Then again that could be why you went off at turn 3.

Personally turn 3 is probably the hardest braking point of any place in we race in the west coast in 944 spec. We entry at 6000 rpm in 5th which is about as fast as we are ever going to go and then exit at what top of 2nd? That is alot of speed to lose and is pretty much all straight line braking. Once you start trail braking into a corner the grip of the front tires is less of concern since you really need to mange the overall grip more than just slam on it.

The fun part on car set-up however is finding the balance betwee giving up a little in 1 place to gain more back else where. Usally the best lap time overall wins, but sometimes you can't overcome a disadvantage in one section of the track and therefore either can't defend or can't attack a competitor there. At that point and lap time edge you may have from running other spots better may not be all that useful.

BTW... for me one thign that keeps 944 spes interesting is the different combination of set-ups these cars allow for. We have a large usable range of camber, toe, ride height, sway bars and spring rates to play with. Most all work to get you in the ball park, but as you are aware sometime small changes can have big impact on lap time and driveability. The ability to adjust things to suit your needs is important. Some spec series can get so tight on set-up that there is no room to fine tune.
Lets face it other than the LSD and some different bushings the car is not really and different. You could a have tweaked the old car to these specs pretty easily. The thing was that you did not know what this combo could do. No you know.

Charley,
porsches at the point in october again, i think is the cash race. just leave the LSD and the rear sway bar at home, and we wont have a problem. ;->

Not sure I can leave the LSD at home. Man did it suck getting spanked on the exit of T11 :-0

I think we race that same weekend. It will depend on points if I make it to that race.

Joe I am not sure exactly what makes this car so much better but it is.

cbuzzetti wrote:


Black art of chassis tunning!

I belive 100% that is partly the LSD and partly due to the alignment changes.


BTW.... I drove Jim Foxx's 13 car last fall at our annual endro for under 2 hours. That car felt very different from mine. I had some tire issues that prevented me from really driving to the limits, but that car was night and day to mine. The LSD was a hoot to have, but the rest of the car felt to stiff and bouncy for me. Could have been due to the springs since I only run 350lbs springs.

Still I could see why that car might be nice at Miller given all the high speed stuff there. Not sure if it would have been faster a PIR than mine with the chassis set-up exactly as it was. I personaly think it needed adjustments to be fast at PIR. Sadly car was wrecked in DE so we will never really know how fast it could have been there.

Point is that car was very different, but I never figured why. Personaly I would love the time to do 4-5 days of pure testing. Meaning time to go out run the car for a few laps then come in and make change. Then go back out and feel the difference. The only way to really do it right is to have an all day open session. That way you can be on track when ever you finish the change and not wait till the "next run group". I figure I could then really map out the effect of indvidual changes and how the combine. Doing it would be long an scientific process, but should help develop the physics behind why some changes work and other don't.

Charlie consider yourself lucky in that you got a car that works very well for you driving style right out of the box.

Oh I know I am lucky. My old car was good but never this good. I spent alot of time, energy and money to get #999 to where it is.
I have recorded the current settings so I can duplicate if needed. Hopefully the car never gets wrecked.
Buttonwillow does semi-private test days midweek. Cost is $600 per car/driver. I believe they limit it to 8 cars. You could have the track all to your self if no one else shows up.
I drove the #13 car last year as well at Buttonwillow on a test day. It drove different than the #999 car due to LSD and good HP.

It is too bad they don't do that here in Phoenix.

We never get any test days here. The only way we can get non-racing track time is to go to a non-nasa event and try to get track time.

The issues them becomes to be effective we need to be race group type setting. DE settings with street cars just does not work since it is too easy to get held up on track and depend on the passing rules you can spend most of session in traffic. Hard to see if an adjustment works if you can get 2-3 full bore corners together. Personally I am not good enough to know if something works in 1 lap. Part of the reason is that I need to drive the car the old way first and feel a difference. Then need to explore slight changes in dirving techniqe to see how a little more rear end grip may help in some spots (ie learning to push harder) or may require and adjustment to deal with understeer at turn in inplaces. Then once that driving adjustment is made I need to consider overall lap times to see if it helped or not.

I one may a sway bar change to correct oversteer in one corner. I had been fighting that oversteer all session. So I made the adjustment and went out. However due to traffic I never could string together more than 1-2 good full bore laps. As a result my lap times were off. The car felt better where I wanted it to, but not quite as good in a couple other spots. However I did not have enough data to really know. So next session when out and got clean laps and felt right away based the feel and lap time what helped me in one spot over was bad since it hurt 2-3 other spots. Result was slow lap time. Darn... that had been qualfing too. Oh well. I could go back, which I did at race time, but it was amazing how not being able to run full bore really hurt me. Now data aquistion may have helped, but in the end the final judge is the overall lap and not getting string of clean laps makes it much harder.

Then again maybe I just need to tow to BW...
Ahh... it is only money right?