Earlier in the month we headed up to Winton to put the 1980s contingent of the Honed fleet through its paces. We had nothing new to test, but the forecast looked good and any day at the track is a day well spent.
Changes to the CR-X since the last outing at Winton in 2016 were Rival S tyres in 225 front and 205 rear widths, and wider 15×9″ front wheels. We’d also fitted up our booster delete kit:
Nothing major had been modified on the Civic, but with the 6ULs and Rival S on the CR-X for the day we reverted back to the old 15×7″ TE37s with 205/50 Federal RS-RRs. This gave a good opportunity for some direct comparisons between the car in its current guise, and the event we ran earlier in the year in identical trim bar the geometry changes.
The weather was fine and cool, about as good as we could hope for. Only 4 other cars showed up, so it was a great chance to run a whole pile of uninterrupted laps, and re-familiarise with the track. The cars in attendance were a bit more interesting than the usual track day crowd too, so we snapped a few pics. First up was this cool Subaru SVX. Not a typical choice for a track car, but the flat 6 sounded very strong at full noise and it looked fast out there:
Also there were a couple of older blokes in an MG B and Lotus 7 replica of some sort running around all day. Great to see these cars still out there having a crack. They must have done 50 laps each by the end of the day.
CR-X
The CR-X showed improved pace straight out of the box; the well worn AD08R were past their best and definitely holding back lap times. Times for the day in the CR-X are below:
1:36.237
1:35.625
1:41.617
1:35.465
2:14.698
1:42.218
1:34.429
2:30.376
1:34.118
1:38.338
1:37.147
1:33.710
3:11.277
2:08.869
1:34.400
1:42.882
1:53.324
1:33.623
1:34.426
1:34.068
1:56.749
1:33.807
1:58.456
1:33.839
1:55.947
It was encouraging to see consistent 1:33 lap times, after languishing in the 1:36s lap range at last year’s events. Here’s a comparison of the previous best lap of 1:36 with the 1:33 time:
A few points in the data stand out:
1. Turn 3 is a long left hand sweeper, and the extra grip of the Rival S really shows here, with more than 10 km/h higher minimum speed. The car maintained more than 1.2 lateral G through here!
2. Better grip and balance greatly improved the low speed corners, making it much easier to rotate the car mid corner and get on the throttle earlier with a higher minimum speed
3. Since the last outing to Winton we added a clutch pedal stop and tweaked the throw of the clutch, gear changes are now much smoother. Less time lost in shifting means much better top speed down the straight, and the slightly shorter 225/45R15 tyre has helped drive out of the corners too.
4. Minimum speed through the final S corners is much improved, we’d put this down to better traction with the wider Rival S. More front grip made it comfortable to throttle on earlier, whereas this was always a challenging part of the circuit on the AD08R which always had a tendency to want to wash wide into the very close wall on the left at the exit.
Here’s a short video of a 1:34s lap, unfortunately the Honed media department didn’t record the fastest lap. The film crew have been reprimanded, so expect better footage in future.
[nz_youtube id=”8D9lbhXYdQI” width=”1200″ /]
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Civic
The best lap we managed in the Civic was a 1:46.5, more than a second improvement compared to the last outing on this wheel and tyre combination. Here’s a speed trace comparison of that lap and the 1:47.8 lap we ran back in March:
The only change between these two laps is our geometry correction kit. You can clearly see the benefit of improving geometry; the minimum speed in each corner hasn’t changed much, that’s limited by the tyre and weight of the car, but in every corner the throttle can be applied earlier and harder. The car turns in better and has much improved mid corner balance. Consequently there’s less time lost muscling the car around the corner and pushing through understeer before the throttle can be applied. Here’s a video of the best lap:
[nz_youtube id=”vYiurWH5WgM” width=”1200″ /]
We’re back at Winton this weekend with EXE Crew. The CR-X now has our geometry kit and a fresh set of Rival S fitted, so we’ll be pushing hard for a 1:32s lap time.
