wstar's Journal

wstar

New pro pics from the last event, Apr 13/14 at MSR-Houston. You can see how much lower the car is sitting, and how much less body roll and nose-dive there is in these. While it feels like "zero body roll" in the car, and other drivers were commenting that there was virtually no body roll, in the still photos you can of course see that there still is some mild roll in the car. I guess that's always the case unless you weld everything solid . Not sure if damper settings affect that or it's just spring rate, so it's possible by bringing up the damper stiffness I could push some of that out, too. All through this event I had the rear Hotchkis sway at full-soft as well.

With notes on what's happening in each pic (This is MSR-H Clockwise):

This one's nearly done tracking out from a right-hander onto the pit straight, still accelerating in mid-4th-gear:



Midway through the second corner of Sugar-and-Spice from the rear, you can easily see the remaining body roll. I'd say at this point in the corner the car's about as laid over on lateral G's as it's ever gonna get on these tires:



This is at the end of the pit straight, a right turn again. I've started turn-in, but I'm not 100% sure whether I was off the brakes on this attempt or still playing with trailing them into it:



Not even sure where this is, too little context. Maybe Gut-check, maybe the straight before Bus-stop?



And this is near the end of Keyhole, a ~50mph-ish tight little circular section to the right:

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Journal thread / Car setup details

ChrisSlicks

Just remember that stiffest isn't always fastest. You have to match the damping to the tires and the track conditions. Some weight transition is useful, it just needs to be controlled.

For my setup I run full stiff on DOT-slicks, about 2/3rds for R-comp 100TW tires (NT01/RA-1) and about 1/2 for sticky street tires as the starting point. In the rain on R-comp wets I run about 1/3rd. Different coilovers though so your settings will be a little different. If I'm not happy with the traction balance of the car front to rear I will make small adjustments to try and get it dialed in.

Probably the most important thing is that you keep a log of everything. Weather, tire pressures, damper settings, what you had for breakfast, oil temps etc. It will all be useful when analyzing your performance at the end of the day or even in between sessions.

Car is looking great BTW and love the data logging setup.

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Hotchkis ARB | Stillen CAI | Art Pipes | Berk CBE | Stillen AP Racing Brakes | AE Performance Oil Cooler | BC Racing ER Coilovers | Doran Control Arms