Civic of Doom: Honda Challenge Recycling

[Kaan]

NASA MA – Spring Rumble @ Summit Point Raceway
Controversy: I love beast of the east racing… its really helping me work on my racing game. The seasoned racers seem to hate best of the east… I HATE (in the standard races) when the leaders of another group get in the middle of my race (I know I know, get faster and that wont happen… I’ll get over it).



I left March Madness at VIR with a car that was pushing mid corner quite a lot. This required me to drive with the throttle a little (or lack of throttle) and I should be mashing the gas and make the vtaks scream. I felt like I was “fast enough” for comp school and my first weekend, but I needed to pick up time.




Solution… (see previous posts) lets check out this alignment and get the corner balance dialed in. Jason did a great job AND it really helped. It was much easier to drive, much more predictable, but later in the sessions the push would come back.
Add to that the unknown heat cycle of my toyo RR take offs and the time it was taking them to get up to temperature… was still struggling to stay with the main pack. I was able to stay within 1.5 seconds of the leaders (per lap), but they were hitting their best lap times on lap 2… where I needed lap 3 or 4 to get up to speed. Obviously lots to work on… to include working through lapped traffic and getting wrapped up with being overtaken just as I am catching the next HC car.
The bad… the push kept me from going flat from turn 6-9 and I’m giving up time. I’m still 50/50 on my starts… I either nail it or bomb it. But my battery was dying and throwing off my tach signal, and that’s all fixed up.


The good… the car under braking was much better. I’m not good enough to bomb into the pack of cars in Turn 1/Turn 5 (which I seem to catch lots of people there but id rather not bend up the car). There is 100% an advantage if you are running the B16/ITR gear box vs. the GSR I’m running… but giving up raw acceleration out of turn T10 and up T9 (and the push through the carousel) and not be “that far” off the pace, I’ll take it.

NEXT…
I need to fix a wheel bearing that I can “feel” is just starting to get notchy… I’ll leave that to someone who wont ghetto it up so badly (Jason). After watching C. Mike break 4 studs and lose a wheel, I’ll let someone that knows what they are doing deal with that bearing.
I’m a cheap cheap man (sorta). Sure I’ll buy a $500 coil on plug setup so I don’t have to fight distributors, but I live on $100 sets of take offs. Talking to Adam Molaver (SM driver), the SM guys (that I get my take offs from) will sell their tires when they drop 1-2 seconds off their lap times. How far was I off? Why are they gapping me in the first 2-3 laps? Yeah… I need a fresh set of tires… and I’m hoping to do it before Hyperfest SO I can put up a fight in a +20 car field.

To date I have been running a square 205/50/15… easy to rotate, etc. because of the push I’m debating on throwing a new set of 225s up front with a 10mm spacer. This should help with the push but it means I cant “rotate” my tires. The other thought is to get a new set of 205/50/15s and run 10mm spacers… if that doesn’t work out well enough at hyperfest, buy a pair of 225s and have two “low heat cycle” pairs for the rear.

HYPERFEST HERE WE COME!!!! We should have at least 20 H2 Honda Challenge cars… I cant wait.