Did time trials out on the ice with Sports Car Club of Vermont yesterday and had a blast. My times were lousy though! Looking for some ideas.
1) I'm not an experienced driver in in this kind of setting, and many out there were regulars in rally and autocross,
2) I was running on 5 year old snows with about half the tread gone,
But even so, I had a stock EF hatch (with LSD) - basically a ~90 Civic hatchpatck - beat my best time by around 15 seconds on a 2 minute course, also in the unstudded class.
I had a hard time rotating the car - I was fighting serious understeer most of the time. It was even tough to get the rear to come out with the hand brake. With my tires I'm thinking the stock car probably would have been faster due to weight distribution in this kind of course
There's no arguing with the physics of weight distribution, but THAT said, what are some things I might try?
-I believe that on pavement, a stiffer rear sway bar would help move it more toward neutral. I'm not sure this would help on the ice, but it might be worth looking into.
-I don't know if putting ballast in the back would be helpful. It'd probably help with rotation, but also subtract front grip, and I'm not sure of the net effect on lap times.
-Maybe the answer is to brute force it with superstuds (compete in a different class) and just put the power down on the straights, where cars like Miatas are power limited?
-Maybe run fewer studs in the rear, or none at all, so I can swing it around corners?
What can be done to get the nose to turn in, in very low traction situations?
