As is tradition in I.C on road in Australia the 2012 NSW state titles were held over Easter at the John Grant International Raceway in Sydney. Unfortunately it is also a tradition that it rains for some portion of the event, luckily this time the weather was perfect for the four days and the track had a chance to build up some good traction. This year a different track layout was chosen. The track was a little more open with less 180 degree corners offering less overtaking opportunities and making it a bit more difficult to set up the cars for the long sweeping corners.
I was very busy and was unable to spend as much time as I would have liked practicing for the event. At least I was fairly well organised apart from having to cut some bodies out at the track.
I had the new Protoform SRS-N for the NT-1 and the R18 for the RX8 and was really eager to try them. Also for the first time I used the new Novarossi Keep-On series engines for both cars.
I arrived at the track on Thursday afternoon for practice, firstly I drove the NT-1 with my usual setup and I felt pretty happy with the car and the handling was a little better than I expected straight up. I had a little bit of a clutch setting problem but I persevered for the day. Right at the end of practice just before the close of the track I tried the RX8 which would be the first time I tried the car with all the optional transmission parts on it. Straight away I was really impressed with the engine and option parts. The car felt so much faster than I had experienced before and with all that weight out of the drive line it was basically stuck in second gear! After adjusting the gearbox I went out for another run to check the handling and I was very happy. The balance was very nice and the car was soo easy to drive hard. I felt like I had a small amount of understeer but I was sure I could fix that during practice tomorrow and during qualifying. .
Friday was scheduled for open practice and one complete round of each practice in heats and Qualifying. Overnight I had changed the settings on the clutch on my NT-1 but it was still not giving me the best launch out of the corners or feel. I decided to spend the first half of the day just working on the clutch and finding the best balance for the Keep-On engine. The next time I adjusted the clutch I found the sweet spot, the engine came alive and wow. I was not expecting the Keep On .12 to have dramatically different power characteristics to the PTS that I used last season but the Keep on .12 is a big improvement. The bottom end is even more savage and the top end is improved over the PTS. I also had fewer issues making 5 minutes than usual even with the extra power. I attributed this to the lighter rear bearing allowing the engine to run down faster and save more fuel once the throttle was closed, similar to the way I find the ceramic front bearing to give better economy. I changed the setup a little on the NT-1 but the major differences that shaved the most lap time were using the SRS-N body and changing to Matrix tyres. The SRS-N gave me much more steering everywhere on the track which suited me perfectly as an electric driver and the Matrix tyres simply had more traction than the previous brands I had been using.
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I was pretty happy with the RX8 but I needed more steering, especially off power and at low speed. The car was awesome on power and at high speed but I know I could go much faster with more off power rotation. The motor was incredibly strong out of the corner and I was basically the only driver who could consistently run 5 minutes on one tank and post competitive lap times. Lastly I tried the new Protoform R18 body mounted 26mm off the centre of the bumper, I felt this body had great potential and would make more traction at both ends compared to the 909 I had been using but would need to be mounted more around 30mm off the bumper as it had a fair bit of understeer.
Some RX8 drivers were having problems with the consistency of the brakes as they warmed up. Xray driver Dave Mcinerney came up with a great solution for this problem by slotting the brake pads which allowed better heat dissipation through the slots and also the reduced surface area made for a smoother more linear feel. This in combination with the new ventilated brake disk gave us much better braking performance and consistency.
During qualifying it was clear that there would only be a couple of fast runs and the rest would be throw aways due to the high mid-day temperatures. I used these runs to make large changes to the cars in search for more speed so that I could make better use of the runs when the track was fast. On the NT-1 I didnâ™t find many improvements from my starting setup but on the RX8 I tried a lot of things. All the changes I made to the RX8 were to gain off power steering, first up I tried lowering the front roll centre by raising the front upper arm up to the highest position but unusually this didnâ™t produce any more front grip so I settled for the standard position. The next change I made was to cut the radio plate like the 2012 car which gave me a little more low speed front grip. Next I narrowed the front track width a little and reduced the rear toe-in to only 1 degree which was an improvement. Then I raised the rear roll centre on the lower hinge pin up to the highest position which gave me more corner speed every where. Lastly on the suggestion of fellow RX8 driver Alex Yousif I moved the rear shock position on the tower out one hole which gave me better turn out of the slow corners.
After qualifying I was 2nd in Nitro tourer and 5th in 1/8 scale. I was a little disappointed not to be in the top four in 1/8 but I took it as another opportunity to try another change before the final in the semi. I won the semi easily and made another improvement to the car for the final so I would line up 5th on the grip for the final.
In the 1/10 final there was a bit of confusion at the start and for some reason my pitman (dad) was still fuelling the car while it was supposed to be on the ground. He eventually put the car down late and I merged into about 5th or so which was very frustrating.
After about 4 minutes I was up to third and battling with Ric Bartolozzi for second. Just before the first fuel stop I passed Ric coming onto the main straight and was pulling away. At the first fuel stop I had about a 1 second or so gap to Ric, Peter Jovanovic was leading and a long way in front. After the first fuel stop I left the pits about 2 seconds behind Ric which left me with all that work to do again thanks to such a slow fuel stop. I began catching Ric again and was very close by the second fuel stop but again the refueling took too long and I continued to loose 2 â“ 3 seconds every stop throughout the race which was unacceptable. After Peters second fuel stop his engine stalled and took a long time to restart. So Ric was in the lead from me a few seconds back. The race continued uneventfully from here and Peter fought back to 3rd from the flameout.
It was pretty disappointing to loose the race in the pits but I was happy to finish on the podium after all that.
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1/10 Final results:
1. Ric Bartolozzi 2. Timothy Lee XRAY NT1'11
3. Peter Jovanovic
4. Ricky Vocale 5. David Chen XRAY NT'11
6. Michael Rumiz
7. Shaun Kaltenbacher
8. John Taynton
9. Chris Stanley
10. Aaron Lee
In 1/8 the start was good and I maintained my starting position. My strategy was to go for 5 minute stops as overtaking was so difficult on this track layout. This worked great for me and after everyone in front on me came in for fuel the first time I had some clear track to put in some fast laps. When I came in for fuel I was then able to come out in front of other cars from the pits so that fixed the problem of overtaking. After around half race distance I was in the lead in front of Blake Young and Leigh Dytor. I was around 2 seconds in front of Blake and maintaining the gap. Knowing that Blake had to do an extra stop, I knew all I had to do was stay in front of him and I could cruise late in the race after he did his extra stop.
Only 2 laps before my last stop my engine stalled at the back of the track ending any chance I had of winning. The marshal returned the car to my pitman unbelievably fast and the engine fired back up right away. In the last 5 minutes my car was super difficult to drive for some reason but thanks to the fast marshal I was able to finish on the podium. After the race I found out that the rear left wing screw had somehow turned in way too far and the body had quite a lean on it for some reason, and I almost ran out of front tyres leaving the chassis far too low by the end and scraping badly.
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1/8 Final results:
1. Blake Young
2. Leigh Dytor 3. Timothy Lee XRAY RX8
4. Ric Bartolozzi
5. Ryan Maker
6. Michael Turner 7. Tommy Lee XRAY RX8
8. Peter Jovanovic
9. Ashley Seward
10. Tim Westwood
Finally, thanks to XRAY for the NT1 2011 and the RX8, Novarossi for the new Keep On engines and as always special thanks to HEI International for their ongoing generous support and for the KO RSX servos, Protoform race bodies and Matrix tyres. Also thanks to all the XRAY drivers at the event, we worked really well together as a team and moved forward with the setup throughout the event and Im already looking forward to the next race.
