Brad@RevXtremeAutoSports

Ran Gainesville Road course this past Saturday. Awesome experience, and then took third place in my first bracket drag race in the afternoon. I'm still on a great high.

My set up is 98 vert, stock springs, c6 Z06 shocks, z06 sways, BFG kdw tires, 6 psd.

What I would like feed back on is if my problem on the road corse is me or my tires. Read all the posts about first timers on the roadcourse. I walked the course, took mental notes, and drove the first three times around it conservatively.

My three goals were 1. dont break anything; 2. no strikes for touching grass/leaving the pavement and touching cones; 3. Improve and have fun.

I definitely accomplished all three. My worst lap time was 1:01 and my best time was 0.55.

following the post advice I kept my rpm's high, braked into the turns and accelerated hard out. I actually hit 6K rpm on the back stretch and went to third, that was a blast . Those Hawks HPS pads really did their job.

However, coming out of the turns the car was constantly breaking loose. I tried to push it hard and of couse the harder i pushed it the quicker it would break loose on me. At no time did I feel that I had lost control of the car, I was able to steer out of it, however is it technique I am missing or just need better tires? I always assume it is me first and something else last. Would appreciate a little feedback from the pros/veterans.

No ego here just want to learn and get better so I can enter a road racing series locally.

Thanks for your time.

Brad

Olitho

Do you have any in car video? That would help a lot.

VetteDrmr

Well, KDWs aren't known for maximum cold weather grip, so keep that in mind.

Corner exit oversteer is basically controlled by the throttle, as you've already experienced. It's pretty typical for newbies to brake too soon and/or too hard and end up slow in the corner. Then hard on the throttle and the rears start sliding.

This will happen regardless of the tires you run (assuming you keep the same sizes). Were you having the fronts sliding going into the corner, and did you feel the fronts and rears both sliding through the middle of the corner? Small amounts of sliding are OK, that's your balance point.

So, I'd stay on the KDWs if you don't care about wearing them out faster than normal. If you want to save them, then you have to start thinking about track wheels/tires.

HTH, and have a good one,
Mike

wtknght1

Alignment numbers?
Tire pressures?
Any other mods?

Brad@RevXtremeAutoSports

Do you have any in car video? That would help a lot. not in car but from a spectator view, does this help?

Were you having the fronts sliding going into the corner, and did you feel the fronts and rears both sliding through the middle of the corner? Small amounts of sliding are OK, that's your balance point.
Just the rears sliding as I accelerated for the most part, and the rear sliding I felt slowed me down. So how do I correct this as a driver? Which as I figured it was driving inexperience as opposed to equiptment?

Alignment numbers? Stock factory
Tire pressures? 29 all around
Any other mods? headers, vararam, kirban shifter, X pipe, custom exhaust, dyno 322 hp and 336 torq.

Thanks for the help so far, I appreciate the input.

Brad

VetteDrmr

Assuming that means the rears were sliding under throttle on corner exit, and the fronts were never sliding, then you're losing time in the corners. This is where street tires are excellent for learning, they'll whine, and slip a bit, and be progressive as they are pushed farther and farther over the line, until they finally let go completely. R-compound tires have more grip, but that progression from initial slip to gone alltogether happens more quickly.

So, what you can do is brake a little less going into the corners, and try to maintain your speed through the corner, rather than slow down throughout the corner (a guess here, as to what you're doing), and then hard on the throttle on exit.

Keep in mind that you'll *always* have throttle oversteer on exit when you overpower the tires. I drove a friend's Z06 at our last autocross on stock F1 tires, and unless the car was in a straight line you couldn't just floor it.

What I'm talking about is how to get your times down with the equipment you've got. "Slow in, fast out" is a good technique, but remember you want the "slow" part to be only as slow as you need to without losing traction. Also, on corner exit, *push* the throttle down, don't *step* on it.

And finally, practice, practice, practice! Or, in other words, fun, fun, fun!

Have a good one,
Mike

wtknght1

That's good advice.
Without being there (in car) and actually seeing what you were doing, I'd say you were just overpowering stock tires. But, if the front was sticking pretty well and the rear was sliding (oversteer), you could crank in a bit more negative camber on the back tires to see if that would stabilize the car a bit more.

On another note, did you write that you had C6 Z06 shocks?!?!?! If that's true, I'm not sure why'd you do that considering your lack of experience on road courses. Those shocks were designed to work with a much stiffer (and completely different) suspension than a C5...so that could also be part of your problem!!

Before you start making major mods to your car, get more seat time and then figure out what the car needs. Contact patches should be first - TIRES, BRAKES...repeat as often as necessary!

95jersey

Car set up is much more important in road race than drag and NOTHING beats experience. It is something that can not be taught in a day or two. While instructor education is great, you need lots of track time to even BEGIN to discover your cars capabilities. I have been doing this for 5 years and are still learning and improving dramatically all the time.

It's like learning to play a musical instrument over several years, you just make breakthroughts once in a while that come out of nowhere that will dramitically improve your skill.

Here's some of the best advice that was given to me as a novice, that really improved my skill and I still use today....

SLOW DOWN...if you want to go faster.

Take a deep breath, forget about everyone else on the track. Don't try to shove the car into every corner and try to push the car suspension past it's ability to work with the chassis. You want to figure out what driving style the suspension likes and go with it. If your car is rolling over, nose diving under braking or spinning out coming out of corners, you are overdriving the car. Don't try to drive a Corvette like a Porsche or the otherway around.

A good way to learn, is to stay in one gear the whole course (4th) and just learn to smoothly drive the car without heel n' toe or complex shifting through different corners. Drive the car like an automatic the first few times and just focus on learning the track...then worry about the technical stuff (such as shifting).

If the car is bucking all over the place, standing on it's nose, and rolling everywhere, your not being smooth and provide subtle inputs, your jaming the car around the track like a dirt bike and playing "point and shoot".

If you look at pictures of a fast driver, the car looks very stable, is not rolling over on itself, and doesn't look unbalance. A good driver can make up for the worst suspension, but the best suspension will NEVER make up for a poor driver

Brad@RevXtremeAutoSports

Taking notes. Thanks to all who replied. I appreciate your input.

Brad