2017 Whiskey Garage Driftcross 1

The first of the 2017 season of the Whiskey Garage Driftcross at Sandia Speedway. I only participated in the autocross portion (for obvious reasons) which was on a separate part of the track, the drifters were just over the hill to the left of the start. I got to ride in one of the 500+hp drift cars, but my video of it was horrendous so I'll just show my own driving.

https://youtu.be/wgREI06-1to

I'm really happy with my car's suspension setup right now. The rear sway bar in combination with the adjustable dampers make for a near perfectly neutral balance which really helped a lot. I ended up setting the dampers to 9/15 front and 15/30 rear after a few runs, which made a big difference. The only thing that bothered me a little bit is there was some turbo lag coming out of the slower sections where I was around 25mph, which is just before the sweet spot for the IS20 in 2nd gear. Eventually I was able to carry more momentum through the turns and time the throttle correctly to where the lag was no longer a problem, so you don't see much of it in the video, but I wish my gear ratios were just that much shorter.

That looks like an awesome course.

Looks like you were you having trouble putting power down based on one wheel peel squeal along with the revs rising. Maybe turning the power down a notch would help. An LSD would be a HUGE upgrade. Getting power down as early as possible is the name of the game. Big power doesn't matter if it comes on too late and you can't get it down.

If EDL/XDS was going nuts, that'd also explain why your brakes were being overworked and possibly fading. Was the car cool before that run? Even with EDL/XDS i'm surprised the brakes were fading on the third turn of an autox. Could be your tires greasing up from the launch/peel/turning.

It was fun! Though I'm not sure which video you were watching , I didn't have much issue with putting power down except right at the start in 1st gear, and I was spinning both wheels when I was doing that. After I shifted into 2nd it was all grip (I'm actually very impressed with my tires). The rev hanging you hear just before the slalom is only because I knew I didn't have time to shift into 3rd, so I just stayed in 2nd at 70mph. I turned the XDS down from strong to weak after my first run because it was intervening way too much. Weak seems to be a good balance.

Also I suppose I should have mentioned that this was immediately after 3 or so nearly continuous runs. If you notice at the end of the run there were no cars in line, so that's why the brakes were fading (and it wasn't much fade, might have even been me beginning to get used to slamming the brakes before every corner rather than just lightly pressing the pedal as I did there).