Less Pressure, More Winning

Last week I got the opportunity to codrive Rad's STR S2000 because I somehow misplaced my trailer lock keys and wasn't able to bring Bumblestook to the NNJR SCCA event. I always like to find the silver lining in bad situations and driving Rad's car woke me up. For starters, I had a lot of fun which is probably the most important thing but it also made me rethink Lupa's setup.

Philly SCCA Autocross - Warminster, PA
5/6/2017

I really liked the way Rad's car handled and put power down. On balance it was on par with Bumblestook but with less grip all around of course but the balance was comparable. Lupa's slightly down on power but I'm addressing that shortly with some parts from Japan. When we ran last week, Rad remembered that during the Test-n-Tune event on the BFG Rival S 1.5 they found running lower tire pressures to work best and only after we lowered it to that level did the car feel on point. I still run Bridgestone RE-71Rs but because I haven't really been running Lupa much, I hadn't been doing any tire pressure testing. I wanted to see what the sweet spot would be for Lupa. With the itch to try a few things, I made the trek out to Warminster today to do some testing. The day started out with some potential with the sun breaking through the clouds but before my heat started, it started raining making the surface really slick.

Of course it had to rain - 5/6/2017

On my first run, I started with my usual pressures of 29/27 but with the wet conditions, testing was really moot. I was sliding all over the place and even some throttle with the wheel cranked would cause the rear to kick out. By the third run, the rain had stopped and we were in drying conditions. I found by my fourth run that running 27/25 worked really well. Lupa was rotating really well and I was able to get on the power earlier. This would've been a good day to have a codriver as the cool temps made it hard to keep the heat in the tires but Warminster has always scared me a bit especially in bad weather conditions. I've definitely seen my fair share of unwanted excursions into the grass there so I opted to run solo for this event.

I got one run in the dry. It was my last run and Feinberg, who ran in the first heat, mostly in the dry, was in the lead. Looking at the data, I was able to identify corners where I suspected that in the now dry conditions, I'd be able to just lift instead of brake. This mostly worked except towards the finish where I overshot one of the corners making me late for the last set of offsets. Even with mistakes and some fairly conservative driving in areas by the grass, I was able to drop a good chunk of time to take the lead. There was definitely a lot more pace that could've been extracted under more stable conditions but overall, I'm just happy things are coming together nicely and the nut behind the wheel is starting to find some improvement again.

Philly SCCA- Warminster, PA - 5/6/2017