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The car was setup pretty close to the drift spec set up it runs in Formula D. It was changed over to larger StopTech brakes, really sticky Hankook slick tires and some aero bits – brake ducts, modified front and rear fenders, (mainly to fit the bigger tires) a GT style wing to replace the trunk lid, lip spoiler and a front splitter. Rhys was in his drift car after all, and we wanted him in the mindset that he was grip driving and not drifting, so the hand brake was also removed to keep him from having the temptation to start sliding the car around. (drifting is slower but more fun to watch!) This car started life as a production car, was converted to a drift car, and then was modified for the mountain with only these changes. The Hyundai engine, Garrett turbo, and the rest of the car was the same spec as the car runs in FD.
So we head out to the mountain and had our first practice early Wednesday morning. We were running the top section and I was stationed at the top at 14,100 ft. (It’s 33 degrees on the top of the mountain at 4 AM BTW). After each of Rhys' practice runs, I would download the AEM EMS and look at the data to make sure everything was working like it should. I also took tire pressures and got temps for the tires and brakes as is common practice. This year was the third time that this car has won the Pikes Peak Time Attack Class and had set a new class record each time. Rhys’s father, Rod Millen had set the class record in the car the previous year and Rhys had set the class record in the car two years prior to that. Needless to say, we had a lot of data from years past to see how well we were doing. On the top section, Rhys was much faster than his dad was the year before and was only about 10 seconds behind of some of the Unlimited class cars that were there this year. The data showed the engine was running like a watch and the only setting change I made in the AEM EMS the entire week was to increase boost pressure as per Rhys' desire for a bit more power. We had switched from an HKS to a Hollinger sequential tranny at the beginning of this year due to the HKS tranny having issues with the +700 ft-lbs of torque the engine puts out – well beyond what that tranny was designed for. We also added a shift knob that senses when you pull on the shift lever so you can do wide open throttle “flat” clutchless shifts. The knob sends a signal to the AEM EMS to momentarily cut the ignition, unloading the transmission so it can physically upshift. Looking at the data, the flat shift was working perfectly with upshifts taking only about 250 milliseconds. Otherwise the engine ran as it did when we first tuned it on the dyno with the AEM EMS back in May.
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| Not much was done to change the drift set up other than aero, sticky Hankooks and some larger StopTech brakes. |
I was worried about additional mechanical issues related to the lean running at idle issue we saw back at the shop. I didn’t see any indication of a change in how the engine ran in the data – the 2nd and 3rd practice days, along with raceday, it ran just as great. We did have some issues with the LSD in practice, and looking at the datalogs, I could see the car had a lot of wheel spin at times. Rhys' was pedaling the car out of the corners quite a bit trying his best to get the power down but it was having issues. The car runs a spool for drift but on the mountain you don’t want that in there obviously. We had a spare LSD and the guys swapped it in but it wasn’t much better, so Rhys was stuck with a less than favorable setup. The only other mechanical issue with the car was that the power steering pump was making some noise. We had a spare, so we swapped that out too as a precaution. Other than that, the car mechanically was rock solid.
