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| The Dog Car has 100 less hp but weighs 500 lbs less, has big tires for its weight, doesn’t fade with heat and has aerodynamic aids. You can see how the Dog Car can pull back in the high speed, flat out in 4th gear turn 9 and use its aerodynamics to slingshot past the 350Z down the front straight even though the Z can normally pull about 5 car lengths without the slingshot and draft. On a high speed track like Big Willow, it can hold onto and extend its lead even though the cars turn about the same times. The Sentra looks tall and goofy compared to the Z. |
The high desert heat was awful. We had contemplated bringing our go karts out to play around a bit on Willow’s kart track but we were actually glad that we didn’t. It was 105 by 10 am when we stopped checking and the temp continued to climb all day.
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| The 350Z was very stable and easy to drive other than its tendency to want to drift on throttle. The KW Clubsport dampers worked well and gave a smooth tire shock free ride while still controlling body motion, even under the high speed, highly loaded corners of Willow Springs. I was pretty impressed with the car and think there are easily several seconds of speed left in it with diff, suspension and aero tuning. We didn’t do too much since this was supposed to be a fun day! |
Both cars were running laps in the 1:35 range. We were pretty pleased with the Sentra as this is the fastest we believe an SR powered car has lapped around the big track. This is with horrible hot and windy conditions. Better conditions could yield as much as 2 seconds a lap faster on the sensitive big track.
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| The Dog II entering into turn one. Dai and I tuned nearly the same lap times as each other when we traded cars. |
The 350Z was having difficulty putting the power down coming out of corners. The car would want to drift instead of hook up. We are going to tune the OS Gikken rear diff to allow more differential action and a more gradual ramp to lock which should help.
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| I felt that the 350Z had greatly superior brakes, the big Stoptechs had really perfectly matched balance which made the car very stable under braking. The Stoptechs were quite confidence inspiring. The Dog car had slightly better pedal feel but it was hard to get the bias perfect even with an adjustable prop valve and the car wandered slightly under hard braking. It could have something to do with the Sentra being nose heavy and engine braking being a destabilizing factor in a FWD car. |
