Ebisu 6 extra hour - Tom's perspective

I've driven all 3 races with the Prelude now. The 12 hour on the original Aragosta suspension setup, the 6 hour on the Tein and now the last 6 hour on the new Aragosta rebuilt suspension with uprated damping and springs. Each race saw an improved the car and faster lap times.

Thinking back to the original race, I think tires have made a huge difference. My original first session was done on RE01s where as the 2nd night session was on a vastly grippier tire, the Z1 star specs. Unfortunately, I found night driving a real visual challenge and was not able to drive as fast as I should have been able to drive to really get a feel for the Z1s but I could sense that they were faster. The next race, we had 8 new Z1s and after a practice session, everyone who raced was confident of the extra available grip and raced them harder leading to improved lap times. Personally, I preferred the first suspension over the TEIN setup we had due to a very slow initial roll rate. I personally think tires as well as cooler weather made me faster.

This last race, the car was vastly different again. A new suspension, gear box and LSD among other things. The gearbox got rid of the reverse problems, but it does have some syncro trouble I think between 2nd and 3rd. The LSD gives us vastly improved traction out of corners which feels amazing. I really enjoyed that. Its a one-way LSD setup. The suspension immediately felt amazing on practice and gave me a lot of confidence to try to go faster.

During practice I pitted a few times to try different damping adjustments and was really amazed by the difference they made. The first setting I tried was quite good everywhere except for the chicane where I felt, if we could get easier neutral turn-in, we could improve our lap time. The next few settings were definitely a step backwards until finally, I got something I liked and went out and got a 1'11.4 in one lap before I came back in again satisfied. What I liked though was how different it felt with every twist. Thanks Miguel and Sumi for working with me on the adjustments.

Before qualification, we found the crack in the rotors. I was in two minds about what to do but decided to believe in the brakes and get on with it. On new tires, I headed out around the first corner and lost it completely sideways though the chicane. I managed to get things back under control and pointing down hill again but it was quite a scare. I had completely forgotten that these were brand spanking new tires so they still had to get through a layer of skin before getting down to actual proper rubber compound. I did 2 slow laps to get the tires prepped and on my first hot lap, I scored a 1'10.5. The next few laps, I made the mistake of following the super 7 around which affected my time as I had to lift or brake earlier to avoid him at times. I felt we could have gone faster but it was time to save the rotor/tires and car and come in. A 1'10.5 is the fastest the car has been and it got us 8th on the grid and 2nd in class - ahead of the Super 7 I might add :-) Looking at the TM data, I note that the best virtual lap time for that session was a 1'10.0 so we can get into the 1'09s for sure.

Dan started the race for us and I mostly watched from the pit as I kept an eye on things. Dan is new to the team which made starting the race for us a lot more stressful on him then he might like to admit. It's always hard to know what your team mates are thinking, you are worried about starting from 8th and ending your session last and not living up to expectations, you are worried that you haven't driven the car so much before, nor done a rolling start. You are worried you might mess up and kill the car before anyone else gets to drive. You want to bring the car back but you want to make your team proud too. I know this feeling from my first endurance race when I started the race for 7 others that I didn't know and I was starting from 2nd on a grid of about 28. Pressure!

When Dan pitted, I checked tire pressures and checked the tires. We had a problem. Our front left tire was showing a lot of degradation and was ripping apart on the outside. Tire pressure was down also to 220kpa (a slow punture perhaps?) and we sent Sumi out on it hoping for a safety car so that we could change it without losing too much time. That was a terrible judgement call and I'm quite embarrassed over agreeing to it but it was driven by 1 silly reason; the fact that this was only the beginning of hour 2 and we had only 4 worn tires left (one of which itself was blistered although not too badly) - would we last the race... Would I be able to drive the car back to Tokyo on our race rubber? Deja-vu from the last race.

Anyway, Sumi was out on badly worn tires but doing quite well with lap times of around 1'13 ~ 1'14 so all didn't seem too bad. Back in the pit, we thought about the problem and decided to change the tire if the chance arose. 30 minutes into Sumi's session things were looking bad as he was lapping around 1'30 and we decided to bring him in albeit a little too late. He had a puncture and was coming in anyway. With the tire changed, Sumi did a few more 1'16 laps before bringing the tires back in pristine condition for Mike. Apologies Sumi! You did a fantastic job! I hope you learned as much from it as I did.

Mike was in charge of hour 3 for us and he promised to drive hard but without pushing under-steer. He lapped a mixture of 1'13s with some 1'12s and 1'14s in the mix. He got our best lap of the race which was a 1'12. Well done Mike! When Mike pitted though, the tires were showing blistering again although no-where near as bad as when Dan first came in. Still having learned from the puncture, we decided to give Rod a "new" left tire.

Rod was only out about 15 minutes when the safety car came out so we dragged Rod in and decided to raise the front suspension. Miguel and Sumi worked their magic and we had Rod out again before the safety car ended. He noted that the car under-steered more with the new setup but he drove a pretty clean race and finished our 4th hour with decent rubber left for James. I need to check up on Rods times but think he drove very consistently at 1'14s. Nice driving Rod!

James was in charge of hour 5. We'd two old front tires left should we have needed them for the last driver which was me. James was very mindful of the tires also and lapped with average lap times of 1'15. Thank you for being so mature James! During James run, I noted that we were only 1 lap down from car 39 which was a white roadster. We were sitting in 10th willing James on to wind that lap back when the safety car went out at around 14:40 and the decision was made to fill up, bring James in and send me out. This made sense race tactics wise but perhaps not so much for James whos session was cut about 15 minutes short. Sorry James! I hope it was worth it to get 9th place!

Before I got in the car the guys put on the old front tire from the practice session on the front left and off I went just in front of car 39 who was trying to up the count to a 2 lap lead. I drove slow enough around during the 2 safety car laps much to the annoyance of the 2 cars behind me who kept flashing me. I suspect they wanted to pit again for more gas before the safety car would come around but I was in charge and they didn't have time to pit before the green flag came out and the race was back on as I missed third gear up the hill and let the cars get too close to me. The faster NB got up my inside on the chicane and I slowed to get a clean line around it when he also slowed in front of me thus letting car 39 through for a 2 lap lead! What just happened? Was that team tactics? I smiled to myself at the cleverness and chased conservatively for the next 3 laps. Having a 75 minute session left and worrying about excessive tire wear, I wasn't going to push the tires just yet. I'd save them for when I needed them.

Car 39 pitted about 4 laps into my session and I looked at the petrol gauge only to see that I'd just around 7/8 of a tank and about 70 minutes to go... Hmmm. From that point on, I decided to be intelligent about fuel also so as to avoid having to pit in and lose laps to car 39. About 40 minutes to go I passed car 39 on the uphill section and new that we were safely either ahead on the same lap or 1 lap ahead. All I had to do was keep the tires, keep the fuel and stay on the track and we'd keep our new 9th place. The orange light came on with about 10 minutes to go and I started changing up even more actively and not using all the throttle on the downhill sections. It became a race for survival.

Coming over the finish line, I was blissfully happy and shoved my arm out the window as if we'd won. What a race... There is something about an endurance race, the complete team effort, the awe at the car making it so far that draws you in wanting more. It turns out I didn't really have to worry about tires either as they were pristine like I wanted them as I had to drive back to Tokyo on them :-)

In hindsight, it would have been worth swapping data cards in the TraqMate to check the first sessions video while Sumi-san was running to see if we could identify if tire wear was down to the driver or the car. I've since reviewed some of Dan's footage and am pretty sure that he destroyed the tires in the first 20 minutes or so of his session. The remaining 40 minutes he actually drove really well as he found his lines and braking points. Nice driving in the last part of your session Dan!

In my opinion we are killing tires primarily in two places.
a) downhill braking and turn in area followed by under-steering the exit.
b) exit of the last corner
Here a) is the primary killer.

Thinking about this further, I think we need:
a) pre-race driver education on how to drive our car and what not to do.
b) more camber on the front - we need to use more of the tire under load. this will help get more speed uphill also on the exit of the last corner as well have more tire patch in contact.
c) more setup testing to better understand what we have and how to change it.
d) different tires which are less prone to break up under a little abuse. The RE11s for example have a much wider outside thread like an s-tire and might be worth trying. Other Sports-radial suggestions welcome.
e) improving downhill braking. A lot of problems seem to stem from braking issues down hill. RE11s also brake quite well in my opinion. Maybe worth trying a stronger pad on the rear (as it doesn't need to be an endurance pad on the rear). Another thing which will help that is reducing weight which has already been mentioned.

I would tend to shy away from harder springs right now and leave the suspension as it is. I think we have a lot more we can improve on before we need to go firmer. Camber might be just what we need to go even faster.

Hmmm. That is rather a long post without any photos but I'm sure my team mates will forgive me. Again - thanks to all for a great day and some great racing. Thanks especially to all who worked on the car preparation!