going to like it better than Jeff G since the Mustang is far more TR8-like than it is Miata-like.
So there you have it. The day was very successful in my opinion and we learned a lot about where we are, and, more importantly we’ve learned a lot about where we want to be. We know what aspects of the suspension we want to change and develop, and we’re planning to apply those changes to Jeff G’s Mustang that will debut at CMP on Memorial Day. Therefore, we didn’t stick around to race the car today and tomorrow. We had our data, we knew we had a somewhat competitive and racable car, but we also knew we had a lot of work to do to both cars if we wanted to have a chance of making the CMP Monster Memorial. So we packed up Sleestack Lightning and rolled back to the lair.
Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be working hard on all fronts – suspension, setup, engine tuning, and exhaust. We feel the car has very strong S potential and had we had another 20 hp this weekend we would have undoubtedly turned some competitive ITS times. And I don’t estimate that the 20hp will be hard to obtain given the extremely conservative ECU tuning we’re running now and the unexploited power we have in the ECU. We also feel we know pretty well what we need to do with the suspension to improve turn in, reduce steering effort, and improve the balance of the car.
I have Traqmate data for sessions but the damn video portion only worked on Jeff’s session, and, it is out of synch for some reason. If I can get the video/Tmate to line up I’ll upload the data later today or tomorrow. If I can’t get the Tmate data to synch I’ll just upload a few laps of Mr Young’s drive in the car.
PS-Ron, thanks for the call and the tips with the panhard.
. Keep us informed as to how they run.
But good luck keeping it from the ITAC!!! LOL>
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