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PN Racing RCX Championship 2011

Posted 04-08-2011 at 04:58 PM by color0
As promised, more review of the RCX Sunday race, the PN Racing RCX Championship.

Sunday's race took place on the exact same layout of track, but now run in reverse! The cars now come down and leftward on the center straight:



Now this time around, I got a tip from PN Mod driver Grant M. that PN X-Pattern 15 front tires, mounted on 19mm rims for more tire flex, might be the way to go. So I got to the RCX hall bright and early to test it out. Holy crap it works! Compared to the day before (on Kyosho 30 radial fronts, also on 19mm rims) I had a ton more steering, a little more scrub, and in general the car just felt more like the setups I usually drive. Fantastic!

Now recall that at this point I was still on the F430. The tire combo of PN X15/PN 6 radial and wheel combo of 0N/+1.5W was feeling pretty good, so I thought, why not try out the body that will fit this better? Thus, I pulled out the 911 GT1 that I had left at home on Saturday, popped it on the chassis, and popped my MR03 back on the track with the same wheel and tire combo.

Holy s***. Even with Saturday's slow handout motor this thing was a ferret through the corners -- low, flat, and VERY quick to enter and exit. The high speed sweepers were dealt with the most impressively, I caught up to people from several car lengths behind in a single corner! Then I remembered that I've seen this behavior before, right after I first installed a front diffuser and rear wing onto the 911 at Kenon. The aero made a gigantic difference at speed, and didn't seem to hurt one bit even at the slowest hairpins. I was super happy already, but I wasn't prepared for just how happy I was about to become.

The very moment I soldered in my handout motor for the day I knew I had something special: this thing had torque! Gobs of torque for an 80t, there wasn't even a "spool up" time per se, the motor just up and went! Compounded by the fact that my batteries were feeling good that day, the TRP 900's + handout PN 80t combo was a (relative) missile down the back straight. And thanks to the new tire combo and 911 GT1 I could out-corner almost anyone on the two longest sweepers of the track, and more than keep up in the tight infield section. In fact, I made many passes on the outside line of those sweepers! This race had just gotten very, very real -- my car was dialed, fast, and would definitely be a formidable machine today!

The first qualifier went by almost without a single hitch: traction was great, power was greater, and without even noticing I had set the early TQ of 21 laps, 5:06.7! This went completely unchallenged for the rest of round one. But when round two came along, I noticed immediately that I started losing traction on launch -- dang it, the rear tires were going already? I had put one qualifier and five minutes of practice on the tires, and they were already fading. Once the PN 6 radials got back up to operating temperature they were fine, but never as consistent or grippy as they were when (almost) brand new for the first qualifier. I still kept my TQ, but this round I only managed 21 laps and 5:07 IIRC.

Knowing how fast the tires had faded, I opted to run the third qualifier on the current set, and mount a new set before Q4 so I'd have a broken-in set of tires for the main. This was probably the correct choice? My qualifying time got worse, 21 laps and 5:12, but I barely hung onto the TQ as Ryan Sagisi solved his binding issues and posted a well-driven 21 laps 5:06.9 (just two tenths behind my TQ)! The fourth and final qualifier was the best show for the two of us: with fresh tires, and the same batteries as usual (TRP 900's, charged at 1.2A), I had the power, traction and setup to finally start pulling away from Ryan -- all the while he was hot on my tail with his Falken-colored SC430, but at the end of this tense heat he posted a 21 and 5:02, and I eked out a close win with a 21 and 5:01! Nobody else would come close to these times for the rest of round 4, and so I got my first TQ at a major Mini-Z event.

Now, I had time to take a break and work on the car, and I was going to make the darn thing PERFECT before taking everyone on in the A main. I reseated my front wheel bearings, making sure they spun free; rebuilt my diff, making sure that was free but tight enough to lay down the power; reseated the rear left wheel hub, removing all the slop; cleaned out the teeth on my PN 126-pitch spur gear and pinion; heck, I oiled the motor bushings for the first time that weekend. More motor can't hurt in 80t, so might as well, right?

Here's where I made a mistake: I assumed that the rear PN 6 radials would last another 10-15 minutes of hard running, which would've been a similar wear life to the last set of 6's that I burned through. So I put my car down on the track to practice a few more minutes. Little did I know that this was NOT the case, and by the end of practice, I didn't even know it but my rear tires were at the end of their life! This would later wreak havoc on my pole start, which I would find out.

As the 2WD Stock B Main finishes and the A Main comes out to line up, I'm pumped -- this is my second big race (if you don't count the Atomic Warm-Up), first TQ, I'm sitting on pole with a ridiculous car, Peter Dinh and Ryan Sagisi are 2nd and 3rd, on. my. arse. waiting for me to make a mistake -- this is awesome! Joe announces the upcoming long tone.

The silence mounts.

That all-too-familiar beeeeeeep rings out --

Holy crap go go go! I mash the throttle on an adrenaline high, turn round the first corner, try to go up the bridge and --

WTF losing traction already? Obviously I had some first lap nerves but the car was definitely slipping those rear tires! I stuffed it into the outside wall at the end of Lap 1 and allowed Ryan to get right by me; just half a lap later, I spin out right into the hairpin wall! Peter and David get right by me as I get myself off the wall and back into the fray. I now knew my rear tires were already going... oh man this was going to be a tough race. Surprisingly it took me almost no time at all to get back to David, it was just a matter of getting around him. But I did have some motor after all and I dived right into a hairpin on the inside for the pass! Alas, a couple corners later I lost the rear end again and spun into the wall again, allowing him to take 3rd place back. I traded places with him a couple more times as I got myself into the groove of this 8-minute main; finally I found it, passed David for good and started to hunt down Peter.

It took me more than a few laps and a few mistakes to do so, but I finally found Peter's yellow-black-white SC430 around the midway mark. And it was over fast! I believe Peter's SC had a small bobble in the second tight infield section, so while he was out I just powered past safely to take 2nd.

After this, I had 3 minutes to go, I was still driving OK, the car was still very fast (and VERY loose!) and I started chasing down Ryan. This turned out to be more than I could handle: with the rear tires rapidly going away now, I posted some very fast laps but my consistency went down; in addition I managed to traction roll my 911 down the bridge! WTF? Somehow, I was able to keep myself right in between Ryan and Peter (7 and 5 seconds gap respectively) and finish the race in 2nd before my tires truly died out.

So, the things I learned from Sunday are even more detailed than what I managed to figure out Saturday:

1) Tires tires tires! It's really mind-boggling how dependent on the tires a car is, the slightest mistake in tire management can end your race. I now know to always underestimate a tire's life, especially for PN tires since they can vary in characteristics from pair to pair. This race, all I did was miscalculate the wear life by a bit and I gave up a pole-start 1st place finish to have to chase my way back into 2nd.

2) Bodies are surprisingly important too! The 911 GT1 is, admittedly, not an easy body to race: compared to the gold-standard SC430 it's longer, offers the front tires less protection, rubs itself into walls rather than glancing off and takes a lot of aero work to make it perform. Mine needs a front diffuser, hood vents, roof scoop block-off plate, rear wing, rear bumper cutout, etc. etc. all to make it a good (albeit very quick if you stay off the walls) race body! A lot of the SC430's I observed were only lightly modified, and in fact Ryan Sagisi replaced his Reflex wing with the stock plastic wing in order to free up the rear end and reduce drag! Certain bodies are just plain BETTER at some tracks, and for low-grip RCX it seems like SC430 was the way to go.

3) As I have postulated in the past, front aero is an area of development that has the potential to greatly increase Mini-Z cornering speeds. I am not positive my hood vents are doing anything good, but I know for sure that the diffuser is working because I broke it during practice (nothing dragging on the track) and immediately got slower. Combined with the good handout motor, nobody's 2WD Stock car could compare with my absolute fast lap of the weekend, a 13.5 -- this was completely untouched by anyone else, by a full three tenths!

All in all, I had a very fun weekend, learned a lot, and got a TQ, hot lap record and 2nd place! Thank you very much to Philip and Grant of PN Racing, John from RCP Tracks, Joe Chen of Reflex Racing, and all the racers who came out to RCX for making this the coolest Mini-Z racing event I've ever been to! I got to see a cool show and put on a good show, and I will definitely be back next year if I can.

Next week we'll be back to our regular scheduled programming, technical articles; I'll delve into some of the tire science that I picked up before and after RCX. Stay tuned!
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