Over the weekend I headed up to Winton with Circuit Club to see if I could achieve that elusive 1:35 lap time. These are the changes since my last time at Winton at H Nationals:
– Front end refurbish including hubs, bearings, lower ball joints, Hawk DTC60 pads and discs
– Caster setting revised
– Front splitter
– Rev limit increased to 7,800RPM
Conditions were good, with a top of 19° and a bit of cloud cover to keep track temperatures cool. After a bit of time helping out the Circuit Club crew with running the event I headed out in the afternoon to crack a PB.
Out of 7 laps, the best for the day was a 1:37.2750, about a second off my best pace here, but a small improvement from the mid 1:37s I ran at H Nationals. As always I’ve got a ready supply of excuses though; without being balked I would have been comfortably into the 36s, and if I can drive the first half of the track as well as I have in the past the 35 second range should be within reach.
Here’s a video of the day’s best lap, watch to the end to see an R33 Skyline having fun through the final corners, much to my irritation!
[nz_youtube id=”I9331GwNUuU” width=”1200″ /]
Unfortunately no data was collected due to GPS problems. Comparing the sector split times from this event and previous events a couple of points are clear:
– Holding 5th gear on the front straight is consistently worth 3 to 4 tenths improvement in lap time, combining better top speed and better entry to the S. With less shifting I’ve got more time to focus on braking and turn in.
– The current set of AD08Rs are past their best. Mid corner and exit understeer was noticeably worse this time out. At the next event I will increase the rear bar stiffness from it’s current softest setting.
– Even with the increased rev limit I’m still running out of RPM so I will be further increasing the rev limit to 8000RPM before my next event at Winton.
The CR-X gets a short holiday now, but we’ll be heading out one more time before the end of the year to get that 1:35s lap time. Thanks to Peter for the images and for making the trek up to support us.
– Tom