[6/2/2013] CSCS #1 (TMP)

Event: Canadian Sport Compact Series #1
Track: Toronto Motorsports Park, Cayuga
Weather Conditions: 21°C Overcast

My plan this year was to move up to Super Street AWD but Can-Jam Motorsports hasn't quite finished re-building my WRX yet. That wouldn't stop me from at least attending and trying to pick up some valuable points! They generously lent me one of their STI's for round 1. I picked the car up the evening before so I was pretty much going into this event with zero seat time behind an unfamiliar car.

Compared to my WRX last year this car was different in some ways but familiar in others. The main difference was a slightly bigger turbo and a JDM 6-speed. The suspension was similar being BC Racing but the spring rates were softer at the stock 8k/6k vs. my 10k/8k. I would run the R-compounds I bought for this season, 255/40/17 Hankook TD's. And to make things feel like home, we ported over my JDM Spec-C driver's seat with the Schroth 4-point harness and my rear triangle brace. This car also had 20mm/24mm swaybars vs. my 24mm/24mm front/rear.

Since I didn't have any car to shake down with in April/May, I had more butterflies than usual going into the first event. I kept tossing and turning in bed and ended up with only 1 hour of sleep. Terrible start for the morning. And on top of that my body was still a bit sore from an endurance karting event I raced in two days earlier. But I wouldn't let this ruin my day so I tried not to think about it too much. I was relying on adrenaline to fuel me through this event!

Open Lapping

Without any data available on the car and lots of traffic on the track it was very difficult to dial in a proper setup. This is why it's so important to do a shakedown on a less busy day. If you wait until the morning of an event it's too late. But we had to make do.

Morning Session

I ran with my StarSpec ZII's first just to get a feel for the car and to find the 6-speed gearing for each section. It had a lot more body roll than I was used to because of the softer springs but that didn't translate to less grip. The wider tires (255 vs. 235) and more aggressive alignment (-4° vs -3° camber) made the car feel very planted. I didn't have as many moments where the car wanted to slide out from underneath me.

As usual we had a disappointing time trying to tune the BC Racing dampers. I can't wait to get my car back and see what a real suspension can do!

Lap times with the StarSpec ZII's:
Session 1 - 1:26.95
Session 2 - 1:27.49

After getting a feel for the track conditions we put the Hankook TD's on. The plan for this session out was to just get them heated up and come in for a quick stop to check the pressures. Immediately going into T1 the car started to slide like I was driving on ice. So this is what R-comps feel like when cold? Scary as hell. But by T2 I had some minor grip and by lap 2 they were already starting to show better grip than the ZII's. After getting the tires set up it was time to start looking for a good lap time.

Issues Arise

As I started to put more and more laps down some problems were becoming apparent with the car. On the main straight in 5th gear, the power would intermittently break up around 5500-6000 RPM. And occasionally I had a very difficult time downshifting into 3rd gear, especially on the final hairpin leading to the main straight - the worst possible place to have this happen. Also the car started to leak radiant heat through the vents. With the windows up I was melting inside.

I brought the issues up with Can-Jam and they figured the power cutting issue could possibly be boost related (likely overboosting). It was a last minute tune so that was not surprising. They sent Sasha Anis out on the track to verify the issues and to see if they were fixable.

Pro Driver

I was fortunate to tag along with Sasha and took a mental note of the difference in his line. Riding with him was a similar experience to when I rode with Peter Hanson. Lots of actions per minute revolving around the steering and throttle inputs. Always testing the limits of grip by twitching around the steering wheel. During this session we only managed a few clean laps, producing a 1:23.95. But there was something clearly wrong with the car, not to mention 3rd gear popping out once. We pulled back into the pits to take a look at the AiM Solo data.

Issue Analysis

Booting up his laptop, Sasha compared the laps we just did with my best lap of the day which was a 1:21.17. Immediately we noticed a 15 kph difference in his top speed vs. mine. We determined that the car was heat soaking so badly that it was losing about 5 kph top speed PER LAP. When hot, the car was even slower than my Stage 2 WRX! Unfortunately he didn't bring his tuning software with him so we couldn't make any changes to the tune. Also some of the GPS traces seemed a bit off, possibly due to poor satellite reception.

The strategy going into the time attack was now clear. Cool the car down as much as possible and don't let it idle in pit lane. Sasha estimated I would only have power for 1 lap so I had to make my first lap count.

At this point I had about 1.5 hours left until the competition so I decided to take it out for one last run before letting it cold soak. I popped the center grill piece out in an effort to increase airflow to the rad. But it felt like it actually made the condition worse. It was like driving in a sauna so I called it quits after 4 laps, only managing a 1:23.53. I put the grill piece back on.

Qualifying

With the 1:21.73 I qualified in 4th place. Ahead of me was Mike Harvey (last year's SSA champion), Alex Li from team NV Auto, and the Maryuichi Auto GT-R R35. Mike and the R35 were seconds ahead and out of reach. But Alex was only 6 tenths ahead. If I wanted to sneak onto the podium I would have to beat him!

It was now time to cool the car down so I took all the ice from my cooler and spread it out on top of the rad and intercooler. At this point I realized the car also had an IC spray system. With a good suggestion from my friend Erik we also dumped some ice into the IC spray reservoir. My tires were also getting cold from inactvity so we bumped the pressures up by a couple PSI. Can-Jam also gave me some VP 109 race gas to use because I had already used up both my gerry cans of 94.

Lap times with the Hankook TD's:
Session 3 - 1:23.86
Session 4 - 1:22.17
Session 5 - 1:23.52
Session 6 - 1:21.73
Session 7 - 1:23.95 (Sasha)
Session 8 - 1:23.53

Time Attack

Clouds came over and covered up the sun. The air was chilly again so I had a really good feeling about the time attack. Lady luck seemed to be on my side right now. Lining up in the queue, I gave the IC a couple sprays of ice cold water.

Warm-Up Lap

I knew the tires were cold and I needed to build temps up fast. Engine bay temps would climb too so I wanted to get this over with quickly. I decided to take the warm-up lap at about 85%. Things were going well until I hit the hairpin at T6 just after the short straight. On corner entry something went immediately wrong. The tires felt like they hit an ice patch and the car went into a drift. I flicked the steering wheel into opposite lock but the car was still drifting towards the grass at a high rate of speed. I thought I saved it but nope. Car went straight into the grass. Wet grass flew all over the windshield and inside the car.  @#$%^&!!! I had a flashback from 2011 SRTA #3 where something similar happened and I ended up with a DNF. I thought to myself that there was no way in hell I came this far to let that happen again. I slammed it into 1st gear and banged the limiter getting back onto the track. The funny thing is that we didn't put washer fluid in to save weight. So I couldn't even wipe the dirt off without risking worse visibility.

At this point I knew that I lost a ton of tire heat from the wet grass. But I also knew that if I held up Alex who was behind me, I would be disqualified. I looked into my rear view mirror and saw nothing. Back on the gas hard. Time to re-build all the heat I lost. T10 came up and the same thing happened. Excess slip angle on the cold tires threw me into the grass once again. But the car was still moving forward(ish) so I just kept going. I went through the final hairpin onto the main straight with a car covered in dirt and grass. There was no time to be embarrassed in front of all the spectators. Eyes on the flag marshal showed a green flag - GO TIME.

Time Attack Lap Times:
Hot Lap 1 - 1:21.20
Hot Lap 2 - 1:20.47
Hot Lap 3 - 1:20.86

I knew I was probably beat after seeing Alex get really close to me by the end of the 3rd hot lap. Coming into the pits the news was broken to me that he beat me by just over a second. That was an incredible run by him so I didn't feel too bad.

Results

Checking the leader board I found out that I beat the Maryuichi Auto R35 to sneak into 3rd place. Yeah podium!!! So overall I managed to collect 80 points in Round 1 and set a new personal best in car I'd never driven before. Results I am more than happy with.

Final Thoughts

Today I learned an important lesson: warm up R-compounds in a straight line, not in the corners! Hard acceleration and hard braking with some careful swerving to build up carcass temps. I also feel that I'm not driving the tires optimally. They have a lot more grip than the street tires I'm used to so that means my braking points may need to change. I'm confident that this will be resolved with some more seat time.

See you at Round 2 in Grand Bend!

PS. Sleep never felt so good in my life lol.

Race Studio Analysis - TMP, Cayuga

Busted out the Race Studio Analysis today and overlapped my best lap (blue line) with data I had from friends' runs. What I gleaned from the data:

• TMP is definitely a power track. Between T1 and T2 was enough to put me about 1.75 seconds behind a higher HP car (green had around 130 more whp than me). I also lose out pretty big on the middle straight between T6-T9 and obviously the main straight.
• Even vs. a car with similar power-to-weight ratio as mine running the same tires, I lost 1 second between T1 and T2. I am way late on the power at exit. T1 is definitely my weakest corner and something I need to work on for 2013.
• The "in-field" section of Turns 3,4,5 seems to be my strong point vs. these 2 drivers since I am actually making up a few tenths here. I downshift to 2nd whereas orange holds it in gear and seems to float (never good to float).
• I have a much different line through T10. Instead of making an "S" over to the left I keep my car straight and take T10 with an "inside-inside" approach. I have a longer time to accelerate between T9 and T10 but my cornering speed is sacrificed due to my smaller entry radius. Is it worth it?  Against both drivers the answer is "marginally". I gain less than a tenth here against both drivers. The best experiment would be to run it against myself and then compare.

It's difficult to compare different cars with different drivers against each other so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. A more useful comparison would be against a better driver in the same car. Perhaps this year if I can bribe a pro to take my car out I'll have some better data to play with :)

Edit: Just wanted to make a note that I manually synced up all the start/finish lines so the graphs lined up. And also my acceleration line appears a bit jagged because I was running with a broken ringland that day.

OptimumLap Review

Finally had some time to play around with OptimumLap. This is a VERY cool program!

I modelled the track using my GPS data from CSCS #4 last year and modelled my car using some basic estimations and information available from NASIOC and Wikipedia.



I had to make some guesses for values such as frontal area, downforce co-efficient, etc. but after looking at some of the example vehicles they had of passenger cars (M3, Miata, Corvette, R8, 911) I noticed they were all in the same ballpark area. Playing with these values only made thousandths of a difference to the lap time anyway.

Dyno chart I took from a typical Stage 2 chart I found on NASIOC. Since my car was road tuned I never dyno'ed my car. All the Stage 2 charts look similar anyway.

Tire Data, in particular Longitudinal and Lateral Friction, played such a significant role in determining lap time that even changing these by 0.1 had an impact of 2-3 seconds on the overall lap time. I settled for a value of "1" which was somewhere between the street car Civic they modelled (0.9) and the M3/Corvette (1.2).

Final estimated lap time, assuming The Stig as the driver, was 1:20.61. My personal best is 1:22.93. And I still have a lot of work to do with my line, especially through T1. So this does seem to be somewhat realistic.



Digging deeper into the results is where things fall apart a little. Looking at the track speed graph is where I noticed things to be really off. The maximum speed (185 kph) is way faster than actual (161 kph) and the minimum speed (47 kph) is way slower (61 kph). See video for reference:

2012 CSCS #4 - Time Attack - YouTube

Despite these drawbacks, I found the program to be useful in comparing changes made to a single vehicle. For example, adding a VF39 and USDM 6MT would shave off approx. 1 second. And adding just a 6MT without upgrading the turbo would make the car 0.15s slower due to the added weight of the tranny. An extra 100-150whp would net me around 2.5 to 3 seconds in lap time. All assuming I stay with the same tires (since the tire modelling is kinda messed).

Here are the predicted lap times for some hypothetical setups:

• 1:17.55 - Borg Warner EFR 7163, JDM 6MT
• 1:18.02 - Borg Warner EFR 6758, JDM 6MT
• 1:18.26 - Blouch Dom 1.5XT-R, JDM 6MT
• 1:19.13 - Blouch 18G-XT, JDM 6MT
• 1:19.71 - VF39 Stage 2, USDM 6MT
  
• 1:20.61 - Stage 2 (Current Setup)
• 1:20.76 - Stage 2, JDM 6MT

I only spent a few hours playing around with the program. With more accurate real world measurements and some more time playing around with the modelling, I think this could be a very useful tool for anyone looking to maximize their setup. You just need to be aware of what you're playing with so that it's not garbage-in, garbage-out.

In summary, for a free program, Optimum Lap is awesome! 

OptimumLap

Saw an ad for this free software in a racecar engineering magazine today. It not only has the ability to do predict optimal lap times, but can tell you how your lap times will increase or decrease based on a range of variables. For example if you changed your gear ratios from a USDM 5MT to USDM 6MT or JDM 6MT, how would it affect lap times? This software can do that.

It works by modelling your car as a single point on the race track. Given the maximum traction forces of your tires based on real world data, vehicle mass, coefficient of drag/lift, horsepower/torque, gear ratios, etc. it will calculate the maximum apex speed your car can carry and then works backwards to figure out braking zones and top speeds on the straights. It can even model the track for you if you have GPS data (which I do).

Of course there are some limitations such as no elevation changes on the track, difficult to know the true coefficient of drag, etc. but it does seem very neat.

Would love to take some time to play around with it. Maybe over the holidays.

[10/27/2012] HANSON School (DDT)

Event: HANSON International Driving School
Track: Mosport DDT, Skid Pad
Weather Conditions: 6°C, Rain

I just thought I'd stop by for a quick journal update since it's been a while. And before you ask, no there hasn't been any progress on my WRX since last time 

Last Saturday I was given the opportunity to help out the HANSON school as an instructor-in-training. This meant helping out on the skid pad. 



The weather was crap. Great for the students, but not so great for standing outside lol. I tried my best to spend as much time in student cars as possible to stay dry, but I still ended up soaked to the bone.

Even though I'm no pro, I noticed a lot of reoccurring errors from students when I sat in their cars. See if you make these mistakes. I know I've made every single one of them so it was easy for me to recognize since it wasn't too long ago.

Car Control vs. Going Fast
Rain plus skid pad is a very good way to find the limits of the car. There were many RWD cars (lots of FR-S!) and I noticed some of the guys were purposely trying to spin out or power oversteer. I asked them what their goals were, and found out that they wanted to get faster lap times. Drifting around a skid pad is great for car control, but ultimately it won't really help you set faster times. I switched their exercise from doing donuts to treating the skid pad like a big sweeping turn on a track. The new exercise was to imagine the pylon on the skidpad as the apex, and to try and take that corner as fast as possible before spinning out. That way, they could find the cornering limit while going fast in the wet.

Threshold Braking
Many instructors teach students to finish their braking in a straight line before starting to turn in. And for good reason too. On a track, trying to learn trail braking can get you into a lot of trouble. But for the more intermediate students who want to experiment or think they're read for trail braking, the skid pad is the perfect place to start. In addition to the exercise above, I noticed that students were braking WAY too early. They were braking 2-3 car lengths before the marked turn-in gate. If I was driving I would probably be braking 1 car length beyond the marked gate. So I tried to get them to push their comfort zone by braking later and using corner entry to scrub the remainder of the speed. This was easier said than done in the rain though 

Smoothness
Students who braked too early also had a tendency to turn-in too early. They would quickly realize they had more grip than they thought they had, and were moving into the centre of the skid pad too quickly. So, to adjust, they would turn the steering wheel back outward to "get back onto the racing line". Steering input should be one smooth arc, without many big corrections. Having an excess of grip like this means you can be going a lot faster into the corners, even in the rain!

Induced Understeer
The other thing I noticed everyone doing was trying to turn the steering wheel more and more once the car started understeering. This would result in the car vibrating (the tires are beyond its useful slip angle) and then occasionally going from understeer to oversteer once the tires regained grip. Everyone says that their cars understeer (especially on Subaru forums) but the real truth is that any car can understeer if you turn the steering wheel too quickly into a turn (smoothness) and/or point the front wheels past their useful slip angle. It's natural to try and turn the wheel more and more since we want to turn in that direction but the car isn't letting us! But the correct, and somewhat counter-intuitive thing to do, is to back the steering wheel off slightly, and once you feel the grip has regained (through your finger tips while modulating throttle/brake), continue to move the steering wheel back into the turn. The end result is many tiny back and forth corrections while making a turn. If you watch the hands of a race car driver closely you'll see them doing this.

F1 2011 - Mercedes GP - Onboard cameras with Schumacher and Rosberg in the MGP W02 - YouTube Skip to 1:25

Unfortunately I don't have any good photos or videos from this day as it was really rainy and I was too busy with students. But I did manage to get a good rip on the skidpad in my iQ lol. I can't believe how much grip that little car has, even in the rain!

[8/19/2012] CSCS #4 (TMP)

Event: Canadian Sport Compact Series #4
Track: Toronto Motorsports Park, Cayuga
Weather Conditions: 24°C Sunny

I didn't get much sleep due to Dobaru constantly waking me up from howling at stuff all night. I was also still in recovery mode from a hangover on Saturday. So having to wake up at 5AM wasn't the best of starts for me. But I was ready to kick some ass at TMP so that was my motivation!

I got to TMP really early, just before 8:00. Luckily I managed to dodge the police harassment everyone was talking about. During technical inspection my car threw a CEL while idling. Not something you want to see at the start of a track day. I reset my ECU and restarted the car. Stu from Can-Jam came up to me and said "That the startup didn't sound good, Sounds like you may be down on one cylinder." Anyone who has ever reset their ECU knows that the first crank can take a bit longer. So I thought it was normal and carried on with my morning.

Open Lapping

My first session started off behind Mr. Cassidy's RX-7 once again. Although it was in a pure white colour scheme now, and not the space shuttle theme previously :P


Going from DDT to TMP is always a huge change for me. TMP just feels so much harder on the car. On my first session out I had no confidence in the way my car was handling. My underdamped suspension combined with greasy feeling tires lead me into a four wheels off situation at T1 just three laps in. Luckily I didn't take any damage. I pulled into the pits and took a breather to gather myself and refocus.

I spent the rest of open lapping playing around with different lines (shallower, as I learnt on Friday). I also experimented with left foot braking at T4. I was indifferent to it as it had no impact on my lap times so I carried on with regular braking. After T11 I started short shifting into 3rd to carry more speed into the sweeping left hander T12. This change probably had the biggest impact to my lap times as my cornering speeds went up by ~10 kph.

My parents also came to visit me. I took my Dad out and he didn't even last 1 lap :| We spent more time doing up his harness than on the track lol. While we were busy laughing at my dad, xeno_impreza noticed that one of the clamps on my after-MAF hose was completely loose. Thanks man! We thought this would fix the CEL but it didn't. The CEL remained on for the entirety of the day.

At this point both my front and rear brake pads were running really low. I had nothing to gain from going out more as my tire pressures were dialed in and I felt that this was as good as the car was going to get. I didn't get too many hard runs in because of traffic and giving rides but I did manage to set a new personal best of 1:23.96. Finally in the 23's at TMP :)

Richard Nadeau was nice enough to give me a ride in his yellow bugeye beast. This thing is gutted and caged with home made aero. He's riding on HotBits DT2's and powered by an 18G-XTR. I was impressed with the HotBits' ability to soak up bumps. I'm not sure what his spring rates were but his car felt much softer than mine. He was able to drive over the pothole at T2 without upsetting the car and also take a different line through the chicaine which just wouldn't work with my suspension. I believe he was using the tire groove that RedScoobie eluded to in his journal.

Richard ended up doing a 1:20.4 with me in the car. I'm not a very good passenger and this is probably the closest I've ever come to puking in someone's car, lol. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to recover in time for the time attack. Instructing might not be my thing after all. Richard went on to win Unlimited AWD but unfortunately also managed to break his second 6-speed this year. Ouch!

Time Attack

Sloppy is the best way to describe my run. I even missed a shift in my final hot lap. In all of that chaos I still managed to pull a personal best of 1:22.93, although the official time shown at livetiming.net/cscs showed a 1:23.156.


Unofficial lap times:
Lap 1 - 1:24.31
Lap 2 - 1:22.93
Lap 3 - 1:23.81

Another 1st place finish in a small Street AWD class.

Car Trouble

Towards the end of the day we noticed some smoke coming out of my exhaust on start up. I was hoping the CEL would be something pollution related like the air pump, but the smoke meant it was probably something worse.

I had Monday off so I did some self diagnosis but I wasn't able to come to any conclusions. My car is at Can-Jam right now and I'm prepared for the worst. CSCS #4 marks my 22nd track day and despite 22 being my "lucky" number I guess I was due for some bad luck.

Edit: I just realized I forgot to count 2010 so it's actually more like 27th track day... w/e I'll probably lose count soon lol

[8/17/2012] HANSON School (DDT)

Event: HANSON International Driving School
Track: Mosport DDT (CCW 1 kink), Bowmanville
Weather Conditions: 23°C Sunny

My first time running this track configuration was at CSCS #3 earlier this year. I wasn't happy with my performance there especially with the uphill section of the track. I wanted another chance to practice this layout before the season was over so I called up Peter Hanson at the HANSON driving school and begged him to run the same layout. He agreed to run it for me. I was stoked!

Lots of Subys showed up this time (some missed the photoshoot sorry)!

I was placed in the advanced group and allowed to run without an instructor. But I actually wanted an instructor, as that would defeat the purpose of the school. So I requested one, and Peter said he would come out with me after he took care of some stuff.

In the mean time, I tried my hand out at the skid pad. Last year the only way I could get my car to oversteer was to do the Scandinavian flick. But I only remembered this after my first failed attempt:


I might not be ready for DMCC but hey it's an improvement over last year lol. I only did 4 runs because these tires need to last me two more time attacks!

Now it was time for the second advanced lapping session of the day with Peter as my coach. Here's the vid:


I must've impressed Peter with my driving because after our run he invited me to become an instructor! I was totally honoured and this pretty much made my day :D I told him I would think about it because I know there is a lot of responsibility behind being an instructor and I want to make sure that I'm ready before accepting such a position.

The classroom portion with Derek Hanson was eye opening to say the least. Some of the important tid bits I picked up were:

• Too many people concentrate on the exit of a corner. But the entry of a corner is what separates the good with the best. Shallower entries allow for higher entry speeds.
• Sacrificing linked turns is a misconception. The extra speed gained from taking a shallow entry will make up for the extra exit speed gained by "sacrificing" the first corner for a better exit on the second. You also travel less total distance by not swinging wide. The shallow entry also happens to have the largest radius.

At least that's what my interpretation of his rambling was :p CSCS #4 at TMP on Sunday would be a great place to practice shallower corner entry since some of the turns there are linked.

There was some discussion of the bucking issue I've been having as well. I was trying out a softer rear swaybar setting but it didn't seem to do anything towards the bucking. Although I think the overall amount of tri-podding has been reduced. Here's a GoPro view of the inside rear:


Some of the instructors, including Derek, were watching me on the track. Their comment was that visually they could see the car pitching back and forth. Derek is convinced that it's the center differential "vacillating" as it hunts for the proper torque split. But from my understanding it's locked at 50/50 on the WRX. Although going back to that one ride in Kwan's STI we did hear and feel the wonders of the Auto DCCD working through all the turns I struggled in. Another instructor said I should just buy a Porsche

Peter had previously mentioned improperly matched front and rear springs. That could be it too. And the fact that my dampers are underdamped would cause the car to bounce around as well.

I'm a bit sick of theorizing and chasing my tail with this issue. I could have all the horsepower in the world but if my car still handled like this through corners I wouldn't be happy with it. I think at this point I know I need better dampers so I should just get them first and go from there.

In the end, it was a great day hanging out with friends; some old and some new. And with no real drama other than my EZ-UP tent breaking from the wind lol

Ninja edit: I forgot to post my lap times!

Best lap times per session
Session 1 - 1:02.51
Session 2 - 1:02.54
Session 3 - 1:02.98
Session 4 - 1:02.09
Session 5 - 1:03.03

My best lap time from CSCS #3 was 1:03.31. Amazing how much of a difference improving that one section of the uphill made. Looks like I'll be able to sleep at night again :)