Loudon August 2002

Nate hammers through in Turn 10 at Loudon

Back home again in New Hampshire!

Since the last event at Watkins Glen, I'd finished replacing all the rod ends in the car. With our new spherical bearing conversion in the Thunderbird spindles working well, we were expecting big things at Loudon. We weren't disappointed.

The track had been modified since April. They'd widened the middle of the banked turns on the oval to give the NASCAR guys more room to pass. This didn't help us much, especially since the club decided not to run the South Oval configuration. Instead, we used the chicane-chicane configuration, as we had in April.

The track seemed about 1.5 to 2 seconds slower than it was in April, perhaps partly because of the heat (in the 90's both days!) and also perhaps because the new asphalt that had been laid down on parts of the oval was not as grippy.

At any rate, Nate was soon under his personal best, and finally worked down to a 1:20.3. As has been the case for most of the recent events, I was a little slower, with a best of 1:20.6.

Powering through Turn 3

We were gratified by how much more stable the car was, both under braking and in the fast Turn 8, where you crest a hill at about 80 mph while turning right. In April, with the old spindles and rod ends, it was scary; with the new ones, the car seemed almost tame!

I was braking later for Turns 3 and 6 than I ever had, but it seemed easy, much less dramatic than before. The car never twitched and had colossal grip.

Last year we had disconnected the rear anti-roll bar to help deal with the twitchiness. Now we found that we needed the rear anti-roll bar. Even at its stiffest setting, the car was understeering massively under power.

For the first time ever, we got higher front tire temperatures than rear. Clearly the spherical bearing conversion, in conjunction with the other fixes, was making the rear suspension work better than it ever had before.

Nate was delighted to take home a third place trophy, but frustrated by the understeer, which was clearly holding us back. Nate's fastest time was only one second off the winning time set by James Garvey in his turbo Porsche 944.

Across the NASCAR oval's back straight,
into the North Chicane

My buddy (and Factory Five Racing engineer) Jim Schenck was second in his lightweight, carbon fiber bodied, 375 hp FFR Cobra. He said it was the first time that everything was working right on the car, and his results showed it. Great job, Jim!

I was only 3 tenths behind Nate, but another car snuck in between us, so I wound up fifth.

Now we get to work on the front suspension and try to cure the power-on understeer. Jim Schenck gave me something to think about regarding the Ackermann geometry of the front suspension, and we're also going to correct for an error that led to shock valving on the rear which is too soft. We may also modify the front upper shock mounts to allow us to run more camber and/or caster.

Nate is lying second in the championship, and I'm third. Doug Arnao says that if we cure the understeer, we'll gain at least a second in lap time, probably more.

Can't wait 'till September!