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Buttonwillow Raceway #13a CCW and #13 CW - 4-2007 Event
We ran Buttonwillow Raceway this weekend, #13a CCW Sat and #13 CW Sun. I'm still on the accursed 205f 225r combination, until I can find some 235's for the rear. As I mentioned in the Horse Thief writeup, the 225s are too little tire for the rear of these cars, and a 235 / 245 offers much better balance. This was the 5th event for this set of tires, and in Red2 of Sunday, both rear tires corded. The new video of 13CW is from this session, and you can see a bit of looseness because of the cording tires.
Video Still 1: It is true that different cars drive different lines on the track...
Two interesting bits of info came out of this event. One was that I was 1.5 seconds a lap faster than last time at this track, and the only real change to the car or track was softening the swaybar by 1 hole to reduce understeer. I'd attribute a good deal of the improvement to that swaybar change alone. The other interesting bit was that both my rear tires corded at the same time, and both corded the outer 1" of the tire first, though wear looked pretty good otherwise. I'm going to have to autopsy the tires and see what was really left on the inside of the tires. I could probably use another -.25* of camber in the rear, based upon the wear (though tire temps look good). Of course, whether that will still be true on 235's I don't know...wouldn't want things to be too easy, you know.
Video Still 2: Here you see my good friend Brent in his brand new C6 Z06...
Anyway, about these beautiful video stills you're looking at here...Well, the session after cording the rear tires, I put on my other set of rears, which were my original set of NT01s from way back when I bought the car. They were all I have left while I wait for Nitto to make a new batch of 235 NT01s. Anyway, I hoped to drop some time on them, as the car had been pretty tail-happy all day on the other tires.
Now, I'm always fastest when I'm chasing someone, so it was good luck that I got put on track behind my buddy Brent in his new Z06. He had been running a few seconds a lap faster than me all day, so I figured for a few laps I could try to keep up and probably drop my times doing so. What I hadn't counted on was the cheating bastard doing a little agricultural work and dusting down the track to keep me behind him ;-).
Video Still 3: Demonstrating an advanced "defending my fast time" technique to slow the competition (me)...
Actually, I've looked at the timing on the lap he so inconsiderately ruined, and it was going to be a high 2:03 or a low 2:04, so not much different than the 2:04.1 that I ran 2 laps later. I was told by someone over by the timing tower that from their perspective it looked like this had been a really close call, but it wasn't at all. Knowing Brent and his mad driving skills, I could see long before his spin that things were not looking good for his experimental new line. I could have stopped before even getting to the turn, but I was hoping he was going to have the good grace to roll completely off track so I wouldn't have to slow down and sacrafice the lap. In the end, not surprisingly, he stopped right in the middle of the track, where he could cause the most havoc. I had intended to pass him on the right, but by the time I got to him he hadn't quite stopped spinning and I was worried about his nose coming around further, so I abandoned the idea at the last minute and went left instead...it probably made the whole episode look all that much more death defying from the tower. The video of the incident can be found on the "When good laps go bad page".
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