Cal Speedway

[moosetestbestanden]

NASA's running their 1 event of the year at the California Speedway Easter weekend. Stokes and I will be there per normal. It's the highest speed track of the year. Fun to drive or just watch. C'mon out - event runs Friday and Saturday, not Easter Sunday.

[slomove]

I am out of town. I suspect my first track event will be the one at BW end of April.

[Jon Stokes]

Jon Stokes

NASA's running their 1 event of the year at the California Speedway Easter weekend. Stokes and I will be there per normal. It's the highest speed track of the year. Fun to drive or just watch. C'mon out - event runs Friday and Saturday, not Easter Sunday.

You got that right! I will be ready to give it my best. My car was very fast at willow, I didn't break my own record but came with in .5 seconds of it with all the changes the car has I guess this was a good run. got to get used to the new trans down shifting with rev matching. I got too hound a radical v8 and finaly pass him in traffic. so much fun it was a fantastic weekend with great weather on of willows fines weekends. Jon

[sdcat]

I was planning on going to Willow Springs that Friday, but may join you guys Friday if HDPE doesn't sell out. The registration says that HDPE pre-registration is for 2 days only, and I have to work Saturday. It's tempting to register for both days and just show up Friday, although I'd have to pay for both.

Justin

[moosetestbestanden]

HPDE 3 is sold out already, which usually happens at this track.

[moosetestbestanden]

I am so jonesing for warm weather and a track day. Furlough starts a week from today. Cmon out Magnus, there's sure to be parts for sale.:D

[moosetestbestanden]

The event went pretty well. Jon took 7 seconds off of his time from last year then broke a wheel bearing in session 3 on Friday and didn't have a spare handy so he rented a 'Norma' (I think that's its name) which is very similar to a Radical. He spent the rest of the weekend in that hot seat. I believe he'll be going over to the downforce race car darkside pretty soon.

I got into the high 1:54s on Friday session 3 in perfect weather, on slicks, which was encouraging enough. On Saturday in session two the car was sliding around a lot so after I had a look at the tires and noticed the right rear was down to cord in places and fraying in others :-O. Not a happy prospect, blowing a rear on the oval so I got 2 Goodyears from Jon and ran the Avons on the front. This was amusing, inducing major but very predictable understeer, and through the infield the stickier rubber meant that I could go much faster than before. Unfortunately, Saturday was also waaay windy through turn 2 (the tri-oval) and front straight. The MaxQData charts showed that I was down about 17 mph from Friday (133 against 116) down the straight due to this. Which sucked because even with the wind I was able to shave 3 tenths from Friday's best time. I reckon I was losing several seconds due to the wind and those seconds would have made me competitive (if not a medal winner) in TTU, where I have finally been slotted. Fontana, w/ about 1/2 of the track being a WFO straight/curve isn't exactly a Caterham friendly track to begin with and the headwind made it much worse.

There was a crew of guys from Bakersfield there at the behest of NASA w/ a mobile Dynojet dyno ($85.00 for 3 pulls, they'll be at Buttonwillow) so I finally got the car dyno'ed. Suffice it to say that I have a lot less horsepower than I was led to believe, which is both bad news and good news; the bad news being that I don't have that much power, the good news being that I can still get pretty competitive times w/ what I've got. So I'm looking forward to Buttonwillow where handling is more of a factor than pure grunt.

It's a lot of fun, that track, especially coming off of the oval at 130+ mph and braking for a 45 mph left-right turns 3 & 4. Big big grins when one gets it right and the reward of eating back lost time to high hp full body cars in the braking zone is really cool. I just chewed em up in the infield. :D

Edit: thanks for coming out to say hello Steve. Looking forward to seeing you at Buttonwillow!

[Doug Liedblad]

So how much power did the dyno show?

Keep in mind that chassis dynos are only 'approximate' HP, subject to many variables.

Doug

[Elv15]

Dyno

Chris,

Since we are running similar engines, I'm *very* curious to hear what your car did on the dyno.

Another caveat is that dyno numbers can vary greatly from dyno to dyno. Inquiring minds still want to know... ;)

Tom

[moosetestbestanden]

The dyno said.... wait....

I'm not sure I want the public (or anybody else hereabouts) looking up my skirt:D just now. I think I'll keep it private until the Buttonwillow weekend. More fun that way.:)

I know that numbers will vary from dyno to dyno and even day to day. The goal of the dyno session was to get a number to provide to the NASA TT director in order to get classified, not to do any re-mapping or tweaking. And the curve was beautiful, arcing up unbroken in a constantly rising arc to max rpm. Kudos to SBD sez I - I've always felt their mapping was excellent and now I have actual visual proof. After looking at the result I didn't think tweaking would gain much. Remember also that I just changed engines. The current one feels little different than the original, perhaps a little down on power, maybe.

The result is that I've been put in TTU - unlimited - and my competition are 500 hp C6 Corvette race cars, 450+ hp Evos and the like. My times were off of podium level at Fontana by about 3 seconds (although could have been *much*closer w/out the Saturday wind, for sure) and 4 to the winner, which didn't surprise me at all. The aerodynamic, um, capabilities of the 7 are well known and about 1/2 of the lap is WFO, more or less straight line top speed action.

[moosetestbestanden]

This pic is worth a thousand words in illustrating the understeer I was dealing with. Compare the fronts and rears in terms of slip angle; The rears are really working while the fronts just aren't. This is a result of using different compounds (and brands!:-O) by and large - w/ matched tires this plowing doesn't happen. It was actually pretty cool, if not ultimately fast. W/ matched tires I think more time would have come to hand.