Queensland State Titles 2014

So end of September was the big one for EP on-road in Queensland, and that was the ORRCA Queensland State titles. For the first time, these were going to be held up at the Fraser Coast track. The track itself is based in a car park of a sports club, and is relatively low grip, but with a smooth surface, and a great layout. And with the event being organised by the always entertaining Fraser Coast boys, it was bound to be a good event, and they didn’t dissapoint. Even managed to organise decent weather for the weekend (with the sunday morning excepted!).

Now, me being me, I had spent a good few weekends prior to the titles driving the 5hours up to the Coast, just to try as many things as possible, and get as much practise in as I could. Tyres was one of the big things, as the states were a control tyre only, so inserts and rims were open. I really wanted to get a good grasp on some different combo’s, not wanting to feel I had left anything on the table. I also made sure to pester my go-too reference people (thanks Chris and Matt!), before finally settling on the Sorex 36-SR combination, which conveniently also came as a prebuild. Testing had shown minimal drop off over a number of runs, and faster laps than the SY’s. With only three sets allowed for the finals, having tyres that could potentially last all six rounds of qual (so saving two new sets for the finals) was key.

During testing, I pretty much ended up on my base Logan setup, as the general characters of both tracks were quite similar. The main change was switching to the Ride Blue springs, as these seemed better suited to the lower grip surface, with the normal Schumacher Greens feeling a bit too reactive.

Onto the event itself, and practise went well, pace being good and consistent. Qualifying started out well, and made some small changes to the setup to compensate for older tyres, which were progressively giving more and more understeer. 500wt oils in the rear shocks only (up from 450), putting the Mid-rear wishbone strap on, and going to a 0.5mm front hub shim all helped. I also moved back to Schumacher springs, going with the blues to help improve corner speed. These worked so well that in the last two qualifiers on the saturday I was running right up the sharp end of the grid, and was sitting 4th overall into the overnight break.

Sunday, and rain overnight left the track damp in the morning. A couple of controlled practise rounds before the last round of qualifying helped to bring the track back up to speed. By this stage I had already guaranteed an A-final spot, but sitting in fourth overnight, I didn’t want to loose any spots. Thankfully, even though a couple of guys did bolt on new tyres for do-or-die runs, little changed to results and I was fourth. The damp morning had taken some grip away, and into retrospect, I didn’t react quickly enough to this for the finals….

So for A1, I made one of the biggest setup errors I’ve made in a while, and basically put myself on the back foot. Having known that on brand new boots going back to the Green springs worked well, I started to make the switch from the Blues… and then got distracted! On inspection after pulling out after 6laps of A1 with a car nigh on undrivable, I had only changed the rear springs… oops! Still, there were two more finals to go, and I still had one brand new, and one 6lap old sets of tyres..

A2. Decided to go back to Schu Blue springs, keeping the car pretty much as the final qualifier (and this is a key point I’ll come back to). Certainly better than A1, but now lacked corner speed, and still a little taily. Dropped a few spots, think I came in 7th for the leg.

A3. Green springs, and took the Mid-rear wishbone strap off, aiming to give it more grip. I should have given it more rear, by basically going back to where I started the weekend. I ended up 7th overall, which whilst an improvement on previous years (at this rate I’ll win it in 2020 :p) was a bit disappointing given how good the car had been on the Saturday. But c’est la vie, it’s racing, and shit happens as they say. The biggest thing I could take away from the event though was the need to stay on top of the settings from old to new boots. Part of that problem was that I wasn’t able to test a setup from super old boots on new tyres in practise, as there was an issue with one set… but I should have made the changes and given myself a safe, raceable car. Live and learn… and I promise thats the end of my cliche quota for this post!