Matra Matra Matra

It has been a nice week or so to get in some racing. The weather has been quite cooperative, and the time has been somewhat helpful, although I still can't squeeze a nice long 3-hour session in anywhere.

I'm still in a bit of shock over the time that the Matra set the other week. It has challenged me to up my game in regards to the other cars and getting them tuned to beat it. Thing is, I'm not so sure that I have a car that can beat it. The Porsche is perhaps the car with the best chance, but so far it's not even tuned well enough to consistently beat the rest of the field. And I don't expect a GT40 to get up to that time, since the track seems to treat the Matra's length a little bit better than the Ford's.

The #10 Matra Simca destroys the rest of the field, including the #11 Porsche 962C.

When I first got the Porsche, I figured that it was going to be the standout car because it was different than all the other cars. It has an inline motor/gear system, instead of a sidewinder, and although it has a longer tail than any other car I have, it makes up for the slight wiggle in the turns by burning up the straights.
Problem is, it hasn't done anything like that so far. I can see the potential, as well as feel it. I'm not saying that something is restricting the car's potential, but I certainly haven't gotten all that potential out of it yet. I'm a long way off, I figure, and this will likely be my summer project. I'll need to drive the Matra less, though, and that's a pretty big request right now.

My track seems to prefer a car with a longer wheelbase. The longer the better, usually. I can say that because I believe that the end of the Alfa's dominance and the laps times of the longer cars improving kind of prove my point. The giant curve allows the longer cars to go through faster, and the shorter cars can't really take full advantage of it. Yes, the technical section is still technical, but I think if I was timing sections we'd find that the cars are pretty similar through it. Three-quarters of the track is not technical, however, and requires flat out speed with an ability to handle. The Matra has exactly that. What it doesn't have is too much tail to make it swing out, much like the Porsche does.

The Porsche will require a bit more work to the tires, as well as some other stuff. I have yet to outfit it with gaskets, so there's that. I think a smoother car is a happier car, and the Porsche tends to rattle a bit.

Could either of these hot rods contend? This year's question.

I haven't been doing any time trials lately, mostly sticking to just running laps, tuning and testing. I run the Matra to try and understand what makes it tick, then try to replicate that in the other cars. One thing I'm considering is adding weight to one of the Fords to see if it does anything, as that's the only thing that I can think of that might be giving the Matra the advantage right now. Thing is, I added weight to the Porsche too, but it doesn't seem to be helping as much as it does on the Matra.

That makes the Matra public enemy #1, so all cars are going to be chasing it. If any of them get close, then we've got a race on our hands.