RTR smackdown!
 

Cal Club Region SCCA event. Ryan Buetzer in the ZOK Solstice. Jeff Cawthorne in his new FRS. Three big foot-to-the-floor sweepers. Two non-slalomy slaloms.

Amazing thing No. 1: Buetzer paxed first overall by a considerable margin, and this is SoCal, where you have a wide selection of national ST champions to choose from. His best run was a 61.095. Second place in RTR was his co-driver ... 2 seconds back.

Amazing thing No. 2: Buetzer took one run in my car: 62.335. He said the car was too loose for his taste but clearly could have gone faster with another run.

Amazing thing No. 3: STR champion Jonathan Lugod warmed up on a different FRS with a 62.7 then put down a 61.7 in my car -- also good enough to pax first overall on the day.

The Solstice is Tim Albin's, and it's probably the best-prepped ZOK in the country. My car has a Cusco bar, alignment and 235mm Z2s.

For context:
Fastest STR car: Bob Endicott: 60.890
Fastest STX car: Jeff Stuart: 61.793
Fastest STC car: Jeff Wong: 61.495
Tim Albin in Solstice: 63.263
Jeff Cawthorne in FRS: 63.377.
Me in FRS: 63.438
Sean Fenstermacher in FRS: 64.834

Cawthorne was on the Strano bar and 225mm Z2s; Sean's FRS was on the 25mm bar (is that Whiteline?) and 235mm Z2s.

Both Buetzer and Lugod said my car is too loose. I usually run a fairly big stagger but had it dialed it back to 38/35 yesterday. (I don't think it's too loose, but then again I am not setting top pax for the day.)

Lugod drove Sean's FRS with the big bar as well and was a bit slower; he said it was pushy. The tires were at 40/40, and he suggested going even higher in the back.

So it looks like Mr. Strano's bar hits the sweet spot. Cawthorne picked up some time fun runs but had an alignment issue -- he has bolts but didn't really gain any camber, which could not have helped with such a sweeper intensive course.

Hey Des!! Great write-up, I saw the results from the event on another site, pretty staggering times by those guys!! :bow:

Now that the ZII's have another event on them, how are they feeling? Were you spraying them? Was the heat tolerance similar to what we were experiencing? Where was the event held?

Watered toward the end when we were making runs with only a minute or two downtime. Plus big honking sweepers :)

Did you buy a BRZ?!

No, didn't buy one...It's been a busy week or so since we last talked! Long story short I will be semi-retiring the Miata for the rest of this season, I was presented with a great opportunity & will be co-driving a BRZ in STX this year :D

So, according to those event results, once again your RTR-prepped FR-S was quick enough to win STX outright :confused0068: That should have been Amazing fact #4 ;)

The 25mm bar is a Hotchkis one I believe. Eibach also makes a huge front bar, so could be that one as well.

You said the 61.7 was good enough to pax 1st, but Buetzer ran a 61.095, so I'm a little confused since they run in the same class.

The fact an RTR car, albeit in extra runs, ran fast enough to win STX against the 2nd place finisher at nationals last year is somewhat telling. Maybe in not such a good way for the BRZ/FR-S. :)

I have heard from at least one good S2000 driver (Jay Toussaint) going from the S2000 to the FR-S/BRZ is very easy. He also said on the FR-S at least the Strano bar is perfect. I have both the Strano and Whiteline 20/21mm adjustable I'm going to try out at our first test and tune. My feeling now is I'll end up sticking with the Strano bar which from my street driving sits right below the stiffer setting on the Whiteline.

With autox its almost impossible to compare that data to other sites, events, drivers, etc. So many variables its hard to get an objective opinion. And driver is such a monster variable. But...

Your post is extremely helpful is potentially sorting some questions about setups.
Namely sway bars. I was considering the Strano or Perrin bar at 18mm. Too much bar up front is just going to have a big impact mid corner favoring understeer. I am looking at C stock not RTR btw.

I am using the 22mm Strano bar in CS. I think it or the Whiteline 20/21mm bar is the way to go. Jadrice paxed like 9th overall at the Blytheville shootout event last year with nothing but the Strano bar and 245/40/17 Hoosiers and it was his first time driving the car with the swaybar (he installed it the morning of the event).

The benefit of increasing the roll stiffness up front outweighs the negative aspects of the front bar. Most I've heard from using the 20-22mm bars haven't really noticed much increase in understeer at all. A stiffer rear bar is going to make the car way too loose and cause the LSD to not work as well.

Sorry, I meant Lugod also would have paxed in front of whomever was No. 2.

I agree, but until we have national champions going at it it's all just conjecture. Fun to watch tho.

I'm not sure that 25mm is too much bar. I think you'd need to tune for it, zero out the toe, adjust your braking points, but the car is certainly easier to drive with the bigger bar, and it does help put the power down on exit.

I agree that the data helps -- it's probably intuitive to everyone else that the bigger bar allows more even pressures front to back, but that wasn't obvious to me.

Yeah... as far as ST goes, this car is SO getting moved. :lol: But on the bright side, it looks like it's capable of keeping up with the current CS crop if that turns out to be the case. So at least there's a contingency plan.

I'm also of the opinion that Strano's 22mm bar is just right, and it seems to work across a variety of setups. The stock geometry of these cars is surprisingly good, so as you go up in bar size, you hit the point of diminishing returns earlier than you would in, say, a WRX. You could probably get a 25mm to work as well as the 22 does, but you'll likely be running weird toe settings to dial out some of the push.

Out of curiosity, what tires were Buetzer and Stuart on? I'm going to assume at this point that most people have moved to/are trying out Z2s.

In RTR you can fix all of that with adjustable shocks and different springs, not in stock class (I know this is RTR thread.)
Pressures are relative to alignments and tires though you know?
What were the alignment specs of these cars needed 40psi pressures?

Buetzer and Stuart were on Z1s.

RTR is stock with street tires, perhaps you meant STX? The cars referenced just have front sway bars, an alignment, and better street tires.

I think this is a very key point to the results at that event. Other than the Tire Rack's informal test months ago, there is really no informative data that says how much better the ZII is over the Z1 in an autocross environment. I think it's safe to say that the ZIIs are at least a little faster on the watch compared to the Z1, so I'm willing to bet both of those cars/drivers could have gone even faster on the new tires.

Last weekend I was also able to run times that would have won STX in Des' car against trophy winners from Lincoln last year. But it was the same scenario, we were on the ZIIs & the STX guys were on last year's tires so it's hard to say if it really meant anything.

Never-the-less, it's still impressive speed from an otherwise stock car, but as some have mentioned there are just too many variables to really put too much weight on the results, & far too early to claim dominance over everything else in STX.