Updates to the car and a few fall events...

Stuck at a hotel in Orlando for a conference with a bruised rib or maybe cracked (I’ll find out after a xray tomorrow) i said to myself "well...what better thing to do then to catch up with my blog...!" :)

Oh.. how did i hurt my ribs...? well i had presentation at 3:30pm and after that i found myself with a bunch of co-workers deciding to hit a local karting track close to the convention center.

And...what a great track that was! Especially the fact that they let us race even when it started down pouring... may i remind you it was dark, lights on the track and a crazy rain fall...! we got completely wet as we hit giant puddles of water...no rain tires of course either. As the rain intensified the puddles got bigger and bigger... at one point one of the hairpin turns was completely under water, and hitting those turns drifting was a great experience... the fact that it was dark, and we had to wipe water off our helmets visor almost every 5 seconds to see where we were going...was an intense experience...definitely a day to remember! :)

But lets get to mods/updates i have done to the car since my last autox event in July... well the first thing i tackled was to actually get rid of the skinny 175 front tires (which meant understeer) and replaced them with 195s. Doing so i also changed the rubber on all 4...and went with A048 which is the tires that come with the sport-pack Elise and all the diffrent flavours of Exiges out there.

I have to say, the tire changes alone...almost gave a me a totally new car. Overnight the understeer was a thing of the past... the car became very balanced and predictiable. "These tires are amazing....!" i said to my self when i hit the last autox of the season with Track Club USA at the end of September.

Since i had more grip now on the front, i stiffened up the sway bar to make sure the new grip did not bring snap-oversteer (Blackwatch autox sway bar 2/5 to 3/5 stiffness setting )

During the autox, i tried diffrent tire pressures, and actually found that 26f/29r (hot) seemed to provide the most predictiable grip... and the higher rear pressure allowed me to rotate the car with throttle easier. During the event we had 2 more Lotus's (a 2007 Exige S, and 2011 Evora)...

Now keep in mind the Exige S has the same tires, better suspension, and ofcourse a supercharger (240hp compared to my 190hp)... and i was ~3.5 seconds faster at the end of the day :) Ohh... the Evora was slow as expected with 6 seconds diffrence.

Here is the helmet-cam fastest run for the day:



Prepping for first track day

After the autox...i decided to prep the car for its first track day :)
The stock Elise out of the factory, has know issues that absolutely needs to be addressed before a track day.. So i focused on the most known issues (thanks to LotusTalk.com forums)

Oil starvation issues : gPAN - Baffled Oil Pan
Toe link failure : RTD2brace
Broken gear shift cables : SSC Cable

Once i got the car a bit more prepped for track use, i signed up to a HPDE event at NHMS (the event was for South Oval - Road course) via COMSCC which i had heard great things about from my autox buddies. Not only are they cost effective, but they provide a instructor for rookies(like me) for the full day for a very low price for 225$.

Also if this is your first event, you get a $100 discount...!

They also have time trials the second day, but i did not sign up for that because first you need to get a license(signed by the chief instructor) and i was told that usually takes a couple instructor sessions/days.

The day is very nicely planned... you arrive at 7am, if rookie get a student log book, get assigned a instructor (they specifically picked a instructor who also drives a mid-engine car for me)...and switched between 20 minute class-room sessions and 20 minute-track sessions (with instructor riding along with you).

I found the class room sessions pretty useless at first as all i needed was more seat time. But the class room sessions in the afternoon had a interesting nice suprise. While we were out on track, another instructor (without letting us know) actually followed us in his car, and recorded our line and our actions from his dash...which we went over during the class room... definetly helped with lines/and pointers! Great stuff!

Anyways, because i was in run group 4... i found my self stuck %80 of the time behind traffic, and had to wait for "point-bys"...lets just say not everybody checks out their mirror!... but i was able to get a few clean laps in, here is a video of that (this time not helmet-cam, but mounted to the car)



At the end of the day the instructor fills out the student logbook, and makes recommendations for further improvements... in my case i got all flying stars and was recommended for a license pending demonstration on improving my heel-n-toe next time... which was spot on,, as that is one area i need more practice! :) Well atleast i got promoted to a higher run group for next time... now time to go to bed and hopefully my ribs feel better tomorrow!

End of Summer, and end of F1 Outdoor Karting League 2011

After 6 x Fridays of intense racing despite many re-schedules due to hurricanes, rains, heat waves, random cancellations we finally had our final race last night with tons of smiles on our faces.

The first time i hit the track on June for practice, with 16 other race hungry locals who had signed up to the league, with some veterans who have done this for multiple seasons and some being first timers just like me... i had a feeling i was going to have a great time..with intense battles and a lot of learning...and i was right.

I have to add, this was proabbly the best bang for the buck... ~$500 gets you 6 Fridays of racing. Each night you get 1 practice session, and 3 heat races. Total seat time per night ~30-40 minutes... 1.5 mile track, with many configurations, lots of room for passing... they even spice it up by running the track in reverse...

However as always there are some drawbacks... $500 gets you access and plenty of seat time in proabbly one of the best go-kart tracks in New England, but with some shitty rental karts... But don't be alarmed everybody gets the same shitty karts! :)

Karts are 9hp, weights are added based on driver to equalize kart performace... but its always a hit or miss,, you can either get a shitty kart that turns well, or you get a pocket rocket with no brakes.., when i say no brakes.. i mean "OMG im going 55 mph and i need to take the hairpin turn...right NOW !! OH SHIT!!" no brakes..! You live and learn..plenty of grass and run-off...and no walls or trees to hit :)

Oh, also these guys run Hard compound tires..in meaning it is very easy to overdrive the kart.. which is actually a great learning tool for me..as i am naturally genetically engineered to overdrive! :)

The racing,, i guess this is standard for karting, involes a bit more contact then i would like. Most common strategy is to bump-pass... you use the guy infront for brakes, as he slides out...you pass on the inside. This usually should be penalty according to the rules, but only if the flag station guy has finished texting and is watching the race. (You can check out my previous post with a video of this happening). BTW to set the record straight i never passed like that,, i had plenty of tools in my arsenal thanks to thousands of hours of working traffic on Iracing :)

BTW after that video, they banned my GoPRO camera on the track... i guess it made'em look bad...oh well...its their track and not mine..too bad or i would have some really awesome 3-wide battles, crazy passing racing porn to share :/

"Measurement is Key to Progression"... when i first started, the first night... i noticed i was ~1.3 seconds of pace from the #1 driver, who also happens to be a veteran of this league.

At that point, i decided i should try to learn as much as possible, and try to improve my self in each night of racing. To reach that goal i started to measure my % of diffrence in lap times (of best lap per race night) and overall points per night.

Each night i would try diffrent driving styles... braking early, braking late, altering lines, controllong how much I let the kart drift. This was a challenge as each heat i would get a random kart, and each race nights karts would behave diffrently... But the principals were always the same.

So when i had first started, i was %2.2 slower then #1 guy, at night #6 i had closed that gap %0.4 (from 1.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds diffrence). Here is a simple graph of night/percantage as i work on my driving:

As i improved my overall speed, this got reflected on the points i would collect each night. To put thinhs in perspective, first night i had 22 points... 6th night i was up to 36 points:

Which is exactly what i wanted...although i started off slow and mid-pack i finally started to find my rythem and winning races, which allowed me to catch up in the points to be tied 3rd place and be up there in points with the veterans:

Now that i am able to get average 30+ points per night... the next summer i am hoping to continue improving my style and finishing even higher!.... does anybody have a time machine to take me there? NOW! :)

The only frusturation i would have is,, if one day the progression stalls despite all my efforts, but i will worry about that when i get to that bridge.. for now the work must go on! :)

The Left Foot

So yesterday after a long stall I had the oppurtunity to hit Devens airfiled again for a autocross. This time i got invited by fellow iracer Ian Cook to join him with another fellow iracer Ryan Field at a Renegade Miata club event...

It was definetly packed, compared to the other clubs i go with usually (Track Club USA, Bay State Corvette Club, etc..) and ofcourse the # of runs got a hit at 7. Maybe I am spoiled with 10+ runs from the other clubs :) However they did lay down a very nice track, with a lot of technical and high-speed sections... so that was a nice change from the slalom heavy configurations i have got custom to over the years...

Ian had brought his project 90's miata, and he would co-drive it with Ryan. Keep in mind this was Ryan's first time autocrossing, however do not be fooled as Ryan is proabbly up in the top %1 drivers on Iracing.. some of you might say "so whats, thats just a sim" however...he is known for his extremely smooth style...After his 4th run, he was able to lay down solid times with a completely stock 90's project car, his smooth style from iracing had resignated well here.. i look forward to watch him in the future...

Ian's style was very similar to mine, especially my style from last year when i first started, fast and good car controll or controlled madness, and crowd cheering stunt driver abilities.. Since this is Ian's first year autocrossing, he will soon come to the same realization that i have come to and try to adapt and evolve his style to be right between the old aggresive and fun Ian and the smooth and boring Ian... it is a though balance to get to, and i've been working for a while for my self as-well, and i look forward to watch Ian unleash his true potential next year...

So watching these guys on the track, complete opposite styles gave me the clear picture, "the happy place", the style to adapt was actually a bit of both...or meet them right in the middle. Ian and i had a lot already in common, and i know i had to smooth out my transitions.. keep in mind my car, bone stock, with front skinny tires understeer's alot,, it is specifically designed to come out of the factory with understeer in mind (to decrease the # of clueless driver wrecks).

I had been left foot braking on Iracing for almost more then a year now, and finally had the courage to try it in real on my last race on Summit @ 24 hours of lemons with medicore success ( locked a couple times).

So what i decided was the first half of the day drive normal, and the last couple runs i would try left foot braking to ease the transitions and settle the car...

Here is a simple graph of my laptimes, comparing the diffrence in both methods (Blue : right foot, Orange : left foot)

You can ignore the first 2 runs, as thats when i try to learn the track, but after that, the amount of progress starts do decrease in each run, and i almost hit a wall (4th, 5th)... but once i switch to left foot braking, i get a great reduction on my lap times...

I can say as advertised left foot braking did not only help with the transitions, cut down the amount of time lost between changing from brake + gas, but it actually improved (in my car) the amount of understeer i used to get...which was exactly what i needed.

I still think the car has more potential with smoother hands(looking at the graph you can see if we had run #8 or even #9 there was room for improvement), but this was proabbly one of the fastest runs on street tires on the event, here is my last run where i finally break the 113 second mark:

Phil-1800 a.k.a "Stockholm Saint"

Yes kids it official, there is a high possibility that next year the team might have a 2nd car as a contender...

This one is a true "piece of shit", but comes with a history and class... I have a feeling once Phil gets done with this, it will be one of the better looking cars on the northeast lemons tracks

Early reports indicate that the car will be named "Stockholm Saint" and will include a swedish theme,, lets hope nothing to do with ABBA :)

Saying that, Phil...(who's apperently dad still owns a restored version of this car ) has some scary plans for this baby. One thing about Phil is he is a true jack of all trades, a perfect engineering genius..once done with this car, it will be pumping a good hp/weight ratio i am sure!! :)

Nothing Phil does is "under-whelming", and i truelly cannot wait to get more updates of the car through out the winter as it morphs into a race car by spring...and shit in my pants on the track while drivin it!

The other cool aspect would be running a 2 car team, although logistically speaking towing 2 cars to each race will definetly become a costly nightmare... However running the fox and the saint side-by-side drafting on the straights, while taking in team orders on intercom will definetly add a nice twist to the equation... a equation that keeps getting bigger and larger each year, just like the team :)

24 Hours of Lemons Capitol Offense

Wow...what a great track that was, i don't think i have ever droven on anything quite like it...very technical and physically demanding (especially with 85-90F degree weather).

Lots of elevation changes, banked turns, crazy S's, off-camber turns, double and even triple apex turns,, you name it they have it :) And when you put 102 x $500 worth cars on the track... you know you will have a good times :)

"Good times" i think is the correct phrase to describe the whole weekend...although we where thrown off when we found out that we got promoted to class B from C because of our previous domination in the C class we knew we had nothing against some of the faster class B cars...

But we where not going to give up without a fight... while some Class B cars where turning in 1:53 lap times, ours fastest time (GJ) was ~2:00 and we were pretty happy to come 10th in our class and 20th overall (may i remind you that it was out of 102 cars)

Its also good to point out that if we where still in Class C we would have won that by a 30 lap margin(!)... but fellow team member and iracer and gt academy finalist Andre contributed for the Class C win in the Sputnik piece of shit car..(because we had no open seats for him on this race he took a arrive&drive seat with Team Sputnik) so atleast that victory did not go too far away from the family ;)

We had a few hickups during the weekend... Chris missed a few yellow flags, Steve got a hit & run (again but this time on the track :) ) but luckly no major flags..

Mechanically the new engine did wonders,, we had to swap out the ECU that was acting funny...which I have to say its great to be part of a team who does not mind carrying around extra parts for easy swaps like this to save the day! :)

I also captured quite a amount of racing footage from Tom, GJ and Chris's sessions, i still have hours of video to edit, but in the mean time here is a quick POV one from me on Sunday morning working traffic and battling out with some of the class A and B cars... enjoy :)



This might very well be the last race for the season for us... but who knows maybe we'll find enough time & budget for another race weekend, but either way i'll have more too post soon...

The next race is coming up :)

Yes...its been quite some time since i had the oppurtunity to update
the blog, but actually there has been a lot of developments since the last
race in NHMS.

Since we fried the engine only a few hours away from capturing our
first victory as a team last race, the majority of the team spent
most of their weekends getting in a new engine from the parts car
that was bought some time ago incase we ever needed it...smart move
on buying that other crap-can fox guys :)

Here is our Craptain working on setting up the install for
the new engine :)

It sucked i couldn't be there with the guys to help out during the
engine swap but a 8 hour round trip drive and the fact that I lack
in mechanical skills, i had nothing to offer then just moral support...

Initial tests of the new engine (on closed course, closed to traffic :P)
hinted that we had more horsepower! This can be explained by the fact that
the old engine proabbly had 150k miles + 4 races under its belt, while i
think this engine is under <60k miles (although not sure)

So new engine = more horsepower, but it can also bring some negative
suprises during the race weekend, as it has not been tested under
stresfull conditions. But i think we will try to do the practice session
on friday to see how the engine behaves..

Practice i think will be important as-well for the team, as the race
will be on Shenandoah Circuit @ Summit Point Motorsports Park which we have
never raced on. It is supposed to be one of the popular lemons tracks
( in meaning a lot of traffic) and a very technical track...

It also sucks that although we have the other tracks scanned from Summit in Iracing
we seem to have this one missing... I had used NHMS Iracing version
effectively in the previous race, but looks like all I have is a few
youtube videos to learn the track this time..

I'll have more updates after the race next week and hopefully some great
news!

F1 Outdoors leaguge and summer action :)

So what other way of cooling down in summer months then racing
on the F1 Outdoor track in the summer leaguge :)

The track is truely beautifull:

The races are usually every other week Fridays after work, so that
means I spend 1.5 hrs in rush hour getting to the track, and we
get 3 races + 1 practice session.

The track hosts a wide array of track configurations, and there is
plenty of room for passing... here is a recent video from Round #1
(I still am trying to figure out how i got the penalty on this
video though...let me know if you figure it out)



The racing is very real, but not everybody obeys the rules..especially
round #2 i have been used for brakes many times, while the flag stations
where chatting about their nail polishes.. I literally raised my hand
waved at them, etc.. but nothing could get their attention :)

I am still learning the tracks and should get higher in the points
in the upcoming events, but there is some serious talent in the top #3!
Some of these guys are old timers who have done the same leaguge last
summer.. and just following their lines i see great improvements...

More mario karts flavoured videos to come, next race 1st week of July...