April 9th FW SCCA SOLO II

[mavisky]

More to come later on, event didn't go so hot for me as there wasn't all the acceleration zones were short or severely curved and offcamber. I'll leave you with this pic for now.

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[ldstang50]

Kyle I like you car, are those Rota Torque Wheels? She looks good let us know how you did

 

[mavisky]

Saturday - 6:30am

I haven't been up this early in months. My brain's barely working, but it's raceday so I know once I fire the Talon up everything will start coming together. Unfortunately for me that includes leaving without my tire pressure guage or 13mm wrench for my boost controller.

Saturday - 7:30am

After a quick stop at the local Sunoco to top off on 94 octane I arrive at the race site. Already some of my competition for SMS has shown up and frankly this is going to be a very tough season for my car to stay competitive. Everyone has brought their A-game this time around. Subaru's make up the most dangerous group of drivers, but with my open diff a well modded srt4 can sneak up and bite me sometimes. Our course is all asphalt, a little bumpy in spots, but otherwise one of our best venues we run on. With the business still running on saturday though we have to forfeit some of our typical racing space to their parking needs so our course is more compacted than usual. *read not good for a high hp open diff fwd*

Saturday - 8:00am

Today is actually a part class / part practice session so we'll be spending the first half of the day learning about some of the aspects of running an autox such as timing and scoring and tech inspections. The other part of the class, that I'm looking forward to, is a roundtable discussion about suspension dynamics and adjustments. I've got a copy of a nice sheet they had layed out for us as to what the suspension is doing in what phase of each corner and the types of adjustments to your shock absorbers that would affect that area. Unfortunately this discussion seemed to favor guys in Super Stock with Corvettes or guys further up the ladder in EP or CP and so forth. Not alot of good info for us fwd guys, but I was able to confirm some things I thought which was good.

Saturday - 11:00am

I head over to my car to find that I've been passed tech and am otherwise ready to run, and according to my work assignment I'll be running in the first heat with the majority of my competition from SMS (street mod street tire - a street mod class on 140 or greater treadwear). Chris Smith is there in his engine swapped 2.5 rs subaru on AGX's, Camber/Caster plates, H&R springs, and 17" wheels with RE010's from his daily driver STI. His car's got a mean combination of lightweight, good hp, and a good driver. Todd James is there in his new to him '03 STi riding on a set of SSR 18" that I got for him through TireRack and he's one hell of a driver so it's always a threat.

We finally get our chance to walk the course and it looks like it should be an interesting one. A mix of tight turns with a big sweeper and a optional 3 cone slalom at the end that really turns into a straight away with a 1 cone slalom, this is my place to make up time.

Saturday - 1pm

After getting all of the other cars teched and on grid I strap in for my first hot lap. The car's ahead of me are putting down their first laps in the 42 range or so, proving just how short this course really is. The flagman waves me off and I let out the clutch at 3500. She spins a little but its expected. The first corners about 40 feet from the start and it's a right hander into a non-optional 3 cone slalom with it being the first of the cones. I go to the left of it trying to keep the passenger side rear tire from clipping it, flip back to left watching the second cone come by my window, and then set myself up for the third cone which I clear easily. The car's in 1st gear at about 6000rpm's so she's screaming, another hard left into the next corner and I'm setting myself up for a giant near 180 sweeper. I make the left turn, shift to second and start to feed the power on around this right handed sweeper.

While walking this corner I knew it'd be wise to try and double apex it so I could turn it into as much straight away as possible, but I didn't notice the small crest in the middle of the first apex. It's amazing what you don't notice from 6 feet, but do from 3 1/2. I crest the hill and the car pushes out wide causing me to lift to get it back on line. Once back on line to make the second apex I push her and let all 16psi out on my poor Falken's. She spins, but its accelerating very well. Now I'm approaching a huge braking zone. After the 180 degree sweeper is a very very tight 15mph right hand 180 again to reverse your direction. Oh I didn't mention that the last half of that sweeper was also off camber did I, this makes braking w/o abs very tricky since you're coming in from 50-55 down to 20-15 mph. Coming in fast I make a stab at the brakes and they're squishy. This was never a problem before but it is now as I can't feel lockup at all on the car. I must have some air trapped in them I think, but it's far too late to do anything about it now. I finally get it slowed enough to clear the corner and I'm back off into the second half of the course.

As I pull away in 1st gear again from that tight corner there's a wide 90 degree left hander where I change to 2nd and then down a short shoot to a right 45 and another tight 180 right. Through here I get the car back up to about 40mph or so and brake for the corner. Knowing that following this corner is another really tight 180 left I downshift to first through the corner using a little trail braking. Mid corner though I find that those small bumps I saw feel like train tracks with the AGX's at 1 front and 6 rear. The good news is that the stiff rear rotates around to help line me up for the second 180. Short blip of the throttle then brakes into and through the second 180. Wow, this thing looked tight walking it, but its honestly a 10mph corner. Clear that and I'm looking at what feels like the Mulsanne straight compared to the rest of the course.

I squeeze in the throttle in 1st til about 4500rpm and shift to second and pray that crappy Phantom Grip will actually do something. It does and I start to pull away with just a little tire noise. Approaching the 1 cone slalom I jerk the wheel hard left and then back right to clear the cone, hard on the brakes then through the finish line on one last tight 90 degree corner.

My time - 42.3 - I'm right there with the leaders knowing full well there's alot of mistakes made and more time to be found.

Over the course of the next 5 runs I whittle my times down to a best of 39.87 only 1 second off of the lead Subaru's time of 38.9.

That's it for driving today and I've been told that we'll be using the same course for the second day.

Here are a couple videos of some other cars running the second half of the course on Saturday.

Todd James, one of my main competitors in SMS. His video starts with him exiting the tight 180 after the large sweeper.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oOja7nOVUAE

Here's one of the A stock S2000's running the same section.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5Ap-QHPY-kA

and finally one of the Prepared c4 vettes.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CQSCyb9Q2lg

I'll be back tonight with a writeup of the actual timed event.

 

[mavisky]

Here are some other pictures taken by a local guy.

 

[Zero Bar]

Car looks good and looks like fun. Look at it this way, our lap times were down around 32 secs for our event as we had to share the lot with a motorcycle training school. 42 sec lap times aren't bad.

 

[Greg Collier]

The track layout was insane! What kind of speeds where you getting to in the left handed sweeper after the buttonhook? I’m assuming your start point was in the lower left hand corner of your aerial photo. You definitely learn how to drive running in those type of configurations.

Great write-up Kyle

 

[mavisky]

The track layout was insane! What kind of speeds where you getting to in the left handed sweeper after the buttonhook? I’m assuming your start point was in the lower left hand corner of your aerial photo. You definitely learn how to drive running in those type of configurations.

Great write-up Kyle

Shoulda specified, start was in the upper left corner, finish was lower left corner. Big sweeper was around 50-60mph depending on vehicle.

Tomorrow I'll be posting the track that they changed to on Sunday. That nice long straight that kept me in the hunt turned into a decreasing spacing 6 cone optional slalom WTF

 

[mavisky]

More pictures and some video footage of me running the event. Video has my times on it, I never got out of the 43's. In it you can see the 6 cone slalom they put at the end of our runs. You can also see just how bumpy it was through the last two 180 degree corners.


Big thanks to Woody at Jspeed.org for the footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um4Wxf6yurs

 

[mavisky]

Kyle I like you car, are those Rota Torque Wheels? She looks good let us know how you did

Wow missed this. Actually their old Enkei RF-1's custom painted bronze. Enkei only ever made them in silver and I just got bored with that.

You can see a reasonably updated list of all of my modifications on my web blog (which sorely needs updated) at http://mavisky.blogdrive.com or by clicking my webpage button.

 

[Black95TSIawd]

i cant see the vid of your car racing.

Good job nonethless and good luck the rest of the season.

 

[ldstang50]

ahhh, very well then. I like those wheels.
I like how stable your car looks from the vids. You have very little body roll and the car turns in nicely. What rear sway bar are you running?

 

[terefic181]

Nice write up Kyle!!!
What did you find, regarding your brakes?
Were you able to pick up some sponsorship for this year?

 

[diambo4life]

Looks great Kyle. Why did I assume your tires were Kumho Victoracers? Didn't even know Azenis had white badged tires.

Car looks great btw.

I need to get back to the course.

 

[mavisky]

Black95tsiawd - video was still rendering on youtube, should be viewable now no problem.

LDStang - thanks, I personally think the car needs a little more front and rear spring though. Rear sway bar is a suspension techniques bar on full stiff.

Terefic181 - Tom, I found a small amount of air in the front lines. Bled it out and they're much more stable now. I should have an answer on my first sponsor (graphics/vinyl/pinstriping company) by the end of this week.

diambo4life - Mike I custom lettered those tires. They don't make them that way. Me and another blue Subaru in town (scca director) will both have these white lettered Falken's by the end of next week though. Might have to get some pics of the two cars together once we both get our sponsorship decals on the cars. Both blue, both falken tired, me bronze wheels/him gunmetal gram lights.

 

[my_precious]

Hey mavisky,

I know this is an older thread but i have a question for ya. I live in Jackson MI and you live in FortWayne....only an hour seperate us. I'd love to come check out your car sometime and especially would love to see you drive it. Maybe I could come check your mad skillz at the next autocross event?

 

[mavisky]

You're more than welcome to. I usually post all of my upcoming events on my myspace page along with the vehicles build / racing blog that I also post on to my other website.

www.myspace.com/mavisky - for blog / personal info / upcoming events

http://mavisky.blogdrive.com - blog / current mod list for the talon

I've got two events in June an autox on the 11th, but even more impressive will be the Winged Warrior II event on June 3rd.

www.wingedwarrior.net for more information on that event.