The Midwinter Marathon - 10 minute Endurance Race
Each car was inspected, tuned, cleaned, and taped before racing. Cars were raced in different sessions over a period of a few days. Therefore this report has also been written over roughly the same period.
RESULTS
Car Laps Offs Points
#11 123 0 4
#8 129 0 10
#2 127 0 8
#5 122 0 2
LH 124 0 6
I did a few things before running each car: I ran them first on drone setting 3 [med. speed before breaking traction] on the controller and gave each a two minute warm up. Then I taped the tires clean. This mattered on each race car, as they all ran slippy at first. Once the tires were clean I ran 5 hot laps at full controller speed. Then I raced against a 10-minute timer to see how many laps I could do.
I had decided to do a little tuning on the #11 GT40 and had it ready to run first. It set a pretty high lap to beat, and ran as smooth as could be. It's easy to see how much of a difference there is between how a newer car runs and how something that's been around a couple of years runs. There's definitely a zone you can put your car into to get maximum performance out of it on your track. Finding the right balance and not having too many gimmicks to trust is a good start. Having some of these cars for over two years and having them running better than ever really gets your money's worth. Keeping them clean, lubricated and solid-running will make them last a long time.
The next morning I had a bit of time to race and almost didn't due to it being 5ºC up there, but I did it anyway. The MKII was ready to run, felt fast and I had the time. It ran a solid race, but did less laps than I felt like it did while driving. It felt faster than both cars run so far, but surprisingly wasn't. I attribute this to a few things: first, I'm racing on different sessions and days. I'll have a different headspace, and that will contribute to the performance. Second, track temperature is an issue, although a lot of that is more with the human than with the car. I still can't explain how cars did so well in the cold the other day. We'll see how that plays out in later races and trials.
If you want to talk about headspace, today is the day. It's three days after I drove the MKII, and the yellow GT40 is next. I didn't want to neglect it [not that I have been], so I made sure to give it a once over, lube and oil. I also haven't mentioned it yet, but I have been setting the pods on each of the cars to an just-loose setting. I'll probably have to explain that in the next video. Anyway, it's that feeling you get when you are screwing in a screw, you're almost in all the way and you hit the first bit of resistance. That's where I usually stop, but with some cars I've kind of screwed here, twisted there. So I reset them all. Just-loose could also be called almost-tight.
But the GT40. Holy crap that thing smoked the track. Seriously, I thought at first I didn't set the timer correctly, then as I rounded lap 126 I almost stopped and checked, then decided to run until it was obviously not set right. At lap 129 it went off. It was set right. Hard to believe, since I thought the #5's 122 was a good enough time that the #8 wouldn't beat it by 7 laps, or any other car, for that matter. I shouldn't really be too surprised, though, as this new/more often lubrication schedule and more attention to tuneups has kept this race car going unbelievably fast when it counted. This car is like a volcano; it threatens to erupt all the time and when it finally does it takes out everything in its path.
The #8 car and the Alfa might as well have their own race team by now. What has been done to one has been done to the other. But because they're so different in size, shape and design, they have pluses and minuses when compared to each other. Not so today. The Alfa was right on the tail of the yellow Ford all day. posting an almost-as-wicked-fast 127. It's good that the Alfa did that or I would have had a hard time believing the #8's time.
Last up was the Leyton House Porsche, which put in a good enough run to get on the podium. I've been working on getting a bit more grip in the tires, so it's been sanded recently. I don't consider it an unfair advantage as one or two others have been sanded as well. The Porsche felt like it was going faster than it ended up being, although I can say that's mostly up to sometimes me and my overly aggressive driving skills, as I've pushed this thing past that limit before.
Here are the standings after 3 races:
Car Points
#11 22
#8 22
LH 20
#2 16
#5 10
It's helping that I'm running these time trials now. It's been keeping me busy and working more on the cars. I can honestly say that I'm happy with every Slot.it car I have.
With that said, I think it's time to do some things to the #5 car.
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