MX, what sort of problems were you having with your car last night? It looked like it might have been a bit too tail happy or kind of squirrely coming off the corners a couple of times when we were close, I'm hardly the best person to give tuning advice since I usually have arse backwards numbers to everyone else but maybe we can figure out something for the next race. Ironically I ended up having problems myself in the few practice laps at Indy right before the race and reset half my suspension to mostly default settings at the last minute which seemed to really help out and even worked well in the test laps I did a bit later with Soks and Grumpy at Rome.
Well, you are very observant. Most of my problems with the car exist between my ears. I spent a week practicing and tuning for this event, and then didn't have internet for 4 plus days. My connection literally went green right before the qualify. The last time I touched my car, it was still understeering more than I like. So I gave it a little tweak to make it looser with the expectation that I would have some time to test and tune after that. I didn't. So I get to the race, do some practice laps and then we start qualifying. I'm about a second and a half behind my best time. So I exit and tweak. Then it takes two laps to get one good lap for qual. Still too slow. Exit and tweak. Two more laps. Exit and tweak. Coming down pit lane the race starts. Since I exited, I'm starting at the back. Ok, no problem, I think I have the tune back to where it was. Leroy Jenkins, here I come.
When we start racing, I start moving up through traffic a bit. We get half way around and I try to gun it pre-apex. Car drifts wide over the rumble strip into the painted section on the left hand side. All of a sudden, my cold tires can't grip on the painted surface, back end comes around and I lose the main pack. Now my attitude is all jacked up and everytime my tail gets a little loose, I just dime the throttle and try to do a donut in anger. LOL.
Did a couple of laps trying to smoke my tires. Got tired of that, pitted, drove by myself for a while and calmed down. Last half of the race I was actually driving pretty well. I was just praying for the torture to end by that time.
In terms of handling issues with the car, I am clearly overdriving the tires. It wants to understeer like a pig for me. But I'm pretty sure that's because I'm not braking enough. So I'm actually trying to make the car more loose. On corner exit, if I dime the throttle, the back end swings out. I just need to use a little throttle discipline there and roll on the throttle as I'm unwinding the steering. When I do that right, it's ok. If I can solve the corner entry plowing, I think I can get a bit faster.
Edit: also want to add, taking 5 pounds off the car made very little difference.