Ok, so I took the car to a large empty car park last night to give it a proper blast and it is a handful! Admitting there was not a lot of thought regards setup (an area I need to learn!!) the only thing I did was raise the suspension a little to accomodate the bumps in the tarmac and odd nasty looking loose stone. I know doing this was not conducive to maximum traction but even so.....
After a few blasts up and down with neat tucked in turns I decided to shoot it down the straight flat out. It didnt just wheelie, it proceeded to go vertical, scratching all of the motor cover and underside of the wing before completing the manoeuvre by back flipping onto its roof!!
After this I was a lot more gentle when getting on the throttle so lesson learned I guess. However, on future runs when I hit top speed it wasnt starting that was the problem, it was stopping. Unless I started braking 25m before the end of the road I found it impossible to break without the the arse overtaking the nose...
Now this may partly been down to ride height as I say, and also the fact that I was doing the flat out runs on the downhill stretch of the car park which is obviously going to emphasise any weight shift forward but I was still surprised by this behaviour.
It always gives a conundrum regarding weight distribution, I could hold the arse down with some rear end weight. But then this would surely only compound the acceleration issues with a light front end!?
The other question this test drive last night raised, was can you actually ever go full throttle in a race? The time it took for me to hit top gear, travel maybe 40m at top speed and then stop it again without it spinning through 180 degreees (horizontal axis) must have been a total distance of maybe 80m. Do many tracks have 80m straights? And this is with the advance timing set at ZERO!!
One other thing, the toss driver of the day award goes to me as well.
I have always been a sticks man but changed to a wheel for the first time with this car, so as well as getting used to the car I have the handset to get used to as well. In the first few minutes of driving it, when going down the hill at maybe 80% throttle, I meant to hit the brake but instead hit the throttle full power. I knew what I wanted to do but my brain just didnt compute the to the trigger finger..... Cue the car slamming flat out nose first into a raised concrete kerb.
I ran over to it fearing the worst, but to my surprise it was 100% intact. It had mounted the kerb and consequently scratched the underside of the front lip in a big way, but that was the only damage at all which I was surprised and relieved to see!
I didnt do that again either though so I guess its all part of the learning curve to handling the relentless power of this beast.
Once I have got it down to Moto Arena and given it a proper track workout I will have more idea of where it stands, but last night was enough to tell me that fun times lay ahead......
