New Setup

Well after our weekend at Gingerman, we put a lot of though into where we could save a few mod points. After reading through the TT rule book a few times, and doing a few calculations, we found a new winning recipe. Our big points saver was from our suspension. According to NASA TT rules, inverted monotube struts/shocks, and struts/shocks with a piston diameter greater than 39mm take additional points. Well our suspension fit right in with that description. Now even though we were happy with how our current suspension was performing, it needed to be replaced for us to be allowed to run r-comp tires. So, we gave BC Racing Suspension (the brand of our current coilovers) a call to see if they could help us out. They gave us some recommendations, and set us up with a new set of non-inverted monotube struts and springs with custom valving and spring rates suited to our car's configuration. Now with the new suspension on the way, and our mod points in check, we ordered up some new tires; a fresh set of Hoosier R6's.

There's some work that needs to be done to get the car prepared for the next upcoming event, but it's going to be a fun one!

Gingerman Raceway with NASA TTB

This weekend at Gingerman was a fun, but eye opening experience. To start, this was our first time being at Gingerman Raceway. We really liked the course. We enjoyed the fact that it is much more technically challenging than you would guess from a look at the track map. Also, the elevation change and the multiple blind corners made the course pretty fun and a bit edgy as well.

Up to this point, we have been running max performance summer street tires. We knew we were at a disadvantage to our competitors who were running r-comps, but we had hoped our much wider street tires would close some of the gap. It's worth noting that, we stuck to the street tires since we had maxed out our modification points for TTB. This weekend showed us the fault in our logic because the majority of Gingerman is very long radius corners, which really benefits a stickier compound.

The majority of Saturday was spent learning the course and progressively dropping our lap times. With the sun constantly beating down and temps rising into the upper 80's throughout the day, it kept getting harder to lower our lap times. Even though we were pushing the car as hard as possible, we never came close enough to the lap times our r-comp sporting competitors had. We had to settle with a 4th place finish. Sunday went about the same as Saturday; except, the weather was a bit cooler. So, we were able to post some quicker lap times (as well as everyone else). The day ended with a 3rd place finish.

This weekend made us re-analyzing our game plan and how we can rearrange some points so we can get rid of these lap time killing street tires and get some decent rubber.