Winton - WRX Round 3

Round 3 was held at Winton. First time here for the championship but I have been here a few times enough to call it home ground. Time to see if all that experience is enough to best some faster cars with 4WD and fat tyres.

With a very small grid of ~35 cars a lot of track time was expected. The format was 2 groups of 20 minute sessions. This allowed for some long runs and returning to the pits for some very quick tweaks. In the end I ran 45 laps which is close to twice the amount of laps I would usually get.

Overall it was an amazing day given the great company, new PB and fastest street class competitor of the day, it was all good news.

New changes to the car this time was just the extra bit of rear camber from the Hardrace Adjustable Lower Control Arms.

(Thanks Suz for the awesome photos again!)

PB! A huge improvement of 0.7 seconds bringing it to 1:42.375 (from 1:43.104)

I recently discovered in RaceChrono that you can add reference laps (old PB) to the session and use that to chase and compare for the current session. Using that I am trying to see where I improved or not compared to my old PB. Maybe more useful is comparing it to my best sectors overall.

Sector	Data	Notes
1		Delta: 0.71 faster Got a better run into this sector from the last lap resulting in 3-5km/h quicker On the throttle sooner out of 1 Slowed down less going into 2
2		Delta: 0.65 faster Faster entry into the sweeper because I lifted instead of braking The car washed out wide and slowed down further, but allowed me to get on the throttle again for a faster exit
3		Delta: 0.07 slower Over slowed into the final hairpin Didn't get a clean exit at the elbow
4		Delta: 0.47 slower Very poor exit onto the back straight
5		Delta: 0.05 slower Braked earlier and stayed on it longer than before Faster exit from a slower speed

Opt = What it could be...

Overall high/low speeds

Most of the improvements were found in the first part of the track

Enabled the Peak G-Force display in RaceRender and in creating my video I found there was a corner it recorded a peak of 1.40 G. Go little BRZ and old RS3 tyres!

Morning squad!

Squad!! Something quite amazing about getting together to cut laps with same-same cars and likeminded mates

Wishing for the clouds to move aside while waiting for scrutineering

Spilled coffee all over myself on the drive up

This is the current street class leader Levorg's wheels and tyres. Massive 265s!

Trying to fuel myself somewhat healthily to make up for the lack of fast car and driving talent

Fantastic vendor support from the Shockworks crew

Driver's briefing for the few handfuls of drivers for the day

Making it home on empty again because I refuse to stop on the way home

I remembered to wash the car before this track day and after seeing these pics I am so glad I did

.. Told the boys I would wash the car straight after the track day... But I haven't...

Closed road circuit, skidpan and rain. It is going to awesome!

First Nugget Nationals motorkhana event held at METEC in Kilsyth just 15 minutes from home! 

My best lap for the day at 1:35 on a RaceChrono track I whipped up whilst sitting in the car being anti-social and staying out of the rain.

It was surprisingly easy to make and worked really well. Though I had trouble uploading it to share.

I am pretty hopeless on the skidpan. But it was so much fun regardless! Thanks Jally for the external footage.

VSC Mode vs Traction Off mode. 

Floodway. Close enough.

Lots of 86 mates!

Indian file run through the course. It was a slow cruise *waits for slow twins jokes*

The skid pan! I need one of these!

Weather for the most part of the day. Quite scenic.

I might be in front, but I'm miles behind.

Should have closed my window. Rookie mistake.

Some people take photos of their clean cars...

... I take photos of her dirty

A bit of homework the night before. Just an excuse to draw cock & balls.

Pedal Dance They Said...

This is only 5 months late, but after looking at the pics and vids, it was like it happened... well 5 months ago!

At this particular Winton there were no material changes to the car. Just hoping to get out there and improve my driving and as always aiming for a PB.

PB! Found another 0.2 seconds bringing to 1:43.104 (from 1:43.372)

Footage this time was using my dashcam A118C B40C with sound disabled because I forgot to turn on the GoPro and didn't have sound enabled on the dashcam. Footage came out better than expected, but a few notches lower in quality compared to the GoPro. Enjoy the tunes!

Decided to pedal dance (Thanks PeterF for the tip) and this was the result! Des was following me so the other in car view is how he saw it

How did it feel? Unsure if placebo, but the rear definitely felt livelier then just Traction Off.  Would I do it again? Yup! I definitely feel like there's more to it.

Did you ever wonder what your optimal PB lap on RaceChrono would look like? 

So did I, so I made this to see what me doing a 1:42.36 by stitching the different sector vids together.

Blue (Old) vs Red (New): Looks like the 0.2 was found in the final 2 right handers going into the back straight

Red 1:43.104

Blue 1:43.372

Collected a bit of dust with that pedal dance-off

I nearly merged into this guy at the freeway entrance at Springvale Rd! Ended up cruising together to Wallan BP.

Heading towards PBs*

(*Artist impression, no one was using a camera whilst driving)

Thank you Winton Motor Raceway! Too polite!

Always good to see GTRs and other 86s on the track

Same destination after all.

#racecar

More mates

Not sure about the colour, but don't mind the brakes

Tom's! Just 'mirin.

Wet Winton, Oil Cooler Data Acquisition and New Camber

It was just a matter of time before I will find myself at a wet track day and it is as scary as I imagined! And it was nice to see the leader board all jumbled up with cars within a smaller than usual margin from each other.

The experience has taught me a thing or 2 about driving in the wet. The limits were very low. 

A little too much steering angle on corner entry, understeer.

A little too much throttle on corner exit, oversteer.

A little too much braking pressure, ABS! And that probably saved me going into the gravel trap more than once.

Rain aside, the other thing I was looking forward to most about this Winton was testing the newly installed oil cooler. The goal was to record the oil temps whilst on track to see how hot things would get during a session. The rain and cooler than usual ambient temps made this an easy trial for the oil cooler.

And as always a Huge thanks to Nugget Nationals for the running the event and for the photos.

Track driving in wet conditions is a good way to practice focusing!

Session video with data overlay. The GPS and speed data was collected via RaceChrono (QStar GPS), and the temp data was collected separately via Torque (OBDLink MX), so I had to splice the data together to get this. Forgot to look into extracting my Fitbit HR for heart rate data.... Next time! 😆

Oil	Penrite Racing 5 (5w30)
Session time	~10 minutes
Ambient Temp	22-23℃

This was a typical EXE/NN session which means it was run flawlessly and I got a healthy 10+ minutes on track. Shame it was raining which brought the ambient temps down making conditions easy for the oil cooler.

Oil Temp
Average		95 ℃
Maximum		103 ℃
Minimum		79 ℃
Engine RPM
Average		4754
Maximum		7337

Despite the rain, I was driving as hard as I dared for the duration of the session keeping the RPM up and in the power (or lack of ha ha...) zone, and it didn't even come close to the high 120℃ I was seeing previously! Overall very happy with the findings.

Coolant Temp
Average		89 ℃
Maximum		91 ℃
Minimum		86 ℃
Intake Temp
Average		24 ℃
Maximum		31 ℃
Minimum		22 ℃

Other bits of data I logged out of curiosity. Coolants temps are well within check and intake temps were nice and low from the weather.

Wet lap PB video with RaceChrono native temp and throttle overlay!

Track wasn't too bad after the rain cleared up, but I was too weak to try for a proper PB by then.

Aways looking surprisingly flat for stock suspension to me. WTB low & racing wheels.

Pre-Some slightly-used camber bolts that got installed pre-track. Time for some negative camber! Fitted and aligned by Ray @ Raceline. A+ service, super friendly, car drives straight, will go back again 😆

	FRONT		REAR
	LEFT	RIGHT	LEFT	RIGHT
Camber (degs)	-1°04'	-0°51'	-1°06'	-1°32'
Individual Toe (mm)	-0.5	-0.5	0.5	0.6
Total Toe-In (mm)	-1.1		1.1
Setback (degs)	0°01'		0°07'

The camber bolts gave me -1° camber in the fronts. Without them I had just under half-a-degree, so even though it didn't provide much camber, it's double what I had. Unfortunately all my focus on driving the car in the rain at a much lower pace meant I really couldn't tell how much of a difference these made on track. Next time!