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S550 mavisky's "LOUDCAR" Build Thread Profile - S550 Mustangs

2018 GT350

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Father's day event was another Win for us in class and overall PAX. Attendance was down a bit (93 drivers vs the usual 130) so our local reigning national champion Christian (see post above) was at home for the weekend.

Course was a tight course with big offsets on the elements. It was definitely a course that required you to be calm and not overdrive the car as blown apexes would lead to you being well out of position for the next element. It's almost like the esses around Suzuka in that regards to any Sim racers (or real racers who may have had a chance to drive there. We ran in the 3rd of 3 heats with a generally clean course and some good heat in the surface.

Our local class is a combined CAM class with T, C, and S and scored off of PAX so I was initially trailing Juan in his CAM-S Z06 and my longtime competitor Brent in his CAMC 2014 Mustang GT. Brent was about a half second up on my raw times through the first 5 runs as I just couldn't get out of the 40.1 -40.8 range. The car was behaving perfectly neutral with a little lift to tuck the nose or a little more throttle to add some understeer or alot of throttle to add some oversteer. Every time I tried to drive harder the I would go slower though and I just couldn't break into the 39's.

On my final run I decided to just try and drive tight lines and be smooth instead of "fast". The biggest change was a shift in my braking point for a tight downhill then off-camber tight left turn. By braking sooner, staying tighter, and waiting to get on throttle a bit longer I ended up getting through it and the rest of the course much faster and found 0.8 seconds to bring home not only the class win, but top PAX run for the event as well.

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Congrats on your win! On that first photo, it looks like the passenger side of your front splitter is about to scrape the parking lot!

Where was the parking lot? As soon as I saw the photo, I thought, "That's Georgia." Then I saw you are located in Georgia.
 
Congrats on your win! On that first photo, it looks like the passenger side of your front splitter is about to scrape the parking lot!

Where was the parking lot? As soon as I saw the photo, I thought, "That's Georgia." Then I saw you are located in Georgia.
It scrapes the parking lot all the time, it's not the flattest parking lot ever built. We run down at the Echo Park Speedway parking lot (formerly Atlanta Speedway) on the south side of town. Unfortunately this is the only area we have to race and have to share with the PCA and BMW CCA as well as other events put on by KIA and when they use part of it for parking for other stuff besides the Nascar race. It seems like every lot in Atlanta that's big enough to host us is either littered with landscaped islands we'd have to work to avoid, has 10+ access points we'd have to monitor for onsite security, or doesn't want anything to do with motorsports so we are kind of stuck here.

These sparks are from the multiple titanium skids i have mounted to the underside of the splitter due to it making contact so frequently. Wears the skids down and not the splitter. Right behind the bumper you can see the transition between two surfaces that was created when they resurfaced part of the lot but not the entire lot at once. There are actually far worse dips out there that we usually try our best to avoid with our course layout. In the video you can hear them just kiss the asphalt at the 43 second mark.

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On my final run I decided to just try and drive tight lines and be smooth instead of "fast". The biggest change was a shift in my braking point for a tight downhill then off-camber tight left turn.
Congrats on the win! This sounds like one of those corners where you can't really gain time by being aggressive, but you sure can lose time. When I was doing courses, I'd like to put in one element where drivers just had to be patient to be quick.
 
Do you run helper springs with that setup?
Apologies. Just getting to this. Helper springs are on the setup, but they're mostly fully compressed based on the setup that the previous owner provided them to me with. They worked great for him in this configuration and have worked great for me so I've been as yet unwilling to make any significant adjustments to them. 20250228_162702.jpg
 
It's been two events since I provided an update so thought I would finally jump back in. July and August events in Atlanta are just unbearably hot and at the least I'm beyond glad that I moved into timing and scoring so that I'm in the trailer for my work portion.

July was another great event for me with a close 3rd place finish in class, but a P7 on PAX and P9 on raw times on a tricky course out of 92 drivers. Again very happy for a car that is still above full weight and full interior including floor mats and everything.

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August saw a more unique track layout for us that saw some very slow moments and some long slaloms that both benefitted and hurt a chassis like mine. In the end I pulled off the hero 6th run I've become jokingly known for again and clinched 1st in class, 8th in PAX, and 10th overall on raw times out of 120 drivers.

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For the July event I ran my usual shock settings and the car obviously performed very well. I then threw 2 seasons worth of data into Gemini AI and asked it for some input on shock tuning for the August event. We initially started off with a bit of an overcorrection. The car had all the front grip in the world, but was underdamped for the slalom transitions. Some mid-event revisions had us on a better track for runs 3 and 4, and by runs 5 and 6 we made our final revisions and we finished strong. Post event I gave additional feedback and have made 1 more set of changes that we sadly won't be able to test out until the co-drive event in October. Overall impressed with the feedback and the changest suggested by AI.

At the end of August I'm now 4.5 seconds back to my buddy Juan in his C6 Z06 in CAM class. Unfortunately due to some other travel I'm probably going to have to borrow a car to drive for the September event from my buddy Brent and being in an unfamiliar car with the points on the line will likely keep me from wining the class this year.

Had some recording issues so you will have to make doe with image updates for this one.

July
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August
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It's been two events since I provided an update so thought I would finally jump back in. July and August events in Atlanta are just unbearably hot and at the least I'm beyond glad that I moved into timing and scoring so that I'm in the trailer for my work portion.

July was another great event for me with a close 3rd place finish in class, but a P7 on PAX and P9 on raw times on a tricky course out of 92 drivers. Again very happy for a car that is still above full weight and full interior including floor mats and everything.

View attachment 111584

View attachment 111585

August saw a more unique track layout for us that saw some very slow moments and some long slaloms that both benefitted and hurt a chassis like mine. In the end I pulled off the hero 6th run I've become jokingly known for again and clinched 1st in class, 8th in PAX, and 10th overall on raw times out of 120 drivers.

View attachment 111586
View attachment 111587

For the July event I ran my usual shock settings and the car obviously performed very well. I then threw 2 seasons worth of data into Gemini AI and asked it for some input on shock tuning for the August event. We initially started off with a bit of an overcorrection. The car had all the front grip in the world, but was underdamped for the slalom transitions. Some mid-event revisions had us on a better track for runs 3 and 4, and by runs 5 and 6 we made our final revisions and we finished strong. Post event I gave additional feedback and have made 1 more set of changes that we sadly won't be able to test out until the co-drive event in October. Overall impressed with the feedback and the changest suggested by AI.

Had some recording issues so you will have to make doe with image updates for this one.

July
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September
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Crazy that Gemini had quality suggestions on that. I guess I'm not too surprised though.
 
Crazy that Gemini had quality suggestions on that. I guess I'm not too surprised though.
If I hadn't fed it a ton of data on my entire car setup, changes I'd made in the past from my log book and my notes from those changes along with where I thought the car had room to improve currently I don't think it would have.


If I had just given it my spring rates, swaybars, and vehicle type and asked for suggestions I feel like it would have been all over the map. As it was I think the largest change it had me make was maybe 3 clicks in one direction on rebound on the rear, and even then we walked it back to not too far off where it was already. I always knew I was fast with the settings I had (as evidenced by July) so I could always just go back if it didn't work.
 
If I hadn't fed it a ton of data on my entire car setup, changes I'd made in the past from my log book and my notes from those changes along with where I thought the car had room to improve currently I don't think it would have.


If I had just given it my spring rates, swaybars, and vehicle type and asked for suggestions I feel like it would have been all over the map. As it was I think the largest change it had me make was maybe 3 clicks in one direction on rebound on the rear, and even then we walked it back to not too far off where it was already. I always knew I was fast with the settings I had (as evidenced by July) so I could always just go back if it didn't work.
Yeah, the more contextual data you feed it, the better it usually is - and that goes for just about anything you're doing with it.
 
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