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Well the last round of the NSW State Hillclimb Championships is done. Had a small field this time mostly because a lot of the classes (including ours) had been decided a while back so there were a few no shows. I was against a junior in an SS, a pretty seasoned hillclimber in a new SS and Andrew in the vette. Basically the young guy in the commodore was on fire and untouchable and did a mid 26 which is real fast. He's been making the cuts in the junior programmes which lead to an Toyota 86 Cup drive, getting lots of coaching etc and has come on massively this year. Home track helps (I did smash him at South circuit though ha ha) but he was on another level and got first. I thought I was ok for second but the other commodore got past me by 3/10ths on the last run which sucked but ultimately my target was the 27's and I nearly got there (28.03s) so cant be too unhappy on an outright power track with only 2 real corners.
Positives of the day were that for a hillclimb, 215 medium fronts seem to outgrip 195 softs as fronts, and that running whats left of my 195 softs on the rear wasn't a bad pairing. The car was uncharacteristically loose on corner entry into the first corner of the esses but I think that had more to do with generally poor rough road riding from the suspension than anything else. To have not had any big moments on what to me is the scariest fastest place you could run at was a plus and I think it'll be a great setup for rallysprints and tight hillclimbs in the future.
Negatives were watching a guy (my previous nemesis who moved to Imp prod) have a truly massive off at the fastest part of the track. He'd gone through 'the fork' the narrow kink right bend between Armco and tyre wall but got crossed up. He may have over corrected but a mate of mine who was there at the fork in the spectator area said that he just kept the slipper into it as though he was confident he could drive out of it - problem was the tail went back out to the right as he left the road that way. Luckily it was the tail of his car and not his door that went into the tree (you'll see the tree in an upcoming vid) which then spun him back around the other way and he fired off backwards over the tyres and through the trees on the left of the track. Andrew and I who had completed our runs were puffing our way back up the hill to get back to our cars when we heard the slide, the crunch and then looked up to see his car in full airborne flight sailing like a UFO through the trees. It was literally jaw dropping followed by '**** that could have killed him'. The crews were onto it asap. He'd given the thumbs up and was trying to bail from the car because he was worried that he'd be spilling fuel but the ambos kept him in the car for a while to check him before he got out under his own steam. He'd actually made the switch to Imp Prod so that he could be caged, seat, harness, hans because he'd always said that road reg was getting too dangerous since we basically aren't allowed any safety gear. To put that in perspective on the lower horsepower tracks a lot of us in road reg class have been going quicker than him and other imp prod cars this year (extra weight and less wings are his problem apparently), but he made the right call that's for sure. To this moment after seeing him literally flying airborne through the trees I don't know how he walked away from it and am not sure that the same could be said for me if it was my car that did it. It was Mega and rattled me for sure. It is different when you know the guy in the car too. I cant say it affected my subsequent runs but it'll take a bit of forgetting.
Anyway his car is basically dead, he is alive and we all now want cages!
Second negative was my cars inability to ride the rutted track surface well. My first run was diabolical, just plain scary. Going through the kink it felt like the car was just sailing from the top of one bump to the next and I had very little feel as to what was going on with the fronts. I should have been getting through flat but had to lift a bit before turning in on each run - I got deeper and deeper but flat stick and just steering it through wasn't on today. It was pretty loose on corner entry into the esses so I took two clicks out of the rears and one out of the fronts (thinking I'd soften it overall and go a bit more on the back at the same time). I dropped the tyres down to 28 psi all round rather than my usual 29 front 30 rear as the run is just so fast that no temp rise was actually happening. This helped on the second run (improved by 1.5 sec), but after the big crash and being stuck at the top till they cleared him meant that the third run was on stone cold tyres again. I didn't want to add another suspension change to a third variable so left everything where it was and went up again. By then though we only had one run left due to all the delays so I left it again for the 4th run. If I'd had the 2 more runs we had expected at the start of the day I'd have made more changes but as it was it was very jittery over what is admittedly a ****e surface and just wasn't inspiring enough confidence for me to really go for it. Like I said I was bummed I didn't crack the 27's but for me I have to do it all in the corners and given the crash etc it was probably too risky to throw it in any harder than I was when I didn't feel 100% comfortable. So I need to work out (with 1 way adjustable damping) what I should have been doing there. I opted to soften off thinking excess bump was the issue, but possibly I needed to go the other way (more clicks in) so that I had better rebound to control the springs better over the bumps,ripples, depressions. Still not sure?
Positives of the day were that for a hillclimb, 215 medium fronts seem to outgrip 195 softs as fronts, and that running whats left of my 195 softs on the rear wasn't a bad pairing. The car was uncharacteristically loose on corner entry into the first corner of the esses but I think that had more to do with generally poor rough road riding from the suspension than anything else. To have not had any big moments on what to me is the scariest fastest place you could run at was a plus and I think it'll be a great setup for rallysprints and tight hillclimbs in the future.
Negatives were watching a guy (my previous nemesis who moved to Imp prod) have a truly massive off at the fastest part of the track. He'd gone through 'the fork' the narrow kink right bend between Armco and tyre wall but got crossed up. He may have over corrected but a mate of mine who was there at the fork in the spectator area said that he just kept the slipper into it as though he was confident he could drive out of it - problem was the tail went back out to the right as he left the road that way. Luckily it was the tail of his car and not his door that went into the tree (you'll see the tree in an upcoming vid) which then spun him back around the other way and he fired off backwards over the tyres and through the trees on the left of the track. Andrew and I who had completed our runs were puffing our way back up the hill to get back to our cars when we heard the slide, the crunch and then looked up to see his car in full airborne flight sailing like a UFO through the trees. It was literally jaw dropping followed by '**** that could have killed him'. The crews were onto it asap. He'd given the thumbs up and was trying to bail from the car because he was worried that he'd be spilling fuel but the ambos kept him in the car for a while to check him before he got out under his own steam. He'd actually made the switch to Imp Prod so that he could be caged, seat, harness, hans because he'd always said that road reg was getting too dangerous since we basically aren't allowed any safety gear. To put that in perspective on the lower horsepower tracks a lot of us in road reg class have been going quicker than him and other imp prod cars this year (extra weight and less wings are his problem apparently), but he made the right call that's for sure. To this moment after seeing him literally flying airborne through the trees I don't know how he walked away from it and am not sure that the same could be said for me if it was my car that did it. It was Mega and rattled me for sure. It is different when you know the guy in the car too. I cant say it affected my subsequent runs but it'll take a bit of forgetting.
Anyway his car is basically dead, he is alive and we all now want cages!
Second negative was my cars inability to ride the rutted track surface well. My first run was diabolical, just plain scary. Going through the kink it felt like the car was just sailing from the top of one bump to the next and I had very little feel as to what was going on with the fronts. I should have been getting through flat but had to lift a bit before turning in on each run - I got deeper and deeper but flat stick and just steering it through wasn't on today. It was pretty loose on corner entry into the esses so I took two clicks out of the rears and one out of the fronts (thinking I'd soften it overall and go a bit more on the back at the same time). I dropped the tyres down to 28 psi all round rather than my usual 29 front 30 rear as the run is just so fast that no temp rise was actually happening. This helped on the second run (improved by 1.5 sec), but after the big crash and being stuck at the top till they cleared him meant that the third run was on stone cold tyres again. I didn't want to add another suspension change to a third variable so left everything where it was and went up again. By then though we only had one run left due to all the delays so I left it again for the 4th run. If I'd had the 2 more runs we had expected at the start of the day I'd have made more changes but as it was it was very jittery over what is admittedly a ****e surface and just wasn't inspiring enough confidence for me to really go for it. Like I said I was bummed I didn't crack the 27's but for me I have to do it all in the corners and given the crash etc it was probably too risky to throw it in any harder than I was when I didn't feel 100% comfortable. So I need to work out (with 1 way adjustable damping) what I should have been doing there. I opted to soften off thinking excess bump was the issue, but possibly I needed to go the other way (more clicks in) so that I had better rebound to control the springs better over the bumps,ripples, depressions. Still not sure?
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