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Redline Time Attack Round #7 Results
This past weekend Spring Mountain Motorsports Park in Pahrump, NV was home to Round #7 of the 2009 Redline Time Attack Series. The DoubleDownMotorsports.com Time Attack Project 370Z was there competing in the very competitve Street RWD class. The track consisted of 3.1 miles of 18 technical turns, 2 major elevation changes, and 3 small straight aways. The track catered to the lightweight and high grip cars so the full weight 370Z would be in some tough competition against the lighter more nimble Lotus and Honda S2000 entries. Saturday was a test + tune practice day and during practice a few issues were discovered with our 370Z. The first being a fuel starvation issue which hinted at us back in May at Willow Springs Raceway. Fortunately we had done some handling modifications to improve the overal lateral grip of the car, unfortunately this caused our fuel starvation problem to become more prominent. The good news was that running a full tank of fuel was an easy fix, the bad news is that added another 85 lbs. of weight to the car over running on 1/4 tank which would be ideal. The second problem we were facing was an understeer issue. We believe that our current front sway bar setup may be too stiff for our car as it is right now on street tires. Luckily there is always a way to fix it, but it takes testing and tuning of the suspension. Our third problem we faced was our biggest problem of the weekend. We had ordered new Carbotech track duty brake pads for the car but unfortunately they did not arrive in time so we were stuck running the Hawk HP+ street/track hybrid pad. New wider front tires and a higher corner exit speed because of other handling mods, more power, and a new limited slip differential, meant our brakes were in for more work than they had experienced before. Unfortunately the task proved too much for the Hawk HP+ pads and they would overheat after one hard lap. This meant that every practice session, and every time attack session, we would only get one good lap in before the brakes were useless. This didn't leave us with much track time to sort out the car and wounded driver Mike Bonanni's confidence in the stopping power of the car. During practice on Saturday the best time we could muster out of the car was in the 2:46 second range in traffic with our understeer issue still causing our corner entry speeds to suffer. Sunday was race day and after letting the car sit overnight, it was time to put the pads to the test. Mike took the car out to mimic our plan for the time attack sessions, go out on a really easy warm up lap, then hope the brakes lasted for one full hard lap. Luckily, that plan worked and after one lap, Mike took the 370Z back to the pits to let it completely cool off again before the first time attack. With our understeer issue still being prevalant, some more adjustments were made to the tire pressure before heading out for our first time attack. Unfortunately the adjustments were too much and the understeer got worse, not to mention a major driving error almost sent our car and driver off the track. The good news is that despite the issues, our lap time dropped to a 2:44. Between time attack sessions we made more tire pressure and suspension adjustments in a last ditch effort to run one good clean lap. The second and final time attack session came around and the same plan of action took into effect. One really slow easy warm up lap and one hard lap. With our latest suspension and tire pressure adjustments our understeer issue was still there, but better than it had been all weekend. Driver Mike Bonanni pulled together one virtually mistake free lap before the brakes gave out and our fastest time of the day was recorded at 2:42.213. The previous street class track record in a time attack competition was set back in 2005 at 2:49.439 so we were VERY happy to have shattered that record by a little over 7 seconds! That just proves how good of a platform the Nissan 370Z is. Unfortunately, the sport of time attack and its competitors have come a long way since 2005 and although we had shattered the old track record, it was only good enough to land us 4th place in the Street RWD class. Even though we just missed the podium by one second, we were still extremely happy with our results. The truth is, our car is far from reaching the limits of the current Street Class rules and being so close to the times of the top finishers in our class lets us know that we will be a force to be reconed with as development continues on this car. Our 370Z has only been on a track three times now and there are still a lot of improvements to be made even as the car sits now! We are more than excited for the 2009 Redline Time Attack season finale in November at Auto Club Speedway! ---DDMTimeAttack.com |
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© Double Down Motorsports, LLC. 2007
