Few weeks later I decided to return to SMSP GP to see how much I could better my time by with no changes to the car. All I did for prep was replace the radiator cable ties as shown below. First photo is what was left of the old cable ties still sitting in the radiator.. All fixed now, hopefully the spring setup will give a bit more flex

As said, returned to SMSP GP with the same setup as the previous event with the goal of dipping into the .49s, push it hard to see if anything else breaks, and setting this as the cars current benchmark before changing a few things up and progressing further.

Overall, the car had a great night. Myles was here again, decided to change up what we set the tyres to especially with them wearing out. One thing I needed to improve on was the out lap being more aggressive to warm up the car and start going for it straight away, instead of this leisurely strolling around like I did last time. This was great, give it the beans out the pit and get straight into the hard weaving and braking. I do do this normally, but at a slower speed and lower rpm, so higher speed and rpm this time round. Less time wasted!

A lot of traffic throughout the night, probably should have been in the top group, and unfortunately had the brake vibration instantly. We did inspect and try turning the rotors the way the brakes would clamp and throw it back, because of the mini cooper rotors being too big on the studs, but this didn't help anything. Made me start to think these rotors are warped? Oh well, I dealt with it for the rest of the night. It would jump the car around a lot, could see my headlights jumping on the car in front.

Quickly I got low 1.50's and then a 1.50.0 (found out the next day reviewing the logs it was a 1.49.98), I could easily feel a 1.49 if the lap wasn't too interupted.

And on the next outing I managed to slip into the .49s a few times, resulting in a 1.49.37 PB for the night. The tyres were quite gone towards the end to be fair, they are a few years old. You'll see in the video I was getting excessive understeer between T4 > T5 and a few others but we kept sending it.

Main improvements for the night were:

• Harder out lap
• Using 3rd gear for T6 instead of 2nd from last time. I just have to keep in mind to throw it into the turn, try get on the gas early and use all the road & kerb out wide
• T1 no braking, just a slight let off then back on gas. Sometimes I had to modulate the throttle a bit on the first half of the corner depending on corner entry
• More kerb on T10 to shoot across, surprised how much time this saved

Unfortunately the last session towards the end I got a TPS engine light againm. Some testing in the pits, we could easily reproduce with moving the plug and wires around so I'll need to investigate, I guess it'll be same as the IAT!

Great night overall, few things to take away. We now have a great base line on old tyres. Time to get some new and better tyres, fix the brakes and TPS, maybe one or two other things and then return.

Race dash needs some enhancements around the shift light setup, bit hard to see I found. It was getting some weird delays at redline as well. I'll try to cover more of this on future posts.

10hz receive was working this time for RaceChrono! GoPro fixed as well, does still seem slightly bumpy, might need some adjustments

Brakes wear after the night was looking quite good again!