Super busy at work and no proper indoor TC track within 250km meant that the first run with the TRF417X was just this past weekend.

Since I was going to southern Finland I decided to bring my car and went for a 1 day test at the permanent full-size indoor carpet track in Tikkurila, just outside Helsinki. Being a permanent carpet track with super-high grip and a normal tight layout these were exactly the conditions I hate. I expected to struggle. And the first run was just as expected with the car very much on-the-edge and wanting to grip roll. So no smooth cornering, instead the typical high-grip carpet characteristic of the car making each turn into a couple of micro-turns. Thought I will have had enough of this very soon.

But to my surprise I got the car handling better than ever in similar conditions within just 4-5 packs.

Changes that worked:

use 1 piece front suspension mount to remove some front flex

use carbon steering brace for the same reason

widen front of car with offset shims

Yokomo springs (really made the car easy to drive, but still fast)

1mm under front suspension mounts

After I was happy with my car I proceeded to try some other stuff, will mention a couple of things:

Smokem 417 FX chassis, felt like the car had less grip, but still wanted to grip roll more, and lap times were around 2 tenths off comared to the standard 417X chassis.

MR33/Ride springs, made the car really difficult, fast on 1 lap but way too easy to grip roll. This was just as expected for these asphalt springs.

So even though I expected the worst I left the track happy. I believe this is a good base for carpet. Bear in mind though that these were very high-grip conditions. It'll be interesting to try the car in other conditions though.

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