New South Wales State Titles – May 23rd-25th

And leading on from that, the next big meeting on the calendar was the New South Wales state titles at the end of May. Straight away, I only entered the Modified touring class. This was pretty easy to make, as flying to the event meant needing to take minimum stuff. Secondly, I made sure that the TC was properly prepared, including fully strip down, researching general track settings, and making a solid list of items to test on the Friday. One final night of practice at the Logan track (trying out the kit 2.5mm chassis, didn’t like it), and I was ready!

Again another early start, flying down early doors from Brisbane to Sydney, leaving home at 4am, and arriving just after 9:30am… and straight to the track for a full day of practise.

SMA was also another first visit, so first two runs on the list were just sighters, with the exception of trying different shells. Unsuprisingly, LTC-R was prefered. The first few runs seemed to show that the car was seemingly lacking grip, although the balance was pretty good. Was also overpowered, so had a few things to work on. Ran though all my list of test things, and seemingly wasn’t able to improve the car.. more than I would like behind on pace, and struggling to find a rhythm. First set of new practise tyres, and similar behaviour… which was strange. Stuck with it, making more changes, before deciding to through the second set of new tyres at the car.. and at the same time reverting to my tried and tested tyre prep routine of Wurth + additive (in this MG v2), rather than the Buggy Grip cleaner I had been using.

Straight away, much improved. On reflection now, this is where the weekend went awry, as finding that out I should have reverted to my standard setup, and worked from there. As it was, I kept the setup I had on upto that point, and worked from there… mistake #1.

Anyway, whilst part of the issues had been solved, I was able to start focusing on trying to sort out the balance. Overall the car was safe to drive, but slow, and struggling to get through the middle of the corner. Braking also seemed a bit of an issue. Ended the day not really making progress, sitting around 1s off the fastest times. Again leaving more work to do on the Saturday in qualifying.

After some rather nice home cooked Pizza (thanks Tyson), and a short sleep, Saturday would present four rounds of qualifying, with a reseed after round two. Somewhat unfortuantly, I was in the top heat in the first two rounds, and frankly my pace wasn’t good enough. Two cleanish runs, but trying to keep out the way of the likely winners meant getting in the groove a real struggle. Made a small improvement to the car, but still just seemed to be unable to get through the turns as quickly. A fair bit of that was lines, and consistency of them (off line being really dirty, and having a snowball effect), but also being slow through the middle of the tighter stuff also hurting getting on the power out of the exit.

Thankfully, the resort ended up with me dropping to the first mod heat, so the jumping out the way issue was now gone. Even so, still wasn’t right, so used the final two qualifiers to try out some more changes. Ended up pulling off in one run, as mistakes (both on the track and on the pit table) made it pointless to carry on, so saved the tyres for later. By the end of the day, I was sitting in 12th, and with a very outside chance of making the A. I also discovered a bit of a diff oil issue… whereby my Xceed oil 3K felt a fair bit heavier than one filled with MuchMore 5K. Something to note as a reference, and as a result, have switched fully over to MuchMore oils again!

Sunday was to be the final two qualifiers, and finals. Finally started to make some progress. Overnight had a long sit down and think about what was needed, and how to achieve it. The main change was to go to the shortest possible rear link, with the aim to improve the rotation of the car. I also leant the shocks in one hole all round, and raised the roll centre. Not entirely sure that doing the shocks and roll centre was the right move, but the car was improved. A little more stable, but with improved rotation. Pace improved, but not enough to trouble the A. Still 2nd in the B was on target for the weekend.

However, it all went pear shaped in the finals… going for a “all in or bust approach” I decided to lean the shocks as far in as possible, as well as narrowing . Big error. Whilst it was ok for the first minute, taking the lead for a short while, but once the goop started to wear off the tyres, it proved very inconsistent and hard to drive, lacking corner speed. My frustation got the better of me, and I ended up pulling off after my third mistake, not wanting to wreck anyone else’s race. And so ended my second straight disappointing meeting… Although as Craig McPhee put it to me succinctly during the weekend, “Everyone fails the first time at SMA”.. no truer word it seems!

Despite all that, and knowing that I wasn’t flying back until the next day, had a couple of runs after the finals were done, whilst waiting for the trophy presentation. Put the shocks back up a hole all round, and left everything as else as it was. Straight up, car was best it felt all weekend (typical). Part way through the run, ducked into the pits, pulled out the forward top deck brace, and went straight back out. Improved further still… dammit! Lapping on track with the guy who finished 4th overall, now was a lot lot closer on pace, spending a number of laps following his wheel tracks, double Dammit!! C’est le vie… Not a great result, but ended on a slightly positive note.

After race practise setup.. if only *sigh*