Umrswimr

Interesting posts, Damon. IIRC, I had about the same experience in the rain last year as you did. Roughly .9G of steady-state grip through standing water on Kumho MX's. I found my "aggressiveness" marks were very bad, but my smoothness score was still pretty good.

Here's the post (in this thread, no less!)
https://www.rx7club.com/showpost.php...7&postcount=89

Umrswimr

Damon, did you see this?

DamonB

^ Yeah. And apparently all my "IIRC" of my times was wrong. I guess being cold, wet and miserable makes everything a little fuzzy

Results here

I need to play back my video again because I swear my third run a 38, but I'm sure they're right and I'm wrong.

Umrswimr

And we're back. Last weekend was the ProSolo National event in Mineral Wells. For those of you unfamiliar (it was my first time too), let me explain.

You have two identical, short autocross courses (about 34 seconds each) side by side, only they are mirror images of each other. The start is a typical dragrace start- tree and all. You and the guy in the opposite course pull up to the tree, stage, and wait for the three yellow lights before launching on or about the green light. A .500 is a perfect light. Here's where it gets tricky: the time for the course starts on the green light- NOT when you trip the lights as in a normal autocross. So all the time after 0.500 is time wasted on your run. You have to get a perfect launch, on time. If you roll backwards out of the staging lights, you DNF. If you redlight, you DNF.
After you make your run, you go over to the other course, wait in about a 2 minute line, then run THAT course. You do this for a total of four runs- two on each side. The car gets hot. The clutch gets hot. The tires get REAL hot.
This happens three times: one session on Saturday morning, one on Saturday afternoon, then one on Sunday morning. The goal is to make the "Challenge" session on Sunday evening by winning your class or coming close enough to the top time- up to a certain number of cars total. I think we had 34 cars in the Challenge.
In the Challenge, it's bracket racing. Delayed start for the faster car, whoever crosses first wins. Switch sides and run again. Don't break out, don't DNF, and don't hit any cones. Advance to the next round or get eliminated. From what I understand, it's intense. I sucked this weekend so I was never even close to qualifyng.

Umrswimr

This was my second event on Kumho V710's, having come from Victoracers for the last four years. In the event last month, I found, much as Damon did a year ago, that the V710's are a sloppy, sloppy tire. Turn-in is especially slow. Where this seriously affects you is the slalom- the worst place to make a mistake anyway. I was way, way, way late for nearly every slalom cone all weekend. Nothing is more frustrating. You can tell yourself to attack early, but it really takes a lot of time for your brain to relearn something that seems so simple. My last run I managed to actually get the timing right and slashed a full second off my time. I was still a full second slower than the competition, so there's a lot left out there. Let's see if Geez! can help.

This is for the LEFT course:
The course starts with a dragrace launch and a pretty good straight shot for your 1-2 shift. The course then hits a quick left/right chicane before WOT into a five cone slalom that extends about 45 degrees left. You have to stand the car on the nose, rotate it aroudn the second cone, then get into a rhythm for the last three cones. The last cone dumps you into a left hand sweeper that's severely decreasing radius. WOT through a slight left/right offset, then trailbrake into a really nifty five-cone slalom. I say "nifty", because the first cone is staggered, so you have to wait for the corner to open up before trailbraking into it. The really good guys could stand the car on it's nose, priorette around it with some left-foot braking, and then WOT through the next two cones in the slalom. Think Chicago box without the box itself and you're close.
You then have a 90 degree left, a 90 degree right, and through the lights.

So, here's a plot of my BEST left-side run- a 34.3 with a 0.710 light and a 2.35 60' ET. Keep in mind- this is not a prepaired surface, so the 60' times do NOT correlate to a normal drag race scenerio. Course starts on the bottom and ends on the upper left. The start/finish are actually side-by-side, but because the course is uphill, the GEEZ! cube is not 100% accurate.

As you can tell from all the red, I did not do very well. You'll notice the HUGE swath of red from the 10s mark to the 17s mark. This is the slalom. And this was my BEST run. The hardest part for me was the transition from VERY heavy braking at the 11s mark (the bright white spot) to turning in to the left for the second cone in the slalom without getting behind. If you get behond on this cone, you're SCREWED for the next three. So I was conservative here. Turns out- a little too much. There's only one place in the slalom I actually use the throttle- and that's between the third and fourth cones at the 14-14.5s mark. Just plain crappy driving here.

Looks like a trailbraked around the last cone (that's odd- didn't know I did it), and then I... waited for the left sweeper. Sheesh. No wonder my times sucked. That big red area of usage at the 16s mark is nothing but brain fade. Stupid, stupid.

Sweeping left-hand corner, you can see me modulating the throttle around the way. Since the exit is tight, you have to be patient for the exit cone before rolling firmly onto the throttle. The red spot at the 21.5s mark is throttle oversteer. You can see the lateral acceleration dip, and I feather the throttle to regain traction before rolling back into it for about three seconds of WOT.

Stand the car on its nose and trailbrake the azz of the car around the first cone in the slalom (25s mark). The left slalom cone blazes by at about the 26s mark. At this point, I'm lined up a little behind for the third cone so I can only give it a little throttle before a try to round the cone. As you can see from the bright white at the 27s mark, I simply could not have taken this much faster.

After watching the good guys before me, I noticed that they generally went WOT after the third cone, praying that the car would settle for the fourth cone and I decided to try it. So, at the 28s mark, I did just that. WOT as I turn in left for the fourth cone, WOT right past the fifth cone, then heavy braking for the quick left-right chicane and through the lights.

Overall, a really crappy performance. Once Damon puts his run up, you'll be able to see what it should look like.

Anyway, here's the plot:
http://www.rx7gslse.com/umrswimr/Geez/Prosolo_Left.jpg

Umrswimr

Here's the stats summary for the left side. It shows about what I expected: Less grip than normal (I can usually sustain 1.15-1.2G easily) and a high 80's usage rating. Not terrible, but certainly not worth bragging about.

http://www.rx7gslse.com/umrswimr/Geez/Stats_Left.jpg