I certainly make no claim to be an expert with these cars and I just might have expressed my frustration about them in previous race posts, although it was so low key that many of you will have missed it
But I will offer my observations as to what changed things for me and it might help others who have also been struggling.
My success last night might also have more to do with drugs than any other reason, as I was full of flu medication and paracetamol
But FWIW I can perhaps explain how I found the extra speed for the Silverstone races after some abysmal outings in previous rounds.
I make no secret of the fact that I rarely do much practice for any races in UKGTL or UKGPL. Because I regularly drive on 4 evenings per week and in vastly differing cars and on a variety of tracks, there just is not any spare time to spend getting perfectly prepared for each race. Anyway I do this for fun, so for me a really good race long battle is all the reward that I am looking for wherever that happens to be down through the field.
I was not expecting this round of the K.A.D. series to be any better than the previous attempts, and given that I was feeling less than healthy, I did consider not even turning up. But old habits die hard, and as per normal during Wed p.m. I d/loaded the track and logged on to the server just to make sure that all was working for the evening's hostilities.
With nothing better to do and not feeling inclined to go looking for anything to occupy my time, I transferred the setup I had used from the last round and casually set about running my KAD Mini around the track. We have used this track before somewhere, so it only took a lap or two to refresh the single functioning memory cell about which corner came next. That did help me negotiate the track but the car was swapping ends or ploughing straight on at most corners, so that I had about 10 attempts before actually completing a very slow lap.
If that was an indication of how the two races in the evening were likely to evolve I might as well forget it!!
Braking was most definitely where things were just WRONG, so I reasoned that I needed to overcome the tendency to swap ends whenever I used the middle pedal. ( at this point I should say that I left foot brake so keep that in mind ).
Shifting the brake balance forward would be the normal correction but then I found that the front wheels locked and the car simply ploughed off into the kitty litter. So I reduced the pressure to around 80% and it helped... a little. But any attempt to brake deep into a corner simply prevented the car from turning in
I moved the brake balance back a little, and tried what I thought would be a VERY steady lap. Braking extra early for all corners and ensuring that I got the nose into the apex ( or at least within 10 mtrs!!). It was far from smooth or tidy, but I knocked a good 5 secs off my previous best
That gave me some food for thought and I did a few more laps concentrating very hard on what I was doing that was different, and why some corners felt better than others. It was as this point that I realised that I was fractionally trail braking on some bends by feathering the brakes, but when I got my foot clear of the pedal the car turned in much quicker and more controlled...………..oooooooooooo!!!!!
By now I was down to the 1:30'ish lap but I was still losing bucket loads of time wrestling the car through, and out of, the corners. So, I looked at the setup which I had always run soft to try and make the car more compliant, but that had not worked. 2 clicks on front and rear springs were added just to see if it made any difference...…..it did!. The car settled quicker in the corners which increased my confidence a little more.
OK, so I now had a car that, although not perfect, I could send into corners with an 85% certainty that we would stay on the tarmac. Surprisingly, ( and this was highlighted later when I managed to follow Geoff for a couple of laps ) it was quicker if I started braking earlier and more gently ??
Avoiding any locking of the brakes with a featherlight foot took another second or two off my PB. Now we were getting somewhere.
The last piece of the jigsaw was the corner exits which were often a wrestling match with much wheelspin and understeer. A tweak to the diff and careful attention to which gear I used helped, but getting used to feeding in just enough power to avoid spinning the front wheel(s) made things much more civilised and another second was trimmed.
Last nights races were much better for me, but I am under no illusion that Geoffers is still at least a second a lap quicker even when he is not trying hard
. I did manage to pass him once when he got a bit sideways in the complex, but it was only a matter of time before he took back the lead and it is still under braking that I am struggling with the confidence to attack corners......…...maybe in time that will come?
The setup I used is online at Silvy 71 under CliveKAD Mini if you want to try it. I make no claims to it being anything other than "work in progress", but I did manage a 1:25 lap last night which was some 18 secs from where I started, so I did something right.
