Sheesh… Motorsport is hard! Thought I had everything down for a good showing at this opening round. It turns out I had a bunch of problems waiting to bite me. The day started with the handle falling off my Hauler, & that turned out to be a bit of an omen.
B74.2
First round seemed pretty positive I was happy with 8th as a starting point. But in round 2 & 3, I couldn’t find any more pace. The handling was good, but trouble with the tabletop and first jump, pointed to 4wd inexperience, and I slid down the order. The car had been making a noise like a slipper under braking, but all the time. I correctly identified that it wasn’t the slipper, because the slipper was coming off the track luke warm. What I missed was that my Surpass V5r 6.5t Motor was on its way out. I think the sensor board went, hence the weird nose under load. In Heat 4, it finally lunched itself. I just about had time to rush in the 10.5t in the bag. But it was too gutless. The final turned into a rather humiliating 2 car affair where I could do quite well on the flat twisty bits, but couldn’t get up enough steam to clear the jumps, or keep up on the straight. I tried to keep at it, but in the end, a more consistant run from Jamie meant he did me at end by just over half a second. Fair play mate!
B6.4
In 2wd, I didn’t get a battery charged in time to practice. This put me onto the back foot when I found I’d dialled out so much roll and Camber at the back, that it actually slid around in tighter corners. I also had the slipper way too loose, to the point that I only just finished the first heat. A tightened Slipper, putting a bit more camber change on the back and switching from the Fuzz Bites to Prisms helped. I couldn’t quite get the aggressive, on the nose rotation I like out of the Prism fronts. I also struggled with the table top. The entry ramp was pretty steep, and I found getting the line and speed endlessly tricky. In the 3rd and 4th round, I changed the Turbo so it came in later but more aggressively when it did kick in. So I managed to get some half decent rounds in but still with understeer in the mediums and a generally tricky to drive setup. The only slight consolation was that 11th in the C meant it didn’t matter how the final went. I tried the Fuzz Bites on the front, and they turned out to be just the ticket, but at the cost of re-introducing the problem or the back end sliding, and the front suddenly pitching or twitching into a turn off power. The final ended up being a long-hard slog to drive around these issues. My feeling is a lighter diff oil, slightly softer rear damping and half a degree more camber will sort it. But together with thee 4wd problems, I went home really quite tired and unsatisfied.
