clyde
04-20-2004, 11:15 AM
Two autocrosses this past weekend. Saturday was with the NCCBMW club, and I used street tires and Sunday was with the WDCR-SCCA and I ran that on the new Hoosier A3S04 (and it was my first time on R comps).
Saturday
I think I set the FTD for non bmw on street tires and was pretty high up there overall (still waiting for results to be posted), about 4 seconds back from overall FTD (~44 vs ~48 IIRC). There aren't enough superlatives to describe how the car handles. It's just great.
Sunday
Considering how I drove, I think I did very well Sunday except the first run where I had a couple brain farts and difficulty seeing what I wanted to see (I think it was a course specific thing, but the passenger side B pillar got in the way a couple times). If I had driven the car to the best of my ability, I think I would have cut a second or more from my best time and the car still would have been faster than me. I finished in fourth place (of 15) .74 behind first (54.486 vs 55.226).
combined
Due to where I’m coming from (underpowered, undertired overweight, tall AWD car), take the following with a grain of salt. ;) The RX-8 felt really well balanced. I thought it was reasonably well planted in transitions and could move from understeer to oversteer and back at will in the sweepers with fine throttle adjustments. If anything, it felt like it was more predisposed to oversteer in sweepers, but just a little bit...and I’m not convinced of that yet. Understeer was only an issue when I came into turns too hot. At this point, I’m thinking that it may not need a fatter front bar, but I’ll probably revisit that later.
Steering response with the Hoosiers on was not as sharp as I expected. It was only slightly quicker than with the street tires. Breakaway was not quite what I expected either. It was telegraphed better than I thought it would be and was quite progressive when it happened. After starting to slide, it was also easier to get it back than I thought it would be.
I’ve now done three autocrosses in the RX-8 (one on street tires in the wet, one on street tires in the dry and one on R comps in the dry). I’m still working out the cobwebs of winter and making adjustments from a 3600 pound AWD pig with no power to a <3000 lb (going to try to get it weighed in the next couple weeks for my own edification) RWD car. So far, my main thought about torque is that it would be nice have more, but no real complaints about it as is. The super flat and smooth power delivery makes the throttle a very precise fine tuning instrument when any steering lock is applied. I’m not sure, but the relatively small amount of peak torque may make it easier to get back to full throttle on corner exit than in some other higher powered cars because the risk of wheelspin is greatly reduced. Overall, I’m very, very happy with the RX-8 so far.
It still has the factory alignment (which can be all over the place). Eyeballing it, it looks like there is a fair amount of negative camber in back and very little, if any, up front. There’s probably a goodly amount of toe in up front (no clue about in back), but that’s just a guess due to its on center feel and how it feels like it's tracking. I don’t know what kind of castor is there either. I have a set of specs from another RX-8 driver in Texas that has a slightly different setup (fatter tires, front sway bar and OEM shocks) and I’m going to try to get it aligned on Friday. I don’t think that his specs are going to be best for me, but it will give me a known baseline to start working from. I haven’t touched the shock settings since I got the car back from Koni (six? sweeps rebound in front, minimum rebound in the rear and minimum bounce all around).
I also have no clue about tire pressures in the Hoosiers. They were set to 42.5psi (cold) before my first run and were all ~49psi +/- after my fourth run. No pyrometer readings. Wear on the tread faces looks very even side to side on the rears. On the fronts there is a little more wear on the outer shoulders than the inners, but not much. I don’t know if I should go up or down with tire pressures next time (or leave them as is).
I’m sure I missed something that I wanted to say, but oh well.
Saturday
I think I set the FTD for non bmw on street tires and was pretty high up there overall (still waiting for results to be posted), about 4 seconds back from overall FTD (~44 vs ~48 IIRC). There aren't enough superlatives to describe how the car handles. It's just great.
Sunday
Considering how I drove, I think I did very well Sunday except the first run where I had a couple brain farts and difficulty seeing what I wanted to see (I think it was a course specific thing, but the passenger side B pillar got in the way a couple times). If I had driven the car to the best of my ability, I think I would have cut a second or more from my best time and the car still would have been faster than me. I finished in fourth place (of 15) .74 behind first (54.486 vs 55.226).
combined
Due to where I’m coming from (underpowered, undertired overweight, tall AWD car), take the following with a grain of salt. ;) The RX-8 felt really well balanced. I thought it was reasonably well planted in transitions and could move from understeer to oversteer and back at will in the sweepers with fine throttle adjustments. If anything, it felt like it was more predisposed to oversteer in sweepers, but just a little bit...and I’m not convinced of that yet. Understeer was only an issue when I came into turns too hot. At this point, I’m thinking that it may not need a fatter front bar, but I’ll probably revisit that later.
Steering response with the Hoosiers on was not as sharp as I expected. It was only slightly quicker than with the street tires. Breakaway was not quite what I expected either. It was telegraphed better than I thought it would be and was quite progressive when it happened. After starting to slide, it was also easier to get it back than I thought it would be.
I’ve now done three autocrosses in the RX-8 (one on street tires in the wet, one on street tires in the dry and one on R comps in the dry). I’m still working out the cobwebs of winter and making adjustments from a 3600 pound AWD pig with no power to a <3000 lb (going to try to get it weighed in the next couple weeks for my own edification) RWD car. So far, my main thought about torque is that it would be nice have more, but no real complaints about it as is. The super flat and smooth power delivery makes the throttle a very precise fine tuning instrument when any steering lock is applied. I’m not sure, but the relatively small amount of peak torque may make it easier to get back to full throttle on corner exit than in some other higher powered cars because the risk of wheelspin is greatly reduced. Overall, I’m very, very happy with the RX-8 so far.
It still has the factory alignment (which can be all over the place). Eyeballing it, it looks like there is a fair amount of negative camber in back and very little, if any, up front. There’s probably a goodly amount of toe in up front (no clue about in back), but that’s just a guess due to its on center feel and how it feels like it's tracking. I don’t know what kind of castor is there either. I have a set of specs from another RX-8 driver in Texas that has a slightly different setup (fatter tires, front sway bar and OEM shocks) and I’m going to try to get it aligned on Friday. I don’t think that his specs are going to be best for me, but it will give me a known baseline to start working from. I haven’t touched the shock settings since I got the car back from Koni (six? sweeps rebound in front, minimum rebound in the rear and minimum bounce all around).
I also have no clue about tire pressures in the Hoosiers. They were set to 42.5psi (cold) before my first run and were all ~49psi +/- after my fourth run. No pyrometer readings. Wear on the tread faces looks very even side to side on the rears. On the fronts there is a little more wear on the outer shoulders than the inners, but not much. I don’t know if I should go up or down with tire pressures next time (or leave them as is).
I’m sure I missed something that I wanted to say, but oh well.