Last weekend we packed the CR-X again and headed 700km across the state border to Wakefield Park circuit in New South Wales. NSW has a bunch of excellent circuits, and Wakefield is a great little track. It’s built into the side of a hill with quite a lot of elevation change, and has a compact but flowing layout.
No time for any changes on the CR-X since WTAC (see our event re-cap) bar some fluid changes and a quick wash to remove 2000km worth of dead bugs.
After a quiet drive up, the track day dawned with cool but sunny and conditions. Perfect for some quick lap times. There were only 25 drivers at the event, which guaranteed heaps of track time. I skipped the first session to help out running the event, and made use of the spare time to bolt on the aero bits and give the car a brief check over before heading out for the 2nd session.
Within a couple of laps I dropped down into the 1:08s, improving from a 1:09.0 best lap at the same event last year. A great start to the day, but it was clear there was more in it. Maybe the front splitter made all the difference, but to be brutally honest I’m only now becoming comfortable in the car, and more familiar with the power and handling. So the I’d put the bulk of the improvement down to the imperfect device between the seat and the steering wheel.
The CR-X is fitted with small 205 width front tyres so I can’t do more than one or two fast laps before the tyres overheat and understeer becomes terminal. So my strategy is to go out and complete one warm up lap and then go straight into flying laps
Putting it all together I laid down a 1:07.7 lap, an improvement of more than a second since my last time at the track, and 1:06s are in reach. To put it in perspective the top 3 places in the Neova Challenge earlier in the month were all within the low 1:05s.
Here’s a video of an earlier untidy 1:08.5 lap, unfortunately no footage of my best lap. There’s plenty of work to do on my driving, watching this video back I can see that my transition from braking to turn in needs work, and in general my steering inputs are messy.
[nz_youtube id=”-uXZcZTpBZ4″ width=”” /]
Another great thing about these events is the bunch of people that come along for the adventure. Along for the trip was our customer Pete, who cut 1.5s to also dip into the 7s with a 1:07.9 in his very well sorted S2000:
Rhys was also there in his faithful Civic, his car features our air guides and bumpsteer kit. Since his last time here he cut the best part of a second off to end the day with a 1:12.18:
Overall it was a great day, and it was good to dip into the 1:07s. With every event I’m getting closer to the cars potential
Below is a speed trace and min/max speeds for my best lap, and track map for reference.
Unfortunately I don’t have any good data from my last visit to Wakefield, but there is a couple of points for me to remember for next time:
- I’d be better off bouncing off the limiter in 5th at the end of the start finish straight rather than shifting to 6th, as my max speed of 180km/h is still just before the rev limiter in 5th
- When comparing to other laps I can negotiate T9 with a later and shorter lift off the throttle and maintain better mid corner speed and speed down the following short straight, which should be worth a few tenths
Some comments on the car:
- As usual, I still think the car needs more tyre. It might be a bandaid to correct an issue that could be improved with suspension setup, but I’ve always fundamentally believed that staggered tyres on FWD is the right way to do it.
- I’m starting to get more comfortable with the brakes, but I’m still finding that the pedal feel is not as progressive as I’d like resulting in some locked tyres. We’re developing a brake booster delete kit with correct pedal ratio and master cylinder diameter designed for track use not hard-parking and I’ll be setting it up on my car soon, which should greatly improve feel under brakes.
Thanks to Nugget Nationals for putting on a great event, along with Rhys, the Peters, Dan, Ying and Adam for a great road trip, and to Vijay for providing all the pics for this post.
We’ll have another update soon when the car hits the dyno for a baseline power run, before a round of small engine upgrades before the next season of events.
– Tom