soldave
Member
Man, that was a hot day! I've been to a few drag events where I've come home with sunburn but after this one I just felt completely dehydrated (despite drinking over 4l of water) and worn out. Temperatures of 33C or more and 90% humidity at a minimum with almost no shelter meant that in order to survive you just had to embrace the fact that you were going to be wet and uncomfortably from sweating for the majority of the day. Once you'd come to terms with that fact you would be a lot happier.
I headed up to the drags with a car that felt pretty strong, although one that was a little down on power since the rebuild according to my power figures. That is probably due to a more conservative tune being applied in the form of a degree less timing and a little less boost (now only spiking to about 1.72 bar as opposed to 1.82, although still holding at 1.65bar). Was hoping for a solid performance and just praying that nothing would blow up and I'd be able to drive home under my own power! I was also looking forward to setting up my 3-step launch control. This was a new bit of code that had been added to my ECU by Andy here and it is kind of a crude traction control system. The idea is to have a stationary launch control rpm limit (e.g. 5,000rpm), and then 2 other launch control rpm limits at low speeds (e.g. 5,500rpm @ 20kph, 6,000rpm @ 29kph), which would slightly limit your acceleration speed off the line in the vital fractions of a second so you are not breaking traction and just spinning wheels on the line. This was particularly important for me as I'm one of the relative few people up there who is racing on street tyres (Potenza RE-01) and not drag radials or slicks.
So I got up there and got things set up while I waited for the drivers meeting. Was surprised to find there were only two foreigners racing, myself included. The other guy is a decent guy known as "the fastest gaijin in Okinawa"! He's got a 850-900whp GTR and with his new slicks and launch control ALS system was looking for a solid performance in B-class (5.5-6.0s to go 150m). I was in the much more lowly D-class (6.5-7.0s).
After the drivers meeting the tournament organizers had one of the best ideas I've witnessed in 2 years of coming to these things. They just opened up the track for free practice. The initial runs were not timed and people were just making sure everything was holding up and tweaking settings. I'm glad I had the time as my initial 3-step launch control was set way too low and the engine was bogging at launch. Had to raise the limiter a couple of times to where the car felt it was on the verge of breaking traction. My last practice run was a really nice launch - I can always tell a strong launch when the face of one of my gauges drops off as I pull away from the line! I think the Ralliart engine mounts were also helping keep the engine from moving and helping stability of the car overall.
Free practice didn't pass without claiming the first casualty of the day. A Verossa with a huge Turbonetics turbo on decided to do the whole run with his right wheels spinning while the left ones were sticking. Have no idea what happened there but it wasn't good and that was the end of his day. Although to be fair it was a car prepared by Ram Garage, who don't really have the best reputation for building solid cars. They did have by far the loudest car there though: a naturally aspirated 1st generation RX-7. The thing was pretty but damn was it loud! As he was cruising down to the starting line he was putting his hands together and doing an apologetic bow in his car while everyone was trying to plug their ears!
A second casualty was narrowly averted when a red Hachi Roku's bonnet flipped up on the first practice run of the day. They were lucky the bonnet was carbon fibre or that could have smashed the windscreen. As it happened there was no damage at all and it could continue running through the rest of the day. That Hachi Roku was by far the best looking car out there at the drags this time, although it was surprisingly slow for a car that had been completely gutted out for racing.
Timed practice then followed and I was consistent, but not setting the world on fire. Best thing in these runs were my reaction times, 0.100s, 0.043s and a very impressive 0.005s. While the latter could be deemed as a great reaction time, it is also dangerously close to a red light. Things were feeling great though, even though I was a little off the pace (7.0s for the 150m including my reaction time was about 0.2s off my best), but I wasn't up there to break records this time. When qualifying came around I was in a pretty decent mood, despite the heat. Unfortunately, my luck didn't hold through the qualifying runs. We had 3 qualifying passes and on 2 of them I went a fraction too early and red-lighted. I think there were a couple of reasons that my reaction times were so low in practice and then were causing me to red-light. Firstly, the temperature was hot as hell on the track and plenty of rubber had been laid down at the start so maybe I was making better traction than before. In addition, the launch control and motor mounts were helping me to stay planted on the line and not wheelspin as I was before, making me a bit zippier from the start. But two out of three qualifying runs red-lighted was not great. I was hoping it got them out of my system but I had to be careful in the afternoon.
I headed up to the drags with a car that felt pretty strong, although one that was a little down on power since the rebuild according to my power figures. That is probably due to a more conservative tune being applied in the form of a degree less timing and a little less boost (now only spiking to about 1.72 bar as opposed to 1.82, although still holding at 1.65bar). Was hoping for a solid performance and just praying that nothing would blow up and I'd be able to drive home under my own power! I was also looking forward to setting up my 3-step launch control. This was a new bit of code that had been added to my ECU by Andy here and it is kind of a crude traction control system. The idea is to have a stationary launch control rpm limit (e.g. 5,000rpm), and then 2 other launch control rpm limits at low speeds (e.g. 5,500rpm @ 20kph, 6,000rpm @ 29kph), which would slightly limit your acceleration speed off the line in the vital fractions of a second so you are not breaking traction and just spinning wheels on the line. This was particularly important for me as I'm one of the relative few people up there who is racing on street tyres (Potenza RE-01) and not drag radials or slicks.
So I got up there and got things set up while I waited for the drivers meeting. Was surprised to find there were only two foreigners racing, myself included. The other guy is a decent guy known as "the fastest gaijin in Okinawa"! He's got a 850-900whp GTR and with his new slicks and launch control ALS system was looking for a solid performance in B-class (5.5-6.0s to go 150m). I was in the much more lowly D-class (6.5-7.0s).
After the drivers meeting the tournament organizers had one of the best ideas I've witnessed in 2 years of coming to these things. They just opened up the track for free practice. The initial runs were not timed and people were just making sure everything was holding up and tweaking settings. I'm glad I had the time as my initial 3-step launch control was set way too low and the engine was bogging at launch. Had to raise the limiter a couple of times to where the car felt it was on the verge of breaking traction. My last practice run was a really nice launch - I can always tell a strong launch when the face of one of my gauges drops off as I pull away from the line! I think the Ralliart engine mounts were also helping keep the engine from moving and helping stability of the car overall.
Free practice didn't pass without claiming the first casualty of the day. A Verossa with a huge Turbonetics turbo on decided to do the whole run with his right wheels spinning while the left ones were sticking. Have no idea what happened there but it wasn't good and that was the end of his day. Although to be fair it was a car prepared by Ram Garage, who don't really have the best reputation for building solid cars. They did have by far the loudest car there though: a naturally aspirated 1st generation RX-7. The thing was pretty but damn was it loud! As he was cruising down to the starting line he was putting his hands together and doing an apologetic bow in his car while everyone was trying to plug their ears!
A second casualty was narrowly averted when a red Hachi Roku's bonnet flipped up on the first practice run of the day. They were lucky the bonnet was carbon fibre or that could have smashed the windscreen. As it happened there was no damage at all and it could continue running through the rest of the day. That Hachi Roku was by far the best looking car out there at the drags this time, although it was surprisingly slow for a car that had been completely gutted out for racing.
Timed practice then followed and I was consistent, but not setting the world on fire. Best thing in these runs were my reaction times, 0.100s, 0.043s and a very impressive 0.005s. While the latter could be deemed as a great reaction time, it is also dangerously close to a red light. Things were feeling great though, even though I was a little off the pace (7.0s for the 150m including my reaction time was about 0.2s off my best), but I wasn't up there to break records this time. When qualifying came around I was in a pretty decent mood, despite the heat. Unfortunately, my luck didn't hold through the qualifying runs. We had 3 qualifying passes and on 2 of them I went a fraction too early and red-lighted. I think there were a couple of reasons that my reaction times were so low in practice and then were causing me to red-light. Firstly, the temperature was hot as hell on the track and plenty of rubber had been laid down at the start so maybe I was making better traction than before. In addition, the launch control and motor mounts were helping me to stay planted on the line and not wheelspin as I was before, making me a bit zippier from the start. But two out of three qualifying runs red-lighted was not great. I was hoping it got them out of my system but I had to be careful in the afternoon.
