Back To Rubber - Results

 Today I got the chance to do a few repairs and run a short race with the NSR and Thunderslot cars. I ran the 10-lap quick race scenario after doing a little tuning to the rubber tires. Here's the results;

Laps: 10

Car                           Time               Lap         

Tergal 908               1:01.57             6.1          

Rothmans 917         0:58.40             5.84          

Gulf 917                  0:58.81             5.88       

Lucky Strike 917    1:02.10             6.2

Elva                         0:56.80            5.68 

Sunoco 908             0:58.92             5.89

Lola                         0:56.09            5.61

This is exactly what I was thinking was going to happen. I had a chance to run most of the NSR cars on their factory rubber and was really impressed by it. It's soft, almost too soft, but incredibly grippy and quiet. The Ortmann urethane isn't as soft, isn't as grippy and is considerably louder than the rubber. 

Competitively speaking, this is a much better result if I don't want to have a standout car. And since the rubbers will be staying on, I can start looking at other stuff on each car. There's only a few tenths difference between all these cars, so I'm feeling good about them racing together. I'm thinking of chasing down some rubber for the Slot.it cars. There are quite a few different formula tires that I could look for, and I'm thinking of doing that. Might even go with NSR rubber. We'll have to see. 

Big NSR Decision

 Since picking up the Lola I have been spending a lot of time running cars in pairs. It's easy: I have my cars in stackable locking sandwich boxes, so when I need to go up 3 flights of stairs to race, I can take one of the boxes instead of the entire collection. So I've been doing that a lot, and running NSR cars against Thunderslot cars. And since getting the Lola I've been a little let down by the performance of the NSR cars in general. 

Porsche 917K: Lucky Strike, Gulf, Rothmans.

When I decided to go with urethane tires, I did it all the way across the board, except for two cars; the Thunderslots. The Ortmanns that are suggested for the cars don't fit. They're a little wide. So they're running on their factory rubber. Well, I was mostly concerned about the Slot.its when it came to urethanes, but thought it would be fair for everyone to run them. Well, now I feel like I might be handicapping the NSR cars. I think the factory rubber has better grip than the urethanes do. I should look into the Slot.it rubbers. They have some alternatives that I'll bet would improve things. I not against running rubber. 

So I just spent the last few minutes changing the NSRs back to factory rubber. Three 917Ks and two 908/3s. I'm going to run some laps, get the tires going on each and then do a 10-lap run. I like that format for general timing, especially when it's cold and I need to go through so many cars. Since I'm doing all tuning downstairs and then running up to test results, I end up going a lot slower than I would like. Once I move I'll be able to dedicate more time to it. 

I don't know what this will do to do Slot.its and whether they'll still be competitive. I think they will, and I'm going to leave the urethanes on them. There's lots of change coming up, so why not just stir things up a little bit?