I've Got Bad News, Folks! - BB Outdoes Her Driver!

Any thinking person would expect that multiplying a cars horsepower by 2.6 and wheel torque by 1.56 would result in some serious time savings at the autocross!  For a variety of reasons, this did not turn out to be true.  Hmmm.  Here are some possible excuses (uhh, I mean explanations!):

• Horsepower and torque and torque don't give a car the ability to go around corners faster.  That is determined by the the capability of the tire contact patch.  Autocross is all about corners.  However, I would have thought that I would gain at least a second on the few straightaways?
• The reduced overall mass and reduced center of gravity and reduced polar moment of inertia may have had less influence than I estimated.  Especially the latter two seemed dramatic to me but I could not make them pay off on the pavement.
• The driver's limits have been surpassed by the car's abilities.  This is for sure true.  For example, I was shocked by the need to shift into third in a car with a 9000rpm redline!  In BB with a 4-speed, I launched in 1st, shifted to second and finished the course.  The shocker is that with her new power and gearing, I can get over 50mph in a small parking lot, could I only manage to shift into 3rd!  In my defense, this is a 6 speed manual, with which I have only a few hours of experience in a German VW rental car but I admit that I am embarrassed to have failed to shift into 3rd roughly 2/3's of the time!  On the street, no issue from day one.  Under pressure of the traction limit and clock, oops!
• I accepted a compromise on the clutch.  Here I have more than 20 year's experience in manual clutch tuning that should help me but I traded many hours for a compromise of very high clutch pedal effort and very short modulation zone.  For those who haven't experienced a dressing down from on OEM engineer for poor modulation, it basically means too little clutch pedal travel to go from 0 to full engine torque getting to the wheels. This is an area I didn't fully understand until I taught my kids to drive a manual transmission car.  I had always processed that you should let the clutch pedal out slowly while giving a little gas.  Actually, what one does is slowly move and then hold the clutch pedal at the point where it transmits the launch torque desired.  (Full disclosure, I learned this when my daughter did her first launch in a manual.  She had the wisdom to check out a YouTube video in advance!)  In any case, the data I collected in SoloStorm, which my son found for me, clearly shows about a second of launch to launch variation.  So, there is work to do!

In any case, let's see the tale of the tape!  

This is painful but doesn't hurt as badly as the next chart.  Here you can see three years of steady progress followed by a year of regress.  I guess the evidence would suggest that the $8200 and 350 hours of work might well have been better spent elsewhere!

Here is the more painful chart.  This is me v the regulars.  In truth, there is now only one person who has been at every race that I have attended.  And I was closing in on her!  But, in my last event, I was a sad 4 seconds slower.  Of course, I threw my muffler across the parking lot in my final run, which was epic in several respects (the run, not the muffler), sadly time not being one of them, or I would have come closer.  But, facts are facts:

Unfortunately this shows that I was even slightly slower last year, with my new IRS, than previously.  Maybe those Abington nut jobs weren't so crazy!  (side bar: Abington upon Thames (Don't you love the British "upon" (I'm an engineer so I am authorized to use nested parentheses!))  I know BB has good bones, 50/50 weight distribution, low mass, etc, but I thought I was adding modern tech too them.  Maybe I have started taking away from them.

But now comes winter in Ohio.  It's time for a halftime huddle, for some reflection, for some engineering, for some uncomfortable processing of painful lessons learned, for some mechanical design, for some chip-making processes (metal working chips, not computer chips, which I would love to help with but can't), for some re-consideration and re-assembly, for some meditation and re-learning.  For in Ohio, it will soon be spring.  And time to see what next year brings.  

My guess is it will bring more #funwithcars!