Meanwhile, the Toowoomba club has been trying to make up for meetings lost due to weather. There is a lot to chose from here when it comes to which weather causes a meeting to be cancelled. There is something slightly masochistic about racing at night when its 1Deg C. Maybe next year we'll try a few day time meetings when it might be a touch warmer.
This week's meeting was the exact opposite -
. The forecast was for 37Deg and the outside temp gauge in the car read a balmy 38 as I drove to the track. Numbers were down a little, even compared to normal, but there was 4 cars in each class so a track was set up (slightly simplified to reduce the work load) and racing commenced. All considered it was a good night with some close racing amongst the TC's and the Mini's being a little more restrained for a change. Lap times for the TC's were in the low 10s range. My F1 was in the TC mix just to make it interesting for everyone.
. The forecast was for 37Deg and the outside temp gauge in the car read a balmy 38 as I drove to the track. Numbers were down a little, even compared to normal, but there was 4 cars in each class so a track was set up (slightly simplified to reduce the work load) and racing commenced. All considered it was a good night with some close racing amongst the TC's and the Mini's being a little more restrained for a change. Lap times for the TC's were in the low 10s range. My F1 was in the TC mix just to make it interesting for everyone.I made some major changes to the F1 for this meeting and for the future. I converted it back to 190mm and updated it a few areas. Keen readers of this blog (yeah right) might remember I tried running the F109 in 190mm guise before and wasn't keen on it. This time however, it was a completely different beast, but I can't tell you why. Certainly some areas are different (different side spring arrangement, RM-01 steel axle), but it was only a tenth or so slower than the 17.5 TC's and was easy enough to drive for my consistency to be consistently around 0.4 for the first time in AGES. It wasn't perfect - it was a little unstable on highspeed turn in - but over all it was probably as good as its ever been, especially on the slippery Toowoomba track. As always, repeat-ability will be the gauge of real progress, so here's hoping for the next meeting in 3 weeks.
The only disappointment was the Sweep tyres. I tried the V2 Super Soft rear with the Hard front. The balance was no where near as good as the Ride R1's, with a lot more initial and mid-corner steering followed by a loose exit. It also wanted to swap ends at high speed with any more than slight steering corrections. As I didn't have time to do any testing with different combos (eg Ride fronts/Sweep rears) I am reluctant to make any definitives about which was causing what. However, over all I am not impressed with the Sweep tyres - the inserts are a pain - they need cutting to size and who has ever glued inserts to the rims first?? I never have with an on-road tyre in my experience.
The fronts are also super tight on the recommended Tamiya rims (I had to use a small screwdriver to force the bead into position) and if the inserts were glued to the rims first I think it would be almost impossible to fit them. Yes they are significantly cheaper and have a better scale appearance than the Ride tyres, but the convenience alone makes the Rides a better option. I have read that Sweep is currently working on pre-mount versions with (possibly) some compound adjustments. If the price stays low they might be worth playing with some more but only time will tell.
I've also been letting a few things churn around in the brain that I might put down on cyber-paper before the end of the year. I should be safe - don't think I'll be bumping into anyone important before the new year
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