September 5, 2010 - Whoops.
I figured out what was wrong with the car yesterday. Yesterday morning I'd set the tire pressures and found them a bit low. At one point during the day, I tried pulling a bit of pressure out just to see how it worked. It seemed to get a bit better but I was still chasing the handling.
Just to confirm, I went back to my notes to see what the hot pressures should be - and I'd mistakenly set the cold pressures about right for the hot pressures! Even better, it was cool that morning and the day got pretty darn hot - up to the mid-90s. So that explains what was going on. On the first, relatively cool session I was probably pretty much dead on until the tires started to take temperature. And my second lap was the fastest. On later ones, as the track got hotter and I started taking more aggressive warmup laps to get heat in the tires, they were getting badly over-inflated.
I've dropped the pressures down to my usual track starting point now. We'll see how well it does at the track this weekend. I suspect much better! Boy, is my face red.
tags: tires, handling |
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