MAM Track Day Results

Went out to Mid America Motorplex yesterday and did some tuning on my aero setup. It's awesome having the track so close to home and for most of the day there were maybe 6 cars there so I basically had the whole track just to myself. It was straight up WINDY though. It was gusting 25-30 right down the damn straight which wasn't a whole lotta fun but oh well... I did 4 sessions in the morning, only 2 were really for time because I had passengers for the other 2. Got the line pretty much ironed out and was managing about a 1:49.9 but knew the car and myself still had plenty more to give. Over the lunch break I pulled the front splitter off and the rear wing off because I wanted to see what sort of difference in feel and lap time the two made. I had to leave the diffuser and underbody panel on because they are pretty much permanently mounted to the car.

Needless to say the lack of splitter/diffuser was HORRIBLE!!! My gosh I couldn't believe how bad it felt. Could barely get the tires anywhere near temp on the warmup lap and it basically took all my focus just to keep it on track. Braking was noticeably more unstable (I brake HARD lol), turn in had ridiculous oversteer and getting on the power made it instantly push/understeer mid corner through the exit. I was absolutely shocked by this and couldn't believe the difference it made. I had my lap timer running but I don't even think I got a "good" hot lap in because the difference was that drastic. But even above all of that, the thing that made the splitter not only effective but NECESSARY, was the coolant temp. Without the splitter feeding the radiator air through the hole in the bumper, there wasn't much of any getting to it and on my second lap I saw the water temp was damn near touching 250! Normally it'll never go past 210, even on the hottest of track days. So needless to say my aero testing was incredibly obvious, just not in the way I thought it was going to be.

The afternoon sessions after the no aero was pretty sad actually. I immediately put the aero back on and went back out and on my 3 lap picked up a bolt or pin or screw or something and punctured my left rear tire! My still damn near NEW, $260 Hoosier R6 tire! So needless to say my day was over and I didn't get the chance to really push the car and see what sort of a lap time I could manage my first day there. Oh well....I'll have to get some new tires and be back out when I can.