I was at the Speed Venture event last week at SOW and the weather was mostly raining with some occasional drying of the track. I have been pretty happy with the dry set-up of my car with the car tracking well through the skidpad area going CW.

When the track got wet I could not get the car to turn at all through the skidpad. Understeered badly with even minor throttle input. I was able to keep up with many RWD and AWD cars in the dry. But I would fall back in the wet. Some of it might be my driving, but I am wondering if the car needs to be set-up differently in the rain?

I was also outbraked by most other cars going downhill into turn 3. I don't have this problem in the dry.

Car Set-up:
88 CRX Si
350 lb front springs
450 lb rear
ST rear sway
Ran street tires all day- Yokohama ES100

 

What shocks and what settings on them?

 

General rule of thumb with a wet set up is to go soft and disconnect all anti-roll bars. My Golf had it just about right, back when it was in Showroom Stock trim.

K

 

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I have the Koni Yellows. Rears are preset to Middle Setting (these are the non-externally adjustable) and the fronts I set to Softest setting.

I would hate to dial in more oversteer - since the car is all ready tail happy through most turns that don't require throttle input.

 

I have ES 100s as street tires and I think they would make a kinda sucky track rain tire. Especially if you normally use an R tire on track I would expect the ES 100 in the wet to be shockingly bad at turn in and under acceleration.

As a side note, I have ES 100s on my ITR and I was at an AX in NC this weekend. I returned to a dusting of snow (1/4") and could not get up my not very steep driveway on them :-)

 

I know the ES100's are crap, but just curious if a FWD car should fall off that much in the rain. I thought FWD cars were supposed to be faster in the rain than RWD. Maybe they are just safer.

The tires do suck, but they are balanced like my Kuhmo Ecsta's in the dry just 5 seconds a lap slower.

 

I think it's more a case that an optimized FWD car gains back some of the inherent advantages enjoyed by an equally optimized RWD car in the dry. At the end of the day though it's ALL about the tires.

K