Thursday 23 May 2013

Race Report - 19/05/2013

Pretty much my last opportunity to race at the Logan track before they go back to night race meetings had me up ridiculously early. All the prep had been done on the Saturday so it was up and out the door in the coldest morning I've had so far since moving to the Darling Downs, including and iced up windscreen. Its a 2 hour drive from home to Slacks Creek where the Logan track is located. Its not the best or worst drive I've had to do over the years but it does make the day just a little longer.


How the day looked when I left home
How the day looked 2 hours later when I arrived
Since my last race meeting the new batteries arrived, so this meant I had set up the 190mm car. I used my 200mm car as the basis simply because it had gone reasonably well at the last club meeting in Toowoomba so I hoped I had a good baseline to work from. With everything set up and my nomination in, I picked up my new transponder and installed it in the car. This caused an unexpected  issue with the new transponder interfering with the Tekin ESC. This meant I missed the start of the first race while I sorted this out. Consensus seemed to be that the new AMB 4 transponders, with 3 wires need to be plugged into a channel on the receiver rather than the battery socket. Luckily there are probably few people running less than 3 channels these days.

The calm before racing begins

Round 1 -  Result : 11/ 8m 7.418s, Fastest Lap - 25.663s
I missed the first 3 minutes of the first round, but once on the track the car handled quite well, but there were a few issues, mostly with the diff setting allowing far to much slip and slowing me out of the corners. Nothing to difficult to deal with.

Round 2 - Result : 3/ 3m 1.138s, Fastest Lap - 26.573s
Well as you can see this round didn't go so well. I made two small changes - (1) Tightened the diff and (2) Added some more toe out. For some reason however, one of the front wheel nuts decided to keep tightening itself. Due to a little idiosyncrasy in the whole F1-09/190mm set up, the wheel nuts need to be just slightly loosened from fully tight otherwise it binds the bearings in the Ride rims. I only managed 1 flying lap and that was still amongst traffic.

This is where I can't help but be a bit critical of the organisers at Logan. A 15 minute final sounds like fun (and it is) and at a bigger event it adds to the spectacle, but on a club day to restrict the running to only 2 rounds before a final makes it VERY difficult for the occasional visitor to really get much done. Add to this the closing of the track between the qualifying rounds and the finals, not allowing any practice seems, to me anyway, a bit extreme.

Final - Result : 16/ 7m23.805s, Fastest Lap - 25.255s
A fresh nyloc wheel nut fitted, and another tweak to the diff tightness and I lined up 8th out of 9 for the final. The first lap went reasonably well - I made a good start and with everyone being careful I crossed the line for the first lap in 4th or 5th place. Then I got absolutely hammered on the next lap by people who have obviously spent too much time in touring cars bouncing off each other, and I mean hammered. The most obvious sign was the severe pull to the left, so much so the trims couldn't even start to compensate, which then made for huge under-steer in the right hand corners. Which is where the car finally finished the day after running wide into a track barrier and breaking the steering arm from the left hand upright. Back at the pit table the full extent of damage was revealed with about 15 degrees of camber on one side and maybe 40 degrees of castor on the other side, thanks to yet another bent turnbuckle. This track has something against my turnbuckle supplies it seems.

Overall
I can't say that really "enjoyed" day. An early start, a very cold morning, a frustrating race day and a damaged car - it could be quite hard to come up with many positives. However, I did finally work out how to make the LRP traction compound work, the new batteries performed well, the basic car balance seems good and, considering how badly out of whack the front suspension was, the lap time is actually better than it first appears. OK, I still ended up the slowest car, but that level of damage could easily account for 1 second, or more, per lap bringing the car into the low 24 second area and easily onto similar pace as the majority of the front runners.

Now I just have to wait and see what happens next. The Toowoomba club only races once a month and with all the Brisbane clubs running night meetings, and Toowoomba not having an F1 class I may have to refocus back onto touring cars, at least at a basic level to keep my driving skills up. The 2nd round of the Interclub is on the 15/16th June but I am not yet certain if I can attend and if I did I'd need to consider running more than F1 to make the trip worthwhile.

Thursday 9 May 2013

Race Report - 04/05/2013

This was the 2nd time visiting the Toowoomba track and the first time at night. Unfortunately, I was the only F1 there so it became more a test and tune for me rather than proper race meeting.

Also unfortunate was the failure of my new batteries to arrive. I had hoped that would arrive in time for this race meeting so I could start working on my 190mm car again. As it turned out, it gave me some more time to play with the 200mm car, and in particular the ESC settings. I am still determined to make the Tekin work for me as other people certainly seem to be able to make it work for them. I also went back to my tried and true tyre combination - TRG Rears and Shimizu fronts.

I also had a little play with making my 190mm car. Nothing serious just played around with battery position and mounted a Alfa World GT body. Hey - its either that or I get bored!

All set up and it was time to get things on the track. I had to decide whether to run in with the tourers or the mini's. Mini's were closer to the same pace so that was done. I also had a problem with a servo which needed soldering. The 190mm/WGT needed more work so it was benched. Being night time the temperature was dropping pretty quickly so I actually grabbed my tyre warmers out, which are normally used on my tourer. 

Round 1
A quick practice run showed up a little issue with the diff so I changed the thrust bearing from the standard bearing back to a proper thrust bearing. This race was all about learning the track (which was different from my first visit) and getting a feel for the car. The changes to the ESC throttle curve and neutral width were making quite a difference and the throttle response was much smoother. Paradoxically to achieve this, I had to make the throttle curve on the ESC more aggressive, but with the radio settings it actually worked better. I had also fiddled with the brake settings and this was also working more to my liking, allowing me to use the brakes to help the car turn if needed. 

The race was pretty uneventful given being the only F1. Its more about trying not to hit anyone or be hit. Corner entry speed was actually a bit faster than the mini's but I had to be more conservative on throttle application out of the corners and I was much faster in a straight line. The main point that came out of the race was the discovery the rear tyres came off the track, after a 6 minute race, colder than when they started out of the warmers.

Round 2
A change to a softer spring on rear main shock was the only change for this race and much like the first it was pretty uneventful. The spring change made the rear end more consistent over the race duration.

Round 3
For this race the main change was to the diff setting, allowing a little more slip. This change made the car more forgiving when accelerating out of the corners and meant I could drive it a little harder and get on the power a little earlier. However, without lap counting (was considered pointless given the situation) I can't be sure if the lap times reflected the car feel.

There is where the night ended. Due to a miscommunication with my partner I ended up packing up early and heading home. On one hand there was probably little point on finishing the night out as its hard racing only yourself. On the other, I could've tried a few more changes - Eg. changing the toe out to try and get a more aggressive turn in, one area I felt the car was lacking a little. The positive was that the car felt more like what I remember from WA. Ok, its on a different track from the Interclub but so were the tracks in WA. I guess I'll have to make another trip and find out.