Yes, I broke it. Lots of times.

I've been taking a break from sim racing for the past few weeks. I tend to burn out when I race a lot, and I raced a lot through the summer and fall. Also, I had some real-world track time, and that tends to make sim racing, even iRacing, seem a little tame.

My friend Michael Fridmann runs a shop that specializes in maintaining and modifying Lotus street and race cars. He's got a Grand Am-prepared Lotus Esprit Twin Turbo V8 that he uses for track days, and he invited me to join him for two events at Loudon.

October 26

The Lotus is a ferocious beast, with a full roll cage, race suspension, and engine beefed up to put out somewhere around 750 HP at max boost and peak RPM. Michael has pegged back the performance a bit for longevity, but it's still a mighty fast machine.

The first day was...interesting. I went out in the first session and got a black flag after two laps. Seems the car was smoking badly going up the hill out of Turn Six. I brought it back to the garage (the same garages NASCAR uses when they run at NHMS) and Michael and his friend Ray Patriacca, who did a lot of the preparation of the car for this event, looked the car over. Everything looked fine so I went back out. Two laps, black flag. Again.

This time they jacked it up and took a very hard look. Ray found evidence of a small oil leak at the rear of the left head, just above the turbo. Apparently a threaded plug was leaking and dripping tiny amounts of oil onto the turbo - which produced copious amounts of smoke.

A quarter turn of an Allen wrench and a shot of Brakleen and we had no more smoke. Michael did some laps and said the car felt good, but it lacked grip. This is because the Hoosier tires were old and had way too many heat cycles in them. Also the car still has the springs and shock settings from when it was running in Grand Am - and carrying 800 pounds of lead ballast that is now stashed somewhere back at Michael's shop. So it's a little stiffly sprung at the moment.

I went back out and started to get some laps in. Great! Yes, it could have used more traction, but it still felt terrific. It's been a year since I've been on track, and this car is worth way more money than I could afford to fix it if I smack a wall somewhere (and NHMS has lots of those). I was carefully working my way up to speed when...I'm coming out of Six, accelerating up the hill, and suddenly the cockpit fills with smoke! Augh! Not again!

I hit the master switch to kill the engine and pull off to the left, onto the grass. They shut down the course and bring everybody in so the wrecker can come and pull me back to the paddock. It's a long, slow trip on the end of the tow rope; plenty of time to contemplate that it's the end of practice and everybody's lost track time because of me and my smoky Lotus.

Back in the garage, we can't find anything. No oil anywhere, no sign of a water leak. Engine runs fine, gauges all normal. Mystery.

Then during the break before the time trials start, Michael checks the brake lights and finds they aren't working. They're required by our club, COMSCC, but weren't required by Grand Am, so Michael and Ray had added them. Turned out that a wire at the brake pedal had fallen off. The connector at the end was uninsulated, and when it touched the floor, it had created a short circuit which melted the insulation. That's where the smoke had come from.

Ray replaces the wire and Michael and I do our time trial laps uneventfully. I manage a 1:24.0, which is way slower than the car's potential, but considering the four year old tires, the ultra-stiff suspension, and my own lack of current seat time, I'm pleased.

After the time trials there's plenty of time for open practice. I get in about six laps when, going up the hill out of Six, the cockpit fills with smoke. Again. This time it's much thicker and by the time I get the car stopped it's so dense I can't breathe. I'm still coughing when the safety people arrive, and after another long tow back to the paddock the ambulance shows up and they convince me to breathe some pure oxygen for a while. To my surprise, this helps clear my head.

Turns out the new wire fell off and did the same thing as the old one. My heeling and toeing into Six is getting my feet into places Ray and Michael never anticipated, and eventually my toe snags the wire and pulls it off the connector. It falls down, shorts itself out and burns up. Since this new wire was thicker with more insulation, there was more smoke. Doh!

November 1

We had a week till the next event, so Ray and Michael had time to fix the brake wire properly. For this event Ray was my student. He's got plenty of oval racing experience, having won a local championship a couple of years ago, but this was going to be his first time on a road course.

I take him out in the car for the early morning instructor session. It's very cold, having dropped below freezing the night before, and this is a light car on big four year old race tires that are now very, very hard. I'm tiptoeing around, trying to get some warmth into them, hoping Ray wasn't too bored. (He wasn't!)

After six laps I'm feeling a little more confident, sensing some grip coming, and I start to lean on it just a little. Out of Turn Ten I squeeze on the power, being careful not to spin the rear tires but giving it a bit more than before, when the engine suddenly zings up toward redline and a big vibration hammers through the car. I shut it down and put my fist out the window to signal the cars behind that I'm headed for the pit entrance, just a couple corners ahead.

My first thought is that I've broken the transmission, but when I turn left to go around the corner the left rear of the car sits down and the vibration changes into a scraping noise. I pull off the asphalt and peer into my outside mirror. I can just see the left rear tire - lying on the grass about 20 feet behind the car. The Lotus is done for the weekend.

No tow rope this time; we (and everyone else who is hoping to be on the track about now) have to wait while the flatbed guy figures out how to get a three wheeled Lotus up onto the flatbed without ripping it to shreds.

Back at the garage, Michael directs the unloading of the Lotus from the flatbed right onto his trailer while I start hoofing it around the garage, looking for someone that will let a road course rookie drive their car so Ray's weekend won't be a total bust.

Finally a very generous Dan Baldwin allows me to take Ray out in Dan's showroom stock Honda S2000. This car is tailhappy like no other street car I've ever driven, but we get in some good laps. As we're getting out of the car in Dan's garage, right next to us Lou Milanazzo is strapping his helmet on, about to get into his ferocious black Dodge Shelby GLH. I ask him if he'll take Ray out and he says sure. Great! More track time for Ray, even if it is in the right seat.

Meanwhile Michael has gotten the Lotus squared away on the trailer, diagnosed the problem as a broken stub axle, and tracked down a drive for Ray: Marc Epstein's fire-breathing race-prepared Honda S2000.

Ray's first laps in the Honda are anything but tentative. First lap, over the hill at eight, he's flat out at maybe 80 MPH and headed straight for a wall he can't yet see until my frantic gestures get him to brake - just in time. On the second lap, going up the hill through seven, the tail steps out and Ray corrects. A wild series of tankslappers ensues. For a moment I think he's caught it, but it gets away from him and spins up the hill, coming to a stop on the right side of the track, tail off in the gravel, up against the tire wall.

In the right side mirror can see the bumper buried in the tire wall and I'm hoping desperately that any damage we've done is purely cosmetic. Marc is locked in a tight battle for the championship and the time trial this afternoon will be the title decider. I really hope we aren't responsible for him losing!

In the pits we get the all clear and Ray's subsequent laps are a little more circumspect. Back in the paddock we inspect the rear of the car. It's perfect. Not a scratch. No, wait, there are a few tiny, tiny scratches on the rear bumper where the grit on the tires in the tire wall scraped the paint. Whew! Close call!

The rest of the afternoon is relatively uneventful, except that my brother Nate lets me drive his latest project, the Bio-Diesel Special.

What a hoot! Feels almost like a shifter kart with fenders, except that you don't have to shift because the hot rodded four cylinder diesel (from a VW New Beetle) has so much torque. Good thing, too, because the shifter is so loose it feels like it's broken (but it isn't). Great brakes, steering, terrific handling, endless acceleration. Sweet machine.

Late in the afternoon Michael and Ray and I are standing around and a thought occurs to me. I've been assuming the Lotus is done for the weekend, but maybe...

Yes! Michael has been thinking the same thing. He's got a spare halfshaft (which includes the stub axle) back at the shop, plus a spare wheel bearing and spare brake lines. He's confident he and Ray can fix the car for the next day.

November 2

Sure enough, in the morning they're back at the track, car ready to go. Awesome! Ray finally is going to get a shot at driving the monster Lotus at speed.

Things go well for a few laps, but then Ray goes into Three a little hot and spins again. As he turns in I can feel it coming; the Lotus is extremely tail-happy and the ancient tires just don't have the grip Ray's asking for. Nothing I can do but wait for the spin to end; fortunately we spin harmlessly, keeping off the wall at the outside of Three, and everybody gets by us without hitting anything. I tell Ray, "I don't want to see any more spins!" And I don't.

Now another problem begins to rear its head: overheating. The Lotus had this problem all through the summer of '07. We'd get in one session with the engine running cool, temps low and stable, but in the second session the engine would start steaming and the water temp would go through the roof. We'd bring it in, wait for it to cool, and Michael would carefully top it up with coolant. We'd get another session of running cool and then the overheating would come back.

To address this, during the previous weeks he'd pressure tested the system and found and fixed a number of small leaks, mostly caused by hose clamps that had loosened up as the hoses had compressed. The fixes had worked for the first two days, but now that we were running it hard and long the problem was back.

It seemed to bite me the worst. Michael got in a nice long run; temps stayed down. I got in the car, and three laps later I was coming back in on the rope - again - after having shut it down when steam filled the cockpit. Michael and Ray both got clear runs in their time trials, but for me it overheated at the end of one lap and I had to pull off, missing out on what should have been faster timed laps.

Finally we got the procedures down and in the open practice at the end of the day I got in a nice series of laps, but I was never quite able to match my best time from the previous weekend. The colder weather combined with tires which get worse with every heat cycle were probably at least partly to blame.

In the end my only time trial lap was good enough for second in class. Micheal and Ray set good times as well. Nate won his class, Dan Baldwin won his class, and Marc Epstein won his class and his championship. Of those who helped us out, only Lou Milinazzo didn't come away with a win; instead the poor guy DNF'd. Thanks to all of you guys; good karma's coming your way - especially Lou.

Ray did a great job in his first time on a road course - and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed himself!

Despite the troubles it was a great three days and a reminder of how terrific it is to be at a race track, driving fast and having fun.

Respectfully submitted,

The Racing Addict

Pedal Project Progress

Head on over to my other blog for an update on the DIY load cell pedals that my nephew Amos and I are building.

Doh! <slaps head>

At the moment I'm a bit disillusioned with the Formula Mazda.

Grant Reeve has posted some new information on the iRacing forum which essentially renders a lot of what I said about the Mazda in my "Teasing Secrets" post moot - for now, at least.

Hopefully the Mazda's aero model will soon be enhanced enough that everything I said in this blog will be applicable.

Until then, my apologies for wasting your time (and mine) exploring and explaining ground effects on a car simulation that doesn't actually have any ground effects, and tire characteristics of tires that behave like no real-world tires I've ever experienced.

Teasing Setup Secrets out of the Formula Mazda

I spent all day on Tuesday pounding around Summit Point in iRacing's Formula Mazda. Squandered a perfectly good day doing 200 laps, tinkering with every parameter in that setup menu.

I ended up taking nearly a second off my personal best (lowered it to a 1:07.4). Also I think my latest setup is a good race setup as well as having some potential for further development.

Richard Towler's Setup, Low Tire Pressures, and Ground Effects

I started with Richard Towler's setup from an iRacing.com member forum thread called Re: Formula Mazda @ Summit Point.

It's a challenging setup - if I get a little sideways and try to recover, I wind up in a violent tank-slapper from which there is no return. But it has what I thought was fantastic balance through the final turn and also good balance through Turn 3, two of Summit's most critical corners.

Richard's setup also is very unusual in some ways, with a quarter inch of toe-out at the rear and extremely low tire pressures - 17.0 front and 17.5 rear! Tire temps show the middle temp far below the inner and outer.

In the forum, people theorize that this setup oversteers because it has a quarter of an inch of toe-out at the rear. Although this makes sense, I wasn't sure and wanted to verify this.

The first thing I did was raise the tire pressures. No other change. And bang! The Mazda's characteristic understeer came back. I've established to my own satisfaction that the oversteer - or at least lack of understeer - is related to the low tire pressures, not the rear toe-out.

I suspect what's happening is that the ultra-soft tires are letting the car squat and roll so much that the outside edge of the sidepod is touching the ground, taking away load from the outside rear tire and thereby reducing rear grip. Or, possibly, the extreme roll and squat are causing the diffuser to stall, taking away rear grip. Either way, I believe the reasons Richard's setup oversteers are related to his very low tire pressures, not toe.

Actually, I think the phenomenon of the chassis squatting under aero load explains why Richard, Wolf Woeger and others have been arriving at very soft tires on the Mazda: because when they lower the tire pressures, they feel more grip, but I believe this is because the chassis squats more at speed on the softer tires.

So as they experiment they feel that lower pressures give more grip, when actually it's the fact that the lower pressures cause lower ride height at speed, which gives more downforce, which is where the extra grip is really coming from. Make sense?

Tire Temperature Spread

But tires in the real world actually make the most grip when the temperatures across the surface are even. This is logical; if the edges are hotter than the middle, than the middle isn't being squeezed against the pavement as hard as the other areas of the contact patch, so it's not generating the grip it could.

So really, the car should generate the best grip with the tires at optimum pressure: with temperatures even across the tread, or slightly higher on the inner edge and the middle temp halfway between those of the inner and outer edge. This is the way it works in the real world.

(And yes, Grant Reeve has said that the Mazda's tires need some fine tuning, but the temperature spread relationship to grip is so elemental that I can't believe Dave K. would have made a mistake on this aspect of the tire model.)

So, I figured, I should be able to set the pressures to get even temps and drop the static ride height to get back the downforce I'd lost because of lack of squat due to the higher tire pressures.

The Formula Mazda's Underbody Design

I also believed that the aerodynamic center of pressure (see below) was too far back, and I thought that was what was causing the understeer I dislike so much. So, as I mentioned before, I thought that increasing the chassis rake should allow me to dial in better balance by moving the CP forward.

Wrong. Or, only partially right.

In fact, at one point I was so baffled by what was happening that I looked up the Formula Mazda on the web.

I realized I'd been thinking of the Mazda as a tunnel car (like the Lola/Reynard generation of Champ Cars) but really it might be flat-bottomed with a diffuser like an F1 car.

I found a lot of photos and even the aero parts list at Star Mazda. Unfortunately there are no photos of the bottom part of the sidepods in the catalog, but there are photos of the diffuser (at right). That and other photos of the entire car elsewhere (look closely at the photo of the white car below) that convinced me that this is a flat-bottomed car with diffuser, no tunnels.

So that made me think about it a little differently. Flat-bottomed cars are notoriously sensitive to ride height - and the downforce they generate isn't linear as the ride height goes up and down. Lowering the chassis does increase downforce - to a point - but then you may reach a level so low the airflow under the chassis stalls and because of this downforce begins to diminish rather than increase as you lower it further.

Real-world race engineers have information generated in a wind tunnel called ride height maps. These show drag, downforce, and aerodynamic center of pressure at various arbitrarily chosen ride heights.

I asked Dave Kaemmer in his AutoSimSport interview if he was planning to supply us iRacing members with ride height maps and he said no, these are regarded as trade secrets by the teams that allow him to scan their cars and supply him with data.

So we are going to have to rely on guesswork and experimentation to arrive at info that the real-world race engineers for these cars have at their fingertips. Dammit!

But I am assuming that Dave himself does have those ride height maps and that iRacing's aerodynamic modeling of the Mazda consists of a set of tables which mathematically represent the content of those ride height maps. I figure the iRacing physics engine, having calculated velocity, ride height, pitch, roll, and yaw at any given instant, simply looks up drag, downforce, and center of pressure in those tables, resulting in behavior that mirrors the real-world wind tunnel results.

Anyway. I found that lowering the chassis and adding some rake did get back some of the downforce, but you can't go too low or the front end just washes out completely. In Turn 3, this might be due to the front of the chassis bottoming, but it also happens in the final turn, which is nearly level. So I think possibly getting the front of the chassis too low causes it to stall, aerodynamically.

So I think maybe you can only go so far with rake and with general lowering to get downforce. I believe you have to start using the wings, too.

Fortunately the front wing should be fairly low drag, as its primary function is as a trim tab, so it shouldn't hurt too much to add a few clicks of front wing to get the aero balance into the range where you want it.

I tried going up one degree on the rear wing and several degrees on the front, and lost only about 1 MPH at the end of the straight. I think gains in balance would produce improvements in corner exit speeds that would more than offset that loss, so for now I'm sticking with 14 degrees at the rear and whatever it takes at the front to balance it.

The Impact of Caster and Camber

I continued experimenting and came to the realization, much to my surprise, that camber (and caster, because of the camber gain it causes) is critical. And none of the setups I'd tried had optimized this. This turns out to be a really big contributor to the understeer.

(This is right in the area where my friend Ricardo Nunnini began to explore a few days ago, so as usual he is way ahead of me!)

I had been operating under the assumption that at high speeds, aerodynamic downforce was so great that it pretty much overwhelmed any mechanical factors like camber. But now I think this assumption was wrong. Aero is important, but so are camber and caster.

I continued tinkering. I could dial out the steady state understeer by cranking up the front wing but this made the car unstable under braking and turn-in. For a little while I went down a blind alley by trying to tune Richard Towler's damper settings for better turn in with what I consider optimal tire pressures. Didn't work; I got slower.

After that I focused on front camber and caster. The rear temps looked good - a degree or two higher on the inner edge of the left-side rear, and the middle in between - so I figured I could assume they were reasonably close to optimum.

I started tweaking the fronts, and to my astonisment I was able to completely dial out the dreaded understeer by getting closer to optimum with the front camber and caster! I'm not sure I have optimized these yet; it's tricky because of the camber gain which occurs when you turn the wheel. But the setups I ended up with are, I think, getting close.

I posted these setups in the same thread I mentioned above. (Pesonally I was a little faster with the x1g setup, but it understeers more than I'd like. I think the x1i setup is potentially faster; I just haven't been consistent enough as a driver to access it yet.)

One of the things I like about these setups is that, unlike my earlier setups with a lot of rake and stiff rear springs, I'm not giving up rear grip, so the braking stability remains fairly good and the traction remains excellent.

The stability of the aero platform is still important, but it's not as critical as when I was trying to balance the car with rake and running the front very low. I've stuck with Richard Towler's spring settings of 600 front, 700 rear, which I think are about the only things left from his original setup. But I should also say that it still owes something to Richard's setup, particularly in the area of damper settings.

I've been experimenting with going softer on the dampers, and I think that helps calm the car down with no downside that I can see. I started with Richard's extremely stiff settings and I've backed off four clicks on all the settings except front rebound, which I think I've backed off more like eight clicks.

Richard's front dampers were extremely stiff in rebound, probably to calm down the chassis response to steering inputs. Since the car with my setup isn't as volatile in its responses to steering, it doesn't need such stiff rebound damping at the front.

Aerodynamics and Setup in a Ground Effects Car

I feel that we are still just scratching the surface of what the Formula Mazda has to teach us. It's the first downforce car in a simulation whose behavior I actually trust to reasonably closely approximate the behavior of its real-world counterpart. Therefore it's extremely interesting to me as a learning tool.

Downforce - especially downforce from the underbody - radically increases the complexity of setting up a car. You have all the usual mechanical parameters that us old GPLers are familiar with (toe, caster, camber, spring and damper rates, tire pressures, roll bars, etc.) and you also you have this enormous aerodynamic effect as well - and it varies drastically with speed. And the mechanical factors and the aerodynamic loads interact, making things even more complex.

On top of that, not only does the total downforce vary with speed, but where - relative to the wheelbase - all that downforce is being delivered also varies with speed.

This is known as aerodynamic center of pressure. If it's forward of the car's center of gravity, then at speed the car is going to tend to oversteeer, because the front tires are getting more downforce and therefore more grip relative to the rear. If the aero CP is aft of the CG at speed, you're going to get high speed understeer.

An interview with Sebastien Bourdais on autosport.com woke me up to this factor. In it, Sebastien pointed out that the Toro Rosso/Red Bull chassis has extreme migration of its center of pressure throughout the speed range. At low speed, the CP is very far forward, so the car oversteers in slow corners. But as the speed rises, the CP migrates toward the rear. At very high speeds, it's very far rearward, so the car understeers in very fast corners.

Bourdais says he doesn't do well with either of these characteristics. Mark Weber and Sebastian Vettel have been able to adapt their driving styles to drive around these problems, but Bourdais hasn't (and neither has Coulthard, apparently).

The reason "Sea Bass" was so quick at Spa is that almost all the corners are medium speed, so the car's CP was in the middle, giving it good balance in almost every corner. And so he flew.

Other Factors Affecting the CP

Speed, of course, is not the only thing which impacts the center of pressure. Ride height, chassis rake, pitch, roll, and yaw all have their impact on the airflow over and under the car. The underbody of a flat-bottomed diffuser car like the Mazda is particularly sensitive to these things. The CP might be migrating all over the place, for all we know, and it might not always be doing this in a way that is intuitive. It makes sense, for example, that increasing the chassis rake would move the CP forward, but does it always?

And, of course, spring rates, damper settings, and tire pressures all have an impact on dynamic ride height and rake, as does the track surface. A steeply banked corner is going to squat the chassis down more than a flat corner of the same radius; stiffer springs are going to reduce the squat compared to softer springs, and stiffer damper settings will impact both overall ride height changes and rake changes during transients.

This is why a downforce car is so much more complicated to set up than a non-downforce car like the Skippy. Almost anything you do to anything affects other things. And it's often very difficult to pin down exactly what is causing a particular reaction to a change. Is it the thing you changed, or is there a ripple effect, with the greater impact coming from a secondary or even tertiary factor?

The Mazda's Center of Pressure

My issue with the Formula Mazda is what I perceive as relentless understeer, particularly at high speeds. I figured this pointed to an aerodynamic center of pressure that was fairly far aft and/or migrated further aft at high speeds.

Therefore, I've been trying to balance the car by moving its CP forward, both by increasing the chassis rake (raising the rear/lowering the front, which should move the CP forward) and by running more front wing.

My experimenting the other day suggested that - lo and behold - tire alignment, both camber and caster (via its dynamic camber change) are also very big factors in the balance of the Mazda, even at high speeds.

It turns out that those big wide bias ply slicks need to have their surface pretty much flat on the pavement. With the front camber and caster in the ball park, the balance of the car is transformed - and radical tricks like very soft tires or extreme chassis rake aren't necessary to get its handling into the neutral zone.

But, as I say, I feel we are still just scratching the surface.

DIY Load Cell Pedal Project

My nephew Amos and I have been working on an interesting sim racing project this summer. We're building a set of pedals patterned after Todd Cannon's CST pedals. The key factor in these pedals is that the brake pedal operates a load cell rather than a potentiometer.

This is turning out to be quite a substantial project. We decided to build a hybrid of Todd's original DIY pedals and his current production pedals, but without any welding or painting. This has required a significant amount of design work.

The load cell and its nearly complete actuation mechanism is shown in the photo at upper right. At lower right the not-quite-complete clutch and brake pedal units sit on a scrap wood mockup of the planned floor stand, built for the purpose of verifying pedal height and angle relative to the floor.

You can read more about the project and see lots more photos at my blog, Amos and Alison's DIY CST Pedals. Actually you might want to start at the first post, Building a Set of Load Cell Pedals.

Mazda Magic, Part II

Laguna is not my favorite track. I don't like all that steep banking; the rolling in and rolling out really increases the complexity of the corners, and not in a way that's fun for me.

But last Tuesday I raced the Mazda with aslightly modified version of Ricardo's Mazda setup and had a fantastic race. (All I'd done to Ricardo's wonderful setup was to add a few notches of front wing to help the car turn in better.)

These days my iRating seems to be high enough that iRacing's automated race control keeps sticking me in races full of aliens, with whom I haven't a hope of actually racing. I wasn't gridded anywhere near the front, but after the first lap shuffle I wound up with a fellow named Dennis Griffen right behind me. Dennis and I were about the same speed; I had an advantage in some corners, he in others, but he was quick enough to put pressure on me the entire race.

I was pushing myself quite hard but trying to stay clean, and although he got alongside a couple of times, Dennis was never quite able to make a pass stick. He was driving very cleanly, which made it fantastic. The only contact we had was when he bumped me from behind once entering the corkscrew after he got a good run out of Turn 6 and I, being a little inconsistent as usual, braked a little earlier than usual at the top of the hill. But the contact was clearly unintentional and he apologized right then and also after the race. What a pleasure to race with people like this!

We had a terrific fight right through until the penultimate lap. The whole race (except for that one blooper) I'd had an advantage through Turn 6, that nasty banked corner before the hill going up to the corkscrew, so most of the time Dennis was never close enough to threaten me at the corkscrew.

But this time he got another good run through Turn 6 and I messed up and went wide on the exit, so I had to lift a little. Going into the corkscrew he was right on my tail and, under pressure, I left my braking too late. I skittered off the outside, shortcutting the corkscrew. Not by much, but just enough to get a furled black flag for a second or two. I had to slow down to clear it, and Dennis was through.

Damn and blast!

But it was a great battle, and we both had a terrific time.

I'm really getting to like this Mazda!

Mazda Magic

Okay, I officially don't hate the Formula Mazda any more. My old buddy Ricardo Nunnini claims he actually likes this car. He kindly sent me his latest setup the other day, and this setup has transformed my experience of driving this car. What a fantastic setup!

I've been using setups sent to me by a couple of other friends who are very fast. (Though they are both probably too modest to be comfortable with the term "alien", in my mind they are just that.) I haven't gotten very far with my own tinkering on the Mazda's setup, so I've really appreciated their generosity in letting me try theirs.

These two aliens' setups are quite similar in some ways: both are using tire pressures in the 20 PSI range (although one is using front pressures down below 18 PSI!) and spring rates at or near the lower end of the range. One is running a little more chassis rake than the other, but if you average their front and rear ride heights their effective overall ride heights are almost identical.

But strangely, the two are at polar opposites in terms of damper settings. One of them uses ultra-soft settings (very high positive numbers) and the other uses ultra-stiff settings (very high negative numbers).

Neither of those setups was working for me. The way the car reacted over curbs - evil - was just driving me crazy. Plus, the softly damped setup was so vague and wallowy - with so much understeer - that I hated driving the car. On the other hand, the stiffly damped setup made the Mazda feel more like a race car - crisper and more responsive - but I was actually slower with it than with the soft one! Augh!

VIR was a miserable experience. During the one race I ran, I ended up just tiptoeing around, trying to stay out of trouble, and, much to my chagrin, I was lapped by the winner at the end! Gad! On a track that's over three miles long! The shame...

At Laguna Seca I began experimenting with higher ride heights and more wing, hoping that getting the car up off the ground a little might help, by getting it away from the curbs and also by reducing the effects of ride height changes which occur when you put a wheel on a curb.

The fast guys seem to be operating from the belief that no matter what the venue, the Mazda is fastest with minimum wing angles (13 degrees front and rear) and ride heights calculated to shave the antennae off of ants. This is because the downforce you get from the ground effects tunnels under the car produces far less drag than the downforce you get from wings.

But I figured if there was any place where a high-riding, high-drag, high-downforce setup might work, it should be a place like Laguna, with tons of medium speed corners and not much in the way of long straights. And all those nasty curbs, plus lots of banked corners which put a high vertical load on the car and tend to squash it down so close to the road that how could it not be scraping and doing weird things to the handling as a result? (Remember GPL's beastly low-rider setups?)

But while the car felt better with my revised setup, my lap times didn't improve. Augh!

Ricardo has gone in a different direction, with significantly higher tire pressures and also less camber, and stiffer springs but with all the shocks at zero, right in the middle of the range.

What a difference! No more instant spinouts if I grab just a skosh too much curb. I can drive this thing like a normal race car now. Amazing!

I still struggled with entry phase understeer at Laguna with Ricardo's setup, so I cranked up the front wing a few notches. That helps; the car doesn't push so badly before the apex, but I have to be a little more careful about getting on the throttle, because it does transition to oversteer fairly abruptly if I mash the throttle in medium-speed corners.

Anyway, with Ricardo's setup the car is simply a delight. I can understand now why he says he loves driving it!

Rock and roll!

Skippy Sweetness

Just did a qualifying session at Lime Rock in the Skippy. I must admit that I've been frustrated with this car at this track for a long time. But earlier this week I made a couple of adjustments to the setup I was using, and it's made a big difference.

The car is still very sensitive; Miss Skippy wants you to caress her into the corners, not manhandle her like the Legends or the Formula Mazda. She's the polar opposite of Mr. Mazda, who likes to be tossed and shoved around.

Not Miss Skippy. Toss her around even just a tiny bit and she'll bite you. You'll be spinning before you can blink. She likes a delicate touch, but when you do it right she's magic.

I raced the Legends at Lime Rock a couple of days ago, which helped me get myself tuned into the track. Then I ran a race in the Skippy earlier this evening. My iRating put me into a very strong field - dead last on the grid and also in the car numbers, meaning I was the lowest rated driver in the field - so I concentrated on just being smooth and consistent, just like they tell you in Skippy school. Nothing too courageous; just stay clean and get out of there with all the points you can.

It worked, too; some of the faster drivers took themselves off. A couple came back through, and I let 'em go. Just maybe they'd take themselves out again, I figured. Right near the end the leaders lapped me - both of them quite aggressively but cleanly - and I wound up ninth, with a small drop in iRating, but I'm 83rd out of 792 in the series, so I'm not doing too bad! And my Safety Rating went up.

I never quite got below 1 minute flat in the race, but just now in the qualifying session, I got really in the groove and did a string of 59's. My last lap was a 59.325, which put me 1.2 seconds off "pole" and 260th out of 608. Not too bad at a track where I've never been terribly strong.

The main thing, though, was I came away with a powerful sense of how terrific that car is. I've never been able to drive a real car at the real-world Lime Rock at the absolute ragged edge because of the fear of crashing it and wrecking my budget. Neither my talent nor my budget allowed me that risk and that pleasure. But tonight I had that little Skippy car out on the edge, balanced at the limit, pushing it as hard as I could, and it just sang.

Sweet music, little Skippy. I love that machine!

Formula Mazda at Sears Point, Part II

Well, I don't hate it quite so much.

Started out again with Wolf Woeger's setup but could not get anywhere, and hated the car again. Took a look at his shock settings and found them to be super-soft. Cranked in a little stiffness and the car immediately felt better, and I went a little quicker, breaking into the 1:30's. Still erratic, though, and the thing still feels like a marshmallow.

Tried running a qualifying session but my times were terrible, in the 32's, because I had to back off from what I'd been doing in testing due to the fact that the car and I were still erratic.

There's a theory going around that the F.Maz's aero is off; the fast guys say that using minimum wing gives the fastest lap times under all conditions.

Maybe they're right, but I decided that if any track would benefit by increasing the wing angle and raising the ride height, this was it. Started cranking up the wings and also raised the ride height because it felt like the chassis was bottoming or else going onto its suspension stops.

Raising the ride height calmed it down and made the handling more like race car, less like a lowrider/pimpmobile. Also went still stiffer on the shocks all around (Wolf had 'em at almost full soft in rebound!) and stiffer on the rear springs. It's starting to feel like a race car; I can place it better because its response to steering inputs is more linear.

Finally did a 1:30.5. And I don't hate the car quite so much. Maybe there's more in it if I can get the setup dialed in better, but I like my setup's feel much better than Wolf's. Gotta keep chugging, I guess.

Legends at Lime Rock...eerrk!

Saved up energy to run the first race of the week in the Legends Weekly Road Race Series at 8:15 EDT.

Got into the car offline about 45 minutes before the race and did some laps to get in the mood. :) Tweaked the setup I'd worked on last night a little more, trying to calm down the rear over bumps and help its traction. Got into the high 1:01's, doing a string of them with a best of 1:01.6. Figured I was ready.

In the first race nobody has had a chance to qualify, so we're gridded by iRating. I was third behind the two guys leading the series. Behind me were another couple of quick guys who were ahead of me in the series points. Looked like it would be a fun race!

Sure enough, at the start, the two guys ahead blew away (but not too fast!) and after the two guys behind me shuffled around a bit, one of them appeared on my tail. Still pretty small in my mirrors, though.

I concentrated on staying clean and driving as hard as I could within my limits. But before I could see if I'd stabilized the gap...Pow! Power outage!

It was just for a second, but it was long enough to lose my connection to the server. The router and DSL modem were on a UPS, and the computer was on another, but the switching hub between them wasn't. Damn!

I rejoined about three laps down, just ahead of the leaders. I let 'em through but was able to keep the second placed guy in sight until near the end. Drove a completely clean race, too, until exiting the final turn on the final lap, when I took to the grass to avoid someone who spun ahead of me. I guessed wrong on the way he'd go when he got the thing pointed straight.

My iRating suffered a little but my Safety Rating wasn't hurt by the grassy excursion, and I had fun.

Ran the qualifying session and took a half second off my personal best with a freak 1:01.1 lap. Woo hoo!

Did the next race two hours later and the other three guys who were leading the series were at the front of the grid! Jeez! Will more people start running this series so the fast guys get their own race?

This time everything went smoothly. Had a nice wheel to wheel dice with my old sparring partner Reed Rundell in the early laps, before he finally took off and left me in the dust. But then he spun exiting the downhill and hit the inside wall. Ouch! That hurts, and I know it because I've done that myself in real life, many years ago.

Ended up driving a lonely race to 4th, but it was still fun and it helped my iRating, my Safety Rating, and I think it even helped my score in the series.

I hope more people discover this series!

Formula Mazda at Sears Point

I hate this car.

Back to Lime Rock; Thinking of Paul Newman

Lime Rock is the track I first drove on in real life, and over the years I've run there many times. Even shared the track with Paul Newman a few years ago, me in my Cobra during its development phase when it was quite slow, and he in his mighty T1 Camaro, which blew by me like I was standing still.

I heard that Paul drove his Camaro one more time at Lime Rock the other day. He's got cancer and he was taking his last ride. This is very sad news.

I still regret not speaking with Paul when I had the chance. Twice - three decades apart - I was within speaking distance of him in the paddock at Lime Rock, and both times I was too shy, too star-struck to open my mouth.

The first time was over 30 years ago, when Paul was driving a Bob Sharp Datsun 510, not long after he'd gotten interested in racing while filming the movie Winning. It was a Tuesday practice day and I was in the pits watching as he drove the Datsun through the downhill and onto the main straight. The surface had a sharp crown down the middle and he had to transition that crown as the car tracked out from the apex to the curb at the outer edge of the straight.

At that point he had to be doing close to 100 MPH. The crown would naturally kick the tail of the car out as the car got light going over it. Most people would have to react to this with some opposite lock to catch the resulting slide.

But Newman was doing something differently: he was anticipating the slide, correcting for it as it happened, so that instead of kicking out its tail, the car seemed to just float sideways for a split second and then hook up as it settled down on the far side of the crown. It was amazing to watch, and it became clear to me that day that Paul Newman was the real deal when it came to driving a race car.

That crown is still there (or at least it was until the repaving) and iRacing's laser scanning has captured it perfectly.

I know, because I was wrestling with it last night. First with the Skippy car, and then with the Legends, which reacts so much more quickly because of its stiffly sprung live rear axle and its very short wheelbase. Fun!

I actually did a lot more laps with the Legends than with the Skippy. I love the Skippy, but the Legends just feels so alive. You feel every tiny (and giant!) bump through the steering, both as the front wheels kick back and also as the tail wiggles. It's fantastic. Back in the GPL days, I never imagined that a racing simulation could feel this close to the real thing.

I haven't been well enough to race yet this week, but I'm hoping I'll be able to at least get in a couple of runs in the Legends tonight or tomorrow during the Weekly Road Racing series, which is running at Lime Rock this week. And of course I'm hoping to be able to do some races there in the Skippy before the end of the iRacing week.

As to the Formula Mazda, I'm thinking about giving up on it for now. I just can't get it to do what I want. I've tried radically different setups from various sources, including Grant Reeve, Wolf Woeger and Daniel Almeida, as well as some I developed myself, and I just cannot get this car to handle in a way that I feel comfortable with. Unlike the Skippy and Legends, it's just not that much fun to drive.

Still, I'm hoping to be able to try it at Sears Point, which is my favorite track next to Summit Point, and that's where it's running this week, so I hope I feel better soon!

iRacing goes live!

iRacing went live today. Woohoo!

I've been monitoring the Drivers Stats page, which this morning was showing over 4100 members having participated in at least one road race, and slightly fewer for ovals. There's been a small increase today but neither number has broken 4200. I'm hoping to see a much bigger rise in the next few days, as new members complete the process of getting comfortable and up to speed offline and start actually racing.

Why this Blog?

So why am I doing this blog? I need an outlet for my thoughts and feelings about my sim racing.

For the past ten years I've had a great partner in this; we've exchanged emails daily (sometimes many emails per day) and this was a great way for me to express my feelings about sim racing as well as other topics.

But my friend doesn't share my enthusiasm for iRacing. I've tried to show this friend how precious this brilliant creation is to me, and convey my belief in its potential for every racing enthusiast, but to no avail. We've decided to end our dialog about iRacing.

I still would like to share about iRacing - which is the only sim that interests me at this point - so I've decided to move into the 21st century and start blogging.

Welcome aboard!

Alison