Dusting Out the Old Cobwebs (4/28/07 AutoX thoughts)

The day started out a bit warm with an overcast cloud and wet pavement from the rain of the night before then progressed to sunshine and dry. I was running with increased power but still stock suspension in lack of the dampers that did not come in this weekend as expected. The course was much larger than the old Bristol site and definately was a little bit smoother. I must admit I was a bit rusty and my first run wasn't that fast at all, I was still coping with the additional horsepower but it was interesting to compare in technical courses whether R-compounds or power would make a difference. It was me vs PSG Evo, both similar cars slightly different suspension but primarly stock, different tires and power. His car had sticky Kuhmo 710 R-Compounds while I was on stock Advan street tires, the question was whether power would play more of a different or tires. It seems that tires make much more of a contributing factor to faster times than power. It's been said that for an average 60 second course (which was somewhat like ours) the difference between an R-compound tire is about 2 seconds compared to the street tires. Even though I had about 80 whp more than him I wasn't able to overcome the additional grip needed to harness that power coming out of corners thus wasn't able to beat his time. After knocking over a couple cones for my first three runs I got some clean runs on my last two which were my fastest times of the day. The new racing seats held me in and I was able to feel the corners which were definately beneficial, though I had more power it wasn't really usable without the sticky tires. There were definately areas where I could have gone faster and this autox was definately a refresher as I finally started to come out of my shell on the last run. Last season I was running on Toyo RA1 R-compound and felt that I was able to power out of a few corners but trying to do the same on street tire was a limiting factor; they would squeel and would not be able to take the punishment. Overall, it was definately fun and am looking forward to the rest of the season!