Ok, some fun news/results from the build: I went to Buttonwillow 13CW today. I wanted to test the full aero and drive the new BFGoodrich R1S tires.
I'll skip to the results: I dropped 5 seconds off my previous best. New personal best: 1:49.02
The car feels amazing----very dialed in. The front aero has completed the build. The R1S tires felt really good. They are an impressive tire.
It was REALLY windy out there today. And the wind was definitely causing issues. My best lap came in the last session when the wind was finally dying down. In the video, you can see the afternoon sun is low and DIRECTLY in your face at times. It was still blowing but way mellower than the howling that was going on all day. I'm quite certain the lap time can drop further with the right conditions. Since I've never driven these tires, I don't know how long they stay prime, but they still felt great in the last run.
I turned traction control off today because I was just running into it too much. After 4 years, I think I've finally found the limit of Euro-MDM traction control on my car: 1:51.5. As some of you may know, I've been roundly criticized and ridiculed over the last 4 years for leaving traction control on. That's ok, I'm immune to peer pressure. I would certainly never turn MDM off because people poked fun at me. But today, with full aero and faster tires, it was just kicking in all the time. You could tell the car wanted to go faster, but MDM was holding back the power and frequently engaging the brakes on individual wheels (I can see that with the AIM Solo DL). So, I turned it off. I've been practicing with DSC-off---maybe 25% of the time, and I've spent time on a skid pad, so DSC-off is not new to me. Well, the car just popped to life and and the aero was doing it's thing and the tires were doing their thing and it was just a great day out there, regardless of the wind.
I am really enjoying this phase of the car---the cage, the lighter weight, the full aero, the R1S tires, the harnesses/neck restraint, the data, the video. It all came together today and worked incredibly well.
Here's the bumper cam: