Time Trials #2 - First on fully painted track

Last night was what I call my "all-nighter", which is the night before I start my nightshifts at work. I usually try to stay up all night the night before going to work so that I can make it the entire way my first night at work. Does that make any sense?

What it gets me is an all-nighter, where I really have only one thing to do; not fall asleep. Last night I worked on the two new cars, although it was too late to race them. So I did some troubleshooting, double-checking and control of the cars. The Porsche needed the most work. It wasn't sitting right in the front, and at first I attributed that to a pickup wire being in the way, but the more I worked on it, the less I accomplished. Turns out the pickup braid had a little bump in it that was lifting the front end of the car. I flattened and flared it out and everything was fine. We'll see if there was any improvement.

Time Trials - 50 Laps / No Offs

Setups: each car was given an opportunity for a fresh sanding, although only a few took it. The Alfa, the LH Porsche and the '66 Ford had slight touchups to the tires.

RESULTS:

Car             Time            1st         2nd       Lap   

Gulf         4:12.18           2:05      2:05       5.04
Shell        4:15.78           2:08      2:07       5.10
Alfa         4:14.38           2:05      2:09       5.08
'66           4:06.33           2:03      2:02       4.92
LH           4:22.77           2:12      2:10       5.24


Here's the last time trials numbers for comparison:

Car [Tire]           Time       1st         2nd       Offs

Gold [stock]      4:20.16    2:12       2:08          
LH [stock C1]   4:29.27    2:19       2:10              
Shell [PGu]       4:24.37    2:13       2:10            
Alfa [PGu]        4:23.42    2:11       2:12         1
Gulf [stockC1]  4:05.06    2:02       2:03


All of the times are starting to come down. The '66 Ford beat out everybody and even broke a 5 second lap. I don't attribute that to the fresh sanding of the tires as much as I do the tires themselves, and the fact that the car is so damn smooth.

Left to Right - Last to First

I think it's most important to look at lap times more than overall time. It gives an impression just how close the cars are to each other. Three tenths of a second separate the field. That's pretty good for 5 slot cars. That means when it gets down to it that it's anybody's race. I still think the LH needs a little bit more work until it's up to speed, but it did much better overall this time trial. I think it's still got a few tenths in it, though.

Also, I suspect there might be a bit of a grab happening in the guide flag on the '66, but I might be wrong about that. Seems like it would slightly cut out going around the sweeper, but that might have been braids, come to think of it. I'll have to take a look.

Two #11 cars. Otherwise perfect.

The Shell car should be doing better than it is. I guess now that I have five working race cars, I need to spread the lovin' around a little bit so that all the cars have the best opportunity. I don't want to suddenly neglect the other three great cars because I have two new ones. That would be kinda lame.

The Alfa, for whatever reason, ran a slower 2nd half than the traditional faster 2nd half. I don't remember cruising in particular, and it didn't crash or anything, so I don't know what it could have been. I think it's days of short track dominance are over, and now it needs to work harder to win.

There's also something that needs to be said, and that is that so far Urethane tires aren't dominating. They did on the short tracks, but not so far on the long track. The technical section up the hill is about 1/3 the total length of the track, and that's maybe the only place it has an advantage. But either the rubber tires are making up for it on the faster 2/3rds of the track, or something else is going on.

The Gulf car went the opposite direction by about 7 seconds, but it kinda makes more sense as that first time trial was a big surprise that it won by so much. I'm sure there will be differences every time I run these cars, based on how it's setup, the conditions and the driver.