I like the R&D you are making on the WRX 2015! Looks like a fun car with the right modification!
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : sam. juin 11, 2016 3:11 pm
par Touge Tuning
So it's been a long winter and there hasn't really been any updates to the car over the winter. It ran great through the winter and the few days of snow we had I took it out for some fun in the snow. So with spring upon us it was time to make some upgrades to the car for the upcoming track season. But before we jump into that I wanted to get around to posting the dyno graph from last year of the final stage 2 set-up that I've been running. As previously mentioned going from catless with stock cat-back to catted with aftermarket cat-back gained a little power but a huge amount. This is probably balanced out by the cat being a restriction but the cat-back being less of a restriction compared to the stock cat-back. So below is the dyno graph which shows the WRX made 285WHP and just under 330WTQ.
Event: Dyno Location: Touge Tuning, Mississauga Ontario Ambient Temp: Summer 2015 Elevation: 249 ft. Weather: Hot Car: 2015 Subaru WRX Tuner: Sasha from OnPoint Dyno Dyno Info: Dynapack Transmission: Stock 6 speed Gear: 4th Stage 2 Peak HP at RPM: 285 @ 5375RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected Stage 1 OTS Peak Torque at RPM: 329 @ 3100RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected Stock Peak HP at RPM: 212 @ 4900RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected Stock Peak Torque at RPM: 250 @ 2500RPM - SAE J1349 (2004) Corrected Baseline HP/TQ for Stock 2010 STi on same dyno: 228WHP/240WTQ Target Boost: 21PSI Tapering Fuel: 94 Octane Petro Canada Mod List -COBB AccessPORT
-AEM Intake
-Turn In Concepts TGV Deletes
-Grimmspeed 3-Port EBCS
-Invidia Catted J-Pipe
-COBB Cat-Back
The car has been on this same tune since it was done and I haven't had a chance to check the carbon build up on the intake ports which i'm hoping isn't too bad and hasn't hurt power too much. In the coming weeks I am considering changing to the catless j-pipe again, adding the Killer B TMIC and possibly methanol injection. We'll update the dyno at that time for the upgrades and see what happens.
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : dim. juil. 10, 2016 2:32 pm
par Touge Tuning
If you’ve been following the progress I've had with the 2015 WRX you’ll know that the stock 2-Piston Front and 1-Piston Rear Sliding Calipers were one of the areas I felt were the weakest when using the car on track. Because of this I upgraded the fronts to a StopTech ST-40 4-piston solid forged caliper last year which made a huge difference not only in lap times but the ability to be on track longer. The one downside to this was that without balancing the rear with more aggressive pads the fronts would cause very extreme weight transfer to the front of the car making the car want to rotate the rear end on very heavy braking. This would not be an issue for most people upgrading just the fronts but with how hard the car is pushed on track it made for some “fun” braking at tracks with high speed heavy braking zones.
Because of this I had always planned to upgrade the rear calipers to the matching StopTech ST22 Rear Big Brake Kit. Obviously I ordered these in the matching yellow calipers and they come in a 345mm x 28mm Rotor Size. For those keen on details they will notice the rear rotors are actually larger in diameter then the front kit presently on the car by 13mm overall. The main reason is that there’s simply no other size offered for the rear of the car and I was also curious how the larger rear rotor would balance the braking with the front if running the same pads front and rear. Luckily these still clear under my 17″ Team Dynamics that I use for track wheels and we tested to ensure they would fit under the new wheels going on the car at the same time.
The single piston OEM calipers weigh in at 7lbs 3oz where as the upgraded StopTech 2-piston calipers are only 4lbs 5oz. That alone drops 3lbs per corner which is awesome. The stock rear rotors are 286mm while the new units are 345mm. Weights are 10lbs 12.8oz for the stock rotor and the much larger StopTech 2-piece rotors weigh in at 16lbs 3.2oz. So yes the rear rotors offset the savings of the calipers but when you think of the additional size of the rotor being gained it’s really not a big factor.
The installation is a little more complicated then the fronts but isn’t too bad, I would say a 5/10. The first order of business is to lift the car up and get the rear wheels off. You also want to make sure the e-brake is not engaged as you’ll need to remove the rotors and doing so with the e-brake engaged is not possible. With the wheels off you remove the 2 bolts holding the caliper to the knuckle and I chose to leave the brake line attached until I was ready to attach the new lines so the brake fluid wasn’t dripping everywhere. The next step is to wind the e-brake shoes in so that the rear rotor comes off easily. If you don’t do this step there’s a chance the shoes will get hung up on the inside of the rotor and make for a much longer install. To wind these in you remove the little rubber plug on the rotor hat and with it positioned at the bottom of it’s rotation you can look inside and see a little wheel with square teeth on it. Using a flat head you wind this down to bring the shoes closer together. It will only go so far but more then enough to get the rotor off by hand. When you can’t spin it anymore remove the rotor from the hub.
With the rotor removed you’ll see the e-brake assembly in front of you which you don’t really need to touch. The next step is to remove the dust shield on the knuckle assembly. This is held on in about 7-8 locations with a spot weld and rather then cut this with a cutting disc I prefer to use an air hammer or chisel/hammer and break the spot welds free to remove the whole shield and not leave any sharp metal. This should take a few minutes to do and when done just make sure there’s no left over pieces and test fit the rotor and check that it doesn’t contact anything. With the rotor installed you can then adjust the e-brake, you basically want to get this so the shoes touch the inside of the rotor and you can’t spin the rotor by hand. Then back it off until you can spin the rotor without it dragging on the shoes.
The next step is to install the caliper mounting bracket which uses the factory mounting bolts and torque to 50lb/ft. You can then take the new calipers and mount them to the bracket using the supplied hardware. These bolts are torqued to 40lb/ft. Next I installed the supplied stainless braided brake line to the caliper and secured the mid mounting point to the knuckle. I then quickly undid the factory brake line connection and connected the stainless line to the hard line connection minimizing brake fluid loss which makes bleeding the system much quicker. Lastly you’ll want to install the supplied StopTech Street Performance brake pads which coincidentally are the same pad shape that is used on the STi rear Brembo calipers.
I then bled the system with AP Racing R4 brake fluid with the help of Mike. I first like to do a pressure bleed to get the new fluid to all the bleeders and then we did a manual bleed on each bleeder until no air was present. This pretty much concludes the installation other then putting the wheels back on and bedding the pads in to the rotors. The new brakes look absolutely amazing and I am more then pleased with the final product.
As part of this upgrade I finally had the chance to get my summer wheels powder coated by JP at Stripping Technologies. The wheels I chose were the Enkei NT03+M which I have really wanted for a long time. The thing about these wheels is that some sizes look good with a decently concave face and others, in my opinion, look horrible with a convex face. These also don’t really clear STi brembos very well but luckily the StopTech’s seem to offer better clearance. I went with an 18×9.5 +40 size and I had them powder coated in a Satin/Matte Black to match the graphics, front lip, rear spoiler and badges on the car. I had them wrapped in Bridgestone RE760 tires in a 255/40R18, we installed these same tires on Mikes 2007 STi and we were happy with the performance, road noise and reviews. I went 255/40R18 as I want to be able to drive these to the track and not have to change wheels for a school or casual lapping day without the worry of fender clearance. We’ll find out soon enough as the first Hanson school approaches.
With the new wheels installed the exterior look is pretty much complete for me, the only thing I still would like to do is tint the windows but that will have to come when I have time to stop by Autolinks. Initial impressions of the new brakes are awesome, exactly what I was expecting which was to get rid of the pedal travel that the stock rear calipers were still allowing. With the solid calipers the pedal now feels firm and is much easier to modulate. I would say it is very similar to stock STi brembos with a bit of improvement in terms of brake balance and weight.
To shake the car down before the first time attack event I took the car to Toronto Motorsports Park for an open lapping day. For this year I decided to have some decent track pads rather then struggle with pad fading. I chose to install Ferodo DS2500 pads front and rear before the lapping day which are a good HPDE/Lapping brake pad that is typically not noisy on the street and won’t kill your rotors. I will switch to the StopTech pads for the winter months when the Fereodo’s will not be able to get up to temperature. I didn’t take any lap times for the day as I was running the same RS-3’s I finished last season on which at that time had 9 track outings on them so they were in rough shape. As soon as I got up to speed on track I immediately noticed the difference with the rear brakes. The car now stayed flat with no rotation in the heavy braking zones. It also allowed me to trail brake into corners much more as the brake application is more precise and controllable. I didn’t have any issues at all with brake fade which is likely down to the new pads as well as better brake balance front to rear which is more evenly distributing the weight to the brakes.
So what would I do to a 2015 WRX? Stage 2 and upgrade the brakes!
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : jeu. sept. 29, 2016 10:42 am
par Touge Tuning
As usual in the summer it’s difficult to find time to keep up with these journal updates but hopefully I can get quicker at them. As usual Round 1 for CSCS is hosted at Mosport Driver Develop Track in Bowmanville, Ontario. This track was redesigned a few years ago and has become one of my personal favorite tracks to drive on. It is one of the most technical tracks in Ontario and really rewards confident drivers. This years event was run on May 15th and it was pretty much the craziest weather i’ve ever seen at a time attack event. Temperatures ranged from 0 to 7 degrees celcius with a mixture of Snow, Rain and Hail. Winds were strong enough that many, including our group, had to take down the canopies so they didn’t fly away.
The temperatures and weather made it very tricky to get tire pressures dialed in and do any sort of comparison between one session to the next. As usual I spend the practice and qualifying sessions getting the tire pressures set while also taking out friends and customers out to experience what it’s like being on track. Last year at the same track and layout I snuck out a 3rd place with a 1:41.900 which was done on the stock Dunlop SportMaxx Tires and I believe on Stage 1+ power. The positive side of the cold weather was that the car was making as much power as it could with the cold air it had all around. The tricky part was knowing when the tires were getting hot and then keeping them from cooling down. Prior to the event the only additional upgrade I had done was to replace the factory 20mm rear swaybar with a Whitleine 22mm adjustable bar set in the middle. The goal was to reduce understeer a little bit and help with rotation of the car without making it too stiff.
I purchased a new set of Hankook RS-3 tires for the season as these are what I ran last year for 9-10 races and lapping days and liked the consistent nature of them. To my surprise almost everyone else had switched to the highly touted RE-71R from Bridgestone which was a bit concerning to me since everyone I had talked to said the RE-71R’s were 1 second faster then other tires in it’s class. By the second or third session I had somehow managed to best my personal best time with a 1:41.320 which I was really proud of. With that I really was not sure how much more time was available as the track would be grippy and then get damp and lose all of the grip available. By the next session I was able to get 2 clean laps in a row and put down a 1:41.278 and 1:41.017. At this point I thought that would be it for the little WRX and 2 of the other competitors with much more powerful cars were already a second or 2 ahead of me in the high 1:3X’s. On the last qualifying session of the event I found a bit more time putting in a 1:40.581. This landed me in the second qualifying position with the #1 qualifier sitting around a 1:38 which left me little hope of winning the event but at least a podium was in sight for me. Funny enough Brandon Lue was the 3rd place qualifier and he also happens to have been my instructor for the past Hanson schools I have done. I’ll admit it felt good for “the student to become the teacher” but I knew Brandon and his car were capable of besting me and my car so my confidence wasn’t high on beating him. I believe in total there was something like 15 entries in the Street AWD class which made it highly competitive.
For the time attack session the weather was getting colder and I had talked to a few other competitors and they were all bumping up their starting pressures. Based on my feedback from the car I felt the pressures were still a bit high (36PSI) so I dropped them down a further 2PSI. After the event I learned this put me at a cold pressure of 21PSI!!! I followed the same routine I always do with the time attack session by setting a decent gap in front of me but still making it so I could use the car in front as reference for if I was going faster or not. Typically I will have the Aim SOLO running while driving but the battery died on the out lap so I had no reference for if I was driving well or not. After the 3 hot laps were done I had the longest cool down lap ever wondering if I was able to secure a 3rd place. Pulling into the pit lane the track workers come and take back the transponder for lap timing and give you your ID and credit card back. Then another person will tell you if you placed and where to go. They are always very straight faced so it always feels like you must have done really poorly. As they walked up to my window I heard him say “You got 1st place, congrats. Pull to the end of pit lane to get your trophy”. I actually had to ask him if he was joking as I couldn’t believe it. Then I saw the rest of our group walking towards me skipping along pit lane. This was definitely one of the best moments so far in running CSCS. I found out after that I had somehow managed to shave off almost 2 full seconds from my qualifying time and gotten down to a 1:38.633 which ended up being almost 1 second ahead of 2nd place. This also gave me the new track record for my class by 1.5 seconds which is another accomplishment in itself.
The new RSB from Whiteline was working awesome and the rear BBK from StopTech really helped balance the car out and made for a much more stable approach in heavy braking zones. I couldn’t have done this without the help of my Team and friends who come out to the events and either compete or just help get things set-up and turn a long day into a fun day with good company. Looking forward to the rest of the season!
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : jeu. sept. 29, 2016 11:11 am
par Touge Tuning
Every year I make an effort to get out to at least one Hanson Advanced Driving School in order to brush up on my skills and learn some new stuff. The event Last year I was signed off by Peter Hanson the operator and lead instructor of the school which meant an instructor was not required for me on track. This meant most of the learning would be done on my own on track as well as taking some of the advanced techniques taught to the advanced group in the classroom.
The weather was beautiful for the school and the most amazing thing was that there was around 30 Subaru's at the school which was a record for them and I believe was 50% of the total attendees. It was great to see so many old and new faces at the track and from talking to the new people they were already thinking of signing up for the next date. It was great to watch many of the cars we've worked on at the shop lapping around the track and seeing the competitiveness come out of some people as well.
I was able to do a few laps with Peter in the car which is great for me as he is able to give me feedback on where i'm doing well and where I can improve. He was blown away by the cars grip and gave me a few compliments on my driving which is always appreciated from a respected driver like him. Overall it was a great day with good company and I am pleased to see so many taking the plunge and enjoying their cars in a safe and well instructed enviroment.
I had decided that I wanted to upgrade the stock top mount intercooler to try and keep the intake manifold temps down while on track so that heat soak didn't play as much of a roll in lap times and performance. For this I turned to our friends over at Killer B Motorsports to get their upgraded top mount intercooler. Initially I just for the intercooler and mated it up with the stock charge pipe but ran into issues with them staying together. Because the OEM charge pipe is hard plastic with a rubber insert it would not clamp onto the tapered design of the Killer B Top Mount inlet. This meant it would pop off under boost so we rang up Killer B and had them send up their charge pipe which is a beautiful 1 piece mandrel bent pipe. Installation was reasonably straight forward and it definitely looks nicer then the factory plastic pipe. After installation I noticed that intake manifold temps would drop faster while driving and also would not shoot up as high as they would with the stock TMIC where I was seeing upwards of 160+ F at times.
We had OnPoint Dyno do a quick check-up tune on the car to see how it was running and if we could make anymore power. It essentially made the same power at 279WHP so we didn't gain anything but it also didn't lose anything which was surprising with all of the hard driving it's seen. For shits and giggles we called up Shellbourne Fuels to get some 110 octane unleaded Race fuel to run in the car. Unfortunately we weren't able to completely drain the gas tank so we probably had a 50/50 mix of 94 octane and race gas. Even so we were able to make an additional 30WHP over the straight pump gas which is pretty impressive for a stock turbo car on 50/50 mix. In the end I decided not to run the race gas for track events simply due to the cost being $5-6/L. I think a turbo upgrade or maybe a good ethanol based race gas would be cheaper and have similar results.
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : mer. nov. 02, 2016 3:20 pm
par Touge Tuning
After a successful day at the Hanson school, the second round of CSCS Time Attack quickly approached. With the car working so well I made the decision not to change anything mechanically but with the tire contingency prize provided by SteelcaseTires I thought it would be a good chance to try out the new RE-71R from Bridgestone that everyone was raving about. My previous best time at TMP was a 1:22.5 at the final round of CSCS in 2015 running very used Hankook RS-3's. All of the information I've heard and read has the RE-71R being over a second faster than the RS-3.
With the weather for the previous round being horrible everyone was crossing their fingers that Round 2 would be better. The rounds at TMP also tend to have the biggest turn out as there's also drag racing alongside the Time Attack, Drifting and Show and Shine. For this round, we had 5 cars including mine competing which meant it would be a busy day in the pits and on track. With the fresh tires on the car, I went out for my practice and qualifying sessions throughout the day. The first things I noticed was how much grip the tires seemed to have. The RS-3's are a very talkative tire with lots of squealing at and beyond the limit. The RE-71R's just didn't seem to have this but the grip through the corners felt very good. Within the first 2 sessions, I had bested my personal best time with a 1:21.304 which blew me away. I wasn't sure if this was simply due tohaving brand new tires or it was the difference between the RE-71R and the RS-3. So it would seem that the RE-71R are the best 200 treadwear tire on the market right now but this doesn't come without downsides.....more on this later.
Throughout the day I was consistently in the 21's which I had never done before. Even with the new tires though the car was suffering from lifting the inside front wheel on corner exit. This issue is exaggerated due to the open diffs on the WRX in the front and rear which means as soon as one wheel loses traction it sends the power to that wheel causing massive understeer. This situation forces me to wait until the car is close to straight to get onfull power and drive out of the slower tight corners. It requires a bit of patience but I was still extremely happy to be into the 21's consistently and the car felt great. I ended up qualifying 2nd overall with Ryan in his JDM STi qualifying first in the low 1:20's. Being a track where power makes a big difference, I wasn't optimistic about improving my position but anything is possible in Time Attack.
Time Attack went well with my first lap being the fastest as indicated by the SoloDL in the car. My laps went 1:21.506, 1:21.724 and 1:24.654, the last hot lap I overcooked it into turn 3 and decided to ease up. Coming into the pits after cool down I wasn't sure where I'd finished but felt like I did well enough to be on the "podium". They indicated to me that I hadsecond place which was a relief to me and it meant that I was now tied for first overall with Ryan. With some new data gathered we could now go back to the drawing board and figure out what the next best step would be for the car to go even faster.
When swapping back to the street wheels we noticed some pretty crazy wear on the middle tread of the RE-71R's. Both fronts had worn this down at an angle to the wear bar. So as I touched on earlier the outright grip of the tires is a trade off with wear, which from the looks of the tires after 1 day at the track may require multiple sets a year if doing more then 3 or 4 days. Time will tell.
Thanks, as always, goes out to our team at Touge Tuning who comes to every event and helps keep the cars running well and always provides me good feedback when I come in from driving. Also thanks to the great friends who have supported the shop and come to the events just to have a good time and cheer all of the competitors on. Onto the next round at iCar Mirabel in Quebec!
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : mar. nov. 15, 2016 4:14 pm
par Touge Tuning
Some of you may have seen posts on our social media channels about me hitting the track with Speed Academy for a test of our 2015 Subaru WRX aka Project Northstar. Well the video was released recently and I thought it would be good to post up and give you some information that may not have made it into the video. But first take a few minutes and watch me be awkward with my hands...
Hope that was entertaining for at least some of you. Now I want to start by saying that Dave Pratte is not only a great driver but he's also probably turned more laps then 99.9% of people who have driven at Toronto Motorsports Park. He knows the track well and is very quick at getting up to speed, because of this I was pretty definitely worried he would demolish my personal best times. The car was run at 280WHP on 94 Octane Pump fuel, we did not test it with the race fuel map that day. The tires on the car had 1 track event from the 2nd round of CSCS so they were pretty fresh. The braking issues that Dave was experiencing were caused by 2 things, worn pads and a bit of excessive deflection in the wheel hubs. This caused pad knockback which we both experienced during our laps. After this day I modified my driving to tap the brake pedal on the straights to push the pads back against the rotor before the next braking zone. Once the pads were worn we installed a new set of pads which got rid of the above issue. Pad knockback is pretty common with a fixed caliper design.
There's been a few comments regarding the way it "looks" in terms of handling and what not and I can tell you that a video inside the car really doesn't show how good the cars stock suspension is. I have had professional racing drivers in the passenger seat be blown away by how much grip the car can generate with the stock suspension. While coilovers would be an easy option it really hasn't proven to be the weakest point in my quest to go as fast as possible with the car. I also want to point out that in it's current form the car is over 2 seconds faster then a Focus RS around the same track and the RS is $20,000 more expensive brand new stock for stock. With that said, the dampers/springs may get replaced in the future but it's not high on the priority list.
As I touch upon in the video I have an STi 6-speed transmission swap for the car and that is the next major change for the car to try and go faster. We'll touch on this in the next installments and follow up video with Speed Academy.
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : mer. janv. 11, 2017 11:51 am
par Touge Tuning
Well it's -7 Celcius here in Mississauga today, the exact opposite of the weather back in August of this year when it was 29 Celcius in Grand Bend for Round 4. Some of you might be wondering what happened to Round 3 of the 2016 season. Well for unknown reasons iCar in Mirabel Quebec decided to give up the pre-booked event date to a corporate client. The majority of competitors already had accommodations booked and time off work so this was a really big annoyance for most. This also meant the series was cut down from 5 rounds to 4 as an alternative date could not be found in the middle of the year. TSK TSK iCar!
While I was looking forward to running at iCar again it was time to look forward and start planning for Round 4 at Grand Bend Motorplex in Grand Bend, Ontario. Grand Bend is an awesome place to go racing in my opinion. I raced here for 2 years in amateur motorcycle road racing with SOAR and really like the area. The town sits on the shores of Lake Huron and is really busting at the seams in the summer. You can have a great day at the track and head into town for a dinner or to the beach for a swim. I would love to see more events here as it is very appealing despite being around 2.5 hours away. Because of the busy summer season we chose to stay in London, Ontario which is around 20-30 minutes away and offers more options for getting a good nights rest. I know some will not think it's important but I value a good nights rest above all else when it comes to racing.
One of the nice things about Grand Bend Motorplex is the number of configurations they have for the track layout. There's 5 different layouts which allow you to change what kind of set-up will have an advantage over another. 3 of the 5 layouts definitely benefit high power as they use the extremely long back straight. This meant for me that my already underpowered set-up would be even more handicapped at arguably the fastest track of the season. When the round was initially announced it was scheduled to be run on the Modified Layout, which was run 2 years ago. As you'll see below the Modified layout has a very simple right-left-right-left in-field section leading to the super long back straight, right hand fast carousel and then the final fast left back to the start/finish line. This was probably the worst layout for my car but that's racing!
At the last minute before the event CSCS decided to switch it up and run the Technical Track which is probably the most balanced layout giving lower powered cars a better shot at making up time in the infield. This was a bit of a surprise and definitely gave me a glimmer of hope! At this point I was tied for first overall in Street AWD with 1 win and 1 second place. To be honest I was simply hoping for a podium result at Grand Bend as I knew that many of the other cars, including our own, were much faster than mine in terms of outright power. The only advantage I had was that I knew the layout and some of the track secrets that you learn competing at the same place multiple times. We arrived around 930am and set-up the pit area for the cars so we could swap wheels and make sure the cars were working well. A testament to my guys is that the whole season not one of our 3+ cars competing has had a mechanical failure or anything of the sort. With the number of entries overall a little down for this round CSCS ran 2 run groups meaning lots of track time and also a good amount of time in between runs. I actually prefer fewer but longer sessions as it gives you the chance to work on the cars in between or just let them cool down properly.
The experience advantage seemed to be working right out of the gate as I was immediately second quickest for Street AWD which again had the largest number of entries at 12 competitors. Unfortunately for me Ryan and his RHD GC STi were sitting in first pretty much all day around half a second ahead of my best time. I continued to shave off time and he would go faster which made me feel like he had a decent amount of time left in the bag. Due to the heat I actually skipped a session or 2 to let the car cool and keep the fuel level at a good amount for the final time attack session. While waiting for the final session we noticed that the RE71R tires were wearing on the drivers front outer edge pretty aggressively. This is likely a combination of the really hot temperatures combined with the long right hand infield section putting a lot of stress on the front left. The tires were actually so bad that we knew the tires would be useless after this event so I had to try and extract all that was left.
Going into the time attack session I was pretty confident I could do a low 1:13 which is where I qualified but beyond this the factors were stacked against me. Hot temps and worn tires are not a combination for turning a fast lap. I was lined up behind Ryan which was getting far too familiar at this point! We had quite a long wait for our time out as the class ahead of ours ended up having the slowest qualifier interfere with the fastest qualifier so instead of doing 5 laps they did something around 7 or 8. The marshalls finally waived us on track with around 10 seconds gap between myself and Ryan. As always I really try to focus on keeping the car cool on the out lap until the last section where I will try and get the brakes and tires slowly up to temperature. Coming around the long carousel I made sure to position myself for a fast entrance into the left kink heading to the start line. Lap one seemed to go well although I never felt like the car was as fast as it could be in the infield section. The long back straight gave me time to do the usual helmet adjustment, belt check and also allowed me to tap the brakes to get the pads back up against the rotor face as pad knockback was an issue for me all day. I got a great run around the carousel and was very fast through the left kink which has a little bump that your left wheels hit if you cut it aggressively. Luckily the stock suspension absorbs bumps well and the car didn't get out of shape and just took it like a champ. I crossed the line of the first lap and on the AIM Solo DL I saw 1:12.56!
It was hard to control my excitement as this was the first time for me in the 12's but I still had 2 more laps to go! I continued to push on the second lap and crossing the line saw a 1:12.34, even faster and pretty much a full second faster then I had qualified. So much for me not having faith in my little WRX, she clearly wanted to go fast. Last lap I pushed even further and just tried to keep the infield section clean and smooth and brake a little deeper at the end of the back straight. Crossing the line the AIM screen flashed a 1:12.32 which was my fastest lap of the day. On the cool down lap I was so happy with how I had driven I was even talking to myself. I uttered something to the effect of it didn't matter where I finished as that was probably the best driving I had ever done. It may not seem important to some but being able to put down 3 laps in a row within 2 tenths of a second with such a simple car is an accomplishment in my books. As we pulled off track to exchange our transponders for our drivers licenses and credit cards I was getting nervous. Did I even make the podium? How did Ryan do ahead of me? How much did I lose by?
All those questions were answered when the CSCS official told me to head to the P1 spot! I couldn't even believe it I had to ask them again to be sure. Sure enough I had somehow pulled out another win and also another class track record. This put me back in first place overall for Street AWD and meant it would come down to the final round to see if I could continue to stay at the sharp end of things. Our 3 cars did amazing and I can't stress enough how much fun it is to be able to share these events with great friends!
Round 4 didn't end without a little bit of carnage. Below you'll see an image of the Bridgestone RE-71R tires at the end of the day. You'll also see the front brake pads which were actually worn to the backing plates just as we pulled into the Mississauga area at the end of the drive back. Thankfully nothing was damaged and the pads still had enough life left to get me the win!
Re: Touge Tuning's 2015 WRB WRX - Northstar
Publié : mar. juin 13, 2017 8:20 pm
par Touge Tuning
I'm a bit behind on keeping things updated on Northstar but I hope you're all still interested in the progress. This update takes place back in September of 2016 at the final round of CSCS hosted at Toronto Motorsports Park. Going into this final round I was leading the Street AWD class by 10 points, after taking home two 1st places and one 2nd place. All season has been back and forth against Ryan and his highly modified JDM GC8 and thus it would come down to the finale to decide the season.
Leading up to this round the only major changes to the car was the upgrade to an STi 6-Speed Transmission and Rear Differential. I also added a MapDCCD controller which we've had great success with at the shop on different cars. The other change since the last time at TMP was that I was back on Hankook RS-3 tires instead of the Bridgestone RE-71R. This was a tough decision as the RE-71R worked amazingly well but they simply did not last nearly as long as the RS-3 and buying a fresh set of tires for the last round wasn't in the cards. I know from last years finale my best time at the track on RS-3's was 1:22.44 and with the changes made for the transmission and rear brakes I expected to get into the 1:21's without much issue. I knew going into the last round I was at the same disadvantage as in round 2 since it is a track that benefits horsepower. Being down over 100WHP really makes it tough to make up time in the corners or braking.
The day started out well, for the most part, although traffic was a bit of an issue which made putting in a clean lap was tricky. After the first few sessions I was sitting in 2nd place for qualifying, almost 2 seconds behind Ryan in 1st. At this point my hopes of trying to pull out a 1st place were very very low and the competitors in 3rd and lower were very close as well. Mid-way through the day the skies began to darken and anyone familiar with the Cayuga area knows that a storm can roll in pretty quickly. The clouds rolled in quickly and a torrential downpour with strong wind proceeded to pound the track. Some competitors canopies were destroyed, the track had a bunch of large puddles on the inside of many corners and all of the grassy area became mud. The rain washed away the rubber build up and essentially locked in the qualifying positions. I still went out for the sessions as I always find driving on a wet track fun and challenging.
By the time the time attack session rolled around the track had dried out pretty decently and I was excited to get back on track. My first fast lap was pretty good, until the last corner when I missed a shift and ruined that lap and also any chance of a fast time on the 2nd lap. The last corner at TMP comes onto the long start/finish straight which means your drive out of the last corner is extremely critical. I took a breather and tried to keep the car cool without losing too much heat from the tires. I made sure my exit on the last corner was as good as possible and knew I had one shot at this. Crossing the finish line I wasn't sure how that lap had gone, it felt good but sometimes feeling fast doesn't mean it actually is. Pulling through pit in the CSCS officials told me I had taken 2nd place, this was a huge relief as I was worried the other competitors might edge me out. Even though 2nd place is good, it was somewhat bittersweet, as prior to the event CSCS had come up with a new tie breaker rule. Because Ryan and I would both have Two 1st and Two 2nd places their current rules wouldn't be able to determine a winner. The new rule would add up all the time attack session times and the person with the lowest elapsed time would win. My elapsed time going into the last round was 252.461 seconds while Ryans was 252.969 seconds. This meant I had half a second gap to win the "tie breaker". I ended up with a 1:21.610 which was almost a full second faster then my previous best time on RS-3's. Well Ryan put in a very fast lap and ended up taking the tie breaker win at the end.
I definitely consider this season a successful campaign of my 2015 Subaru WRX and i'm looking forward to continued development and am really hoping to get into the 1:20's or below for 2017! Thanks goes out to all of our team members, without everyone these events would not be as fun as they are.
