I had an opportunity to autox the car this weekend. Let me start off by saying I have done quite a bit of autox with my Gen 2 so all the comparisons will be slanted towards my G2 experience. As far as ability, 50% of the time I ****, 25% of the time I am OK and 25% of the time I am pretty good. I think part of that is because the viper is too large for autox and the power does not always help.
Myself (G5) and a friend with a G1 joined a corvette regional autox points event. I believe it was five state clubs that sponsered the event. The national corvette club has a very well defined set of classes for autox. My guess is that this event had some of the fastest cars from each club. This was a two day event, however, we only raced on the second day. The course was fast and the gates were open which is good for both the corvette and the viper. Lastly, this was a very good group of people and they showed us a lot of hospitality.
There were approx 40 cars at the event. At least half the cars had full slicks. We had 13 runs full runs. The temps were about 80 degrees. To the best of my knowledge the following is accurate. The course/time board is very busy and hard to follow, plus, some cars did not have their last two runs displayed when we left. They are supposed to email us the results, if they differ I will correct this account. From what I could see I had the third fastest car. What makes it more interesting, this was a first timeout for the car and I was running street tires versus the competition with full slicks, although, the Corsa's seem to stick real well. The car will have A6's on it fairly soon. My friend with the G1 also did very well.
Technical Review
I guarantee that anyone who has autox'ed previously will be all smiles if they autox this car. In short it is amazing. It will improve your times.
Stability Control - this may not be the same for road racing, but, but, for autox I do not think that lap times will improve if you run with stability off. I run autox with a Pontiac GXP turbo and it turns better times with stability off, I do not believe that is the case for this car. The stability/traction control is non-evasive when you are at speed and it does allow a lot of drift even though this car is an SRT with no race mode. The stability is merely off or on.
Traction Control - This is the only wart I have found on this car. When you run with stability control on, that automatically includes traction control. The traction control portion is far too invasive and and causes the car to bog when you launch. Until they make a PCM change you will not get around this problem consistently when stability/traction control is turned on. The current solution is to launch with stability off and as soon as you are at speed you turn stability back on. It is a little tricky, but, manageable. This is probably not an issue if the autox slows you down off the gate, however, at this event you could get speed up quickly, therefore, a good launch was important.
Tires - The P-Zeros seem to stick very nicely. You have to start cold at 25 psi. I made a mistake and started at 29 psi, they went up to 36 psi during the runs and the tires started to crown and they did not have the full patch on the ground. The tires ran 150-160 degrees on the track. This car was set up by Woodhouse and the tires on the outside had real even temps once I dropped them down to 29-30 degrees hot. If you drop these down any further they will chunk on you real quick.
Windshield Wipers - they are pretty close to the steering wheel, take out the fuse.
Shocks - This car has the MCS shocks and 500/800 springs. They basically have 15 clicks of range. My street settings are compression at full soft and the rebound at 7 clicks off full close. For autox I started with the compression at 8 clicks off full close and the rebound at 10 clicks off full close. The problem with stability control on is that it sort of hides the changes you make to the shocks. You no longer get the full feel, you have to look at lap times. We ran 4/4/6 sets of laps. I kept increasing the compression till I saw a difference, however, I forgot the stability control was masking the changes. In my last set of six runs I had the compression up at 11 clicks, that was way too much and my lap times went up, however, I was feeling more comfortable with the car and turned my best time on the last run.If the compression setting had been at 7-8, the time would have been better.
Steering - I think one problem with the G2 was the time-delay when steering, such as in the slalom, it did not react fast enough. That hesitation is gone you do not have to slow down or contemplate where you have to turn - you just turn and it does turn on a time and it stays planted.
Gearing - As much a I hate this long first gear for drag racing, however, this first gear is perfect for autox.
Myself (G5) and a friend with a G1 joined a corvette regional autox points event. I believe it was five state clubs that sponsered the event. The national corvette club has a very well defined set of classes for autox. My guess is that this event had some of the fastest cars from each club. This was a two day event, however, we only raced on the second day. The course was fast and the gates were open which is good for both the corvette and the viper. Lastly, this was a very good group of people and they showed us a lot of hospitality.
There were approx 40 cars at the event. At least half the cars had full slicks. We had 13 runs full runs. The temps were about 80 degrees. To the best of my knowledge the following is accurate. The course/time board is very busy and hard to follow, plus, some cars did not have their last two runs displayed when we left. They are supposed to email us the results, if they differ I will correct this account. From what I could see I had the third fastest car. What makes it more interesting, this was a first timeout for the car and I was running street tires versus the competition with full slicks, although, the Corsa's seem to stick real well. The car will have A6's on it fairly soon. My friend with the G1 also did very well.
Technical Review
I guarantee that anyone who has autox'ed previously will be all smiles if they autox this car. In short it is amazing. It will improve your times.
Stability Control - this may not be the same for road racing, but, but, for autox I do not think that lap times will improve if you run with stability off. I run autox with a Pontiac GXP turbo and it turns better times with stability off, I do not believe that is the case for this car. The stability/traction control is non-evasive when you are at speed and it does allow a lot of drift even though this car is an SRT with no race mode. The stability is merely off or on.
Traction Control - This is the only wart I have found on this car. When you run with stability control on, that automatically includes traction control. The traction control portion is far too invasive and and causes the car to bog when you launch. Until they make a PCM change you will not get around this problem consistently when stability/traction control is turned on. The current solution is to launch with stability off and as soon as you are at speed you turn stability back on. It is a little tricky, but, manageable. This is probably not an issue if the autox slows you down off the gate, however, at this event you could get speed up quickly, therefore, a good launch was important.
Tires - The P-Zeros seem to stick very nicely. You have to start cold at 25 psi. I made a mistake and started at 29 psi, they went up to 36 psi during the runs and the tires started to crown and they did not have the full patch on the ground. The tires ran 150-160 degrees on the track. This car was set up by Woodhouse and the tires on the outside had real even temps once I dropped them down to 29-30 degrees hot. If you drop these down any further they will chunk on you real quick.
Windshield Wipers - they are pretty close to the steering wheel, take out the fuse.
Shocks - This car has the MCS shocks and 500/800 springs. They basically have 15 clicks of range. My street settings are compression at full soft and the rebound at 7 clicks off full close. For autox I started with the compression at 8 clicks off full close and the rebound at 10 clicks off full close. The problem with stability control on is that it sort of hides the changes you make to the shocks. You no longer get the full feel, you have to look at lap times. We ran 4/4/6 sets of laps. I kept increasing the compression till I saw a difference, however, I forgot the stability control was masking the changes. In my last set of six runs I had the compression up at 11 clicks, that was way too much and my lap times went up, however, I was feeling more comfortable with the car and turned my best time on the last run.If the compression setting had been at 7-8, the time would have been better.
Steering - I think one problem with the G2 was the time-delay when steering, such as in the slalom, it did not react fast enough. That hesitation is gone you do not have to slow down or contemplate where you have to turn - you just turn and it does turn on a time and it stays planted.
Gearing - As much a I hate this long first gear for drag racing, however, this first gear is perfect for autox.
