Nothing. It felt like a rear upright broke... or a sudden loss of pressure in the loaded rear left tire. If you watch slowly, you will note that the loaded rear left let go the moment it touched the concrete patch. Without the video i would have been clueless to only what the data acquisition system told me (not much really in this situation), so having video was extremely helpful.Subw00er wrote:Thanks for all the great replies.
Steven, what broke?
Basically, i'd rather not say specifically. The car was setup correctly per new equipment supplier specs. An equipment supplier was not honest with me about the variations of a new product they released and now refuses to take back the wrong gear they supplied me for the race and i had to buy a new replacement that is to proper specification. Problem was the new proper spec was not available at the track and so i was SOL for the race.
In their defence (partially), was also going for slightly less rear wing angle that worked well on Tuesday test day at LRP and had me doing faster lap times. Was testing quite a few things on Tuesday at LRP and found a setup that was fast and comfortable. Of course less wing makes less downforce.
So.... the combination of less rear downforce and the new spec equipment had me taking turns slower as the car was a handful as it was also less aero downforce, etc made for a driving handful during certain types of on-track events at sections of LRP. In these cars it is better to go faster than slower in places as the aero downforce is part of the overall equation.
As i recall you were at Calabogie. The only off i had was during a misshift at Quarry One and the car wound up slowing down to the point i lost grip due to the loss of aero downforce that is dependant on speed and, therefore, could not get the car turned. A very small off, but the car wiothout aero load was not going to turn in time to keep the car on the track.
Of course the easy thing to do in these cars is to just dial in lots of downforce everywhere and you can feel nearly invincible, but the aero drag kills lap times.
So perhaps at LRP just dialing in a bit more downforce and using the incorrect spec new item would have worked, but had no data to support this and had only one more qualification session before the final race of the year. A decision had to be made and i chose to be on the safe side and use my old equipment and change the car setup back to the way she was on test day Tuesday (this includes ride height changes and other factors). So my old equipment was a bit fried and slower, though knew it would get me through the race without a doubt, albeit a bit slower, plus would feel comfortable when driving the car as it was predictable versus a car that was twitchy and 'on the edge'.
A driver with more talent/years of experience may have done better than me of course in figuring out a solution that would yeild faster lap times, yet when it comes to taking calculated chances in the FC (where things can happen fast) i like to error on the side where i have a better than 50% chance of surviving... and not doing the LRP downhill into the wall 'blender.' (50.1% chance is acceptable
)It is also why even at the recent COM event at NHIS i waved off some point bys i could have made, but felt the risk/reward did not merit it plus the room for error was such that if something went wrong the person pointing me by could have been at a great risk. There are more things to think about than just my own safety...
