Vince's Stuff: A slightly better evening at ICAR, new best lap for the RSX

After changing my destroyed brake pads, I decided to give ICAR another shot. I was hoping that the street pads would be tough enough for the track.

The pedal feel in the first session was pretty good, and I managed my new best lap with the RSX, a 1:18.61. The car felt predictable and I was having a good time in the green session, even though almost every other car passed me.

I went out for a second session and I thought I could hear the sound of brake pads disintegrating. Still, I slightly improved my best lap to a 1:18.58. I checked the pad thickness without removing the wheels and it looked quite bad... they were more than half worn after only two sessions. I decided not to push my luck and called it a night. I didn't want to destroy another caliper.

I decided later that week that I didn't want to lose any more track time trying out cheaper braking options. Even though I had received my R1 Performance budget track pads, I decided not to install them and instead to contact Carl so he could recommend me a real track pad from Hawk. As he had done last year, he proposed the ER-1. They are expensive, but they are an endurance pad, so they may make up for it by lasting a long time. When I installed them, I noticed that the Bosch pads I had removed were not worn very evenly. The thinnest one was at about 1/3 thickness while a couple of the inner pads still had more than half their thickness. I'm not sure they would have lasted two more sessions. At least I know that I won't have to worry about my pads on track for a while.

I want to improve my lap times now. I feel I am driving OK, but when looking at the data, I can see that there are a few more tenths to go and get with better driving (3/10s according to the theoretical lap time). This is the first component to improving my lap times. The other part of this can be accomplished by improving the car, ideally without spending any serious money. The RSX's cornering speeds are not significantly better than those of last year in the yellow Civic. I decided to try two small easy changes: I swapped the wheels for the Mustang wheels I bought before the season. These wheels are 1 inch wider, 1 pound lighter and have a more agressive offset. I used a vice grip and hammer to "roll" the rear fenders, as the clearance looked tight. In doing so, I cracked the body filler of my rear fender repair and had to redo it. I am happy with the result: a more aggressive stance for the car. I can no longer say the car is a total sleeper now that it has these wheels: it looks like someone's track car. Anyway, these wheels should give the tires a wider footprint and increase the car's track width.

Part RSX, part Mustang!

The other thing I did was remove the passenger seat, which weighs 46.4 pounds according to my scale. That's a 1.7% weight reduction. Will it make a difference? A couple of tenths?

Anyway, given that the car's theoretical best last week was 1:18.33, I think I can dip down into the 1:17s with these minor changes. I also think that if all the planets align (including cooler weather), the car will be capable of a high 1:16. If the weather is nice tomorrow, I will be able to see if I'm moving in the right direction.