Dick Stockton was up at Watkins Glen this weekend, trying out the new Hoosier
Speedsters, here is what we found..
First and foremost, we don't have a baseline to go by. Dick has been up at
Watkins Glen these past few years, but nothing has ever worked right with the
motor; most due to just plain bad luck and Asian parts. We did not touch the
motor once this weekend.. ran like a freight train!
Friday:
Simply just getting seat time and making sure everything worked alright. Lap
times were falling in the high 2'23's low 2'24's
Saturday:
The "crew" finally arrived at the track. Dick reported a very bad and
persistant understeer problem. The front tires showed lack of wear on the
outsides, so we made some changes and cranked in -3 degrees of camber from
-2.5 degrees. This seemed to work, as the morning qualifying session showed.
Running a mid 2'23 right off the bat, followed by a few more low 2'23's
followed by a 2'22.6 . Not bad.. but we were still having a very bad and
visually noticeable understeer problem. Tires were reading about 31lbs hot,
and the pyrometer was showing them to be hotter in the middle than the
outsides.
The Qualifying Race was a wash as far as data is concerned due to our
"swaybar" issue.
For the race we kept the qualfying race settings minus 2lbs in the tires,
but we made clearnance for the bolts. The car felt better, but still
understeered terribly. Fast lap was a 2'23.7.
We have a few changes to make, obviously, but these tires are showing
promise. Data Aq. showed Dick averaging 1.3-1.4 lateral g's through the
corners.. they show promise of being a good tire. Also some of you may be glad
to hear that the Porsche 356 racers are now on these tires. The "356
Enterprise" crowd was seen running mid 2'19's-low 2'20's. They also have 3
events on these tires, and they look good.. I'll echo Henry in saying that
we're going to be counting heat cycles with these tires, not wear. Hope this
was of some help..
-Bob
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