[Kevan]

Race reports - 2nd November - Mosler ‘Club Challenge’ #6 - Car Swap

   

During last week's AGM we discussed the ‘Club Challenge’ and making the cars easier to race for the guys further down the pecking order, Mike B suggested lowering the track voltage as low as 10v if necessary.
After track cleaning, testing at 10v started, this was too low, at 10.5v the car felt better but still flat out well before the end of the main straight, at 11v the car was reaching top speed at the end of the straight but the overall handling was so much easier to control.  As the other drivers arrived they were advised to do plenty of practice as the controller settings were noticeably different, turning sensitivity up and brakes down.
Gav did a fair bit of testing whilst being helped with his controller settings after watching the car on track, a sticker is now in his cars box with controller settings noted.

Tonight was to be a ‘car swap’.  We have all raced together only once this year, the results of that night were used to decide who had first choice of car, in order of choice from that night were:
Gav, Mike H, Ed K, Mike B, Chris, Geoff, Andy, Brian, Kev
Gav chose to race his own car as he didn’t want to damage someone else’s car
Chris initially opted to race his own car but changed his mind to race Andy’s
Brian was invited to race Kev’s car
Kev decided to race Brian’s car

Kev had earlier set up a webcam to video the racing, both rounds were recorded and will be uploaded to Youtube.

We raced two drivers per heat with two marshalls.

Round 1

Heat #1 - Kev (Red lane - Brain’s car) and Brian (Blue lane - Kev’s car).  Brian won by 2 laps with a hot lap of 6.1 and Kev did a 6.2
Heat #2 - Chris (Red lane - Andy’s car) and Gav (Yellow lane - his own car). Chris won by 3 laps with a hot lap of 6.4 and Gav managed a 6.6
Heat #3 - Kev (Yellow lane) and Chris (Blue lane).  Chris won by 2 laps as Kev had a couple or three deslots and couldn’t possibly make that time up.  Chris managed a 6.3 hot lap, Kev managed a 6.2
Heat #4 - Brian (Yellow lane) and Gav (Blue lane).  Brian was flying round now, finishing 5 laps ahead and a hot lap of 6.1 with Gav going quicker with a 6.5
Heat #5 - Gav (Red lane) and Kev (Blue lane).  Kev finally found his racing boots, flying round with the best lane score of Round 1, finishing 9 laps ahead of Gav.  Kev managing a 6.0 hot lap and Gav managed a 6.7 but Red lane keeps catching Gav out, you can’t race Red lane like the others as nine deslots robbed him of at least 3 laps.
Heat #6 - Brian (Red lane) and Chris (Yellow lane).  This was going to be an interesting race, Brian couldn’t afford too many mistakes in the difficult Red lane although he had a couple of laps in hand over Kev and Chris wasn’t going to make it easy for Brian in the middle lane.  As it turned out Brian couldn’t keep up with a couple of nervy deslots whilst Chris flew round setting his best lane score and hot lap of Round 1.  Chris won by 1 lap with a hot lap of 6.2 whilst Brian managed a 6.3
Round 1 ended with Brian 1.3 laps ahead of Kev, Chris 1.8 laps behind Kev and Gav 15 laps behind Chris.

Round 2

Drivers were swapped round and Heat #1 was Chris (Red lane) and Gav (Blue lane). Chris managed an extra lap over his Round 1 lane score and Gav managed a slight improvement over his first run on Blue lane.  Chris managed a hot lap of 6.3 and Gav managed a 6.6
Heat #2 - Kev (Red lane) and Brian (Yellow lane).  This was a close race, both drivers improved over their previous lane runs, Brian managed an extra 0.7 of a lap and won the race by only 2 seconds…but Kev managed an extra 2.2 laps…could this be the comeback run?  Kev’s hot lap was 6.2 whilst Brian managed a 6.1
Heat #3 - Chris (Yellow lane and Kev (Blue lane).  Kev was flying in this race, an extra 1.3 laps and a 5.9 sec hot lap and Chris matched his first round run lane score whilst getting a 6.1 hot lap.
Heat #4 - Gavin (Yellow lane) and Brian (Blue lane).  Gav had his racing boots on for this one and was flying in this race finding 5 more laps than his first run and his fastest ever lap with this car of 6.3 meanwhile Brian now under pressure after Kev’s previous run needed a 49 lapper…he was quick but was it quick enough, a 6.0 hot lap tells us he was pushing hard! Brian won by 4 laps but what a great drive by Gav.
Heat #5 - Brian (Red lane) and Chris (Blue lane). These were the two most consistent drivers tonight and this was going to be close…in fact it was the closest race of the night, Chris winning by just over 1 second managing a hot lap of 6.1 and finding an extra lap over his first run whilst Brian found nearly 2 more laps over his first run and a 6.2 hot lap which was the quickest lap on Red lane all night…was it enough to beat Kev overall…
Heat #6 - Gav (Red lane) and Kev (Yellow lane).  Would Gav finally learn from his first run on Red lane where he lost at least 3 laps…with pressure now on Kev after Brian’s final run he was hoping so!  Despite a few too many deslots, Gav did indeed find those missing laps from his first run, in fact he found 5 more…and a 6.4 hot lap on the difficult Red lane, nice one Gav…and Kev ideally needed a clean run and managed that, also finding 5 extra laps and a 6.0 hot lap…surely that was enough to overhaul Brian’s overall score.
…it was, but Brian was still the winner as it was his car!

Round 2 ended with Kev 2.7 laps ahead of Brian, Chris 5.3 laps behind Brian and Gav 8.7 laps behind Chris

So what was the feedback after this low voltage track, high voltage racing…MUCH easier to drive cars, the gap between the fastest and slowest is reduced, the fast guys are marginally slower but Gav improved noticeably, faster hot laps and less ‘offs’.
The tyres will last much longer at this reduced voltage and the tendency to lift the front end onto the straights as full power is applied has dramatically reduced.

   

   


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Next week is Grand Prix & Prewing F1 + Classic F1 & F1