We spent the weekend testing at Lakeside with our tuning partners Romano Workx on a VERY wet day. The track did dry with an hour left of testing but we managed to gain some very valuable data from the majority of the wet sessions.
The Mazda 2 once again proved to be a remarkably capable chassis setting the 3rd fastest time whilst rivers poured across the kink on the main straight and covered most of “hungry”. The upgraded brake pads proved to be far superior to those we tested at Sydney Motor Sport Park earlier in the year. We’ll continue with a number of safety enhancements before the end of the year and then plan the 2014 assault.
Our Toyota 86 benefited from a number of suspension upgrades that were developed by Graham at Fulcrum Suspensions. Graham and his team have worked hard to dial-out the 86’s soft stance. Our testing proved the chassis to be more responsive as was the power-train – by a large margin! Chris from Romano Workx re-tuned the 86 in order to achieve more of the available power throughout the rev range. The difference in drivability was extraordinary allowing our test drivers to use taller gears without sacrificing acceleration. The overall power gains were better than 20%!!!
The naturally aspirated 2.0 litre #17 NC model Mazda MX5 set the 4th fastest overall time of the day beaten by a V8 and a couple of very scary turbo’s. We elected to test the NC so that the team from Romano Workx could assess the usable power with a view to developing a new tune and possibly upgrading the intake and exhaust.
Overall the day was a huge success and we managed to cover every item in the testing schedule. The VW Scirocco has been stripped and is currently being caged whilst the Alfa Romeo Mito has also been stripped in readiness for race prep. We also have two more projects ‘on-the-go’ but we’ll post more news later this month. The hard work starts now for 2014 as we have a tight schedule leading up to Round 1 of Modern Sports Cars.
