AMS Super Lap Battle Videos

AMS Super Lap Battle Videos
It’s only been a little over a month but finally getting caught up and getting a chance to post up some videos and comments about the Super Street Super lap Battle.

We took our EVO X and in a few weeks turned it into a potent street class car. Using all of our bolt-on’s including a new prototype turbo kit we pulled about 440whp out of the stock engine and took a few lbs out of the car. In the end the car weighed in a little over 3400lbs with me in it.

Being sponsored by BFGoodrich I ran the BFG KD, although discontinued I managed to get a set of old stock. Some people told me I was crazy to run on those tires and I think Robi even said that if I ran in the 56’s it would be a feat! Well they turned out to be pretty decent compared to the new rubber that’s out there from the competition. the qualification session I ran all my hot laps in the 56’s, 1:56.9 , a 1:56.66, and qualified #1 with a 1:56.64 . Unfortunately from there our luck and my skill ran out, haha.
We had the BFG’s mounted on new wheels and apparently the valve stem cores where not screwed in all the way and leaked with the caps off. Between sessions we left the caps off and pressure was way down in a few tires.
I went out for the first session not realizing this and the car pushed badly and just handled like crap. I should have come in and checked but silly me stayed out there and just beat up the tires more.

After coming and being frustrated we checked the tire pressure and realized what was going on. The second session we aired them up and wound up still a little short of our target hot pressure but it was much better. Unfortunately track conditions got much worse (a car lost a motor) and the tires got chewed up from the previous session.
Our car came to California untested and I was rather impressed with Ivan’s and mine ability to dial the car in. Of course input by phone from Mark Daddio and Bryan Hise helped too
With the car still pushing we had to make a big change to loosen her up. We swapped the rear tires on the front, took some rear wing out of it, I changed shock settings, and tweaked the alignment.
last session the car woke up and it was really fun to drive! It was a little loose especially in corner #1, but great everywhere else, very fun and fast to drive. I experimented with corner #1 and even coming off the brakes early and then turning in it still made the back end take off. One more round of tweaks and it would have been perfect.

Overall it was an awesome experience from my end as a driver and for Ivan as a support crew, we both learned a lot and enjoyed the challenge. FWIW, we ran the fastest time in street class in every session besides the first one where track condition were good and we made our rookie mistake. No excuses as racing means a lot more than just a fast lap in practice or quals, it means putting it all together when it counts, and congratulations go to Nils for doing it big and winning the event! Also great job to Ryan Gates for 2nd, it was really fun chasing each other around and cutting our lap times down.

Now for the vids:

Here the nice video Rich put together: see below for more laps and my screw-ups.
http://videos.streetfire.net/video/A…Lap_206611.htm

A hot lap running 1.56.9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WIqF…e=channel_page

A hot lap in the last session where we made our changes, can you tell the difference?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAo-V…eature=channel

Out-takes – drift car
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=967L0…e=channel_page

Out-takes – low tire pressure, bad tire chatter, too hot into corner = baja driving
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gtR6…e=channel_page

Out-takes – sloppy driving, over driving , etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPUh…e=channel_page