First Weekend Shake down.
 

So this was my shakedown weekend with the FRS. I ran a STF TRD tc auto for the last season and a half. See thread here for videos of that car. http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6696

First day I had a co-driver nick who runs a STX prepped RX8.

So Nick and I were having trouble launching the car off the line. It was pretty slow. Even my Tc would launch off the line. Well... I made a post about it in the forums and people made me aware that they could do it.

I went out to make a quick video showing what I was doing and that it would not rev past 2k rpms when the brake was pressed in. Well funny enough while i was filming it all of a sudden I was able to launch it. 95percent brake I could launch it. 100 percent to the slammed to the floor I could not launch it. Made a quick run for ice cream and in the empty lot I gave it another shot and it worked... I looked in the mirror and while standing still I was roasting the rear tires. Smoke and all I was happily surprised.

This will help off the line speed in autox.

Another issue we were having was getting the car back in first when we wanted it to. Little more testing and

1st gear goes to 36mph and you have to shift to 2nd. 2nd goes to 63 mph... it will not allow you to get back into first until 33mph on the dot due to the over reving safety feature.

These are all things good to know. And maybe I should have tried these out before this weekend.

Yesterday was a scary day for me. Spun the car into cones in the finish. Had a lot of oversteering all most everywhere. Almost spun it on the taxi way. Big big difference going from my TC FWD car to this.

Today I pushed the car and myself harder and by the end of the day I was starting to feel good about the car. Due to my spin yesterday and the almost spin on the taxi way I still held back and it showed in my times. Hopefully in Rantoul where I feel safer then Coles county due to the amount of seat time I have had there I can push the car even more.

Here are the results of both days. I did run c stock both days.
http://ccsportscarclub.org/files/201...ommand_fin.htm
and the 2nd day.
http://ccsportscarclub.org/files/201...ommand_fin.htm

Here is the go-pro footage of the first day of Nick and I and todays runs. The first day the go pro acted up and we only got 8 runs on footage out of 12.

My runs.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0XTmrWxmY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0XTmrWxmY[/ame]

Nicks runs.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH42hfErvzc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH42hfErvzc[/ame]

My day 2 runs.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETRG0ezzleY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETRG0ezzleY[/ame]

On a side note. I ran everything stock besides tires. I had my 225/45/17s RS3s mounted.

We checked the tires with a pryomter each day and funny enough we had even temps across the entire tire patch... Thats damn impressive for stock as anyone knows. We ran 35front and rear first day. Today I ran 35 front and 32 back for extra grip to combat the oversteer I was feeling from the first day.

Very good!　Yes, the AT Paddle does have built in safety for engine, and it makes the driver know where and what they are before making full use of the potentials. Sometimes this can be frustrating as all drivers have habits and methods of his own built from driving a manual all his/her life.

But as for me, simply this car being an AT-paddle shift car, the flexibility of multi-role from something like this, and all other uses as a primary car for individuals, is a very good one.

Most of the quirks are something one just has to be aware and get used to, as they are borderline misuse anyway, if the car doesn't let you do something. Hopefully though, there will be aftermarket tuners and companies that will offer a bolder reprogramming to allow those who seek motorsports venues, to make it become more "manual." :D

For now, though, I like it!

Thanks Moto Can't wait to get the car back out there. One thing for sure that I dont think I can fix is the fuel cutoff. My Tc auto would bang off the rev limiter all day long no problem. Its ok after I turned on the beep for the rev limiter that helped.

For such an amazing site I'm surprised at the course... All those open areas and two 180 turnarounds would just make the horsepower cars kill everyone else.

Ya course to course varies on the event chair. Sometimes we have power courses sometimes we have miata courses. Sometimes we have drag starts the events just vary. This site is not our main site. We do about two event weekends here a year. This year however this weekend was our only weekend here.

I feel like i would get lost on an Auto X course-- like i'd see all the cones and not know where i should go..

Its not as bad as you think. But I will say this...most (if not all) of the videos posted on the site recently have that "sea of cones" feeling where there are just too many unnecessary pylons that clutter up the field of vision. That's a course design thing and it varies region-to-region.

I'm glad to hear that the taller aspect ratio gets the car to 63 in 2nd...are you certain that's what you hit?

Yep.

You walk the course ahead of time, and it's a lot easier to navigate from the driver's seat. Even when I used to ride along I thought it would be a lot harder to keep track, but so far I've only DNF'd twice for missing gates. And neither time was I ever truly lost. So don't let that stop you!