Track Day 59 -- Oregon Raceway Park with Skip Day
Full article coming soon, just awaiting picture uploads from the photographer!
Modifications to the Car for the Event
The only modification performed to the car for this event was I added 2 full turns of the spring collar on the front of the Car (since spring collar adjusts ride height on the QA1 Promastars) and 3 full turns to the rear. This improved ride height slightly and got rid of my self clearancing bodywork, reduced tire contact while turning, and in general seemed to make the car a bit happier out there. I really like the care on 305/35R18s.
A New Personal Best
More information to come on this as well. While it smokes my previous personal best, a lot of that was I have limited experience running clockwise in a car. My previous best of 1:56 something was also on my lapping tires (Continental ECF) so a good 1.5 seconds of capability below my Vitour P1 time CCW of 1:53.3... and then I find I am 3/4 of a scond faster on my Sonic's than with my Vitour P1 and folks find their times are a bit slower in this direction supposedly... so really this can all be chalked up to tire changes. I will say I was able to operate near the limit much better with the revised configuration to the C5 this year and it's perpensity to try and step out on me was nearly entirely cured. The lower rear control arms seem to really do the trick for me now, and in combination with the fixed rear toe... I'm shralping!
Thoughts Comparing this Car to the Dead to Shred
I'll be coming back to this as time throughout the day allows, but I want to say that while I love the Time Attack C5, the broad trackable power of the Dead to Shred C5 corvette with it's stock cam profile... was amazing for just having fun. It had more power down low, it required less shifting, it was less peaky... the Time Attack C5 is far more capable, but the Dead to Shred car was so much easier and low key to drive. I wound up chasing our Lemons car around the D2S car for a few laps, and the laps were pretty boring 2:10 laps... but they were all fun and I could focus on just enjoying the G forces of hard cornering through the half pipe.
What does any of this mean to you the reader? It's to say that you don't have to build an outright missle to have fun. There's plenty of joy to be had in a modestly modified C5 Corvette... I know it put an ear to ear grin on my face that's for sure!
Other Driver Feedback
For this event we brought out 3 cars and had 5 drivers swapping between all of them. This was both fun as I like sharing cars with folks, but als useful feedback as I can get outside perspective on all of the cars.
More info to come as I feedback on this car starts to come in from the folks out there driving them.
Fixes and Plans for the Next Event
One lug nut stud snapped off, so I need to replace that with ARP studs. These were the MPI V1 bearings and I have had issues with studs snapping on these, so ARP is the only solution going forward.
I need to change the trans and diff fluid out and do an oil change, just standard stuff.
I am getting tons of oil blowby. I think I need to get the later model LS valve covers that have the vent drain backs to help reduce oil consumption.
Otherwise... this car is ready to shred. Maybe rotate the tires before my next time attack event?