[Egon]

Originally Posted by Gefiltefish

I finally got to exchange a few brief words with some of the 6th drivers, including Ryan. First off - congrats Ryan on your championship!

To start, I went to the SAC breakout session and got wind that the 6th gen 1LE SS will not be in FS. For good reasons. There is good balance without them. Sounds like they are leaning n having the LT V6 1LE be in FS though. So that means you have several choices if you want to run a Camaro. If you believe max tire wins, the you go 5th gen 1LE. If you think min weight wins, then go V6 1LE. The 6th gen SS offers a good balance.

One interesting note was third place going to Mark Scroggs in an EB Mustang. Proving that power is not everything.... Mark is a very good driver, but that car is currently proposed to to be moved to DS next year.

The GM Performance Team drivers were driving 285's square. That looked very pinched on the front wheels. Ryan's set-up looked better, but looks are not everything! The GM Team was also running some type of a revalved OEM shock.

There is no way that the 6th Gen SS 1LE should remain in FS. I love the car, I want one very badly, but it will destroy everything in FS by a very large margin. I think everyone is pretty happy with the balance in FS right now and it would be a shame to upset FS so massively with a car that outperforms the rest of the cars in the class right now. Unfortunately if the 6th Gen SS 1LE ends up in AS I think it will have a difficult time against the C5 and C6 Corvette Z06's which dominate that class so badly. BS may be a good fit, it is where they put the 1LE's sibling, the 2016 Cadillac ATS-V.

I just want to see the 6th Gen SS 1LE be competitive against the other cars in its class so that we actually see them out there competing. I was really disappointed to see a single GT350 and a single 5th Gen Z/28 that no showed at Nationals this year but I think it's because the Z06 is so completely dominant in AS that no one else even try's something different.

The V6 1LE is a good fit in FS but I think it will be tough to beat and an extremely good value in the 1LT 1LE trim at $33,300. It will make FS a lot more approachable to new drivers who are put off by the fairly steep entry price with the typical cars that run there.

Mark Scroggs is a fantastic driver. He is a 2 time National Champion in GS in a Ford Focus ST and his 3rd place finish at Nationals and his 4th place finish in the ProSolo Finale may cause some rethinking of the EB Mustangs move to DS. I bet he got some other drivers thinking about running them successfully since the lighter weight of the EB appears to be better with the smaller tire the Mustang is stuck with. Mark ran 1.33 seconds faster than the next closest Mustang GTPP this year at Nationals. I know the guys in GS are just glad Mark isn't running his Focus there anymore.

I hope Ryan can stop by here after the celebration dies down to give us some info on his car and any of the other cars running in FS this year. As a 5th Gen 1LE owner I would also love to hear from Courtney about his setup too. I am also pleased that the GM guys were out there experimenting with the 6th Gen, I get the feeling they may be working on some SCCA Street class approved upgrades you guys can order and install on your cars.

[rotis]

Thanks everyone! It's finally starting to set in that I've won a National Championship. It's been a long road for sure. I have to give a shout out to Sam Strano @ Stranoparts for the great bar and winning setup.

Regarding tire sizes and setup:

I'm running 275 square RE-71R. Strano front bar and stock dampers. The tires have 126 runs on them now, so the Bridgestone can be quite competitive with high run counts. The Gen6 is a great car, you don't need 3 sets of wheels and $texas dampers in order to compete.

Courtney was running 305 square RE-71R, not sure about bar/dampers.

Des' car (driven by Mark) was running 285 square RE-71R, custom Konis and a Strano rear bar IIRC.

The GM team was running 285 square RE-71R, a big front bar and revalved stock dampers. They said they tested the 285 back-to-back against the 275 and the 285 was faster, even with slower response from the pinched fronts.

Power is definitely not everything, if you watch my videos below pay attention to the throttle position data. While there are a few areas where I am calling for everything I can get from the engine room, overall I spend VERY little time over 50% throttle, if I'm not using the power then I'm just hauling around extra weight. I think the V6 1LE will be a good car for the class, course dependent.

East- A solid 2nd run, a couple small mistakes that I fixed on my 3rd run, but made a different mistake so it ended up slower than this one:



West- Overall a great 2nd run, only mistake was over-slowing into the slalom. I fixed that mistake on my 3rd run, but again committed a collection of small mistakes so it was slower than this one:

[bballr4567]

Very nice runs!

It seems like you take a stab at the throttle a bit, especially that first video, and the car doesnt seem to like it much. Is that something you just have learned to do with it or bad habit? lol

[rotis]

Hah, those constituted most of the mistakes in the run. You want to apply the most power you can, as quickly as you can, without breaking traction. Most of the modulation in torque delivery is in the 30-60% range, there isn't a big difference between 60% and 100% throttle so once the car hooks up I try to get to 100% as quickly as possible.

My actions were too quick and aggressive for the amount of grip available. I dropped the rear tire pressure 1 psi after that run on the East course and my 3rd run was much better. No drama or slides, eliminating all of those small mistakes, I was ahead of that 2nd run by almost .4sec until I got to the plane-side esses. I under-drove those and gave up all of my gains.

[bballr4567]

I was assuming you were talking about that but you werent that clear. haha

What throttle setting did you have it in? I wonder if that would be able to control the immediate delivery of torque so that it wont upset the car yet still put down a lot of power.

[rotis]

I use Track mode, it has the most linear throttle response. Touring and Sport are both too aggressive on tip-in to modulate at-the-limit. I also drive with TC/ESP disabled, some of the GM drivers use Competition mode.

[destoups]

Ryan, I don't have the vid / data -- Mark's still driving home -- but I would love to see his and yours overlaid. East course was pretty optimal for whatever strengths the Mustang has, but Mark's runs were pretty hairy looking compared with what I see here, so precise and smooth. I see where you found the time and where you simply just didn't lose it.

The great ones make it look so easy.

My recall from a quick perusal of our data was that the Mustang had marginally faster terminal speeds through the slaloms. It looks like you're actually getting power down better on exits; Mark was dealing with throttle oversteer all the way to the next entry point.

A different rear bar might have made a difference on the Mustang -- we were on the Eibach, not the Strano, which offers a softer option. My call, and my mistake. Mark drove the snot out of what he had, though.

Your West course finish speed: 76 mph. Ours: 70 mph. At first I put it down to our shift and your horsepower, but then I looked at your setup through the previous sweeper and realized you carried an extra 5 mph out of it.

Again, you make it look easy.

[Cuda7050]

Congratulations Very smooth driving.

[bballr4567]

Originally Posted by rotis

I use Track mode, it has the most linear throttle response. Touring and Sport are both too aggressive on tip-in to modulate at-the-limit. I also drive with TC/ESP disabled, some of the GM drivers use Competition mode.

Nice information!!!

[nilfinite]

Originally Posted by rotis

Thanks everyone! It's finally starting to set in that I've won a National Championship. It's been a long road for sure. I have to give a shout out to Sam Strano @ Stranoparts for the great bar and winning setup.

Regarding tire sizes and setup:

I'm running 275 square RE-71R. Strano front bar and stock dampers. The tires have 126 runs on them now, so the Bridgestone can be quite competitive with high run counts. The Gen6 is a great car, you don't need 3 sets of wheels and $texas dampers in order to compete.

Courtney was running 305 square RE-71R, not sure about bar/dampers.

Des' car (driven by Mark) was running 285 square RE-71R, custom Konis and a Strano rear bar IIRC.

The GM team was running 285 square RE-71R, a big front bar and revalved stock dampers. They said they tested the 285 back-to-back against the 275 and the 285 was faster, even with slower response from the pinched fronts.

Power is definitely not everything, if you watch my videos below pay attention to the throttle position data. While there are a few areas where I am calling for everything I can get from the engine room, overall I spend VERY little time over 50% throttle, if I'm not using the power then I'm just hauling around extra weight. I think the V6 1LE will be a good car for the class, course dependent.

East- A solid 2nd run, a couple small mistakes that I fixed on my 3rd run, but made a different mistake so it ended up slower than this one:

West- Overall a great 2nd run, only mistake was over-slowing into the slalom. I fixed that mistake on my 3rd run, but again committed a collection of small mistakes so it was slower than this one

Great info and amazing runs!!! Holy crap, very smooth and aggressive. Your commentary on your runs is one of the things I love about autocross. Everyone only gets a couple of runs and the courses are always slightly different. Even at Nationals everyone is going to make mistakes. Goal is to make 0 big mistakes, minimize # of small mistakes and don't let your little mistakes become big mistakes. Well-earned championship. Congrats!

At Camaro5, someone mentioned that Courtney was running the newish Koni Yellows. Not sure if he also had bars.

Expecting to see more Gen6 Camaros come out to play next year with the results this year. Hopefully the dynamic doesn't change too much after the SAC decides where to put the V8 & V6 1LE. Either way the Gen6 Camaro owners probably can't wait to get those 1LE dampers.

RE: 275 vs 285. I've seen three competitors that I respect favor the 275 over the 285. Also, if you trust Tire Rack's tread width measurement methodology, the 275 have 10" of tread and 285 have 10.1".

Methodology: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...jsp?techid=201
Specs: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....Potenza+RE-71R

[bpang1234]

Yeah the 1LE doesn't belong in FS...I just got new wheels/tires in basically the size that the 1LE will have (285/30/20 and 305/30/20) the difference is night and day. That's not even including all the suspension improvements that the 1LE gets.

[BigEnos]

Congrat's Ryan! I was there watching, but I had to work 4th heat and I didn't want to bug you during the runs. Nail biter for sure! Courtney (Rod's car, actually) has konis and a bar, but I don't have specific details.

[rotis]

Thanks, Des. I was going to upload my best runs from each day to the Solostorm cloud. I'd really be interested to see how the runs compare, and where the time came from.

[Z3papa]

Ryan deserves big props for his results. Camaro looked tough on course but so does the 15 1LE. Don't write off the BMW E90/92 M3 I can attribute a lot of my time delta to operator error. Mark was simply amazing in the EB.