[thstone]

After one race weekend and one practice day, here are my thoughts on running a square setup;

Thus far, I have posted consistently slower lap times at two different tracks while running square vs staggered. Somewhat disappointing.

The staggered setup tends to understeer. Dial out some of that understeer and the car can be fairly neutral (balanced). With this setup, I was able to match class record times in BSX and post some pretty fast BSR times. But they were still a few seconds off of the fastest BSR guys (who all run square).

The square setup tends to oversteer. A lot. If you like to drift at 120mph, then put another set of 255's in front, don't change a thing, and that rear will slide with little provocation. The problem is that the car loses grip when the rear is sliding and its hard to go any faster.

At first, I thought it was me. I thought that I had to get used to the car being loose and not to fight it - kind of let the car have its head and keep my foot in the throttle and keep it out of the ditch (meaning counter-steering like a madman to keep the rear of the car in line with the front!).

But alas, nothing helped. At least nothing within the driving skillset that I possess today.

So, where do I go from here? I still think that the square setup will be faster. Why? Because the front end grip is hugely increased over the staggered setup. That should allow faster entry and mid-corner speeds - which should result in faster corner exit speeds which results in faster straight line speeds. Basically, faster everywhere.

The next step is to work to tune out some of the oversteer. This should help plant the rear of the car through the corners so I can increase the speeds.

I'll let you know how it goes...