Once a year the Central Florida Autocross Region hosts an event at Daytona International Speedway. Though this year instead of being on the tiny gokart track it was in the gigantic guest parking lot.
My competitor and good friend Ben had just bought a very nice set of adjustable coil over suspension. One of the best ways to dial it in is to simply get more seat time in the car.
Holding on tight in this bumpy course
Some background. I have only driven one all wheel drive car before. a 2007 Subaru Forester converted to STI specs. Though I did do one run in Ben's car in December of 2015 but back when he was on Pirelli Super-Sport tires. I have about ~4 years of competitive driving experience.
The car is now on 265/35/18 Bridgestone RE-71R tires, with full bolt ons, a turbo swap, and a MCS coilover suspension (more detail below).
This car was just stupid amounts of fun to drive. Ben says its putting down around 340(wheel HP) and 360 (wheel TQ). We were running the car on a lower boost tune due to the excessive heat that day and to be honest it still felt more powerful than my Mustang which makes about the same to the wheels. The power just SURGES on with minimal turbo lag. I still had to slightly change the way in which i drive. Was a bit strange going into a turn and putting my foot to the floor in order to spool up the turbo for the exit. In the Mustang this would be very bad and result in massive amounts of over-steer (running into crowds of people). My strategy seemed to work pretty well and I became very attuned to the car quickly. I placed 1st out of 6 competitors that day, and a ~20th raw time out of 120.
Back to the suspension and the whole reason I was co-driving. Ben's new adjustable suspension was made out of some kind of dark unicorn-magic. The course at Daytona was very bumpy and I actually managed to slightly sprain my arm that day from the ultra death grip i put on the steering wheel when I drive. After that first run though we dialed down the stiffness and the bumps just went away. Really goes to show you that a very expensive suspension system won't necessarily make you faster but can make you more consistent. This particular suspension was a Motion Control System (MCS). They usually run in the upper 4k-5K ranges and are very high quality.
We managed to each bring down our times and clean up our runs by the end of the day. Mission success and I hope I helped out Ben by showing him a different driving style and giving him more runs to dial in the suspension! See Ben's build page on our site and follow us on YouTube to see how the competition goes this year against him!
Grant - Spectro Racing Staff