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| Front passenger side, outside on left |
The front end of the car, as with all FF cars, was the most interesting. Unlike the rear tires, the front tires were subjected to the new-found turbocharged fury of an SR20DE(T), and you could see the evidence of me getting used to the car’s throttle response (read: lots o’ wheelspin) with the gradual decline in temperature across the tire. Even still, we weren’t using the outside of the tire very well, so we dropped pressure on this tire to 43psi for the race.
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| Front driver side, outside on right |
The front driver side tire was subjected to less wheelspin (I kept getting on it too early on one right-hander in the early laps), but was still a little high on pressure. We settled on 42 psi before the race.
Once set up properly, the experience on the track was just short of amazing. Turn-in was noticeably improved, the car was easy to read going into a corner, and the tires (unlike some rival’s tires) were extremely informative of the impending limit of adhesion. While the car was more balanced with barely a hint of mild understeer under WOT and tail-happy under braking, it was extremely easy to drive. During a corner, the car would transition to oversteer relatively (for a racecar) slowly and linearly. While observers were quick to point out the amount of time I spent in the first couple of laps sideways, at no time did I feel the car was going to snap into oversteer, or fail to pull out of it. Once we got my right foot and the tire pressures dialed in, and I learned the track (which was extremely dark in the infield, and extremely bright on the oval), the car was smooth and fast. Even during my hamfisted driving the first 5-10 laps, the tires were extremely resistant to abuse and grip never noticeably dropped off despite some pretty high tire temps. Our first practice session had our G20 sitting with the second-quickest lap, half a second behind the APD TSX (whose driver had actually been to the track before), and qualifying had us within five seconds of the pole-sitter despite pulling into the pits at the end of our first and only hot lap (everyone else got through the start-finish before the session was black-flagged).
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| The Dog Car and Project G20 Racecar, both on 225-45-15 Goodyear Eagle RS rubber |
Unfortunately, the tight field at this event (best laps during the race session were separated by less than one second) meant we were dead-last on the grid for the race. After fighting from last to third place and about 1 second behind the leaders in only three laps, our G20’s transmission gave up the ghost as I entered the oval. That same lap, both the APD TSX and the Dog II (positioned one and two, respectively) had spun off-track. Had our glass transmission held up, we have no doubt that Project G20 Racecar would’ve won, and even been in serious contention for the lead even if the two leaders not had contact. In any case, each race that weekend was won by a car rolling on Eagle RS'.
