The track yesterday was quite large (Carpet wars is, IIRC 12 full rolls of carpet), and being carpet, naturally has a good amount of traction. This obviously increases as the day goes on, and it's towards the end of the day that I tend to set the car up for. Put it this way, in practice, it was drift mania...

I had a problem last time out when it just felt like the car was rolling and binding mid-corner on some of the sweepers, and I just couldn't keep up with the fast guys.... I had one run that was a 0.2sec diff (fast/avg), so I was consistent, just not fast enough.

This time round, I made sure I had the car set up for minimal roll, hence the high roll centres (1mm under front blocks, 1.5 under rear). If it was a tighter and twistier track, I may have dropped that a bit, but given the wide, open, grippy nature of the track, coupled with the low power of the stock, this worked really well.

Also, I've noticed that the car has a lot of rear end traction, way more than the 415 did. This does tend to make the rear end very well planted, however when the grip comes up, it's too planted. To counter this I went for a lower amount of rear toe than I tend to run (B/E so 1.5deg), a medium rear rear bar, and stood the rear shocks up one hole as well. Worked very well at freeing the car up, also giving it more rotation. The rear shocks being stood up helped to cure a lack of on power steering I had too.

Also moved the rear wheelbase back 1mm, and that also seems to have helped steady the car a bit. Other addtion I need to add to the sheet was additive, of LRP Carpet, at 1/2 front, full rear.

Anyway with that setup I managed to break into the 15s laps yesterday, with a best of 14.95, the fastest lap I saw posted was a 14.81, so very happy with that. Car handled brilliantly, it was my cells that are begining to let me down now... my IB42's have hit the end of their racing life, they are going soft after 4mins. Started off the day with that setup, only made 1 change to it all day, which was the moving of the rear shocks (before was running them in hole 4 on the tower).

Unfortuantly, didn't have the best of luck, as I kept numptying the car off on the first lap of the qualifiers.... first round simply by being first car round the track, and not realising how much the grip had come up from practise. So I just decided to treat the run as a test session, and tune the radio settings. Even with a 26 and 31 second lap, finished the round 20th.

Second round, rolled first turn by clipping a bot dot... although my fault laid before that as I had used more additive on the front than I ment too. Still, managed to get going reasonably quickly, and started to trade fastest laps with the guy leading. Was starting to pull away, until I came up on another car who just wouldn't let me go, ended up diving up the inside to get by, and them promptly got hit and rolled again, moving the motor and stripping the spur. Scratch round2....

Round three, much better, apart from again being a numpty and putting the car on it's roof first lap. Made a change to the motor for this round, and it didn't work, car felt flat with little punch. Managed 4th in the heat, putting me 13th overall.

Final round, ballsed that up even before the round begin, as 3 minutes before the start of the I reverse connected my MRT... manged (with thanks to the air duct) to get my sphere mounted up and in the car, unfortuantly wired up the wrong way round... changed it over, but missed the first lap of the race. Even with a 39sec first lap, was only 13 sec off improving my time!! (average of say 15.3s, so lost a lap and a half). Diff of 0.4s fastest/avg otherwsie so was a pretty good run.

Without that, I'm pretty certain I would have been in the A, as the other driver I was trading fastest laps with end up 4th overall, I ended up 14th with my 3rd round time.

As for the final, this really hammered home the corner speed advantage. Had a good start (for once), and ended up in second after the first lap. Started to real in first place, in couple of sections of the track, it was easy to see I was carrying more speed, literally taking chunks of time out. Then made an error to let third back through, but managed to get back in front after he made an error too... got right back onto the bumper of 1st, and were nose to tail going through the final chicane when I got slightly off line, clipped a bot and end up on my roof. With only a minute left, had to settle for third, but was a good clean close race, which made it very enjoyable.

Had a number of comments after the race at just how good the car looked, carrying lots of speed, changing direction quickly, but also stable. I knew there was a lot of potential in the car.

Just need to improve my luck a little, and it'll be A final easy next time...

Cheers
Ed