Ohh yeah, we had a second Test'n'Tune event as the Starting Line school wanted the pad for their school. I got a bunch of runs in in varying conditions ranging from wet, to drying, to completely dry. During this I made the swaybar change and put the front bar at the middle setting. During the pre-Spring Nats nut and bolt I found out that the passenger side was in the middle and the driver side was in the stiffest setting. Apparently I wasn't paying attention on the one side! This was fixed before Spring Nationals.
Spring Nationals:
The Thursday of Spring Nationals, I drove out to the event in an attempt to get the car teched and to see Eric and Jojo. The test'n'tune course was up and running and Eric and Jojo both wanted to drive the car. Well I got distracted at the T'n'T course and didn't get the car teched. That's fine. A small tweak to the car's shock settings made Eric and Jojo happy enough with the car setup to give it the "doesn't suck at handling" thumbs up but there was one glaring issue with the car that they felt was really holding it back and another potential source of lost time. In fact, their 2013 Gotta Have it Green Track pack GT was running faster raw times than my car at the test'n'tune course by about a second on a 30 second course... IE: an eternity. Now if you question my driving ability, that's fine, but Jojo would end up taking second and Eric third during the tour. Jojo placed first at the Pro-Solo in F-Street as well. Suffice to say, they can drive and they do it very well! Ohh yeah, that one issue: Power. My 3V in it's current form makes somewhere around 290 RWHP and 300 RWTRQ with just the CAI and tune. It would max out in STU trim somewhere near 305/320. Other cars in the class are making similar to more power and hustling around a lot less weight or were AWD. They were surprised at how much grip the car had and how well it handled the course. Like I said the only real changes to the car done at the T'n'T were rear shock rebound changes. Both thought the 5.0L was the better car to have for STU after driving my car.
It was quite hilarious to ride with Jojo in my car and see him shift to third. I scolded him for doing so and informed him of the 74 mph 2nd gear top speed and the fact that the car was missing a forward gear compared to his 2013. After that he ran a run that was about a second and change off pace of his own car. He did remind me that his track pack car needs to shift to third on the T'n'T course as the back opening radius sweeper really tops out their car because of the short gearing. When I drove their car there were a couple of things that really made the car different. First: The coyote is such a sweetheart of a motor. It isn't a brute and that really improves driving in autocross as the torque and power builds linearly. Second: The Brembo brakes have a lot more initial bite and a lot more woah down on those rotors than my puny 12.4" front rotors and 2 pot sliders do. Part of this is pad compound (Carbotech 1521 vs Hawk HP+) but the additional rotor diameter certainly doesn't hurt. Third: Dem Bridgestones are something else. Like an RS3 in feel (not as precise as other street tires) but with more grip and a lot quieter. They don't talk as much to you but you can feel when they let go of grip so it is a pretty moot point. They are definitely faster than the RS3 is at Lincoln.
Anyway, on to Spring Nats Day 1:
The day started off with rain. STU ran in heat four so I wasn't worried about it as the rain was supposed to end pretty early on. In fact it ended early enough that the course was basically completely dry by the time STU ran. The Day 1 course was the west course from the 2014 Solo Nationals, run in reverse and a tweak to the finish. STU was an 8 driver, 6 car class that composed of the usuals (STi's and Evo's) a 350Z and myself.
Run #1:
One of the things I've learned through the two events on these RS3's is that the first run always starts off... well... interesting. They don't have the cold grip that one really expects in a good autocross tire. That first 2-3 corners are almost always a handful until the tire really warms up. Once it is warm it has good grip and tolerates some over driving. Run #1 would come in with a 64.715 after a cone (so 62.715). After coming in from the run the tires were scalding hot. I unleashed a torrent of water on them to cool them down some before the next run as I found they don't tolerate the heat like the RS3V1 did. Tire pressures were at 32F/30R and the car felt fine after the tires came up to temp. Turned in well and was easy to keep on line. In general, very easy to drive. As the times came in for the competitors, it was evident the car was off pace. Mark Hill came in with a smoking 58.494 and Robert Pendergest came in with a 57.942. That's a lot of time out on course to try and find!
Run #2:
This run felt really good to me and the time confirmed my suspicions. I came in at a rather smoking hot 17 seconds. The announcer made some comment about there being a timing glitch and that I'd get a re-run. I told the guy handing out the time slips that it was BS that they weren't going to count my STU winning run and make me take a re-run and he thought it was funny. I didn't! I'm convinced that there is some form of conspiracy that is keeping the Mustang down in STU. It isn't my fault the car can warp space time and finish a run in 17 seconds! Sheesh! The re-run felt pretty decent. Not as fast as the 17 second run but it came in with a more believable time of 62.539. An improvement but not much of one.
17 second run:
The re-run:
Run #3:
As with every run my goal is to improve on times and learn about the car's handling and tweak as necessary. Without any other changes being made to the overall balance of the car this run also felt pretty good. The car transitioned well and put down power well. It was up to the nut behind the wheel to really show what the car could do. I was determined to get out of my last place and into 7th but it was not meant to be. The run was faster at 62.276 but it wasn't fast enough to move into 7th place. I would go into day 2 a half second out of 7th.
So the finish of day one put me about a half second behind the 7th place person. Not a great place to be (considering I was hoping to be closer to the middle) but I could still achieve my goal of not being DFL with a solid drive. The day 2 course had a lot of elements that benefited my car through both balance and power but it was up to me to really drive the car and accomplish that. The course was designed by Nebraska Region member and CSP National Champion John Hunter and proved to be a fun and interesting course with some challenging lines and places where a set of cojones went a long way to carrying speed.
Car setup wise, nothing changed between the days. I stabilized the pressures back at 32/30 and that was about it. The shock settings determined at the test'n'tune course and recommended by Eric and Jojo were left in place as it worked extremely well on the previous day's course.
The day did start out with rain as seems to be the norm but the course had completely dried by the time I had gotten to run in heat 4. This certainly kept my spirits higher than they otherwise would have been as rain, STU, and RWD don't mix for good times.
Run #1:
I went out on Run #1 and did my best to lay in a good clean run given the cold tires and relatively fresh surface and the new course. I had walked the course 3-4 times so I knew it well in my head and new where the interesting areas were at. This run felt good except for the extremely cold tires caused for some interesting understeer and oversteer conditions that weren't entirely unexpected. The showcase turn had a bit of throttle induced oversteer that I carried pretty far through the turn. It wasn't a lot of oversteer, but enough that countersteer was necessary to keep the car from swapping ends on course. This run came in at 63.371 and would place me in first in STU for the second time during Spring Nationals (the first time being the first run on day #1 :P) Of course this promptly was smashed as the faster drivers came in. The fast guys were only 3.5ish seconds a head of me.
Run #2:
After spraying the tires I went out and attempted to get faster. I drove the start differently (shifted after the turn rather than before it) and got a little more aggressive in the places where I could be. That did NOT pay off as I ended up coning the run. Unfortunately the run was also a slower scratch time anyway and came in with the 65.725. That is rather unfortunate but one run to go!
Run #3:
After hating the run #2 performance I went out and cleaned things up as best I could. I attempted to go faster in places, slower in others and by the time I got to back slalom things had changed for the worse. The rear tires got hot and greasy (even after spraying) and the higher rear rebound lead to getting way too tail happy and this unsettled the car way too much. The run slowed down. I personally don't know how it slowed it down that much but shit happens and it did. This run was a 65.161 which was two seconds slower than my previous two runs. I'm not sure how I went two seconds slower as I wasn't that conservative in the driving and the mistake wasn't that big I didn't think... I dunno. I was sorely disappointed with my driving.
The unfortunate part is that my driving put me a hair shy of one second behind the 7th place person after two days. This disappointing drive put me in a pretty sour mood and to be honest I was ready to be done autocrossing for a long... long... time. But after really thinking about it, it didn't make any sense to just give up on this hobby all together. There was a long build up to get this far and the car handles really well but I think the deficiencies in power and grip really conspired to make this car a non-starter for STU. There was nothing about Eric's Coyote that led me to believe it was too much motor as I had previously believed.
After thinking about where the car could go and how much money it would cost to do so, I determined that another path was necessary. So there is now a new direction. The 2009 is going away. There is simply no way the 3V has enough power in ESP trim to take on a coyote with the same mods in an otherwise identical chassis. I think the absence of properly built S197's with Coyotes has exacerbated the thought that the 3V has a chance. IE: THere haven't been enough builds that really maximized the available tire width from the Hoosier lineup to show the true speed of a Coyote S197. The weight difference is so minute in ESP trim that it wouldn't be enough of an advantage. Unless there is something else I'm missing it doesn't make sense.
CAM, well... CAM is a bottomless pit of money and frankly that doesn't appeal to me at all. This meant two things: Buy a 2011-2014 Coyote or buy a new Mustang GT. Well duh, what do you think I chose?
A 2015 Mustang GT, base, 6 speed manual, and performance package was ordered in Ruby Red:
The above isn't actually mine but is a picture representative of what was ordered. It should be here in 4-6 weeks if all goes according to plan. The 2009 is getting traded in. The plan is to play around in F-Street for a while and harass those people. The car is competitive there and will most likely be competitive in ESP when parts become less expensive. That is the new plan!
As always, questions, comments, concerns, gripes, bitches or complaints welcome!
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