The Australian Summer Nationals is the first major event in the 2008 racing calendar for 1/10 scale Nitro and Electric touring cars. Spanning over 3 days - Friday practice for Nitro and Electric, Saturday Nitro qualifying and finals and Sunday Electric qualifying and finals. The track, located at Fairy Meadow - Illawarra NSW, has a flowing layout with a mix of high and low speed corners with two heavy breaking corners. The surface traditionally has medium to high grip levels but as an old tennis court has a few rough expansion joints making set up tough but critical. The entry numbers were significantly lower this year due to a bleak weather forecast and possibly partly due to the introduction of limited control tyres for all classes this year with only one set for qualifying and the option of one extra set for A finalists.
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Friday Practice
Arriving at the track on Friday morning the weather looked bleak, I and the team knew that we would not have long to obtain a good set up for Sunday. Everything that we had learnt previously meant nothing as the club had recently repainted the track with a rougher and sandier version of the original paint that had not been painted evenly but randomly directed and thicker in some areas than others. As the club had used paint rollers for the track there were random roller lines and textures that the car could get caught up in and follow momentarily making it hard to hold the correct line through the corners consistently. I started with the kit set up and the car felt good but a little slow mid corner, but the times suggested that the car was a lot slower which was strange considering that the car felt and looked so good on the track. I moved the wheelbase to 259 and the car was a lot more direct and easier to place. Then I changed the chassis flex setting to the full soft position and changed the kit 4 degree castor blocks to 2 degrees and now the car was steering a lot better and I could hold a lot more power through the many flowing sections. This effect was enhanced with the change of the rear toe-in to 2.5 degrees from 3 degrees which allowed the car to flow a lot better through the sweeper and into the first chicane.
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Next I started fine tuning with the roll centre blocks to try and get a trend as to whether the car needed to roll more or stay flatter in the corners, I tried various mixes of low, high and middle blocks with different combinations of anti-dive and anti-squat that had worked well on the T2â™007 but the ultimate outcome was that the middle blocks front and rear worked the best by far on this particular track. Early in the morning I tried going softer on the springs changing from kit C-2.8 and C-2.6 to C-2.4 and C-2.2 which surprisingly felt better but was no faster. For a trend indication I decided to go in the opposite direction and installed C-3.0 in the front and C-2.8 in the rear and now the car felt more agile but still could not generate faster lap times. At this point it was evident that faster lap times would be achieved with a softer set up so I changed springs again to blue green all round and this was faster so I went even softer again to the older Xray D=1.3mm purple springs and the car then had awesome grip everywhere and was almost exactly how I would like it to be going into Sunday but it was lacking a little steering so I moved the rear roll bar position to the firm position and the car was even faster again.
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The car was now ideally how I would like it to be so any positive changes that I would make from now on would just be bonuses and I decided to go for even more chassis roll by moving the quick roll centre links into the low roll centre position with softer 1.2mm anti-roll bars all round. The car was now absolutely dialed and unbelievably easy to drive at the same time and it felt as if I could just roll around and still produce a good lap time but the chassis was now scraping really badly with all the extra chassis roll being produced so I changed ride height to 5.7mm in the front and 6.3mm in the rear and just before I had a chance to test this change the rain prematurely ended practice early in the afternoon. That night after rebuilding the car I decided to make a few changes for Sunday and as the chassis roll was so beneficial at this particular track when the grip came up I thought it would be better to change to lighter shock oil (300cst) and shim the shocks out top and bottom 2.5mm along with the installation of the 50mm front drive shafts for some more aggression in the car.
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Sunday Practice
Saturday Nitro was washed out and it was clear from the outset that there was not a lot of grip in the track, making me nervous as we had set up the cars anticipating good grip from the nitro event the day before. I only had a few minutes on the track between the track being open and the start of racing and the car felt okay but not fast and I was left hoping that it was just the track being damp with low grip and that my one set of new qualifying tyres would not be wasted in the first qualifier.
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Sunday Qualifier 1 -
On new tyres I had a clean run but the car felt unstable as if it was tweaked really badly and I could not drive down the straight without the car moving fiercely left and right. When I brought the car back in I realized the problem, due to the soft springs the down stops became very crucial and because of the raised ride height I had no droop with the down stops at 5 in the rear and 6 in the front so that the car was bouncing off the front down stop screws on power and could not transfer weight forward under brakes and off power making the car feel tweaked. I changed the down stops back to 5 in the front and 4 in the rear which gave me a droop of about 2mm above ride height in the rear and 1mm above ride height in the front, but with this run I still managed to qualify 4th. At this point it also became clear that the new surface was gripping up far more rapidly than the old one and I would need to change the setup accordingly throughout the day.
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Sunday Qualifier 2 â“
The car was much better now and I could place it where I wanted it on the apexes but the rear end became a little loose when I really pushed but I moved up one position in this run and placed the car 3rd so far.
After this run I decided to make a few changes and removed a 0.5mm shim from the rear camber link to lower the rear roll centre and increase rear grip and changed the piston position in the shocks to 2 shut in the rear and 3 shut in the front.
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Sunday Qualifier 3 -
The car was faster again and I was in and out of first place until I made a mistake and the rear end stepped out as I was going over a ripple strip and I the car ended up facing against a barrier with no chance to get out and I lost 6 seconds but still managed to qualify 3rd overall for the final. After this I changed the shock piston holes to 1 shut all around to create even more chassis roll as the grip was coming up again and I was looking for exit corner steering.
Qualifying: A Final
1. Troy Laughlin 2. Michael Clark XRAY T2â™008
3. Tim lee XRAY T2â™008
4. Justin Vergunst 5. Ryan Maker XRAY T2â™008
6. Peter Dooley
7. Scott Guyatt
8. Damien Zarb
9. Chris Hamilton
10. Martin Choy
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Sunday Final 1 -
For the final there was an option of purchasing an additional set of tyres but I decided to use my old tyres for the first final and put on new tyres for the second. At the first corner the car behind me, on new tyres, had far more corner speed and ran into the back of me sending me into the barrier and leaving me on my roof, putting me last before the end of the first lap with a tweaked car. I had to push really hard with fourth run tyres but managed carve through the field to take 4th.
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Sunday Final 2 â“
I got a clean start on new tyres and pulled out of the first corner in second behind Michael Clark (XRAY) and had to back off in order not to hit him due to the much higher corner speeds of my car on new tyres compared to his car on second run tyres. As we came through the chicane on the 3rd lap I just tagged him behind his rear left wheel flipping him over and he was stuck on his roof. I waited but had to go when the rest of the field came up behind and if I didnâ™t move my car would have been run down and probably damaged. I went on to pull a lead of half a lap on Troy in second and was able to cruise the last 5-6 laps or so to avoid being caught up with back markers. I went on to win the race comfortably and posted the best lap of the brushless class all day a 13.6 but felt really bad about the incident with Michael as he is my friend and teammate but the corner speeds on new tyres were just so different.
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Sunday Final 3 â“
The start was clean once again and I was on 2nd run tyres and everyone was on 3rd run tyres and so I was easily able to pass first and second cleanly and pulled about a one second lead until the 3 minute mark when I came up to traffic that would not give way and Troy came right up on the back of me and then they let me through along with Troy. I quickly pulled the gap out as before then the same thing happened again but I went wide at the hairpin and Troy was able to sneak through on the inside but I was right back on him and gaining and was looking to pass but then we came up to three consecutive cars. Ryan Maker (XRAY) let me through but the two lapped cars in front of Troy let him through but closed the door repeatedly on me very defensively and Troy pulled away and was gone.
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With about 30 seconds to go I knew I could not make up the time so I sat behind the traffic to avoid getting tangled with the back markers and finished second behind Troy placing me second overall. This was still a good result but the best part was that the car was so fast and thus I was able to post the best lap time of the brushless class by 3 tenths. My tire strategy was also successful.
In conclusion it was a very promising competition debut for the T2 008 in 5 cell brushless modified class.
Final Positions:
1. Troy Laughlin TOP Scythe 2. Timothy Lee XRAY T2â™008
3. Justin Vergunst 4. Michael Clark XRAY T2â™008
5. Ryan Maker XRAY T2â™008
6. Peter Dooley
7. Scott Guyatt
8. Chris Hamilton
9. Martin Choy
10. Damien Zarb
