Event: Open Lapping (Practice for CSCS Round 2)
Track: Grand Bend Raceway (Modified Layout)
Weather Conditions: 30°C+ Sunny and Humid
Another early start to the day, waking up at 5:30AM to make the 3 hour trek to Grand Bend, ON. The drive was not an enjoyable one. This car has really taken the CSCS rulebook's definition of Super Street quite literally: "The Super Street Class has been designed for vehicles that are a bit extreme for the street; they often see more track time then street driving." The lack of air conditioning, an exhaust that makes your ears bleed, and an unforgiving clutch were all enough to make me miss my Scion iQ for regular driving.
But that all goes away once the car hits the track. This is where the Can-Jam Motorsport background comes to life. The car was able to consistently put in fast lap after fast lap without effort. Two full track days in a row and not a single drop of oil was burned! The IXIZ AOS we carried over has been working great with the new EFR setup. Overall the build has been holding together very strong and I have Can-Jam to thank for that.
Lap Times with the StarSpec ZII's:
Session 1 - 58.00
Session 2 - 58.09
Not so impressive considering my best lap time was a 58.31 last year with my old Stage 2 setup.
Lap Times with the Hankook TD's:
Session 3 - 56.84
Session 4 - 56.03
There was a big difference once I threw on the TD's. They were faster, but more importantly they gave me a lot more confidence to take some corners flat out with the extra power I was making. The only thing I played with all day were tire pressure settings. I didn't bother touching the dampers. They handled great! The car had some mild understeer but I felt I could handle it given the sweeping nature of the track. It wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday at DDT with many sharp 90 degree turns.
Photo credit: Jeff Beech
A few other hardcore time attackers showed up to practice and it was great fun chatting with everyone before the big day on Sunday. Special thanks to Mike Gardner who lent me some earplugs for my trip back home. Those were a life saver man.
With the best lap of the day being a repeatable 56s flat, I was feeling comfortable going into the time attack. I was only 2s off the unlimited track record from last year and this time would have been enough to win SSAWD by 1.7s.
It was hot and humid all day and I was beginning to feel some heat stroke setting in. With the 56s session I decided not to waste any more rubber or gas and call it a day. Time to hit the strip and sip some fruity drinks!
Event: HANSON International Driving School
Track: Mosport DDT (CW 1K)
Weather Conditions: 25°C Sunny
My car is finally ready for some action! The Can-Jam crew was pulling another all nighter getting prepared for a big CTCC weekend as well as CSCS. My car got its alignment and tune through midnight. So instead of having to go pick it up, I received a special delivery at the track this morning :)
While the big boys were out testing on the big track, I was stationed over at DDT performing skid pad duty at the HANSON school. Since I was primarily manning the skid pad exercises I didn't get to do a lot of fiddling with the car. But a couple of sessions on track was still better than nothing. Definitely needed for an overhaul of this magnitude before a weekend full of racing.
The car was supposed to get tuned on a ViPEC V88 ECU but a last minute glitch in some wiring meant we had to send it back to the manufacturer. So the car got tuned using COBB Speed Density as a temporary measure. This meant that little time was spent fine tuning and it was the first thing I noticed when driving the car. Part throttle was very choppy and power seemed to come on like an on/off switch. Combined with the almost instant spool-up of the Borg Warner EFR-6758 turbo, it made for a monster of a car to drive. Getting on the power too early in 2nd gear could make all four tires go squirrely. And the car pulls so hard in such a short distance that combined with the shorter JDM 6-Speed gears I'm now having to double downshift into some corners.
Next on the list was setting up the new RaceComp Engineering T2 coilovers. It uses a 2.5mm allen key and I found that I had to jack up the car to get to the compression adjustment due to the low ride height and wide 255 tires. I admit that I've been spoiled by the simple, single knob adjustments of the BC Racing coilovers! I spent an entire break period setting up the coilovers when I could have been out on track. But the trade off was well worth it. On the track the coilovers soaked up the bumps much better than before. I'm still in the process of fine tuning them and this thread has been a great resource for starters.
I ran into my first problem of the day on my 2nd run out. As I was powering out of the slow right hander at the downhill, I heard a "pop" sound followed by an instant loss in power. Checking my boost gauge I saw that I was only hitting 0 PSI at most. This was a familiar feeling as I had this happen to me at my very first track day at Shannonville in 2009 when I blew off a throttle body hose coupler. Checking the engine bay in the pits confirmed that I blew the 90 degree turbo outlet coupler off. Luckily, an easy fix!
Other than the turbo coupler issue, no real big issues to report back. There was a knocking noise coming from the rear suspension area so Can-Jam is taking the car back to the shop tonight to get it sorted ASAP. I was experiencing more understeer than I'd like, but I'm sure that some time spent with the swaybar settings (or removal) and shock tuning will correct that. My lovely new GReddy Ti-C exhaust tip is already turning brown from heat. Oh yeah, and the car came with a surprise: a Neetronics DCCD controller! I'll definitely need some time to learn how to use it.
Tomorrow is a practice day for me at Grand Bend, followed by CSCS Time Attack on Sunday. A hat trick weekend for track days. Tiring, but fun.
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.
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.
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:
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!
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.
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.
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!
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