Friday's practice race with Colin threw up some warning signs about the likely pace of this race. I had mentally opted for the Brabham as a safe 10 token reliable car around a circuit that needed some predictable handling.
SO, I hear you ask, why the heck did you drive the Honda???!!!
Well, I tried the Brabham but I had no previous setup for this track or any other that immediately felt good, but I remembered that we had raced here a few seasons ago and that the Honda had seemed hooked up.
A bit of digging in the setup archives with much blowing of dust and swearing unearthed that setup. The reality was that it was NOT as good as I remembered and Friday's laps following Colin's quick Fezza reinforced that view. OK I thought, time to carefully read the setup topic on the forum and see if I could dial out the negatives from this setup by using those guidelines, just to prove that they work.
Just for those who have not yet been tempted to develop their own setups .......
First of all I looked at where I was fighting the car,
The car I started with had too much understeer and was very twitchy over the jump and braking for T1. Plus far too much wheelspin which was lighting up the right rear tyre.
I tried to forget anything that I had done before and simply read the info and apply an adjustment, as if I was new to the whole process.
Slowly the car began to yield faster laptimes, but it also needed a slight change in driving style to extract the benefits. After about 45 mins and several evolutions of the setup I was driving a Honda that could just dip into the 1.33's on race fuel and could do consistent 1:34's. Even so, I still felt that it was unstable over that jump towards T1 and the final touch was to raise the ride height to 3" all round. Now I lost a couple of tenths on lap times but it would absorb the landing without sending the rear end on its own adventure so should prove more reliable in the race.
One very noticeable difference was that the original setup would be quick in the first lap with tyre temps getting up very quickly, the new version took 2-3laps to get warm and required the use of different gears to ensure stability until then.
I think my race pace was good and the development of the setup worked well. especially pleasing was the fact that at about 50% race distance all my tyre temps were green ( even the fronts!! and they NEVER get warm usually). Sure I had to be careful to minimise wheelspin and sliding to protect that right rear but I was lapping comfortably for most of the race.
So I think the info on that topic stands up and should work for most people. One thing I would suggest is that sometimes you need to apply one adjustment but back off another to get a good result. So if parameter "A" does not yield results try altering "B" and maybe ease off "A" if things go too much the other way.
I almost threw it all away on the last few laps when a moments loss of concentration resulted in a half spin squandering my comfy lead and giving Sam a sniff of a chance.
Hard Luck to Bob and Colin who were presenting a major problem in the early laps. I knew I could go faster, but just could not engineer a passing chance without them making mistakes. Bob chose to half spin
and Colin decided to loosen his wheel.....very generous
. Sam was even gentlemanly enough to spin his car rather than challenge me for the top step of the podium
Grats to all finishers on an unforgiving track..it takes no prisoners, only retirements!!