Nathan Pitcher 929 Evo – Track Day Testing 3.26.2011

After about 4hrs of sleep, this (pic above) was the scene early Saturday morning – bundled up and unpacking the car! It was downright cold and windy in the morning and didn’t change much throughout the day. The high I seen was 36; maybe 37 degrees. Temps under 40 definitely bring up a host of additional issues! I was probably going to be running street tires all day and definitely needed to turn the boost down!

I got everything unloaded and was out on track early. I wanted to check out the updated 100oct tune from AMS Performance, my new AST Coilovers, my new alignment and my new Aero. Lots of new stuff! I ran maybe 8 laps at about 6/10’s and everything felt good and solid. Nothing broke, cracked, fell off and all the gauges looked good.

My 2nd time out I took Aaron who aligned the car the previous day for some feedback. I pushed the car a bit more but nothing more than 7/10’s really. I ran my GPS data and even with the additional passenger weight I hit 130.45 mph on the main straight which was a personal best. I think the boost leaks have been remedied! Thank you so much AMS for the new gaskets and the updated tune!

After the 2nd session and about 20 laps in all the car was nearly out of fuel. We came in – I filled it up with 93 oct and switched the maps and cranked the boost even lower. Turns out it was low enough.
As I had this day and my next trackday for testing, I figure why run the expensive fuel. I should’ve stuck with the 100. Turns out when it’s 36 degrees out, I can’t turn down my MBC low enough to prevent boost cut! It took me 3 different occasions to verify this was infact the issue and nothing else was wrong with the suspension or the tune. I had the new A/F gauage and it was pegged straight to 10 during one of the boost cuts. What a pain… My remedy was to run at partial throttle the rest of the day – so I did so and worked on learning the suspension/aero more.

By the end of the day I dipped into the 1:19’s. I got more daring with the car and tried to force some oversteer and understeer and it wouldn’t do it! Meaning that not only is the car initially balanced, but I can definitely raise the cornering speed.

In all I put on 114 miles which equates to around 60-65 laps at Putnam Park. I’ll be back here in May with NASA! Before then, hell before my next event we’ve got a ton of GPS data to wade through and a host of minor changes to make. Namely the rotor and brake setup. I was running front Girodisc 2-peice rotors and ST-43 pads and they wouldn’t fully come in until about 8 laps. After that they were hard to modulate for me; just not a big fan. That’s not going to work for me when I run TT and need to hit it early and hard. Plus after 4 days they look pretty damn spent which is not what I’d hoped for considering the intial price. So we’ll see…

Video! Here’s a few laps from around 3pm. Still on my 245 Dunlop Z1 StarSpec’s and running about 3/4 throttle to prevent boost cut: