Today was
NER SCCA's second to last points event, "Scorched Orange". Looking ahead, I found out that the Stirling Moss event will
NOT be a points event for the first three runs in the morning
like last year, which means I've already lost first place for the season to John. John definitely deserves it, as he has been able to consistently drive
Serenity fast with all the setup changes throughout this season, so congratulations to John! Just because he is in first though, doesn't mean I'll make it easy for him for the remainder of the season!
As mentioned in
my last post, we did a lot of changes to the alignment (
yet again) for this event. Evan from
Flatout Motorsports also allowed me to include his input in that post as to why these changes were done. The outcome? "Suspension Wizard" indeed he is. At first, I was caught off guard at the fact that I could control the car so well and not get it to misbehave or suddenly kick out where I didn't want it to. After a few more runs, I was able to throw the car around and be more confident, as it behaved exactly how I wanted it to.
John seemed happy with the new setup as well, but had started developing a new habit that he now has to stop doing;
Trail Braking. He was working on that so he could get the car to rotate, where-as now, the car rotates when we want it to, so doing that can upset the car and get it too loose. Ultimately, I feel that this is the best setup we have thus far. This alignment setup matched with the following settings made the car feel spot on to me:
- Front tires at 37 PSI on the course
- Rear tires at 35 PSI on the course
- Front shocks set to 8 clicks from stiff
- Rear shocks set to 20 clicks from stiff
- Front swaybar at full stiff
- Rear swaybar at full soft
With such a fun course that flowed very nicely (
props to Roger Whipple for the awesome course design!) and the car being so easy to control, I was able to take the lead for the day. Thing is, my fastest run was a
'48.236 clean, and John's fastest run was a
'48.220 + 2 cones, and his fastest clean run was a
'48.401. That means I still need to step it up! I came
18th in PAX, and John took
20th in PAX, so I can't complain there. The rest of the results are located
on NER's website.
As a side note, one thing John and I noticed was how fast the Davis' CSP Miata was at this event. We spoke to them afterwards and learned that it was their rear aero that helped them in the back section of the course, allowing them to stay stable and on the throttle longer in the high-speed sections. Aero is definitely something on the "to-do list" by next season. We were hoping to have it done before last event, but unfortunately we haven't had the time.
Big thanks again to Evan from Flatout Motorsports for his help with the RX-8 and getting everything squared away. I'm actually kind of anxious to see how the car will behave with this alignment on my street tires at the next Renegade Miata event! For now, below are videos of my fastest run, and John's fastest dirty run. The rest of the videos from the event are on my
YouTube page in a playlist for your viewing pleasure. Till the next event, stay tuned!
1 comment:
Great reaading this
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