10/6/99: For October we will be racing in conjunction with the Hydrofest boat races. I guess you could call us the "side show" For the first time we'll have lots of visitors watching and Fran is concerned about the additional pressure to to well. To prepare for this months autocross I ordered new tires from Rex Tire, but due to a communication error I received Toyo Proxes RA-1s and not Bridgestone RE-010s!! I guess you could say that RA-1 and RE-010 are easy to confuse, but I've never had any problems telling the difference between the name Toyo and Bridgstone and I do know the difference between a tire with a treadwear index of 120 and one at 40!
Don't get me wrong, deep down I really wanted a true DOT road racing tire, but I never wanted to use it for the street. I would have gotten a set of spare rims and mounted the racing tires for weekend use only. Oh well, I didn't have much choice, I needed tires so we put them on today. Needless to say there seems to be quite a bit of grip, I'll just cross my fingers and hope for 3-4 months before I've got to do this again!
10/9/99: I just came back from the October Autocross on Ford Island and man was it hot! The track was hot, and the competition was hotter. Because of the extra space, the course designers set up a really large course. It seemed to stretch half the length of the Ford Island runway and then it doubled back on itself. Despite the size of the track, it flowed really well, and the best time of the day was a quick 47.703. Unfortunately, our weekend did not go too well.
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Ford Island is in the middle of Pearl Harbor, it was here that the battleship Arizona and many others were moored the morning of December 7th, 1941. This is a picture of the Arizona memorial built over the sunken battleship whose flag still flies. |
| A recent addition to Pearl harbor is the Battleship Missouri. It was on the decks of this ship that WWII officially ended. It seems fitting that you can look over the bow of the "Mighty Mo" and see the Arizona only a few hundred yards away. |
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Franceen needed to leave early, so we decided to have her run in the first heat instead of the second. This would present a problem since that meant that we were racing in the same group. I wanted to help her with the setup on her car and I needed to work on the setup of my car at the same time. Trying to juggle tire pressures on both cars was a bit too much to handle. Since I was using the Toyo RA-1s for the first time, I had absolutely no idea where to start with tire pressures and because this was only our second time with the new GS-R on the Toyo T1-Ss we were just as lost there. To compound matters, she was lined up right behind me on the grid and with our two cars on the track at the same time, I couldn’t watch her race.
On my first run around the track, there seemed to be very little grip. I figured it was because I was the second car out for the day and the track was dusty. My time of 55.310 seemed ok, since the Vette that ran in our group only managed a 56.036, the Supra Turbo ran a 58.488, and the RX-7 did 57.716. Sadly all of them would improve dramatically on their times, while I managed only a 2 second improvement in my following runs. My second run dropped to a 53.953, and my third run had my "big spin" for the weekend, and a 60.394. My final run was again my best, 53.832. As I reflect on my times for the weekend, I am at a bit of a loss for the lack of relative performance. I went with the best tires that I’ve ever had, and came away with the worst times since we started.
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My car was lacking grip in a big way (despite my new tires) and I never became comfortable with the track. It seemed like on every run a different corner "surprised" me! |
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Franceen on the other hand complained of massive understeer and on her first run plowed over 5 cones! FIVE cones! This netted her a 71.662. We adjusted her tire pressures and her next three times in order were: DNF, 60.460 and a best of 60.224. By the last run she was actually commenting that the car felt a bit loose! That’s a switch! I’m pleased she is able to give me feedback on the way the car is working. Her input is valuable because her driving style differs dramatically form mine and since she's getting better at describing what the car is doing, I may be able to help her get the car better for her. Hopefully next time we won’t run in the same heat so I should be able to help sort out the car better.
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By Fran's fourth run, we had gotten her car a bit better balanced, but the inside rear is still getting real "light" and doesn't seem to be contributing much to her cornering efforts. |
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I came away from this month’s autocross with mixed feelings. Overall the new S2000 performed exactly as it was designed to. It exhibited almost no body roll, responded to steering inputs precisely, and behaved just like a car with a 50/50 weight distribution should.
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My new Honda S2000 was the perfect dance partner, unfortunately I kept stepping on her toes. |
The driver however, ran over cones, over revved the engine on several occasions, accidentally pulled it out of gear, on another, and generally just drove poorly. Part of the "problem" is that I’m not used to having a car "sideways" in a power oversteer or 4 wheel drift. (With my MR-2 you don’t want the tail start to come around since many times you can’t stop the process!)
With the Honda, a tail out cornering stance at the limit is normal, but because I am not used to this, on the exit of several corners, I was clipping the cone with the SIDE of the car! The times for the day reflected my unfamiliarity with the car: 69.790 (67.790 with a cone), 66.046, 66.970 with 1 cone, and 67.954 with 1 cone. My best for the day was the clean run of 66.046 and that was good for 24th overall out of 65 drivers. FTD was a 59.176 and the slowest was a 98.762.
Franceen had a hard time getting her car to turn in again, it seems that the Acura is going to be a difficult car to get really fast in G Stock. There were 7 Subarus in GS and they all finished ahead of Fran in the GS-R.
| Franceen's GS-R rounds the last fast turn before the timing lights. |
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