To wing or not to wing
 

For those of you who started out without a rear spoiler/wing and then added a wing. Did you notice a significant difference? Was it worth it?

I’ve only been on track in a Miata. It had a small wing. It felt like it was on rails…truly fun and easy to drive. I was rear ended and lost the wing. The car didn’t feel as stable on track anymore. Not sure if it was in my head, or if I was pushing a little harder.

I plan on tracking my 86 for the first time in a month. Wondering if a wing will be useful. I do not plan to add any power mods. Focused on suspension, brakes, and tires only—aside from seats, harness, and roll bar.

Get the biggest wing you can find before you try the car out for your first time on track. That's what any truly experienced track guy would do.

Smh.

Thanks for the advice, I strapped a Spruce Goose to both ends of my car :bonk:

I don’t pretend to know what I’m talking about. I’ve only done about 15 track days. I’m barely scratching the surface on the type of mods needed to address certain issues on track.

I said the car felt a little loose, but it could’ve been a number of factors…the tires were nearing their end of life. The track was super hot. I may have been pushing a little more than I had in the past.

I know a wing and a splitter will add downforce on faster more powerful cars, but does it help slower cars like ours? I didn’t say I was going to get a wing. I asked if it made a difference.

But I’ll take your advice. You sound like you know everything and is kind enough to share his knowledge to help and inform others. Thanks!

Do one weekend without a wing and see how the car behaves, proceed from there. You will lose a little bit of top speed on straights due to drag but will more than make up for it in turns.

Is that a 'Hakone' in "racing" speak?

Wing makes a difference, especially on tracks that have a lot of medium to high speed corners. I’d really just drive the car as is till you decide you want it. I put one on my car too early for me and partially regret having it altogether. The car is certainly faster with it, but there are issues with adding a wing I didn’t think about dealing with that I am still sorting out now. Car was also more run to drive with less grip IMO.

Aero mods are a touchy subject for these cars, they don't really have the power to push past the drag penalty incurred by meaningful amounts of downforce so most people would suggest that you do what you can to increase and tune mechanical grip before you start playing around with aero. I'd certainly spend my money on suspension and tire upgrades before I did anything with aero.

All that said, if you're going to put aero on these cars, I'd just acknowledge it's more about looks than about performance because these cars DO look very good with a bit of aero on them.

IMHO: The most effective aero mods would be under the car. Underbody panels, front splitter, and a rear diffuser.

To wing or not to wing
 

I wish I had AIM data before and after adding my wing and splitter. I went to RaceChrono in between and my start/finish point is not the same either so I can’t compare data apples to apples. I think I have one damp session with a wing logged with AIM.

You can’t look at the drag penalty purely from a MPH/power perspective. You have to look at the time that it takes to cover the distance. Drag also squares with speed so the rate of acceleration from 60 up to 80 or even 100mph isn’t significantly big. I notice it’s really around 105-110ish that the car struggles to push through it, my car being NA. So even being down 5mph on the front straight that is 3/4 mile at the track I frequent the most, the actual time delta with splitter/wing going down the straight isn’t as big as you would think, especially considering I am coming onto the straight 3-5mph faster to begin with.

Leave the wing for last. Also if you plan to go full Aero get suspension that can handle it with your desired tire.

IMO Do Full under panels, diffuser for better stability. Move onto Front Aero and then look at wings.

I'm not trying to say it won't help but I'm just trying to hedge expectations, not all aero is created equal and aero benefits are course dependent. I'm just advocating that the money is better spent improving mechanical grip first if you haven't done the basic stuff there already. And be prepared that if you're particularly unfortunate, aero may not help at all at your local track, like it doesn't at mine.

I'd agree with most people here, leave aero for after you have good car control and are able to extract more performance out of the car. But a lot of people are underestimating how much downforce affects car's behavior on track (and lap times). The whole "car doesnt have enough power" is a lot of nonsense most of the time. You'd need huge dual or tripple element wings (and proper front to balance) to get there, and even then, only on really long circuits with long long straights would you actually go slower that way, everywhere else, aero is king.

But dont do it, not yet. Also, dont put a wing and call it done, all you are doing is creating a world of understeer, aero needs to be balanced to be fast.

I really messed up this with my car. Even though I am running a smaller wing and splitter setup I didn't anticipate how much higher the loads would be and my current suspension setup is not up to the task. So even though the car ended up around 2 sec a lap quicker at most tracks, it's a handful in some situations and really hasn't had all it's performance unlocked.

Power isn't the issue. It's more about the travelled speeds. When you're dealing with speeds in excess of 80 mph the wing can help however it needs to be balanced out with some front aero otherwise these cars get understeer. That was my experience. The rear wing needs to be adjusted with a low angle of attack. There is a balance of too much downforce and speed loss with too much wing angle. The tracks I run the added downforce has been great. The car is PLANTED. Speaking of tracks, if the track is low speed then the wing and aero is pretty much useless. Autocross, forget it.

Overall I'd say to learn the car first in it's stock form and build from there with aero being the last thing you add.

Are there issues beyond the unexpected suspension loads that you're dealing with?

Well there's your problem!
Spruce Goose is a flying boat and will lift on a wet track.
If you are not very careful you will put the rear end into the wall on take off!!!!!

More instances of fuel starvation and oil starvation.

You are looking at aero the wrong way. The lower the speeds of a particular track, the more aero you need, not less. Autocross needs stupid amounts of aero. Also, a "planted" car is usually not that fast, an agile car that rotates well isnt "planted". A planted car is easier to drive and inspires more confidence on the driver, which usually lead to novice and intermediate drivers pushing more and getting better times thus thinking that planted is faster (but its not).

Go to an autocross event and see how many cars have aero, very very few, for a reason. As far as planted, in fast corners (80+) you want planted, predictable. In corners where you're using rotation you aren't really going fast enough for the aero to be working.

Yeah, classing. Aero is typically on the higher dollar, higher end, less participated in classes.

Like @NoHaveMSG said, that reason is classing. The whole "aero work above X speed" is not true at all. Aero loads increase exponentially with speeds, but as long as you are moving, they are never 0. Also, if you think unless you have several hundreds of lbs of downforce it doesnt make a different, well, you are wrong. You can feel something as little as 20-30lbs of downforce on your car, the same way you can feel when the gas tank is full or empty.

Im not disagreeing with your initial comment on aero, just the reason.

Correct. However it depends on how much downforce you have dialed in. Too much to where at low speeds it's noticeable then it's most likely compromising speed in the straights so you need to find that balance. Plus as discussed, less planted in slower corners is faster

What kind of suspension are you running? And what makes it feel unbalanced between aero and mechanical grip?

T2's with 7kg springs. I mostly need to go up in spring rate, play with ride height, and work from there. The car feels okay most of the time, but on longer high load corners it starts to understeer at mid corner. It looks like I am bottoming in the front as it is chewing the hell out of the inner fender liners.

If it helps, when I went the moderate aero route (5" splitter with tunnels, APR GTC200 wing and flat floor), my 6k front and 8k rear spring rate was also not sufficient. Going up to 12k all around fixed that and allowed me to run low ride heights to generate even more downforce.

I have a set of 10kg's I was going to put on next. I can't run splitter ramps or flat bottom in my class, but the group I am running with next season allows down to 100TW tires. I am just running a 3" splitter and the GTC200 but I removed the risers out of the wing brackets so I run it quite a bit lower then it comes out of the box. Thanks for confirming the direction I need to go, I suspected it was the primary issue but just dealt with it last year.

I'm in a very similar boat right now-- I finally have the front end grip enough that I like it, but I've destroyed the fender liners in just a few races.. I'm at the same static ride height I was before, but now it's tearing stuff up. I need to either go to stiffer springs or raise the car.

(APR GTC-200 with 3" splitter as well... KW Clubsports for springs, although I don't know what rates they are. they were on the car when I bought it. I need to do a little research on rates and lengths to get correct ride height before I spend any money on springs. likely also need to get the shocks revalved. I'll have some time this summer tho- next race is 3 months away but I'm fiddling with engine/oiling stuff right now and want to do some back-back testing with that, so I don't really want to change much on the car that would alter my lateral Gs and affect oil pressures in the corner.

What suspension and spring rates do you run?

RCE T2’s in 7kg springs.


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Positive rake a lower speeds, neutral or slightly neg at high speeds.

Spring Rates, Wing, AOA of Wing etc etc all play into effect when trying to properly setup a car to be balanced at all speeds possible.

Can you bolt on a wing and be faster? Sure maybe. Can you maximize the impact it can offer? No

Me too. Do you think 8k or 9k would be enough to compensate the aero?

I dunno. It’s going to depend on your setup. I am trying 10kg based on what others are running but may try some different rates down the road.