SCCA F-Street Setup. What's Everyone Done so Far?

[DickR]

OPR in Lincoln may also include the "seam sealer" used in the concrete slab expansion joints. OPR would include your own scraped off rubber . . . except by your next run some other car's tires have picked it up for you. :-)

FYI Sololive has sorted out the BS times and Marcus in a dual motor awd Tesla 2 is barely ahead of Daddio in his GT350 . . . running winning FS times.

Sponsored

 

[BmacIL]

On day 1 I threw the hardest punch I could at the East course and ended up 3.6 seconds behind the leader (Tony). I think it was a decent indication of what the gap is. Here is my video. I believe I’m not 3.6 seconds incompetent. Day 2 I was doing something wrong in my line choice and got OPR fucked immediately all 3 runs. So my total is invalid. Krzysztof Threw a good punch at the 2nd day course but was again tragically uncompetitive. Maybe the sum of his times and my times is a decent theoretical S550 FS performance.... but then again, neither of us are aliens.

Definitely good driving! That course is shockingly tight/slow for a nationals course...at least from this video perspective. That OPR amount is crazy...

 

[Dana Pants]

I submitted letter 27445 to the SEB to try to move those BMWs out of FS. Now the long process of practically forgetting you wrote a letter by the time you get a reply.

Title: E90/E91/E92 M3 BMW from FS to BS

Dear SEB,

At the 2019 Solo Nationals, The E9X BMW M3s took positions 1-14 in FS. This shows a significant competitive imbalance of the class traditionally set-aside for American pony cars to compete. If the E9X M3 was in BS, it would have taken positions 1, 8, 10 and 13 of the 14 existing trophy positions in that class. This comparison is quite fair as all classes had dry runs this year and FS drove last on Tuesday and Wednesday allowing the courses to already have OPR in place.

Please please please move the E9X M3 to BS where it belongs and will still be competitive and thank you in advance for giving the best-selling sports cars in America somewhere to play fair in street class again. I am optimistic that this will increase the participation level of FS pony cars in the national and regional Solo programs.


Please write the SEB in support of the letter if you agree.

https://www.crbscca.com/?page=submitLetter

 

[NightmareMoon]

OPR in Lincoln may also include the "seam sealer" used in the concrete slab expansion joints. OPR would include your own scraped off rubber . . . except by your next run some other car's tires have picked it up for you. :-)

FYI Sololive has sorted out the BS times and Marcus in a dual motor awd Tesla 2 is barely ahead of Daddio in his GT350 . . . running winning FS times.

If they put the GT350 in BS, they should absolutely throw that M3 in there too. I don't even thing the GT350 is really any faster than a GT, except for being able to run wider tires and having a bit higher factory RPM limit may benefit some faster courses. On smaller courses the lowly GT has more torque off the line.

I submitted letter 27445 to the SEB to try to move those BMWs out of FS. Now the long process of practically forgetting you wrote a letter by the time you get a reply.

Title: E90/E91/E92 M3 BMW from FS to BS

Dear SEB,

At the 2019 Solo Nationals, The E9X BMW M3s took positions 1-14 in FS. This shows a significant competitive imbalance of the class traditionally set-aside for American pony cars to compete. If the E9X M3 was in BS, it would have taken positions 1, 8, 10 and 13 of the 14 existing trophy positions in that class. This comparison is quite fair as all classes had dry runs this year and FS drove last on Tuesday and Wednesday allowing the courses to already have OPR in place.

Please please please move the E9X M3 to BS where it belongs and will still be competitive and thank you in advance for giving the best-selling sports cars in America somewhere to play fair in street class again. I am optimistic that this will increase the participation level of FS pony cars in the national and regional Solo programs.


Please write the SEB in support of the letter if you agree.

https://www.crbscca.com/?page=submitLetter

Seems like a no brainer. Thanks for taking the time to write the letter!

 

[Dana Pants]

Seems like a no brainer. Thanks for taking the time to write the letter!

Written and submitted from the passenger seat during my 22 hour drive home. Geography set aside the time for me.

 

[ahhter]

A couple additional stats should anybody want to consider them for their letter. In 2019, FS was the second smallest Street class at 31 entrants, smallest was Super Street at 26 entries. FS entry counts over the past 5 years:
2019 - 31 (BMW dominated top 14)
2018 - 36 (BMW won by 1.5s)
2017 - 45 (Camaros and Mustangs at the top, results don't say what car Cashmore was in but assuming same BMW he ran in 2018)
2016 - 39 (Camaros and Mustangs at the top)
2015 - 46 (BMW dominated)

 

[DickR]

A couple additional stats should anybody want to consider them for their letter. In 2019, FS was the second smallest Street class at 31 entrants, smallest was Super Street at 26 entries. FS entry counts over the past 5 years:
2019 - 31 (BMW dominated top 14)
2018 - 36 (BMW won by 1.5s)
2017 - 45 (Camaros and Mustangs at the top, results don't say what car Cashmore was in but assuming same BMW he ran in 2018)
2016 - 39 (Camaros and Mustangs at the top)
2015 - 46 (BMW dominated)

Jeff and Denise Cashmore did run their BMW in 2017.

Here are some interesting class winning times which become more interesting if you look at the top few finishers in FS, BS, and CAMC. CS cars, of course, are mostly Miata's which apparently did not benefit as much from their size and handling strengths on these courses as they do on smaller and tighter courses.

FS: 132.405
BS: 132.545
CS: 132.873
CAMC: 133.234

Interesting how 4 days of good weather and these particular courses lump the times. This is not normal even on rare years when the weather is consistent in regard to dry and temperature.

NOTE: The FS tire information is not correct for several of the cars including the winning BMW. Many of the FS BMW's were on the new Yokohama which isn't available yet in 19 inch Mustang or Camaro sizes. Also regarding tires there is very credible info, but no details that I've heard, indicating that there are likely to be one or more new TW200 tire brands or updates from existing brand(s) for next year. Autocross relevancy for our cars is very much unknown at this point since the open track and track racing markets are MUCH bigger than the autocross market.

Official class results:

https://www.scca.com/downloads/47271-2019-tire-rack-solo-nationals-official-class-results/download

Here is a link to all the results including complete PAX results.

https://www.scca.com/events/1992935-2019-tire-rack-solo-national-championship

 

[Dana Pants]

Further reflecting on my failures on the west course, I’m going to try stock sway bars for a while. IMO the west course was won on the first 1/2 of each 180 degree turn and I couldn’t do it due to under steer. I was trying to turn the sweepers into two smaller turns where I could upset the car into rotation, but the OPR locations wouldn’t let me. At Nats I was running a drilled front bar which I think benefited me on the east course where I could put down a lot of power in the acceleration zones.

 

[ahhter]

Curious, do the M3s have greater front camber adjustment than our piddly 1mm of grinding? Been keeping an eye on those Yokos and it seems like they're awful for camber-challenged cars due to a softer sidewall than Stones and BFGs.

 

[Dana Pants]

Curious, do the M3s have greater front camber adjustment than our piddly 1mm of grinding? Been keeping an eye on those Yokos and it seems like they're awful for camber-challenged cars due to a softer sidewall than Stones and BFGs.

M3s don’t have more meaningful front camber adjustment and the yokos that won looked pretty beat up. I’m a bit nervous to try them but probably will unless something better comes along next year.

 

[DickR]

Further reflecting on my failures on the west course, I’m going to try stock sway bars for a while. IMO the west course was won on the first 1/2 of each 180 degree turn and I couldn’t do it due to under steer. I was trying to turn the sweepers into two smaller turns where I could upset the car into rotation, but the OPR locations wouldn’t let me. At Nats I was running a drilled front bar which I think benefited me on the east course where I could put down a lot of power in the acceleration zones.

Do you have MagneRide?

FYI my car has MagneRide and I've had a few email conversations with one of the Ford MR calibration engineers. He seemed "happy" when I told him that I had changed back to the stock front bar from a stiffer bar. While he cannot go into the specifics of the algorithms, etc. he has made it clear that MR Track mode is calibrated to provide turn in stability for elements such as slaloms.

 

[Dana Pants]

Do you have MagneRide?

FYI my car has MagneRide and I've had a few email conversations with one of the Ford MR calibration engineers. He seemed "happy" when I told him that I had changed back to the stock front bar from a stiffer bar. While he cannot go into the specifics of the algorithms, etc. he has made it clear that MR Track mode is calibrated to provide turn in stability for elements such as slaloms.

No magnitude, but turn in stability should be easy to accomplish with koni front rebound adjustments.

 

[2017GBGTPP]

No magnitude, but...

 

[BmacIL]

Do you have MagneRide?

FYI my car has MagneRide and I've had a few email conversations with one of the Ford MR calibration engineers. He seemed "happy" when I told him that I had changed back to the stock front bar from a stiffer bar. While he cannot go into the specifics of the algorithms, etc. he has made it clear that MR Track mode is calibrated to provide turn in stability for elements such as slaloms.

The car really needs considerably more front roll stiffness to get it into corners and maintain camber. Obviously FS limits what you can do here but the really fast CAM cars are running 3.5-4x stiffer than stock front between spring and bar, but only about 2x stiffer rear (or less).

This year's courses just seemed to put a premium on constant L to R transition, to a ridiculous level, IMO, so you needed stiff springs and dampers, low front weight, or geometry that wasn't lazy (very low roll centers).

 

[Dana Pants]

One of my buddies took a bunch of photos while I was running the East course. Nearly all photos have the nose to the sky. No wonder this car doesn't want to turn. All throttle inputs unload the front tires a crazy amount. I think this might be the unsolvable issue of the chassis in FS.

The brake dive behavior is comparatively non-existent... which is too bad, because that could probably help chassis rotation given the nose-up behavior on throttle.

Sponsored