..one step backwards and some Sideways as well....
OK, the good news: the Scaleauto is without question my best option... for now. Today's testing pretty much eliminated the NSR Merc and the Sideways Huracan. That is the one piece of good news.
The other piece of good news is that I broke the 6 second barrier. But only just: 5.974. OK, so that is not too far off the best lap time of the Gp 5 proxy round held at Luf's earlier this year: that was a 5.958. So that sounds OK, doesn't it?
Yes, but.... Always the but!
Firstly: this is my home track. If I am slower than the fastest guys here, what chance would I have on other tracks? Not good.
Secondly: this was done with fresh tyres. As the tyres wore off the glossy finish and started roughing up a bit, I was struggling to stay in the 6.0 range.
Thirdly: the car was not that easy to drive when I did the sub-6 second laps. I ended up adding a bit of weight: it did make the car easier to drive but now it was slower still! The bad news is that I was now around the 6.1 second mark. The good news is that I could do this quite consistently and relatively comfortably.
But the bottom line is I need more speed.
For comparison: I also ran my 2018 Gp 5 proxy Capri. And it was Not Good! Not sure what went wrong but I could only get a best lap of 6.338: this is like 3/10ths off my testing. I did not spend any time trying to get to the bottom of it as that was not a priority. But I need to look into this at some stage.
I also tried my Sideways BMW 320 that was under consideration for the 2108 Gp 5 proxy right up to the last second. In the testing for that proxy I got a 6.151 out of it, the best I could do today was a 6.217. Close but not quite.
The Merc was a bit better than before with some minor tweaks that I had applied plus the NSR rubber tyres. But still I could only get a 6.174 out of it. Nice to drive though.
The Huracan could only manage a 6.298 with urethanes so I did not bother trying anything else.
So while I did clear up some questions, I am still not happy with where I am. Next steps? I did not spend enough time at Luf's today, so I will do some more experimenting on Friday evening before our regular weekly racing. I still have a few things to try, such as coating the front tyres, playing around with body and pod float, some weight tuning etc etc. Not sur ewhat that will get me though.
I still have one left field alternative that I will be exploring over the next week or so, but time is running out....
