bsclywilly

It was a bitter sweet weekend at Autobahn Country Club during the 5th round of the Redline Time Attack.



The weekend started with an extremely hot and humid Saturday lapping day. Being new to the track, and having several new parts to test I wanted to make the most of our on-track sessions. We had just fitted up new coilovers from AST Suspension, Hawks grippiest DTC-70 compound, and a pair of Hankook RS-3s for the front.

Saturday practice only allowed us to run a 1:42 due to traffic and the limited laps we did due to a lightning storm (we had lightning strike within a couple hundred feet of the paddock area!). A bit dissappointing but datalogs showed I’d be able to run around a 1:40 or so. That was without any intercooling (about 15% power loss) since it gets to be a hassle and expensive buying ice for the air-liquid IC when I am just learning the track.

On Sunday, morning practice provided some clear laps and immediately I was able to pull off a 1:37, 2 seconds faster than the existing record set by the undefeated SFWD Champion, Doug Wind in his Dodge SRT4 last year. Knowing that, I decided to park it until the afternoon.

Now if you haven’t heard yet, there was quite a bit of chaos in the first TA session involving contact between 3 cars. With the first street tire class TA session, I was gridded up 4th out of the 6 fastest street class cars just behind the COBB Sti, Professional Awesome Evo, and the Fortune Auto Evo. Behind me were the black Evo of Justin Mathews and GT Motoring S2000 of Greg Haye. First lap, a 1:35.9, more than 3 seconds faster than the old record and only 2 tenths off the previous street AWD record! Second lap was a few tenths off, but the car felt good and I figured I’d run the car hard for the third to see how the tires hold up with more heat and also curious if the ice I had on board would last incase I needed to make some adjustments for TA#2.



The start of the final lap, I saw the Professional Awesome Evo parked between turns 3 and 4, a suspected front suspension issue. By turn 8, the debris flag was out and yellow waving due to Cam’s Sti having caught on fire. Taking a more cautious speed into the corner, I didn’t find the track surface to be any different. I don’t doubt that this flag had preconditioned my mind for what came up next. At the final corner, the debris flag was out again with a waving yellow, GT Motoring S2000 sitting at the outside of the track. I apply the brakes early but as I turn in, I realize how slick the track really was and am sent spinning off mid-corner, narrowly missing Greg by maybe 4 feet or so and coming to a stop about 15 feet past him with my rear view mirrors facing down the straightaway. I stalled out and tried desperately to get the motor started again without luck. In my rear view, I see the black Evo approaching fast, too fast. As I turn my head away from the mirror and press it against the headrest to prepare for an impact, I start to hear screeching tires even though I am cursing as loud as I can inside my helmet. Like playing bumper cars, the Evo was already sideways when its front clipped the front tire of the S2000, breaking his tie rod, before the rear of his car slammed into the rear of my civic. From the pictures it looked like my car slid another 20 or so feet as a result.

It’s unfortunate but thankfully none of us were hurt. Greg would have been in the worst location since his drivers door was facing down the straight, lucky. I hope Greg and Justin both get the cars together for their next event.

I was able to check the alignment and wheelbase on the civic after pulling some metal and it was all true. Looks like everything should be able to get pulled/cut out for the most part.

While the contact was unfortunate, we were able to set a new street FWD record by 3.3 seconds and only a couple tenths off of 3rd place AWD! I must mention that the Street AWD class is the most competitive class, having top 3 drivers sharing wins in this years events. Throughout most of the day, the Enmo twincharged civic was a crowd favourite. Not only for the anticipation of breaking lap time records, but also being so competitive with much more heavily modified AWD machinery in the street tire classes. Our civic also beat out all of the Modified FWD and RWD cars and would prove to be the second fastest FWD car, only a second behind a Super Modified class Honda CRX.

An official Recap of the weekend can be found on Redline Time Attack website






Our blog site: www.enmo.ca/blog

HitF8

Man thats a Bummer! Glad to hear everyone is okay though

Egezzy

iTrader: (2)

congrats and at the same time..sorry to hear about the accident. atleast you guys were ok.

Stinkycheezmonky

Thanks for the write-up! I heard about what happened and was waiting for you guys to post. Bummer about the collision, but on the new lap record!

94DCLS

Dang, sounded like a blast. until the accident.

bsclywilly

The boys at import2race.com just posted up a video of me. On-board camera shot of practice laps in the morning. Was running 1:37 and 38's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaITwajoilA

Don't mind the floppy hood. I normally have that taped up but forgot to that session.

Lo-Buck EF

sux about the wreck. but nice job on the lap times!!

RoadRacer46

I'm glad everyone is ok and the car is repairable.

Are you planning on making it to the Redline event at Sebring?

kungfuSiR

iTrader: (1)

Good to see everyone is ok, definitely makes for a tough weekend I'm sure.

Congrats on the new record!

descartesfool

Car looking good. Congrats.

How was the Cobb GT-R running by the way. I hear it's been setting a few outright time attack records as of late.

Battosai84

Well done! Will you attend the other events as well or was this a one timer?

Glad nobody was hurt in the accident, already read about it on the RTA page.

Jaker

Congratulations on decimating the record Will. The wreck sounds like a painful end to your weekend. That's a real drag. Glad to hear it sounds mostly superficial.

BlueTeg

iTrader: (2)

Congrats. I have no idea about what's "fast" at that track, but I know Doug is very fast at Buttonwillow in SFWD trim, so if you're beating his times, that's pretty damn fast.

hatchaneg

I love your car and have been seeing it around honda-tech. It's an inspiration for me because I also track a D series forced induction Civic. I was at Calabogie Motorsports Park yesterday for a lapping day, what a rainy one it was! Anyway, its terrible to see your car banged up but hopefully it all works out for you. Best of luck.

bsclywilly

Thanks for the kind words everybody. Just looking in to options of rebuilding a new shell or repairing mine. You know when you have to fix something, you have to make it better!

It's likely we'll be out west at the end of the year for SLB and RTA Finals.

Wes at Motoiq wrote up an awesome article covering the weekend. You can find it here. There is mention of me on page 2.

http://www.motoiq.com/magazine_artic...--chicago.aspx

clemsonhatch

Congrats on the record breaking weekend! Sucks about the contact but no one got hurt so that's good.

Hearing about your car doing the OLOA and these time attacks makes me want to get my hatch back together to join in on the fun maybe one of these days...

bsclywilly

Here's a cool pic. I didn't really fix my splitter mounts completely after One Lap so it's deflected downwards a bit in the pic. Combined with hard braking, makes for a nice air gap!

rallyeman

Nice pic..!
One question,
i see you are using wilwood dynalite calipers, i suppose its one of the fastbrake's kit with the 0.8" rotor, right? May i ask what pads you are using? Are you satisfied with overall performance of that kit in terms of brake fading over time, or braking power.
Thanks.

Stinkycheezmonky

How did you like the Hankooks over the Star Specs from OLOA?

bsclywilly

That is a setup I put together myself using a 11.8x0.8" rotor and custom brackets. It's a non-boosted setup with bias adjustable dual master cylinders. Have been running the DTC-60 and 70's and prefer the 70's for the extra grip. Haven't had any brake conisistency issues whatsoever. Used to have cooling ducts but removed those as they weren't needed.

The calipers, because they're rather compact, have a bit more flex that I like. I measured about 0.012" deflection between the caliper face and wheel which is about twice as much as a rotora caliper (for comparison). The test was done at threshold braking force for 1g decel, I think 800psi line pressure but would have to check the books to be sure. A 6 piston caliper where the caliper is able to span a larger section of the rotor would likely be stiffer. If you can imagine, the caliper is quite stiff in bending if the fasteners are in line with the pistons. But if the pistons are trying to spread the caliper apart like a clam shell, not so good.

Stinky, the Hankooks were great! The disclaimer is that the Dunlops have had over 4000miles on them from One Lap and a few other events. But this past weekend, the Hankooks had consistenly more grip on the first lap as well as the 3rd lap so they get up to temp fast and don't drop off with more heat. I was able to get the fronts up to about 180F and rears up to about 140F. For the CW Autobahn track, I was running a fair bit of wedge, about 5% off the cross-weights to keep the left front cool but it looks like I didn't have to so much since the Hankooks could handle it. Car balance was great with the combination. Gained a little oversteer in the slower corners but was still very stable through the high speed sweepers.

The test consisted of running the Dunlops all around and then swapping the fronts only with a new set of RS-3's to get a feel for the balance change. I have been warned that the RS-3's won't last very long though. I know for a fact that the Dunlops wear extremely well if maintained, meaning you don't go out there for 30 min hard lapping sessions at a time. We're still at over 5/32nds all around.

*edit: 225 Hankooks were mounted in front on 15x9 and 205 Dunlops were on 15x8.

Stinkycheezmonky

Thanks, Will

heel_touge

good vid.
it looks like they fixed the low speed bump in the braking zone of T4, am i correct?

bsclywilly

I was a bit surprised how bumpy some sections of the track were, especially on the back straight and several of the braking zones. T4 was pretty smooth though but it's also a medium speed corner so not sure if you're thinking of another one?

Really fun track though with a good combination of tighter technical turns as well as many where you can carry much more speed. In the vid, I definitely wasn't using as much track as I could have, particularly through T3, T10, and T12. I think I fixed that for the timed session though. Brakes got a good workout through T1, T8, and T11.

Battle2.0Eg

Wow...How do we manage to end up with body contact during a time attack event. ?!?

Andy Hollis

Will,

From what I'm hearing, having some experience at Autobahn might be a good thing for One Lap next year.



--Andy