On a wing and a prayer

Spoilers. Wings. Fins. Negative lift devices. Aerodynamic aids. Call them what you want, I have never been all that partial to these things folks bolt to the boot lids of their cars in the mistaken allusion that they will magically transform the dubious handling of their family sedan into that of a race bred machine. At best they will add drag and slow the car down, at worst the wing might be ripped off at speed and slice the head off some poor sap following on behind minding his own business.

Look Mom, I'm a race car!

Personally, I like the name "spoiler", since generally that's what they do to the lines of a car.

So, it was with more than a little trepidation that I started considering fitting a wing to the rear of my car. My thinking was, however, helped considerably by the last couple of outings following my recent upgrades. You see, I had taken the car out four times since the wheels, brakes, pedals etc had been upgraded and, of those four outings, I had managed to spin during three of them. The spins were also a little confusing. You can generally tell when you have overcooked something and will be mentally ready for the inevitable consequence. I have done this plenty of times in the past so it is not all that new to me. I quite regularly seem to run out of talent in certain corners. However, these last couple of spins where totally out of the blue. They all happened in corners, as one would expect, but not where one would expect them to happen in the corner. The most impressive was probably the spin into turn 3 during the first practice following the upgrades. I spun just at the entrance to the corner, did a complete 360 and exited the corner as if nothing had happened. The others were a little less impressive and a whole lot more alarming. Notably the spin in turn 4 with Quintin on board. I think he might still be picking the sand out of his ears. We had spun mid corner during a track day and engulfed the car in a cloud of mole hill sourced debris that I am still finding in nooks and crannies around the car. 

Anyway, discussions regarding the problem pointed to my lack of recent driving practice and the extra front grip the new wider tyres introduced into the equation. The concept was that with the, now, much increased front grip, I was entering the corners as I always had - expecting some light understeer - and was thus inducing oversteer instead. Oversteer with my car was not good, and was exceptionally difficult to catch, unless you were really expecting it. In these cases I had not been expecting it at all and thus ended up farming.

The solution to the problem was to, firstly, improve my driving skill, but more realistically, to increase the downforce on the rear wheels. This meant I would need a wing. I mentally relented and a wing was duly commissioned from Team Harper Headquarters. After much beavering away at the factory, Craig eventually requested the presence of my car for the fitting of the wing. It was a week before race day and I decided that it would be a good idea to have the car serviced and generally check over at the same time. I had been racing the car for close on two years now and, excluding the recent upgrades, not much had been done over that time, save for an oil change and some rear bushes.

Craig set about the car in earnest, which was good, given the short time frame. A phone call a little later in the day shed a staggeringly bright beam of light on the spinning problem. During the routine checks on the car, it was discovered that the right hand side lower ball joints were ever so worn. To the extent that my right rear wheel had its own version of dynamic rear toe adjustment. Rear wheel steering is nothing new, and never really caught on. I can assure you that random rear wheel steering will definitely never catch on. It causes you to spin at arbitrary places in corners. This of course brought up the question of whether I still needed a wing. It was a moot question as Craig had already fitted mine. 

I finally got to see the car on Friday morning, the same day I was scheduled to practice for Saturdays race day. My first impression was "Wow, that's a rather cool wing". It was large to be sure, and wide, and large. Did I mention it was quite large. It stood proud over the back of the car and added a serious dose of race cred to an already mean looking vehicle. I was suitably impressed with Craig's design efforts. Now it was a case of seeing if the wing would make any difference, so I set off to join the practice. Craig had a few things to finish off on the wing and was scheduled to meet me at the track in time for the last practice slot. I was going to run in the midday practice without the wing and gather some "before" data that could be used for comparison to when the wing was fitted. This plan was royally scuppered by some road works that had me inching along in bumper to bumper traffic and eventually arriving hot, sweaty, irritated and too late for the practice slot. I now had a two hour wait before my next slot so headed to the club house for some lunch.

Eventually it was time to head out for some testing. Craig arrived in the nick of time and we bolted the wing to rear of the car. I took the first couple of laps easy just to see if anything would would fall off. The car felt fantastic, but this was more due to the new ball joints than the presence of the wing. Finally, after a couple of warm up laps, I managed to stretch the car a bit and could immediately feel the effects of the wing. I was able to brake much harder without locking up the rear wheels and the car was feeling much more stable under hard cornering. Sadly the practice session was littered with visiting Sports & GT cars, down for the GT Invitational race the following day, so I only managed a handful of clear laps. On the upside, I was treated to the glorious sounds of a Ferrari 430 Challenge downshifting at full song next to me as we entered turn 5 side by side. 

So, with practice wrapped up for the day, it was looking to be an interesting race day as I, once again, would be getting used to a "new" car during a race meeting. Some things never seem to change.

New wing doing it's thing - Photo courtesy of Dieter Dolinschek

Race day was an early affair with us qualifying at 8am and racing at 10am. Thankfully I had made good use of my two hour wait the previous day and had completed documentation and scruteneering. This at least gave me a little more time to get organised in the morning.

Qualifying was a bit of a non event as we had a large field for the day and I ended up only getting in 5 laps of which possibly one was clear. This did not really concern me as I was going to be using the day to get cozy with my car again. This is always best done from the rear of the field.

Race one was called and we lined up for the start. I was fourth on the Class D grid and had Ant's Type 5 and Hennie's Corvette behind me. The lights went out and the three of us roared off into the first corner. During the mayhem of the first lap, Hennie managed to pass me, but as the race settled down a bit and I realised I was catching Hennie's 'Vette. The mist descended and all thoughts of "getting to know the car" where out the window as I focused on the rear of the black Corvette. I quickly realised that, with my added downforce, I was able to out brake him into the corners. Thus, the plan was hatched. Pick him up at turn 5, climb into the air hole behind him down the straight, at the last minute pop out and duck inside to take the corner. Easy enough, but this needed me to be really close to his rear end. 

Going onto turn 5 I was glued to his rear, focussing on the red ZR-1 sticker low down on his bumper. I exited turn 5 in third gear as close as possible, snatch fourth to match his speed down the straight, dropped the clutch and floored the throttle. I was met by what can only be called a howl of protest from the engine as I appeared to have missed the gear. I quickly snatched third, but was too high in the rev band and tried fourth again, but with the same effect. I seemed to have lost fourth gear for some reason. I hopped across to fifth, but by this time I was stone last. Images of little steel teeth happily bathing themselves in the warm oil of my gearbox sump flashed through my mind, but something about the gear shift did not feel right. It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what had happened. 

My gear shift is cable operated, with the gear cables being quite special devices having to be both compression and extension resistant while being flexible. To this end, no section of the flexible bits of the cable can be exposed outside of the outer sheath, for if they were, they would simply bend when asked to "push". A  while back a section of my outer sheath had come adrift and I had relocated it with some fuel hose and pipe clamps. Clearly this fix had failed and all push ability of the cable had been lost. This effectively meant I only had "pull" gears, being first, third and fifth. Not exactly ideal considering I mostly use fourth around the track. I decided to carry on anyway and at least finish the race, so spent the remaining laps alternatively buzzing the rev limiter in third or coughing down the straight in fifth. 

Back in the pits my diagnosis was confirmed and I set about fixing the problem again. About three metres of duct tape and an hour later, I had a working gearshift and headed to the club house for some lunch. 

Unfortunately, Ant was having overheating problems and pulled out of the first race, which was actually a good thing since he has now officially eclipsed me as the most powerful Harper, following his recent turbo work. He was certainly showing a significant turn of speed and would likely have shown me a clear pair of heels had he stayed in the race.

Ant hassling my new wing at the start of race one. Photo courtesy of Dieter Dolinschek

For race two, I had drawn fourth on the grid which put me behind Hennie's Corvette and Paul's GT40. I had some unfinished business with Hennie and was keen to get back to the action, this time with a couple of extra gears. We rolled around for the start of the race and three V8's thundered into turn 1. Everyone was well behaved and we exited the other side intact and in the same places. Paul was still trying to get to grips with his rebuilt GT40 and was being cautious in the corners. This was a bit of a problem as I was behind him at this point and I could see Hennie making a getaway up front. Paul's GT40 boasts a significant 5.7l engine and he ambles away from me down the straights. Finally, after around three laps, I built up some courage and applied my new found brake force to out brake him going into turn 5. I had tried this once before and ended up watching him wave to me as I parked up backwards on the exit of the corner. This time, however, my wing did its thing and I stuck to the corner like glue, exiting ahead of the GT40. I could see the Corvette at the end of the front straight. He was probably around 5 seconds up the road from me. This meant I would need to lap around 1 second a lap faster then him if I had any hope of catching him with enough time to pass him before I ran out of laps. This was a tall order, but I put on my race pants and set off after him. This would also give me a chance to get to grips with the car while I had some open track in front of me. The next few laps were a bit of a revelation as I braked later and later and tried to cautiously find the limits of grip in the corners. Craig, who was watching from the stands, told me later that I was indeed catching the Corvette at a rate of around a second per lap, but in the end it was not enough, and we crossed the line some three car lengths apart.

All told, it was a good day. The car was very much on song now, and the wing, which turned out not to be a spoiler, was showing some serious benefits. Later lap sector analysis would show that, while I had lost around 10km/h top end on the straights due to added drag, I was faster through almost every corner. This has two direct spinoffs. Firstly, I now need to spend time with the car to explore the limits and reassess my brake markers, but secondly, and more importably, I need more power!

Now where did I put that turbo....