The Challenge Put Before Me

 So it's settled what kind of races I'm going to run. Class division. It's seems kind of obvious what needs to happen next. I need to get faster lap times on the Slot.it cars. 

I'm not saying the Slot.it cars are perfectly tuned, because they aren't. I never swapped parts, and in some cases gave cars pretty questionable setups that may or may not have affected their performance. So there's room there. I decided that I needed a test car, and since I had last run the Matra and had a time for it [4.18 lap time], I would use that.

How much faster can the Matra go? We're about to find out.

I got to thinking about what possibilities I had to get more speed. Weight seems like a good candidate. I've kept my cars purposefully light all this time, only adding a little weight on a couple cars to keep the nose down, one of those including the Matra. 

I could swap motors, but I don't really see the point as they're all similarly rated. One thing about NSR cars that I've found is that they're very well constructed and once dialed in can produce great speeds. But aside from some design features they're essentially the same thing, so they should be able to go about the same speed as each other. At least that's the logic I'm going to use for awhile. Might get proven wrong. We'll have to wait and see.

The out-of-the-box NSRs ran about the same speed as the tuned Slot.its, but once I tuned the NSR cars they shot ahead. So now, in order to catch an NSR car, a Slot.it car is going to have to shave .5 off its lap time. They've got the capability. But do they have the grip to run that fast? 

I'm doing a few things to the Matra. I decided to add weight, bringing it from 62 grams up to 68 grams, which is pretty significant. I can go more if I need to, and I might. I'm using the Rothmans Porsche as a comparison, which sits right now at 70gr. 

I'm using this as my comparison test car. Once tuned it ran a 3.88 lap time compared to the Matra's 4.18. So I need to shave around 4/10ths of a second per lap.

I also got a couple more grub screws and reset the ride height. At the time I got this car I only had 2 grub screws left when I needed 4, and the shop was out of them when I tried to order. So the Matra has been running a little loose in the front end. I did a proper ride height adjustment and now there's no more vertical play and the tires are planted firmly on the track. Proper.

So now I need to take it to the track and run it against it's previous time. If I need to shave half a second off, I'm hoping that what I did gets me at least halfway there. If not, then it's back to the drawing board.

RESULTS

Matra previous lap time:    4.18

Rothmans 917K lap time:  3.88

Matra weighted lap time:   3.90

We that settles it then. If I can tune the Matra to get this close with a rough estimation of weight added, I can find 2/100s of a second. And if I can get the Matra that fast, I can get the Alfa, the Chaparrals and at least one of the GT40s up to that speed. The only ones I'm not sure of are the Porsche 962C and the blue GT40.

What changed: adding the weight gave it a more solid ride and improved bite in the corners. Since the car was going around the corners better, I was able to step up the overall power from 40%, where it was, to 70%, where all the new cars are running. It was more than capable at that speed, and if I pushed it I could get better lap times. I don't need the Matra to hit 3.88 exactly, just be in the ballpark. There are always driver error and other circumstances to consider when it comes to race time.

Side note: dang, I have a lot of Porsches. 908, 911, two 917s and a 962. I guess I'm a Porsche fan and didn't know it.

Notes: I'm going to work on the Slot.its to get them up to speed. I have enough weight for two cars but will order more. I'll probably do all of this upgrading before starting a new series. That's going to happen in the apartment anyway. And if I can get all or most of them competitive, I can do away with the classification structure and run all the cars together. I'll probably still use classifications for scoring, though. I wouldn't want the Alfa to be a perennial best-of-the-rest.