s2000Junky

Yeah... the S2000 bench marker

s2000Junky

Yeah id say generally these are the cars that would be closet to running together. The only thing that's really going to make the Miata guys happy though is to stick them all together in a Miata only class. Or stick them with the wrong wheel drive guys if they keep griping about it

luder_5555

I want to run with the s2k's. I just think that its dumb to put high power FI cars in the lowest class because they decided to run street tires. The whole point of a street tire class is to have a place where the new guys can run and have a chance at being competitive.

I still don't see why people have an issue running FI/street with NA r-comp. The only guy that has come out with FI/street is the guy with the really nice black rx7. He runs 1:14-15. He would podium in the class the way I propose it. If junky comes out and runs half as well as I have been led to believe, he too should be on or very near the podium. How is that not fair for the FI/street guys, when they would almost certainly be near the top of the NA/r-comp-FI/street class?

I can't try to speculate beyond what we have seen at previous events. And what our previous data shows is that a mildly preped NA car on r-comps is aporx. as fast as a mild to well preped FI car.

I do agree that on paper it doesn't make perfect sense, but the real world results have suggested that it would be fairly closer. Certainly a lot closer than what we have now.

I think that if the lowest level class start being won by people running 1:16 or lower, we will run into the same problem of the newer drivers feeling that they are out classed and out of place.

WestSideBilly

I think the gripe would be more from the end of the NA/R guys... who have to face off against cars with a lot more power.

GEARHEAD

Not to beat a dead horse but, as mentioned, I do have some data points to support a bunch of this information. Granted it's only one car/driver but I do have a log of data for the last two years at PGP (500+ laps?). I only run street tires when my R-compound wheels break at the track. Turns out, this happens often so I have back-to-back street tire vs R-compound when NA and FI.
My car, which is medium-well prepared is about 3 seconds faster when NA on R-comps vs. FI on Streets. The gap would likely be higher if the R-comps were Hoosiers.

We've seen NA R-comp cars run 1:08's (Vette) and 1:10's (S2000). I hate bench racing but for the sake of this discussion, I think a Miata or Elise on R-comps with well set-up chassis and alignment can run around 1:11 (based on driving Miata's and RT's Elise at PGP and comparing National Auto-x results which do often see speeds near 70mph). There are a few cars that are outliers and will just screw up the classes just as they do in auto-x. Vettes, Atoms, GT2's, GT-R's are all insanely fast. I think we need to design the classes to fit the majority of cars that show up. If one well driven/well prepared Atom shows up and smokes everyone, so be it. These outliers will exist on R-comps and street tires. If Petty's running 1:06's on Hoosiers, I'll bet he could run 1:09-1:10 on Streets and a non-FI Atom on Streets could run 1:11's.

My experience is that Good Street Tires to Good Race Tires is worth ~3 seconds. 200 whp to 300 whp is worth less than 1 second. I should sift though my lap data and show what percentage of time is spent at full throttle. I haven't done that but looking at the image below (click picture to blow it up), you can see how much time is spent at max cornering where hp is useless. The green line is lateral acceleration so when it's high or low, the car is cornering hard. The nearly vertical green line between peaks is the transition from cornering one direction to the other. The graph starts at the Start/Finish line. The front and back straights don't account for a large percentage of lap time (the graph below is displayed in distance, not time) so even a car that accelerates at half the rate isn't loosing a ton of time. We need a datalogger in a Miata to compare real numbers. At this track, grip to weight is much more important than hp to weight.

All that said, my vote would be Novice, Street Tire, DOT R-comp. I think the current Miata's and Elise's that show up have a lot of untapped potential and we will see big drops in laptimes.

Graph is NA on Street Tires 1:13.1

s2000Junky

My first and only time out to PGP I hit a 1:15.1... This was on my second session. I had another session to run after… but felt the car was maxed out for the set up so I left early with boiling OEM brake fluid which wasn’t working and stock 215/245 street tires with a 240/280 UTCQ that I still had to drive home on. Not a podium time, but considering the limited braking and grip I had I felt satisfied at the time. What was more satisfying was winning the bet against Liggy and having my session paid for

I will run some super blue next time out so I can have brakes …and my grip should be well improved now over what I was running then, I’ve done a few other things to the car as well which should help things along a tad.

RT

...... and shred tires on fender lips

s2000Junky

Well thats standard ... but its ok as long as your rubbing on the inside too

No.. no more rubbing for me... as far as tires that is

RT

uberflushness

s2000Junky

"Hella" Uberflushness