Vince's Stuff: First Monday at St-Eustache

Thursday, May 17, 2018

First Monday at St-Eustache

I headed out to Monday night lapping at St-Eustache for the first time this year. The car was basically as I had left it after renting it out at the Calabogie race school. I put the almost-corded 2016 Hankook RS3's on the front and the fresher RS4's on the rear. I hoped this setup would allow me to improve on my best time so far of 1:03.0, which I had achieved on even older tires.

In my first session, it took me a while to even get under 1:05 and I ended up with a disappointing best time of 1:04.3. I was still having fun, despite the lousy lap times. The car felt good, other than that the front end was not gripping as I would have liked.

My second session was not much better, and I clocked a best lap of 1:03.7. In one of these sessions, I was closely following a Scion FRS and we even swapped places for a while. It was quite fun and I had a talk with the other driver afterwards. Carl pointed out that my car was leaking oil while parked and I was trying to figure out where it was coming from. Marc N. theorized that my oil filler cap was not sealing, and it seemed like a realistic theory, so I have since gone out to buy a new one.

In my last session, I somehow managed to find some speed, probably due to the track cooling down a bit. I achieved my best time yet with this car, a 1:02.7. While looking at the data, I could see that I was not particularly fast anywhere on track. It's hard to predict how fast I can ultimately go with the current setup. With my old coupe, I had managed a 1:00.5 with a 1.8 Type R engine. If I want to dip under 1:01, I need to shave off 1.8 seconds... that'a a lot. Can I get a full second just by switching to fresh tires? Can I get the other 0.8 seconds with cooler temperatures, or better driving? If it doesn't rain on Monday, I will head back to the track with fresh tires and see how much that helps. My new goal for the season in so go under 1:01 at St-Eustache. Can it be done? Stay tuned...