First SCCA event

[NDSP]

So this weekend I took my first leap into the world of turning and had a good time. My biggest concern was not remembering or being able to "read" the course and missing cones/going of course. That ended up being nothing, I had no doubts as I went through the course on where I should be going. I'm very glad that I walked the course a couple times, once by myself and once with the novice instructor ( 14 time national champ, I'm horrible with names so I don't remember ). I also think getting to work the first heat, watch the second, and run the third really helped. I got the "lucky" corner three and that is where 90% of the cones that got hit happened, so I was able to learn what not to do there. The radio guy in corner three for our work heat was a great guy and veteran SCCA driver and he was kind enough to answer all my questions when we weren't running to put cones back.

My runs:

My goal after watching a other mustangs run was a 46 second lap. My first lap I was a little deer in the head lights, so I forgot to disable traction control and made a safe and leisurely 50.96 second lap. I was making the tires howl in the turns but I wasn't really challenging the cones.

My second lap I thought I needed to be allot more aggressive and made sure to turn off the traction control. The combination of the two was a fatal mistake. It was like I was on ice out there. I'd turn the wheel the car would keep going straight, multiple times I came very close to plowing cones in the first three corners. And final in the last corner I managed to get ass end in front and plowed a cone. I thought I might of took it with me, but luckily I didn't. It was a mess, lol. 54.73 +1

I asked a couple other mustang drivers in my heat what their tire pressure was in front and decided to lower my fronts to 42 and keep my rears at 35. I also probably made a decision that will slow my learning curve but help my control. I left the traction control on. I still had allot of push, but better control and ended up with a two second improvement. 48.81

forth lap I lowered fronts to 40, kept traction control on, and was final able to remember to not push the clutch in every time I braked. Push wasn't nearly as bad and resulted in a slight improvement to 48.173


Last lap I changed nothing and actually thought I was going slow as hell. The first corner I went into too hot and it pushed a little and the rest just seemed uneventful and slow. Somehow I ended up with my best time of 46.78.

I did at least get faster, and had fun. I also got a ride along with Jason McCall in his C4 vette, that was eye opening. I think I was bad luck because he ended up with a DNF for that lap. I was surprised at how he threw the car around and how it would seemingly grab and go instead of slide out of control.

I need to get better at approaching folks to ride with me and give pointers. I just kind of stuck to myself and did my own thing. Everything to too fast for me to process during the runs. I have no idea what my line was, can't remember where my hand where. I think on one run my right hand was on the shifter for most of it, lol. I also think I really screwed my learning curve by "relying" on the traction control to keep me pointed in the right direction. Well it is a starting place and I had fun.

 

[TGR96]

Yep, sounds about right for your first time out. Sounds like you had fun, and at the end of the day, that's really all that matters. You'll get faster with each event.

And don't worry about the traction control thing. My last event, I made better times with traction control on than with it off! I guess my car is a better driver than I am at this point. But driving with the traction control off sure was more entertaining! LOL

 

[Whiskey11]

You will get better as you drive more and more and do more events. Reading the course will get easier and you'll eventually reach a point where things are comfortable. Unfortunately, being comfortable is not necessarily fast either so keep pushing yourself to be better!

One tip I would like to get you is to forget for a moment what people have told you about tire pressures and learn to read tires. It's not difficult at all. I think people get it in their head that higher PSI is going to make up for lack of spring rate and proper shocks/struts and make the car perform better but all you are doing is reducing grip and wearing the tires out quicker. If you want the tires to be more responsive, buy a tire with stiffer sidewalls.

I ran my first event with 40 PSI front and rear in the stock BFG KDWS tires. It was a mistake because any time you turned the wheel or applied the gas it would either plow or light up the tires. I learned to read tires and the pressures dropped down to about 34/32 PSI front and rear.

When I got my first set of REAL summer tires it really helped to get pressures set correctly depending on how the tire was rolling over.

What I mean is, when you look at your tire, you can see where the tire is being scruffed up from the pavement. You want that line to be at the absolute edge of the tire tread which is always on the sidewall portion of the shoulder. Usually tires have a heavy line with some arrows on it that indicate where the actual tire compound starts and goes to the tread.

Here is a photo of the roll over I'm talking about:


Notice how the scuffing is primarily on the top portion of the shoulder block and not much on the side? Now do you see the line I was talking about just above the lettering? That is where the roll over should be getting to.

I should go take a picture of those Star Specs NOW compared to then (nearly new). Those pressures were around 35 psi. I ran them at 32 psi in the front and 30 psi in the rear.

Here is the original KDWS tires:


See the line on that? It's not very clear so here is a different photo:


See it there? Too much PSI, it needed to come down some to get the line at the bottom of the tread blocks! Not that the KDWS tire is a very good corner carving tire with the huge gaps between the shoulder blocks.

I'll get some photos today of the new RS3's after the event yesterday and my old star specs for better examples!

 

[NDSP]

Thanks for the info Whiskey11. I ended talking with a fellow S197 driver after our heat and he thought it was interesting that I had 140 tread wear tires, but a "standard" tread pattern. The car came with these tires and are Bridgestone Potenzas. My lines was definitely still up on the top of the tire, I had a half inch to go to get down to where your recommending. I noticed that his tires had scruffing likes yours. He was in a 2013 and ALLOT faster than I was, lol. He said he was using the eibach chamber bolts to get more negative chamber ( he runs FS ). I'm getting a set now too, until the CC plates happen later on.

 

[Whiskey11]

Thanks for the info Whiskey11. I ended talking with a fellow S197 driver after our heat and he thought it was interesting that I had 140 tread wear tires, but a "standard" tread pattern. The car came with these tires and are Bridgestone Potenzas. My lines was definitely still up on the top of the tire, I had a half inch to go to get down to where your recommending. I noticed that his tires had scruffing likes yours. He was in a 2013 and ALLOT faster than I was, lol. He said he was using the eibach chamber bolts to get more negative chamber ( he runs FS ). I'm getting a set now too, until the CC plates happen later on.

Eibach's bolts are not technically legal for F-Stock/F-Street or RTR but Ford's camber bolts are and they aren't cheap. I want to say they were like $120 for two camber bolts and a set of caster bolts. They are the only camber bolts I would put much faith into on these cars. If you still get the Eibachs, use red loctite to make sure they don't come loose or you can (not will) experience premature failure of the spindle. It was too much of a risk for me to take so I opted for the plates straight away.

Sadly, other methods of camber adjustment wont be legal in F-Street thanks to the neutering of the rules.

I'm assuming the Bridgestones you have are RE11's? Those are GREAT street tires to learn on and were pretty competitive up until some of these newer tires started to come onto the scene.

 

[csamsh]

Get that traction control off!!! You'll MURDER your rear brakes with it on...in addition to not REALLY learning car control. You don't know what spinning out feels like until you do it a couple times. I bet Ford (Ford's lawyers) like a push more than oversteer.

Approach it like a golf swing. You can't do everything every time. Practice a skill until you don't think about that one thing (hand position, where your left foot is, not overcooking that one turn, etc) until you don't think about it, then move along to the next thing. YMMV of course, but that worked (works) for me.

Beg borrow and steal rides. Be annoying and obnoxious about it. I sure do love riding in that red Vorshlag Mustang...

 

[Whiskey11]

Here are some close ups of my tires:
The Hankook RS3s:

The Star Specs:

Hopefully that helps!

 

[dontlifttoshift]

Get that traction control off!!! ...

This. You aren't learning anything with it on. It will prevent you from getting a true feel for the car and cause you problems later.

 

[NDSP]

The whole traction control thing confused me. Because I was under the impression that the main( possibly only ) function of the traction control is to prevent rear tire spin during acceleration. Well, my bone stock 2006 GT 5spd manual can't even break them loose in 1st gear with traction control off. So when the main apparent result of turning the traction control off was it pushing ( massive under steer, is pushing the right term? ) through the turns and a couple of times under throttle coming out of turns the ass end kicking out. The ass end kicking out makes since. Tells me my 100k mile tracloc still has some life left in it. But the plowing through the turns makes no sense what so ever to me. What am I missing? Or is that a symptom of something else?

here is a pic of my tires, which happen to be model RE040, treadwear 140, traction A. I have no idea if they are worth a crap or not.

So am I correct to think less air pressure? When you are lowering your pressure, how much do you increment by each time. Does it depend on where the wear line is. Would 3psi be a good amount based on where the line is my tire?

Thanks everyone for your advice.

 

[Whiskey11]

The whole traction control thing confused me. Because I was under the impression that the main( possibly only ) function of the traction control is to prevent rear tire spin during acceleration. Well, my bone stock 2006 GT 5spd manual can't even break them loose in 1st gear with traction control off. So when the main apparent result of turning the traction control off was it pushing ( massive under steer, is pushing the right term? ) through the turns and a couple of times under throttle coming out of turns the ass end kicking out. The ass end kicking out makes since. Tells me my 100k mile tracloc still has some life left in it. But the plowing through the turns makes no sense what so ever to me. What am I missing? Or is that a symptom of something else?

here is a pic of my tires, which happen to be model RE040, treadwear 140, traction A. I have no idea if they are worth a crap or not.

So am I correct to think less air pressure? When you are lowering your pressure, how much do you increment by each time. Does it depend on where the wear line is. Would 3psi be a good amount based on where the line is my tire?

Thanks everyone for your advice.

RE040 isn't a horrible tire, it's certainly better than the all seasons the car came with but it is two or three generations of tire old now.

Less air pressure, definitely. I usually come down in 2 PSI increments when testing unless it's WAY off. For you, it will probably be closer to 4-6 PSI judging by that picture. I would come down 4 PSI and at the next event watch the line and adjust from there. Taking a tire pressure gauge to the event and changing it (and maintaining it) between runs is necessary too.

Plowing going into turns is almost always driver error, plowing under partial throttle in sweepers is probably car setup (need more rear roll stiffness or less front roll stiffness). The sudden ass end out could actually be that the T-Lok is dead and the reason it doesn't do it with TC on is because the TC is keeping the wheel spin that normally reduces grip from causing the diff from going full open and free spinning the inside tire. With it off, the inside tire will "light up" which reduces traction at the rear and then you get a very unpredictable oversteer. With a fresh diff or a better one that oversteer is predictable and controllable.