The Test'n'Tune
The T'n'T course was pretty basic. Some sweepers, some slaloms, some eyebrows, pretty basic course but plenty of necessary practice on elements I need work on. The first run showed exactly what I figured the car was going to do. It pushed. With tire pressures at 32 psi all around this was going to be an inevitability but I opted to leave the pressures the same for the next run for a number of reasons. The biggest of which was the previous run was THE FIRST run on those tires. The only miles on the tires were the 2 days prior to the event I drove them on the street and the drive to the event the morning of. The first run also exposed just how short the second gear on these cars really is. It's short.... like shift to third in some places... short. There were two places on this T'n'T course where 3rd was not only faster but a necessity. The shift back down to second was was relatively easy.
The second run on the Test'n'Tune course was much like the same... until the end. The very end was an increasing radius sweeper that mandated a shift to third. Well I shifted to third... the back end stepped out and I carried the drift through the timing lights, past the finish cones and then promptly spun the car, not once, but twice around. No harm, no foul, car didn't even stall!
The rest of the test'n'tune involved bleeding front tire pressure down to 30 PSI and letting the rears climb to wherever they went. The car's handling balance still involved a push but it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. I would end up running about 20 runs in the car to get used to it and it's quirks. Note, still no front camber... front tires would show their hate for this type of driving by the end of the day.
Here is a list of observations about the chassis:
1.) Overall, car balance is a hair to the pushy side in tight stuff and in faster stuff.
2.) Cars with real power are not forgiving of abusive relationships with the throttle pedal.
3.) Brake pedal works, although the initial bite is large, the middle of the pedal is kind of soft which makes modulation easy.
4.) Dat body roll.... it exists, but is overall quite controllable.
5.) Corner-to-Corner porpoising sucks and the GT/PP needs better dampers. Overall though, compared to the 2009 stock... no comparison, the 2015 is flat out better.
6.) When people say the car "drives" narrower than it is, they would be speaking the truth!
7.) Track Apps is a lot of fun to play with. Max lateral G today was 1.16, max braking was 1.01, max acceleration was .76
8.) The car could use an aftermarket rear swaybar... BMR bars incoming with a slight possibility of showing up before Nationals.
9.) Grip + Speed + Shifting = Need for Harness... harnesses ordered already!
10.) Overall speed: This car is fast and runs good times!
Solo Points #6
The event was held on a more complex course than the Test'n'Tune and looked to be very fast. Lots of VERY fast transitions mixed with some tighter turns. I really felt like the course was an absolute riot to drive. The high speed stuff did exacerbate some of the pushyness of the car but overall I didn't think there was a huge issue with the way the car handled in relation to the course design when driving the correct line. Like I said above, the car's brakes work and a brief brush of the brake pedal allowed the car to really take a bite into the corner. Transitionally, the car is slow to transition. While the stock shocks are tolerable, I miss the quick transitions of my 2009 on coilovers.
My first run actually came in with some ridiculously high time. This was due to a timing error from cars finishing too close together. A re-run was granted and I took every bit of an advantage from that. A free look at the course never hurt anyone!
Anyway, run #1, I left the car's tire pressure where they were at from the previous day which was probably a touch low. That's ok. The tires were starting to wear in and feel better. First run of the course was mildly timid. I had no idea where the shift points would be, if there were going to be any. In the first run I didn't find the rev limiter so no issues there. That said, it wasn't as fast as it could have or should have been. The first run was a 53.921 which was .3 slower than the other 2015 Mustang GT/PP on site but still good enough to be in 3rd or 4th of ten.
Run #2 set forth little in the way of changes to anything but driving. The run found .15 seconds to drop the time to 53.750 but the other competition was improving faster than I was. By this time the tires were hot, like properly hot.
Run #3, I bled the air pressure down to where they were for the test'n'tune. This course was open enough that those tire pressures were working. Still pushy, but not so bad that it couldn't be driven around. The fronts were most certainly hotter than the rears which is not a surprise given the car's balance. I knew that changes in tire pressure were not going to be a permanent fix to this problem as it was a far larger handling adjustment needed than tire pressures could allow. Of course, lazyness doesn't help either and I was that! :) This run dropped some time and ended with a 53.417. I was not getting fast enough to take over first place but I was dicing around the first 3 slots in F-Street up to this point. The other 2015 GT was running just a few tenths faster in the 53.3XX range and I new I needed to beat that.
Run #4 was more of the same from the previous run. I new there were places out there to make up time out there so I went out there and tried my damndest to find it. It didn't pay off as I lost time through some rather big mistakes. Go figure right? Get a little bit of red mist going and that's all she wrote! Final time was a 53.652.
Run #5 started off with the news that the other 2015 GT/PP had dropped time down into the 52's with a 52.906 run. I was hell bent on finding the 52 that I knew was out there. Big driving line mistakes in the previous run showed a few places to really push harder as I was underdriving. The left hand sweeper going into the back offset slaloms was one area and the quick "kink" after the long right hander before the finish as I was slowing down too much. This was an area at Spring Nationals at the T'n'T course where I found some good time. It paid off, at least partially. Aggressiveness where due really shaved some time off. I think that had I had one more run on the course I would have dropped a little more time. The final run came in at a 52.904. That is .002 faster than the GT/PP in the lead at the time of my run.
So that was good enough for the win right? I sure thought so! Then I found out that our local Shelby GT driver and frequent attendee of Nationals ran a smoking 52 flat time. Well that just sucks the wind right out of the sails doesn't it! Still, second place in an under prepped car against prepped competitors wasn't a bad place to be. I finished 14th overall, which given the talent pool of the rest of the people wasn't too bad either.
You can view the full results here:
http://nrscca.com/files/results/1150413754SoloPoints6Results.pdf
And the PAX results here:
http://nrscca.com/files/results/1717828943SoloPoints6PAXResults.pdf
So what happens now? Last night I did the F-Street legal slotting of the stock struts. I also pulled the lateral link of the front lower control arm out and pushed the strut tops in to take out any tolerances there. Preliminary measurements indicate that this gave me approximately -2.3º of camber. Yesterday I also had the wheels and tires swapped over so I'm F-S legal for Nationals. An official alignment is coming on Monday to give real numbers. I think I'll tweak the rear camber out a half degree and even it out side to side. Zero out the toe. If the BMR bars show up, I'll throw the rear bar on and we'll go from there.
Scrothe Rallye 3, DOT approved 4 point Harnesses are also on the way from Solo Performance Shop and will be here before Nationals too!
Stay tuned for that update after labor day! Thanks for reading and watching!
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