Photo by Bill Stoler Photography April 23, 2023 (Summit Point, W.V.) – An overall USTCC win in the Round 1 Feature Race was the last thing Roger Maeda expected after electrical problems put him out of qualifying and a post-Heat Race crash cracked the Prelude's front splitter. Yet, through the perseverance of his crew, an aggressive heat race performance on Saturday, and a determined drive on Sunday, the StudioVRM.Racing team crossed the finish line first in both the Sportsman Class as well as the entire USTCC grid. Qualifying Disaster struck moments before Qualifying as the StudioVRM Honda Prelude shut down on the grid mere minutes before the start of the session. A low voltage condition indicated that there was a problem with the new battery that the team installed the week before the race. The friendly Summit Point recovery crew towed the stricken Honda back to its paddock spot, and the team went to diagnose the issues in lieu of running qualifying laps. Saturday Heat Race Roger started the Saturday heat race in 33rd place on the grid with a new battery mounted in the Prelude’s engine bay. The StudioVRM Prelude’s new-for-2023 VTEC engine gave Roger the horsepower he needed to rapidly move up the field in pursuit of his fellow USTCC competitors. His upwards charge was paused when an ITS-classed Z car unfortunately caught fire, then was completely curtailed when the Honda’s H22 engine started losing power six laps into the race. The low voltage issue from the morning had returned with a vengeance, this time preventing the coil packs in his coil-on-plug converted engine from firing consistently. These worries were soon superseded by the sudden arrival of a thunderstorm, which flooded the track and brought the checkered flag out five laps early. Then to add further injury to injury, Roger drove through a huge puddle on his cool-down lap and threw the Prelude into the tire wall, damaging the splitter. Despite all of our mishaps and misfortunes, the StudioVRM Racing Team had overtaken 23 cars on the road and recorded a fast lap that was good enough to put them 5th on the grid for the Sunday Feature Race. Sunday Feature Race The team replaced the alternator, repaired the front splitter, and secured a broken battery terminal to make it to the grid before the start of the 20-lap Feature Race. From his position on grid, Roger could see the rear taillights of Coyote Black’s Super Touring classed Porsche Cayman S spurring him on to give chase. That cat and mouse game would sadly fail to materialize. The tiniest of mistakes during the out lap caused the black Cayman to spin nose-first into the tire barrier, ending Coyote’s hopes of a strong finish to the weekend. Seeing his compatriot’s race end on lap zero solidified Roger’s decision to switch to a finish-at-all-costs strategy for the Sunday race. He followed the top three cars until the #00 Nissan Z-car let the Honda through, then carefully tiptoed his way through the field of lapped cars so not to disturb their respective races. As he did, Andrew Conner’s #66 BMW 325i edged ever closer as he scythed through traffic to close in from the middle of the 33-car field. The red BMW came tantalizingly close to mounting an attack, which might have succeeded were it not for the timely arrival of a tight pack of ITB and B-Spec cars. Roger managed to pass the group on a short straight and managed to reopen the gap while Andrew was baulked by the lapped cars. To add one last twist to the tumultuous weekend, the Prelude’s left front outer CV joint failed at the exit of Turn 10. After coming this far, there was no way that the team was going to let this stop them. Roger slammed the throttle to the floor and willed the car across the line to take the top spot in Sportsman class as well as the entire USTCC field. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si Qualifying: No Time Race: 1st in Sportsman, 1st in USTCC, 3rd Overall “Determination. Sometimes, that’s what makes the difference. This race was a test of how determined we were to see that checkered flag. And thanks to our crew, our friends, fellow USTCC competitors, and technical partner Bad Guys Worldwide, we were able to triumph over this ordeal and emerge with smiles on our faces. In addition to a new trophy and a generous haul of prizes from ScanGauge, Cobra Suspension, and Plastex, we are coming home with a much better understanding of the new engine and setup. You can expect a lot more speed from us in the rounds to come.” Special Thanks Thank you to Ross Shull of the CMP Racing team, Andy Yoon, Martin Szwarc, and Chris Eng of the ProjectCRX Racing Team, and Cole Mulvey from Bad Guys Worldwide for helping us get our new engine installed and running in time for the 2023 season. And thank you to all of you who came out to watch - live, via livestream, or via Racehero. Especially Mike McLaughlin and his friend Mark, who brought their beautiful daughters out on the long trip out to Summit Point Motorsports Park to watch us race. I hope we put on a good show.

Banner photo by Billy Howell A few weeks ago, one of the most competitive Honda Prelude endurance racecars in North America quietly rode off into a long-awaited retirement. While this was a sad moment for many of us fellow enthusiasts, it did have one upside: It now means that we can share some of the other speed secrets that are rumored to have helped make the car so competitive. We can neither confirm nor deny whether these modifications actually saw any action in Champcar races. But we can say that these creative methods are well within the realm of what could be done to make a fast racecar even faster... Even if we wouldn't necessarily recommend them for your car. Extra Fuel Capacity, Smokey Style If you are a club racer in North America (or follow NASCAR in any capacity), you've probably heard of Smokey Yunick and his rule-bending escapades. Smokey was a master at exploiting the so-called "grey area" of the racing rulebook. One of his most famous tricks involved finding places to store extra fuel outside of the car's fuel tank so the car could run longer stints between pit stops. According to the latest rumors, the CMP Racing team had chosen to follow the spirit of Smokey Yunick instead of following the spirit of the rules. Because the CMP Racing Prelude has been rumored to carry an extra gallon or two of petrol in its fuel system despite using the stock Honda Prelude fuel tank. There were allegedly two parts to this trick. The first part is a well-known endurance racing hack. Pull off the fuel pump access cover, reach into the fuel tank, and bend the metal breather hose upwards so it touches the roof of the tank. This will prevent the fuel from splashing back up the fuel filler early and make it possible to fill the tank with an extra quart or so of fuel. The second is the real secret. The stock fuel filler on the 4th gen Honda Prelude is on the driver's left side of the car. This happens to be the opposite side from the pit wall at most North American tracks. If the team could move the fuel filler to the other side of the car, the pit crew wouldn't have to carry the heavy fuel cans as far during pit stops, resulting in faster fuel stops. All they needed to do was to extend the fuel filler neck to reach the other side of the car. So they did exactly that... using fuel-safe metal tubing that was several sizes larger than the stock fuel filler neck. By extending the fuel filler neck with extra-girthy tubing, they would have created a 3-foot-long space where they could tuck away an additional gallon+ of fuel. They also extended the fuel filler breather to ensure that the extra fuel wouldn't just spill out onto the track when the fuel was brimmed. With both parts of this trick in place, the CMP Racing Prelude would have gained an additional 10% of fuel capacity over a stock 4th gen Honda Prelude. That extra fuel capacity could then be used to run a more aggressive tune or to run longer stints between pit stops, at the team's discretion. There is no way to confirm whether this idea was actually implemented on the car, or if it ever raced in this configuration. But if true, the creative ingenuity that birthed this idea would no doubt have made the great Smokey Yunick proud. Rubber Springs (no, really) One of the unique quirks of budget-oriented endurance racing cars is that they usually do not have height-adjustable coilovers. This is because the rules discourage it, primarily as a cost-saving measure. It makes sense. After all, most dedicated race dampers are height adjustable. And if the rulemakers allowed them, it would open the door for competitors to buy or build some eye-wateringly expensive dampers. On the flip size, the need to use fixed height, non-adjustable dampers comes with an unfortunate side effect - You can't run off the shelf race springs. Race springs are made for standard diameters (typically 60mm / 2.25 in, 65mm / 2.5 in, and 70mm / 2.75 in for cars) and all of these are too small to fit the spring perches of most stock-fitment dampers. You could use off-the-shelf lowering springs, but the spring rates of those springs are often too soft to be useful in a race scenario. So what do you do? The CMP Racing crew had to be creative. They started by getting the cheapest set of eBay lowering springs that they could find. This was a performance-driven decision. Cheap eBay lowering springs are often wound to a super-stiff rate that is unsuitable for street use. Ironically, this makes them more suitable for race use than properly-designed lowering spring kits. After doing some on-track testing, they determined that even the most haphazardly designed eBay drop springs weren't stiff enough to get the best out of their tyres. Rumor is that they solved this problem by ordering up several sets of NASCAR bump stops, stacking them inside the damper, and experimenting to see which ones gave them the best combination of roll control and compliance. Believe it or not, this is a perfectly valid setup strategy that many OEM manufacturers use on their cars. The main suspension spring absorbs the hard hits until the car runs out of travel. Then the bump stops touch and makes the corner behave like a secondary spring with a progressively increasing spring rate. The advantage to using NASCAR bump stops is that the manufacturers publish the spring rates. That is, someone at the manufacturer put each of these bump stops on a spring tester, compressed them as they would a spring, and determined what the spring rates are. Some bump stops are progressive, others are linear. Others have a spring rate that ramps up like a bus hitting a brick wall. If you have the spring rate information for the stops, you can calculate what the spring rate of your finished assembly will be by doing a bit of math. It's a very clever way of running stiffer springs when you can't run stiffer springs. The downside? If you take it too far, the car will literally bounce off of kerbs. Case in point, take a look at this photo of the CMP Racing Prelude rocketing up VIR's uphill esses on two wheels: It's hard to say exactly what kind of suspension setup the CMP Racing team was racing with. But this photo does seem to indicate that there was some real bump-stop-related trickery at play. Seeking Astralogical Direction Contrary to what many racing enthusiasts believe, fast modern racecars have power steering. This is true for top formula cars as well as for the fastest production-based touring cars and prototypes. It's only club racers like yours truly who think manual steering conversions are a sensible thing to do. Part of this reason is that the power steering mechanisms on modern cars are both light and unintrusive. Unfortunately, this isn't really the case for cars from the 90's and early 2000s. For example, removing the power steering mechanism from a 4th gen Honda Prelude will remove upwards of 35 lbs of weight from the front end of the car. The weight savings is a real boon to the performance of the car. The downside is a noticeable increase in steering effort that makes aggressive steering corrections unnecessarily difficult. Being an endurance racing team, the CMP Racing crew needed to ensure that their car was as easy to drive as it was fast. Reliable sources say that they looked to the stars and found an inspiring way to strike that balance - Replacing the Prelude's 90's belt-driven hydraulic power steering system with an electric/hydraulic unit from an Opel Astra. Photo: Wikimedia Commons For those of you who may not be familiar with the car, the Opel Astra is a much-loved compact car currently manufactured by the German arm of the Stellantis family. It's a very popular car in Europe and was, for a very brief period of time, sold in the US under the Saturn brand. The EHPS pump out of the earlier generation Astra is a fantastic self-contained unit that is compatible with the hydraulic power steering rack of the Prelude. It's a great way to retain the power steering system in these cars while cutting down on weight and saving a bit of space inside the engine bay. Word on the street is that the CMP Racing Prelude used this exact system to keep its steering sharp and effortless throughout the entirety of a 100-minute stint on 245 width tyres. Based on the smooth handiwork on display in their in-car footage, we tend to agree - There is definitely something to the rumors. Serious ABS Work They say the brake pedal is the single hardest thing to operate in a racecar. From personal experience, this author can confirm that this is true. Dancing the car at the edge of threshold braking is an incredibly delicate process that is challenging for us on a good day. Never mind what it's like to do that when you're in the middle of a heated wheel to wheel battle, desperately trying to outbrake your closest competitor. Now imagine if you had to deal with that over the course of an 8 hour race. The mental strain would be enough to physically wear you out. Modern day ABS is a huge help in this regard. You do still need to have a certain level of skill to make the most of ABS-equipped brakes in a racing situation. However, they do offer a bit of a safety net in case you hit the middle pedal a little too hard, which takes a lot of stress off of the driver. Unfortunately, the stock program on the 4th gen Honda Prelude ABS computer is not very useful on track. The safety-focused ABS program in the 92-96 cars kick in too early and too aggressively for the system to be useful on a racetrack with super-sticky modern day track tyres. But the CMP Racing Prelude clearly has a working Honda ABS computer mounted in its passenger side footwell, and in-car footage showed them outbraking even the lightest cars in their class. So how did they do it? The rumor is that one of the more inquisitive members of the team discovered that the ABS computer from the DC2 Acura Integra Type R is a plug and play replacement for the 5th gen Prelude's standalone ABS computer. While this does involve swapping in the wiring and pump from a 1997-2001 Prelude, the more advanced programming of the newer DC2 ABS suits the characteristics of stiff suspension and sticky track tyres better than either of the OEM Prelude units. Once again, there is no way to prove that this setup was ever used in a race. But it would explain why the CMP Racing Prelude was able to stop so consistently well, regardless of which of their drivers was sitting behind the wheel. *Correction - The DC2 Acura Integra Type R ABS computer is a plug and play replacement for the 5th gen Prelude's ABS computer, not the 4th gen ABS computer. The Real Secret It takes a balanced combination of racing experience, engineering expertise, and a creative imagination to exploit the "grey area" of the rules as successfully as CMP Racing. But as often is the case, those qualities aren't enough on their own. The real secret is in their team members' ability to openly ask questions, no matter how strange or silly they may sound. Take a quick look through CMP Racing Driver-Owner Ross Shull's posts on the Honda Prelude Facebook Group and you can see exactly what we mean. And when you do, try to read between the lines and figure out what the crafty racer is really asking. Behind the bizarre photos and outrageous captions is a modern-day Smokey Yunick looking for a competitive advantage for his next race. Pay close attention, and you might learn something too. See you at the track.

In a previous video, we talked about what makes a racecar a racecar. But if you watched that video, you would know that turning your car into a racecar doesn't necessarily make it fast. So what is it that makes some racecars faster than others? If you asked class-winning ChampCar team owner Ross Shull, he would probably say something like "light weight." But then you would glance over at his team's 4th gen Honda Prelude racecar and wonder why it looks like this: Look past the bumps and scrapes on this Prelude's battle-scarred body, and you will start to see a myriad of performance-enhancing modifications that you won't find on slower cars in ChampCar's Class B field. The reason is simple: You can only remove so much weight and add so much power before you reach the limit of what's allowed in the rulebook. After that point, it's creative ingenuity that give the frontrunners their competitive edge over the backmarkers. Today, we'll take a closer look at the curious details that helped this car become such a dominant force in the competitive world of North American endurance racing. The Monster in Question Photo by AJ Allen Photography This MGD-liveried fire breather is CMP Racing's #253 Honda Prelude Si VTEC. And on paper, it doesn't seem like it would be one of the top dogs in ChampCar's competitive racing field. An internally stock H22 engine and a race weight of slightly under 2600 lbs seems downright modest given ChampCar's permissive rulebook. There are no exotic suspension components or expensive coilovers underpinning this car. It's even saddled by street legal, 200 treadwear tyres as mandated by the series. And yet, this car has the pace to run a 2:13 lap around VIR's full course - Faster than many similar SCCA and NASA classed cars that have the benefit of running sticky R-compound tyres, aftermarket cams, and expensive race-tuned suspension dampers. Let's take a look at some of the details that make this car so formidable on track, starting with those 200tw tyres. Maximizing Grip Although the current generation of 200tw street tyres are known to be extremely sticky, they are still a step behind the 40tw R-compounds that rule American club racing. Ross's solution was to make up for the lack of grip with tread width. The CMP Racing Prelude wears 245mm wide Nankang CR-1s, stretched across massive 10" wide, zero-offset Vision Sport Star II wheels. Of course, fitting wide tyres to the front end of a front wheel drive car is a tried and tested way of making FWD racecars fast. The real secret is in the wheels. Running a zero-offset wheel on the 4th gen Prelude has the effect of increasing the track width of the car by 110mm over the OEM +55mm offset wheels. This massive increase further improves the car's ability to grip the road while increasing stability under hard braking. The resulting increase in positive scrub radius also helps counteract the increased steering effort from running such wide tyres on the front end of the car. In stark contrast to the fronts, the rear end of this Honda is supported by a pair of slightly undersized set of 205/50R15 CR-1's. This is also by design. The narrow tread of width of the rears helps the rears to warm up more quickly, encourages the car to rotate better through slower corners, and keeps rolling resistance to a minimum down VIR's long straights. This unusual wheel and tyre combination gives the car the grip it needs to corner on par with R-compound shod club racing cars while running upwards of 8 hours on a single set of tyres. Brutally Efficient Aero ChampCar Endurance Racing rules stipulate that all wheels and tyres must be completely covered by bodywork as seen from above. While this is very important from a safety perspective, the real performance advantage comes from covering the wheels and tyres as seen from the front. The reason is simple: Spinning tyres generate tons of aerodynamic drag when exposed to the open airstream. In order to ensure that the extra-wide Nankangs wouldn't slow the Honda down the straights, Ross and his team built a new lower bumper out of the same heavy duty Sprint Car plastic that we use for air dams and side skirts. This wider lower fascia doubles as the front air dam and is also the mounting point for the radiator and brake cooling ducts. Because the ChampCar rules penalize the addition of any non-stock metal to the car's body, the CMP Racing crew had to be creative. They first cut the lower portion of the stock Prelude fenders and bent them outwards as far as they could. When that wasn't enough to cover the tops of the front wheels, Ross removed the OEM exhaust heat shields from the underside of the car and used them to create weld-on fender flares. Strips of universal exhaust hanger material recovered from the car's old exhaust system give added structure and rigidity to the car's widebody front end. The resulting structure is just wide enough to shield the rotating wheel / tyre assembly from the oncoming air. Those of us familiar with American club racing are used to seeing racecars without exterior wing mirrors. This isn't just because of all the bumping and rubbing that we do on track. It's mostly because the wing mirrors on a 90's production car account for anywhere between 7% to 15% of the drag generated by its entire body. Replacing the stock wing mirrors with smaller mirrors mounted inside the cabin makes a noticeable difference to both top speed and fuel mileage. And that can be decisive in a multi-hour endurance race. In addition to switching out the bulky factory Honda mirrors for small roll cage-mounted convex mirrors, Ross has taken the extra step of installing a triangular block plate that extends a few inches into the window opening. Those few extra square inches of clear plastic are enough to deflect the airstream past the open windows to further cut down on drag generated by the two-door Prelude's large window openings. At the rear end of the car sits a Nine Lives Racing wing, mounted to the chassis with endplate pylons. Even though there are many good options out there for affordable racing wings, Nine Lives Racing's wing profile still boasts one of the highest downforce-to-drag ratios of any of its competitors in the 70mph to 120 mph range. The endplate-integrated pylons are as functional as they are interesting to look at. This design is among the most efficient ways of mounting a rear wing on cars that allow for it. These small aerodynamic enhancements add up to a big difference at speed. The CMP Racing Prelude will hit 128 mph on VIR's long back straight while maintaining the fuel economy it needs to finish at the front at the end of an 8-hour endurance race. A Strategic Approach to Cooling Racecars generate a lot of heat. The longer they run, the hotter they get. And the CMP Racing Prelude is no exception. There are many ways to increase the cooling capacity of a racecar and most of these modifications come with some sort of penalty in performance, either in weight, complexity, or in aerodynamic drag. The challenge is in finding ways to achieve better cooling performance without hurting the car's performance on track. The CMP Racing team achieves this by pulling in cooling air from as few inlets as possible, ducting it to where it is needed most, and extracting that air as quickly as possible. Take, for example, the oversized cooling vent cut into the car's hood: This vent is absolutely gargantuan compared to what you see on most vented hoods. When viewed from above, it's the same size as the cooling inlet for the radiator. This is no coincidence. Placing a large vent like this directly behind the radiator encourages much of the hot air to exit the engine bay before it even reaches the engine block. The 1-inch-tall Gurney flap on the leading edge of the vent forces oncoming air to flow around the vent, creating a low-pressure area directly above the opening to pull air outwards. The overhang covering the engine's valve cover ensures consistent extraction, even at low speeds. All of these features work together to reduce the air pressure in the area directly behind the radiator, which in turn helps pull a larger volume of air through its fins without the need to cut bigger (read: drag-inducing) holes in the front bumper. As a result, this car needs nothing more than an OEM-replacement Prelude radiator to stay cool in the heat of battle. Ross and his team applied the same philosophy to solve their brake cooling problems. The bulky radius rod front suspension setup of the 4th and 5th gen Honda Preludes make it notoriously difficult to route brake ducts from the front bumper to the brake discs. The team sidestepped this problem by stopping the brake ducts ahead of the front wheels. This results in a brake cooling setup that feeds the entire wheel well with cool ambient air, albeit at a lower velocity than if the brake ducts went all the way to the front hubs. To compensate for this, Ross removed everything behind the front wheels to encourage the air to leave the wheel well as quickly as possible. This reduces the pressure inside the car's wheel wells and helps pull more air through the brake ducts, while simultaneously reducing the drag generated by the front wheels. Very clever. A Faster Cockpit With all of these creative mechanical modifications at play, it's easy to forget that it's the driver that makes a fast racecar go fast. And yes, it is possible to modify the cockpit of a racecar to make it easier for its driver to consistently punch out fast laps. Fortunately for the CMP Racing team's quartet of drivers, Ross hasn't forgotten that important detail. The dash and gauge arrangement of the CMP Racing Prelude offers the pinnacle of distraction-free driving. The factory dashboard has been removed to give the driver a completely unobstructed view of everything in front of them. The OEM gauges have been consolidated into a single tablet mounted in the middle of the car, out of the driver's line of sight. A hard-wired shift light in the driver's peripheral vision reminds them to shift at precisely 7800 rpm every time. The sole warning light is a blindingly bright center-mounted LED, which floods the cockpit in red light in the event of a catastrophic loss of oil pressure. All of the important buttons and switchgear are mounted on a single switch panel on the center console. The switches are spaced just far enough apart that they can be operated while wearing gloves. Indicator lights mounted directly above each switch illuminate when each switch is flipped on, and the fuses for each circuit are mounted directly below for easy troubleshooting. Below the center mounted switch panel is the factory shifter with two small but important modifications. The first is a budget-friendly short throw adapter to make it easier to make quick, precise shifts. The second is the removal of the rubber bushings that normally hold the shifter to the chassis. The latter improves the feel and feedback of the shifter, allowing an experienced driver to make faster, more precise shifts. This does have the side effect of decreasing the height of the shifter, hence the taller shift knob. A perforated plate of curved metal on the accelerator pedal makes it easy for the driver to roll their foot onto the throttle for precise heel & toe downshifts. The thin gauge of the metal and gentle curvature of the extension gives this throttle pedal better ergonomics than most aftermarket pedal covers. It's a brilliantly effective solution that is as popular with its drivers as it is aesthetically incongruent to the rest of the car. A pair of NASCAR brake fans keep the windshield fog-free in the rain and the driver's helmet sweat-free in the searing summer heat. Finally, a Chillout driver cooling system keeps the driver's body temperature in the sweet spot so they can perform at their best, lap after lap after lap. Its Last Bow It is the combination of all of these clever details that makes the CMP Racing Prelude such a dominant force at the racetrack. Despite its successes, however, the curtain is soon set to close on the #253's competitive racing career. Ross is planning to retire his phenomenally successful racecar at the end of the 2022 racing season. Its last race will be the VIR on the North 8+7 Enduro on December 2-4, 2022. While we are sad to see this paragon of creative ingenuity ride off into the sunset, we wish Ross and the CMP Racing team only the best at their upcoming season finale. If you happen to be at VIRginia International Raceway that weekend, make sure to stop by and wish the team a fast and trouble-free race. And make sure to check out the in-car live streams of their races on the CMP Racing Youtube channel here: Day 1 - CMP Racing VIR North 2022 Day 1 - December 3rd Day 2 - CMP Racing VIR North 2022 Day 2 - December 4th See you at the track.

Photos by Paul Hayden October 21st, 2022, MILLVILLE, New Jersey, USA - New Jersey-based racing teams ProjectCRX and StudioVRM joined forces to tackle the South Jersey SCCA 3x50 Endurance race, fulfilling an eight year old promise to the team's founding members with a top 5 finish in class at the classic South Jersey endurance race. StudioVRM.Racing's lead driver Roger Maeda took the wheel for the first part of the grueling 3-part enduro, handing over the reins to ProjectCRX.Racing's ace Martin Szwarc to close out the race. At 107 hp and 2250 lbs, the team knew the CRX would be one of the lightest and least powerful cars in the field. They therefore gambled on a strategy of running the entire race on one set of 100 treadwear Nankang AR-1 racing tyres. The treads on the hard compound Nankangs would prepare the team for the possibility of rain, while giving the car just enough grip to match the cornering speeds of the Miatas that dominated the E4 class. Although the track stayed dry, the strategy still paid off. Martin and Roger aggressively hustled the lightweight Honda from the bottom of the grid to a solid 4th place finish in the E4 class. When they crossed the finish line, the duo also achieved a long-standing goal for team ProjectCRX.Racing: Finish the classic South Jersey endurance race in the car that they built together over 8 years ago. Qualifying Qualifying: 8th in E4 Class, 16th Overall Qualifying proved to be the biggest challenge for the team. The sole qualifying session was only 30 minutes long, and it had been several seasons since Martin or Roger had driven the single-chicane layout of NJMP's Thunderbolt circuit. The team opted to sacrifice qualifying speed and dedicated their time to learning the track and car. This was particularly useful for Roger, who discovered that the extra cushions he put in the CRX's large Racequip full containment seat put him too close to the pedals to drive comfortably. 6 laps in, he hot swapped the car with Martin, who experimented with what gears yielded the fastest results through the Thunderbolt course's tighter turns. Their combined best lap of 1:44.135 placed them 8th in class and 16th out of 22 cars overall. 3x50 Endurance Race Race: 4th in E4 Class, 9th Overall Roger took full advantage of the car's small size and weight, slipping past several cars at the start and latching on to a group of Miatas that were stuck behind a Mustang FR500 in the faster E1 class. The Mustang would experience a sudden and unfortunate incident just 6 laps into the race, crashing tail first into the corrugated steel barriers under the bridge to the Thunderbolt paddock and spinning back on to the track in the path of an unfortunate Miata. This crash brought out an early red flag that halted the race for a full 30 minutes while course workers furiously cleared the track of debris. When the race resumed 30 minutes later, Roger found himself in a race-long dogfight with the other cars in class, punctuated by the short break between the first and second stints. A quick fuel stop and a quick drink of water later, Roger returned to the cockpit a second time to resume their battle. By the end of the second stint, he had brought the car up to 4th place in E4 and 10th overall. With a promising foundation set, Roger handed the car over to Martin, who has been the regular driver of the car for the past two seasons. Martin immediately got into his comfort zone, set his sights on the cars ahead, and muscled his way to 9th overall in his first three laps. While the cars around him started slowing down, Martin kept a steady pace to bring the car home a respectable 4th out of 13 cars in E4 class, and 9th overall. Their best lap of the race? A solid 1:41.829. Driver photo by Andrew Conner Martin Szwarc - Ace Driver#99 ProjectCRX Honda CRX Si "This race was a nearly perfect end to our '22 season. Qualifying could have gone better, but given that we were bedding pads and scrubbing in tires I'm happy with our position. The team worked hard to move from 16th to 9th place overall and we showed the car's potential. I'm looking forward to next year's improvements to the car. We're also still looking for a third driver so Roger doesn't have to work twice as hard." Roger Maeda - Starting Driver#99 ProjectCRX Honda CRX Si "What an amazing race. Normally our post-race debriefs are 2-hour long discussions about everything that went wrong and what could do better next time. Today, we debriefed by celebrating everything that went well. Then we sat in awkward silence because we ran out of things to talk about! I would like to thank all of the members of the ProjectCRX Racing Team for their combined work in building such a great car and for keeping the dream alive after all these years. And equally importantly, I would like to apologize again to Warren Sackman in the #77 Mazda Miata for inadvertently turning in on him through Thunderbolt's high speed turn 9. We will be back next year. And next time, we're coming for the podium." Special Thanks Special thanks to Paul Hayden, who helped outfit the car with a special livery, accompanied us to the track to support us at this special event, and took many of the fantastic photos that we featured in this race report. For more information on ProjectCRX, visit their team site at https://projectcrx.racing.

If you want a race-ready, fixed-caliper big brake kit for your classic Honda, you have three popular options: Install a Wilwood-based big brake kit from a manufacturer like FastBrakes Roll the dice with a fully custom kit from brands like KSport Custom build your own brackets around a performance-oriented racing caliper The annoying reality is that Option 1 would give you less than ideal performance unless you sprung for the 6-piston Wilwood DynaPros (or better). The 4-piston Dynalites are notorious for flexing, and there have been reports of the newer ones leaking from the bleeders. Option 2 is known to have hit and miss quality control. And Option 3 can be expensive if you can't do your own fabrication. As it turns out, there is an Option 4. Thanks to a small US-based shop called FatFour Customs, there is a way to get an affordable bolt-on fixed caliper big brake kit for less popular Honda cars like the Acura ILX, Honda CRV, Honda Accord, Acura TL and of course, the 4th and 5th gen Honda Prelude. Intrigued by this possibility, we took the plunge and ordered a kit for the StudioVRM Honda Prelude. What's in the Kit? The FatFour customs kit is, in essence, an integration of proven OEM parts. It uses a combination of the much-loved 4-piston fixed calipers from the 2005 Acura RL with the beefy 324mm diameter brake rotors from the 350Z, and a series of adapters to fit them on to the much-loved Honda of yesteryear. Because FatFour Customs makes applications for quite a few cars, you do need to select the components to fit your car. The shopping list for our 4th gen Honda Prelude included: A FatFour Customs Brake Caliper Bracket Aluminum Hubcentric Rings PowerStop Evolution Rotors redrilled for 4x114.3 New (or rebuilt) 2005 Acura RL calipers The hubcentric rings are an important component that is unique to our application. These small aluminum rings are necessary because the center bore of the 4th gen Prelude is just a few millimeters shy of the centers on the 350Z rotors. Without them, the rotor would not center properly, and could cause balance issues at higher speeds. The thickness of these hubcentric rings meant that we would not be able to run the 10mm spacers that we had been running on the front end of the Prelude. We compensated for this by making some alignment adjustments to help the car rotate. Alternatively, most machine shops would also be able to bore out the centers our wheel spacers for the outer diameter of the rings. We would also need brake pads that would fit our new calipers. Our pad of choice is, as usual, the Raybestos ST-45, custom cut by Porterfield Brakes. The total cost of the kit? Less than $950, including a set of Raybestos racing brake pads custom cut to fit our RL calipers. It's a solid deal when compared with the comparable FastBrakes kit, which comes with flexy Dynalite calipers and lack brake pads. The kit is also a total of 14lbs heavier than the stock Prelude Si VTEC brakes - A weight penalty that we are happy to pay if these brakes work as well as we hope. Watch that Brake Balance Upgrading to any big brake kit will inevitably affect the front-to-rear brake bias of your car. It's generally safe to assume that upgrading to a larger rotor with a larger width pad will move the brake bias further forward. The question is - by how much? Thankfully, the formula for calculating brake bias is well-known, and there are a number of calculators that you can use to get a good estimate of your brake bias. We happen to be fans of this one hosted by Track and Build. By taking a few measurements, we found that upgrading from the stock Honda Prelude Si VTEC's 11.1" front rotors and single piston calipers to the FatFour Customs Kit's 12.76" rotors and RL calipers moves the brake bias moving forward by 5%. This is a welcome change, as we need as much front brake bias as we can get to ensure that the front brakes lock before the rears under hard braking. If the front bias proved to be too much, we could dial it back using the Wilwood proportioning valve that we previously installed inline with our rear brakes. If you want to try the calculator yourself, here are the key figures for the FatFour Customs kit: Front Rotor diameter: 12.76 in Front piston 1 diameter: 1.690 in Front piston 2 diameter: 1.690 in Front pad width: 2.90 in Pro Tip: You can get the majority of these numbers for any car from RockAuto. The pad width can be found by looking up the FSMI pad shape code (e.g. D1091 for the 2005 Acura RL front brake pads). An Unusual Installation Process Every kit has its quirks. With the FatFour Customs kit, those quirks were in the installation process. The first thing we noticed is that the FatFour Customs bracket comes with US Standard ("SAE") rather than Metric hardware for attaching the RL calipers to their brackets. We suspect this is a cost-savings measure, as high-strength USS fasteners are available for much cheaper than their Metric equivalents in most of North America. While the cost savings are welcome, it is a bit annoying to see USS fasteners on a car that uses all-metric hardware. The silver lining is that the hardware is all common automotive sizes. 9/16" is a common size for spark plug sockets, while 13/16" is a common size for lug nut sockets. Most automotive enthusiasts will have sockets for these sizes in their toolbox already. Because the brackets are made of a lightweight aluminum alloy, you also need to torque the bolts carefully so you do not strip the threads. We recommend that you follow the manufacturer's installation instructions to the letter to ensure that you do not damage the brackets while tightening everything down. Another quirk of the installation process is that FatFour Customs recommends securing the big caliper to bracket bolts with high-temperature Loctite 243. This is a good solution for drivers with street driven cars. But racers tend to remove and replace their brake calipers quite often. We were concerned that repeatedly removing and reinstalling the Acura RL calipers would result in us accidentally stripping the threads at the track. Fortunately, FatFour Customs also sells a stud-and-nut kit to replace the big bolts that come with the kit. This will let us install and remove the caliper without unthreading anything from the aluminum caliper bracket. Upgrading to studs is easy with the use of a stud installation/removal tool. We would highly recommend that you spring for this on any track or race cars. We were also surprised at just how tightly the Acura RL calipers fit over the big beefy 350Z rotors. With the calipers perfectly centered, we had just over 1mm of clearance between the rotor and the caliper on either side of the rotor face. Just to make sure that things were perfect, we broke out the feeler gauges to measure the gap between the calipers and rotors on both sides. We would need to test to ensure that this wouldn't cause any clearance issues under hard cornering while on track. On-Track Performance We had an opportunity to test these brakes during our unexpectedly eventful USTCC East Series double header weekend at PittRace. The bad news was that our Prelude's engine expired during the pre-race test day. The good news was that we were able to put in enough laps to put our big brake kit to the test. And boy, were we surprised by the results. The first thing we noticed was just how much firmer the brake pedal felt under hard braking. 90's Hondas tend to have long, vague brake pedals owing to the internal construction of their Master Cylinders. We had worked hard to get a good consistent pedal feel from the Prelude's mushy stock VTEC brakes, and we thought we had a decent pedal. But FatFour Customs' kit brought the pedal feel in line with what you would expect from a modern production racecar. The tight clearances between the Acura calipers and the thick 350Z rotors was paying dividends. Happily, the clearance concerns proved to be a non-issue. Even after a full session of hard cornering around the notoriously tight PittRace North course, there were no signs that the brake rotors had contacted the calipers. This is notable because our Prelude runs on super-sticky Hankook F200 race slicks that happen to be particularly hard on wheel bearings. If these brakes worked on our setup, they will work just fine on cars with a DOT R-compound or high performance street tyre. Most importantly, the FatFour Customs brakes were consistent. With our stock Prelude Si VTEC brakes, we always expected a bit of front brake overheating (and fluid fade) after 10 laps of full-bore hard braking. Not so with these brakes. We were able to last the entire session without a hint of fade. We even managed to lock the front left brake going into the entry to the super-slow Turn 10, something that we hadn't experienced since we started running 245mm wide F200s on our Prelude. While we were not able to test their thermal capacity this time around, we are pretty confident that these rotors will have no problems shedding the heat from our 2550 lb Honda. We hope to test this out as soon as our Prelude receives its new engine. Conclusion & Recommendations The FatFour Customs big brake kit is a real diamond in the rough. Most OEM+ big brake kits tend to focus on show rather than go. This is the first kit that we have seen in some time that has the performance to back up its show-stopping looks. If there was anything that we could change about this kit, it would be to replace the 9/16" caliper to bracket bolts with the stud and nut setup from the upgrade kit. Yes, this does mean that you would need a specialty tool to properly torque the studs into the brackets. Even then, we think this is a worthwhile tradeoff for most performance enthusiasts. FatFour Customs' customer service proved to be excellent as well. When we mentioned that our brake calipers didn't seem to be sitting perfectly centered on the rotors on one side of our car (which we later discovered was due to a casting issue with our OEM spindles), they offered to send thin spacers to ensure that everything lined up. When he found out that we wanted to switch to the stud upgrade, he offered to send them to us at a substantial discount. While we ended up declining these discounts and bought the parts at full price, this level of customer service is commendable. Would we recommend this kit? Based on our experience so far, the answer is a resounding yes. The performance and convenience of this kit is just hard to beat at this price point. The only thing we could ask for is applications for more cars. Until that happens, we'll see you at the track. Disclosure section: StudioVRM and Roger Maeda are not affiliated with FatFour Customs, or any of the brands mentioned above. All parts were purchased at full price from each of our own pockets, and installation was performed at the cost of our own time. FatFour Customs was generous enough to offer a discount on the stud conversion kit as an existing customer of their kit. However, we enthusiastically declined this per our policy and paid full price for this as well. Any Amazon links embedded above are affiliate links, which means that we get a (very small) commission from them every time you buy a product through those links. We would appreciate it if you did exactly that. These parts are expensive, and we could really use the money.

A catastrophic engine failure saw Team StudioVRM.Racing bow out from the Pittsburgh International Rounds of the 2022 USTCC East Series before they had even started. The team's H23 powered Honda Prelude Si lost power coming out of the Pittsburgh International North Course's slow turn 10, and Driver-Owner Roger Maeda had to crawl the car back to the paddock with a cockpit full of smoke. Team Mechanic Martin Szwarc, the ever-helpful Coyote Black, and famed pro motorsport crew chief Jim Locke performed some trackside troubleshooting with borrowed tools, only to discover that cylinder 1 had no compression. A borescope inspection revealed that the ring lands on the piston in cylinder 1 had failed and chunks of piston had broken off. The damage was nothing short of catastrophic. With no spare engine and no means to change it before the start of the race, the team had to retire the car before racing had even begun. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM Honda Prelude Si "It feels terrible to have to retire the car before the weekend has even started. We haven't even had the chance to get up to speed before the engine let go. The engine will go straight to Powertrain Wizard Robert Oliver for an inspection and teardown so we can figure out what to do next. The one silver lining was that we were able to give our new FatFour Customs Acura RL brake system a quick test, and confirmed that their stopping power is as strong as their show-stopping looks. That will give us something to look forward to once the Prelude is back up and running under its own power."

It is our unique privilege to announce our new Technical Partnership with world-famous performance Machine Shop Bad Guys Worldwide (aka The Bad Guys). The Bad Guys is a household name in the world of high-performance internal combustion engines, using modern techniques to extract maximum power out of everything from thundering small block Chevy V8s to red hot 1000+ horsepower turbo motors to the classic Honda engines that we all know and love. Owner and Master Machinist Cole Mulvey is as imaginative as he is eccentric. His trademark method combines the precision of modern machine tools (like his Rottler 5 axis CNC head porting machine) with the practiced hands of a craftsman with over a decade of experience in the trade. Cole was understandably shy about making a published statement in a press release, so we agreed that we would let his results speak on his behalf: The Bad Guys has built engines, heads, and power adding parts for racer winners in Global Time Attack, World Time Attack, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, SCCA, IMSA/Camel GT, VARA, NASA, RallyX, IPRA, and the National Automotive Championship of the Dominican Automobile Federation. And soon, StudioVRM.Racing will help him add success in the US Touring Car Championship to his impressive list of accomplishments. Roger Maeda, Driver-Owner, StudioVRM.Racing says: "The Bad Guys Worldwide is the perfect partner for the StudioVRM.Racing team. We even share the same philosophy: Combine modern tech with classic machinery, explore the roads less travelled, find that hidden performance, and bring home the wins. Cole helped us find some much-needed power and reliability in our Prelude's H23 engine earlier this year, and we have been actively collaborating on a few new projects behind the scenes since then. In fact, he has already prepared an engine upgrade package for the #22 Honda Prelude, which we will debut at Round 5 at NJMP Thunderbolt. In return, StudioVRM will share our feedback and race data with The Bad Guys so they can incorporate it into future products. The goal is to build better products for performance car enthusiasts everywhere. With The Bad Guys' expertise extracting the maximum from our Powertrain Wizard-built power unit, and supported by our in-house chassis know-how, Team StudioVRM.Racing will be a force to reckon with in the seasons to come." To learn more about The Bad Guys and their services, visit: W: Bad Guys – Global Domination (the-bad-guys.com) FB: Bad Guys | Facebook IG: @badguys_worldwide • Instagram photos and videos TT: @badguys_worldwide TikTok

June 5th, 2022, MILLVILLE, New Jersey, USA - New Jersey's own Roger Maeda battled hard charging competition and searing heat to take 1st place in the Sportsman class in Round 2 of US Touring Car Championship East Series at NJ Motorsports Park. This was the first race win for both Roger and the East Brunswick-based StudioVRM Racing Team since it took its step up to the pro racing series, representing a remarkable turnaround from its disastrous early retirement from last year's June race at the very same track. Qualifying A misunderstanding of the grid announcements resulted in Team StudioVRM.Racing arriving late to the grid and missing the first few laps of qualifying. Thankfully, NJ Motorsports Park's Lighting track is long and is mostly made up of high-speed corners. Roger warmed up his new Hankook F200 slick tyres, and unimpeded by any traffic, banked a safe but brisk 1:16.705 lap time just one lap before the end of the session. The team estimates that there were a few more tenths left in the car and driver, but that lap was enough to put our green Prelude within half a second of the On Q Racing Super Touring BMW 325. Roger and the StudioVRM Prelude would start 2nd on the grid for the Saturday Heat Race. Saturday Heat Race Learning from his start line mishap at the first round, Roger timed his start perfectly and firmly glued the #22 StudioVRM Prelude to the back of Andrew Conner's ST-class BMW. He pushed hard from the outset, keeping the polesitter within striking distance for as long as possible. The 325's 300hp engine would make overtaking a challenge around the high-speed Lightning track, but with consistent laps and the potential for anyone to push too hard, there was always a chance. Unfortunately, fate would intervene and spoil the fun. The #22 Prelude's left rear brake rotor suddenly and catastrophically split into two pieces, destroying the left rear wheel bearing and threatening to throw the green Honda off the road. Roger managed to limp it back to the pits after clocking a lowly 1:19.336 lap in the late afternoon heat. Sunday Feature Race Roger started second on the grid in the Sunday Feature Race by virtue of his fast banker lap from the Qualifying session. He would once again nail a perfect start and dove into Turn 1, pursued closely by a rejuvenated Coyote Black, who had extracted maximum power from his Integra Type R by permanently locking its engine into VTEC mode. The #23 Savage Garage Racing Integra followed closely behind, filling the Prelude's rear-view mirror and inching ever closer through the entire first half of the race. But just as the cars finished their 11th lap, the combination of heat and an oil pan leak forced Coyote to slow down dramatically. This gave Roger the opportunity to open a gap and secure a first-place finish in the SP class with a best lap of 1:16.809. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si Qualifying: 1st in USTCC SP, 2nd Overall Race: 1st in USTCC SP, 2nd Overall "It's hard to describe just how special this win is. Just 12 short month ago, we were driving back to the shop with our heads in our hands, towing a broken car, without turning a single racing lap on track. And now we are coming home with a fast and reliable performer, a beautiful custom-made trophy, and a trunkload of prizes from our series sponsors, Adenna, ScanGauge, and Fauna. We couldn't have dreamed of a better result. We can't rest on our laurels though. Despite being handicapped by his underpowered backup motor, Coyote Black in the Savage Garage Racing Integra Type R was right on our rear bumper for the entire first part of the Feature Race. If he didn't have those issues with his rear tyres, there was a good chance that he could have gotten past into Lightning's fast uphill turn 1 or the downhill Turn 7. Not to mention, we hear that the team is planning a major engine upgrade for the next round. We are planning to counter his extra power with chassis and suspension upgrades on the StudioVRM Honda Prelude. We think we can lighten the car by about 50 lbs and trim some aerodynamic drag while still being above our minimum weight for the series. Let's see if it's enough to bring the fight to Coyote on his home track, Pittsburgh International Raceway. It's going to be very, very close." Photos by Andrew Yoon Special Thanks Thank YOU - yes, that's right, you, reading this race report - for standing with us as we climbed our way back from the darkest depths of defeat to the top step of the winner's podium. We will be back for the Pittsburgh International Round of the USTCC East Series on August 27-28, 2022. See you there.

April 3rd, 2022 SUMMIT POINT, West Virginia, USA - Round 1 of the 2022 US Touring Car Championship East Series kicked off with a shock pole position for New Jersey-based StudioVRM Racing Team at the fast and challenging Summit Point Raceway. Qualifying StudioVRM's Roger Maeda drew first blood in the battle for the 2022 USTCC East Championship when he blitzed out a 1:25.872 lap in the Saturday Qualifying session through the rolling hills of Summit Point's Main course. The Honda Prelude pilot's scorching one-lap pace was strong enough to earn 2nd place on the grid while being just two tenths of a second shy of Andrew Conner's best attempt in his Super Touring class BMW 325. When Andrew's fast lap was deleted due to his car coming in under its series-mandated minimum weight, race officials promoted Roger and the StudioVRM Prelude to pole position for Saturday's Heat Race. Saturday Heat Race A conservative start from pole position resulted in Roger dropping back to 2nd place through Summit Point's slow and technical turn 1. A promising fightback was abruptly cut short when the engine oil dipstick popped out of the Prelude's Honda H23A1 power unit, coating the engine bay in oil. Some of that hot oil dripped onto the left rear tire, causing a heart-stopping 90mph half-spin that saw the Prelude momentarily heading nose-first towards the concrete pit wall. Roger managed to save the car by applying full throttle, powering the front-wheel-drive Honda out of the wild slide. But after weighing the risk of dripping engine oil onto the track surface, Roger made the call to pull into the pits after just two laps. Sunday Feature Race Because the Feature Race grid would be set by the fastest lap across Qualifying and the Heat Race, the StudioVRM Prelude was set to start on pole position again for Sunday's Feature Race. However, given the reliability issues from the day before, Roger chose to start from the back of the grid instead. Roger commenced his charge through the field as soon as the green flag flew in hot pursuit of USTCC SP class leader Coyote Black in the Savage Garage Racing Integra Type R. The pursuit lasted just under halfway through the race, when the engine oil ventilation issue from Saturday reared its ugly head, this time causing the Prelude to bellow huge clouds of white smoke from its exhaust. Rather than risking any damage to the Honda's engine, Roger decided to retire the car early. Roger Maeda - #22 StudioVRM.Racing Honda Prelude Si Qualifying: 1st Race: 2nd in USTCC SP / Ret. on lap 8 "I'm not disappointed. In fact, I'm encouraged by our performance this weekend. The car is blindingly quick. And we were on old, 30-heat-cycle hard compound tyres. Thanks to some friendly advice from fellow USTCC Competitors and the Honda Prelude racing community, we also know exactly what we need to do to fix our issues. Plans are already underway to upgrade the crankcase ventilation system and eliminate those oil-related problems once and for all. With those upgrades in place and a brand-new set of Hankook F200 racing slicks, we should be able to fight for a win at Round 2 at NJ Motorsports Park." Photo by John C. Ernst - www.jcernstphoto.com THANK YOU for supporting us in our first pro race of 2022 at the track and through our social media channels. We will see you all at VIRginia International Raceway on May 14-15 at HyperFest. Come visit us in the North Paddock.

Most racecar drivers have some sort of racing-related hobby that to keep themselves occupied between races. For some, that hobby is a keen interest in sim racing. For others, it's cycling, running, or some sort of sport that keeps their bodies honed for the season. For yours truly, that hobby is the fine art of racecar engineering. It's the main reason why there are so many chassis and suspension related articles on our Racing Secrets blog on StudioVRM.net. I love learning about the intricate mechanics that make racecars work and making the fine adjustments that they need to go faster. So you can imagine my excitement when we found out that Australian racecar engineering company ChassisSim was running a contest for racecar engineers. And it wasn't just any run of the mill theoretical contest for college students. It was a competition to see who could produce the best setup for a real SRO GT3 car using their pro-grade simulation software. Anyone of any level could enter from anywhere in the world, and there was actual prize money for the winners. For me, this was a chance to test my hard-learned skills against the best and brightest racecar engineers from across the globe. The 2020 edition of the ChassisSim competition attracted 150 competitors, many of whom were professionals or automotive engineering students. It would be a tough ask for a self-taught race engineer like myself to stand a chance against a field of hardened pros and pros-to-be. So I set some realistic goals - If we didn't come in last place, we would treat it like a win. With our sights set firmly towards level ground, we put down the entry fee and dove head-first into the world of professional racecar engineering. Table of Contents Because this story ended up being so long, I created a table of contents so you can quickly jump to the different chapters. Just click on the chapter headings to skip to each section. What is ChassisSim? Sizing Up the Challenge Selecting the Tools Strategy Session The Secret Setup Process The Big Reveal The All-Important Debrief How do YOU Enter? What is ChassisSim? Those of us who have ever done any setup work on a racecar (whether in sim racing or in real life), you know that your car's setup is only as good as your test driver. If your test driver is fast, sensitive, and honest, you can trial-and-error your way to a fast setup. But if your test driver isn't a perfect machine capable of turning out metronomic laps, you may be left guessing as to whether your changes actually worked. Unfortunately, not all of us can afford to hire top-tier test drivers to set up our cars. That's where ChassisSim comes in. ChassisSim is a software simulation suite that lets you test upgrades and setup changes to racecars on a regular home PC. You do need to take some fairly precise measurements off of your car in order for it to work. But once you have that, you can make any changes that you would want to test on your car, and a virtual test driver will take it around the track of your choice and show you exactly what differences it made. And when I say exactly, I mean EXACTLY. ChassisSim simulates the cars and tracks down to its smallest details, from the torque curve of your engine to the smallest imperfections on the track surface. Each run produces a full data log, revealing everything from engine rpm to steering angle to the exact ride height of the car at any given point in time. It even has its own built-in metric called the Index of Stability which tells you how stable or twitchy your car is through the corners. If that isn't enough, ChassisSim has a built-in 7 post rig for testing suspension systems and a Driver-in-the-Loop simulator so you can actually drive your newly set up racecar in the virtual world. As you can imagine, this is a huge time and money saver for race teams. Engineers can see what an alignment change or a power-adding engine upgrade will do before they lay a finger on the car. If an upgrade package works out, great. Put it on the car. If not, that's ok. Just go back to the last setup and try something else. What's even more incredible is how well the results correlate to the real world. A few random queries on LinkedIn (of all places) revealed that the laps they simulated in ChassisSim were within a hundredth of a second of what they achieved in real life. Needless to say, it's an incredible piece of software. All it needs is a skilled race engineer to get the best out of it. And that's the challenging bit. Sizing Up the Challenge The rules for the 2021 ChassisSim Engineering Competition were simple: Set up a race car so that it laps the Mount Panorama Circuit at Bathurst in the fastest time possible, regardless of whether it's driven by a computer or a human driver. The organizers would give us a model files for a car (a mid-engined, RWD GT3 car), model files for the track, and 100 simulation runs on ChassisSim Online so we could test out our changes. We were allowed to make as many setup changes as we wanted, so long as we stayed within that allocation of 100 simulated laps. The final submissions would first be put to the test by ChassisSim's simulated driver, which would punch out the ideal fast lap for each setup. Then, a professional racecar driver would take the wheel in a Driver in the Loop simulator and do a flying lap with the same setup. Contestants would be ranked based on a combination of the two results. Sounds easy, right? It would be if we could upgrade the car like a college student playing Forza Motorsport. In order to keep the cars realistic, the contest runners added a few extra rules to this year's competition. These extra rules meant: No changes to the weight or weight distribution of the car No changes to the engine or gearbox No changes the wheelbase or the front/rear track A minimum dynamic ride height of 20mm on all four corners A spec tyre with no adjustments allowed Limited adjustability on the wing No automagic active suspension or computerized differentials No adding a hybrid system, converting the car to AWD, or changing the engine layout Limits on how far you could move the inboard and outboard suspension pickup points (+/- 50mm on the inboard pickup points, +/- 10mm on the outboard pickup points) In other words, we couldn't make the car go faster by slapping on a big turbo or by taking a ton of weight out of the car. We would have to earn our lap time the good old-fashioned way - with careful adjustments to the suspension system, brakes, diff, and all of the other settings that you can normally adjust on a real-life racecar. It would be hard work, to put it mildly. But the blood sweat and tears would be well worth it. The contest offered generous cash prizes for the Top 3 finishers (in US Dollars, the most expensive of dollars) and a big pile of free ChassisSim simulation runs for all contestants who finished in the Top 10. Game on then. Selecting the Tools ChassisSim is a tool designed for simulating a car's behavior. While you don't need a particularly powerful computer to run it, you do need a few other tools to get the most out of it. For this contest, we would need a good data analysis suite that would help us analyze the data that ChassisSim produced, as well as an organized way of keeping track of the setup changes that we were planning to make. Because I had no particular loyalties to any data analysis platform, I chose the most user-friendly of data analysis suites: Motec's i2 suite. Even the (free) standard version of i2 is powerful enough to give you all of the graphs and graphics you need to turn the data logs from ChassisSim into visually friendly graphs that you can configure to your heart's content. The aesthetically pleasing UI is as intuitive as it can get - If you know how to use the data logger feature in Gran Turismo or Assetto Corsa, you already know how to use Motec i2. As for my digital notepad, I chose Microsoft's venerable (and free) OneNote. In addition to supporting support text, images, videos, and voice notes, it has a built-in calculator that parses out mathematical equations - a very useful feature for those few occasions when you need to plug some numbers into equations. Strategy Session Now that we had our tools on the table, it was time to figure out how we would use them to tackle this challenge. 100 simulation laps sounds like a lot, but you will burn through them very quickly if you spend all of your time taking shots in the dark. I quickly realized that the only workable approach would be to set this car up the same way that I set up real racing cars: Take a series of baseline measurements and understand the car's fundamental behaviors Change springs, dampers, and ride heights to glue the car to the track Stabilize the car with the alignment, differential, anti-roll bars, and aero Step back and look at the car Make more intrusive changes to items like suspension pickup points Test out any other ideas that come to mind Of course, I knew there was no guarantee that a 500hp mid-engined GT3 car would respond to setup changes the same way as the 200hp club racing sedans that I was used to working with. But I wanted to see how my approach stacked up against the practiced hands of the pros. So with that settled, I fired up ChassisSim and loaded up the contest car for the very first time. Setup Step 1- Understanding the Beast First order of business - Load the car into ChassisSim and find out what we were working with. The car model file had no make or model in its description, so it was anyone's guess as to what real-life car it was based on. What we did know was that the mid-mounted engine made 509 hp at 7500 rpm and the whole car weighed 2866 lbs. Those numbers sounded vaguely like the specs for a GT3 Lamborghini, so I pretended it was a green and yellow Huracán GT3. The specifications of the default suspension setup read like that of a Front Wheel Drive touring car, but in reverse. A 44/66 front-to-rear weight distribution meant that most of the car's weight was supported by the rear wheels. ~1300 lb-f/in front springs and 1500 lb-f/in rear springs held the car up at all four corners, with a 1066 lb-f/in front anti-roll bar paired with a relatively tame 550 lb-f/in rear anti-roll bar. Fortunately, there was nothing in the car that we weren't familiar with. No funny setup trickery, no third springs / dampers, no weird F1-style front-rear interconnected suspension. Even the differential was a standard adjustable clutch-pack setup. It was reassuring to see that there were no surprises. Reassured by the familiarity of the car and full of confidence, I loaded up the provided track file and ran my first-ever simulated lap to get a baseline lap time. The software scrolled through a flurry of numbers before displaying a surprisingly fast lap time - a 2:01.487 (??). This was the first of many surprises in this contest. My baseline lap time was a full tenth of a second faster than Shane van Gisbergen's real-life GT3 lap record around Mount Panorama Circuit. How on earth were we supposed to make the car any faster than that? Something had to be wrong. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to email the contest organizers and validate the baseline lap. This turned out to be a good move. The organizers confirmed that this lap time was not what they expected either. It turns out I had somehow loaded the track file given to us for the contest with the built-in Bathurst circuit file that came with the ChassisSim software. The resulting mis-mosh of a track was missing many of the track's trademark bumps and elevation changes, making it faster than it should have been. It was a classic case of operator error, caused by a user who didn't know how to use the software. And so, the second order of business became to understand the software itself. Make no mistake - ChassisSim is a pro-grade simulation tool. It has so many features, options, and dialogs that you'll never be able to figure it out by clicking around. Fortunately, the creators of ChassisSim have spent the last 10 years building up a series of beginner-friendly video tutorials on their YouTube channel that show exactly how to use every single option and screen. So for the first week, yours truly spent his commute listening to ChassisSim Director Danny Nowlan passionately explain the ins and outs of ChassisSim in a cheery tone of a man who clearly loves his job. Yes, that was a solid 3 hours of every day watching videos, but it was time well spent. The ChassisSim tutorials use real-life examples, and even offers suggestions on what settings to use for what situation. Some of them, like this one on the Damper Workbook, even have formulas in them that show you exactly what numbers to put into the software to get the best results. They are excellent chassis setup videos, and I would recommend watching them if you have any serious interest in learning how to set up a racecar. Armed with a newfound understanding of the software, I loaded the car and track into ChassisSim and re-ran the baseline lap. This time, the software spit out a lap time of 2:04.175 - exactly what the organizers said it should be. Success. We were finally at the starting line. Time to get to work. Setup Step 2 - Giving the Car Legs Despite never having set foot in Australia, I have always loved Mount Panorama Circuit at Bathurst. There is no other track like it in the world. The long, fast straights leading up to a narrow concrete-lined climb up a literal mountain, the bumpy winding road across the summit of Mount Panorama, and that hair-raising descent that opens into the highlands of New South Wales all come together to make the track a legend amongst motorsports enthusiasts and sim racers worldwide. Finding a fast lap would involve setting the car up so it would be compliant enough to absorb the track's many bumps while being stiff enough to serve as a stable platform for the car's aero. We had no idea whether the default suspension was stiffer or softer than it should be, but we didn't want to make any assumptions. I started by increasing the spring rates by a substantial 15% front and rear, to see what it would do. Unsurprisingly, this hurt lap times - a 2:04.895. So we tried the opposite, reducing the spring rate by 10% front and rear. Somehow, this was worse. The car was even slower, returning a lap time of 2:05.035. What was going on? We opened up the logged data in Motec i2 and looked at the data traces for suspension damper travel. The car appeared to be skipping over some of the smaller bumps on the flat sections of the track. And softening the springs made the skipping worse. This didn't make any sense. I must have screwed something up while editing the setup dialogs. One of the advantages of using ChassisSim is that you can undo changes very easily. So that's exactly what I did. I loaded up the original baseline setup that the organizers had sent and lowered the spring rates 10% from the original setup. This worked. Just by swapping in a softer set of springs, we had gotten the lap time down to a 2:03.622 - A full 0.5 seconds faster than the baseline setup. Nice. In the next few runs, we tried reducing the spring rates until our GT3 car rode like an American luxo-barge. While this did help soak up the bumps, it also caused the car to pitch and sway so badly that the aero balance of the car would change as soon as you hit the throttle or the brakes. Our solution was to install tender springs on top of the main springs on each corner. This would effectively make the car behave as if it was on super-soft 700lb-f/in front and 820 lb-f/in rear springs for the first 25mm of its suspension travel. When you compressed the suspension further (e.g. under hard braking or when the car would squat down due to aerodynamic loads), the car would behave as if it was riding on 1150 lb-f/in front and 1350 lb-f/in rear springs. This setup yielded a 2:03.605 - Only marginally faster than the single spring setup. But the steering and throttle traces in Motec i2 showed that this made the car much easier for the driver to handle. We then briefly flirted with the idea of using a third spring to keep the car flat under hard braking. That idea went out the window when we realized that even the softest of third springs would cause the front wheels to skip under braking. Instead, we changed our focus to the dampers. Damper tuning is often considered to be a fine art rather than a science. That's probably why most people look so surprised when they find out that there is a set of well-known mathematical formulas that will tell you what damping rates to use based on the mass of the car, the spring rates, and the motion ratio of the suspension system. And thanks to ChassisSim's Danny Nowlan, there is a step by step guide on how to use the formula in one of ChassisSim's tutorial videos. Which means that I didn't even need to go look for my old suspension setup textbooks. I punched the numbers from the latest setup into Microsoft OneNote, accidentally discovering that OneNote solves math equations for you if you put an equals sign at the end. How handy. I then put the resulting numbers back into the Damper settings screen in ChassisSim to get my newly revalved suspension dampers: The magic formula worked. The new damper settings took another huge chunk of time out of our lap time. The car was now running a 2:03.272, almost a full second faster than it was originally. And we were just getting started. Setup Step 3 - Stabilizing the Platform I messed around with the dampers some more in an attempt to eke out a tiny bit more performance. But my usual method of playing with the high-speed rebound and compression adjusters didn't seem to make a tangible difference in lap time with the AI driver behind the wheel. So we turned our attention to other matters. The wheel speed traces in i2 showed that we were getting asymmetric wheelspin across the rear wheels through the uphill section of the track. The limited slip differential wasn't working hard enough under full throttle. Admittedly, I have very little experience in tuning a clutch pack differential. That inexperience was made painfully obvious as I fumbled around with the max diff wheel spin and locking ratio numbers in an almost-random way in the hopes that it might result in a faster lap. My best attempt resulted in a disappointing 2:03.615. Fortunately, ChassisSim offers a very simple and effective option for people for the differentially challenged - A locked diff. Locking the rear diff is a surprisingly common option for high-powered RWD race cars. In addition to being brutally effective in putting down power, it makes cars extremely stable under hard acceleration and hard braking. Not to say that it isn't without its downsides. A locked diff also makes RWD cars less willing to turn into corners and can result in some snappy handling if you don't manage it carefully. But given my personal inexperience and the limited number of runs allowed by the competition, we chose to take those risks and lock the rear differential. The locked diff hurt lap time slightly, pegging us back to a 2:03.570. But it was worth it. Acceleration down the track's long straights had improved dramatically. We would just have to make up time elsewhere. In an effort to help the car turn in, I dialed out the front toe-in that the car came with and applied a tiny bit of toe-in to the rear wheels. I also experimented with some of the higher downforce wing settings, lowered the ride height, turned the brake bias back to 52/48, and tried a few different anti-sway bar settings. Lap times incrementally dropped to 2:03.235. We were slowly going faster, a few hundredths of a second at a time. I closed my eyes and daydreamed while ChassisSim crunched through the numbers on my latest setup. If only there was something out there that would make us a few tenths... or maybe even a whole second, faster... Then it hit me. I missed a trick with the third spring. Yes, the whole third spring experiment was a bit of a disaster. But what if, instead of installing a third spring, we installed a third damper with no spring attached to it? With enough high-speed bump damping, a third damper would the sudden nose-diving that we were getting under hard braking. Yes, it was a bit of a gimmick, but how bad could it be? I took an educated guess at the damping rates, attached a third damper to the front suspension of then GT3 car, and excitedly punched the Simulate button to run the car through a lap. My jaw dropped at the result - a 2:02.215 (!!) - over a full SECOND faster than our fastest setup so far. Of course, this was far from a slam dunk setup change. The Stability Index trace showed that the change had made the car much harder to drive, as it wanted to dance under hard braking through turn-in. But it was impossible to ignore the impact of the change. We were on to something. All we had to do was to refine it. Softening the front anti-roll bar made a massive improvement to drivability, at the expense of a few tenths of a second per lap. The car was back to running a 2:03.032. But we knew we could unlock more speed. The data showed that the car's camber was changing dramatically as it went around the track, so we started making adjustments to tackle that instead. Take out some static camber, adjust the front springs so they ramp up to full rate faster, raise the front roll center, lower the rear roll center... The drivability was improving with every iteration, but every setup change was making the car slower and slower. By the 30th simulation, the car slowed down to a 2:03.825. Not good. Worse yet, we were out of ideas. Setup Step 4 - Breaking through the Wall We had hit a brick wall in our setup, and I had already used up a third of the 100 simulations that we were allowed to use. No amount of staring at the data would get us past this roadblock. I needed outside inspiration. And something to help me regain my confidence. The gradual decline in performance was making me start to question whether I had any idea what I was doing. Surprisingly, validating my own sanity was the easier of the two to-dos. One of the default car models that comes with ChassisSim is a Lamborghini LP560 built for the same GT3 class as our contest car. It was lighter and has slightly different specifications to the car we were using for the contest. But it was close enough that we could at least see if our car was in the right ballpark. We loaded up the Lambo into ChassisSim, put it on the same track that we were using for the contest, and hit the Simulate button. The car turned a scorching fast 2:01.972. This unexpected result caused a brief moment of panic before I realized that the default Lambo had something the contest car didn't - a Super Diff. Apparently, the designers of ChassisSim were fully aware of the frustration that comes with tuning a racecar with an adjustable limited slip differential. To combat this, they created a setting that would allow engineers to temporarily eliminate the differential as a variable. This setting, called "Super Diff", delivers 100% of the car's power to the ground at all times. That explains why the car was so unbelievably quick. I quickly replaced the Super Diff with a locked rear diff, and raised the weight of the car to the same 2866lbs as the contest car. This resulted in a 2:03.990 - Slightly faster than the baseline settings for the contest car, but almost a full second slower than what I had managed after 25 simulation runs. Seeing this was a huge relief. I wasn't completely out in the weeds. My setup strategy was indeed working. I just needed to take it in the right direction. Finding the right inspiration would be slightly harder. Aimlessly flipping through motorsport magazines and technical journals was probably not going to work. I needed something more tangible. And more solid. Fortunately for me, I had something very tangible and very solid sitting right next door - The StudioVRM Honda Prelude. So I threw on my coveralls and sauntered out to the garage to seek inspiration from the car that literally and figuratively carried me for the last 10 years of my racing career. I opened the hood, put the Prelude onto jack stands, and stared at the array of mechanical metal bits from the underside of the car. I closed my eyes tried to visualize how the GT3 car was running, based on the steering, throttle, and brake traces in the data logs. "If the Prelude was handling like that in real life, what would I do to fix it?" I went to bed that night without any answers. The following night, I went back out to the garage and did the same thing. The Prelude needed new brake pads anyway, so I had a good excuse to wrench on the car at midnight. That's when I realized that the Prelude and the ChassisSim contest car had something in common - Both cars carried most of their weight over their driven wheels. Being a front wheel drive race car, the StudioVRM Prelude has a front / rear weight distribution of around 65% / 35%. It's a very front-heavy car. As a result, we have to run our brake bias all the way forward to prevent the rear wheels from locking up under hard braking. The GT3 car that we were setting up for the contest was similar, but in reverse: Its weight distribution was 44%/56%. What if we turned the brake bias rearward and made the rear wheels do most of the braking? The idea itself isn't particularly unique. In fact, it's somewhat common for older mid and rear-engine production cars to be have their braking systems biased towards the rear of the car. We would just be taking it to the extreme. The locked rear differential and rear toe-in already made the car stable under braking, so the driver would be able to tolerate a fair amount of rear brake bias. In preparation for this experiment, I rolled the car back to an earlier setup and made some alignment changes to help stabilize the rear end. Front toe was now at 0.05 degrees out, rear toe was now 0.15 degrees in. This preparatory alignment tweak yielded a few hundredths of a seconds of performance on its own, lowering the simulated lap time to a 2:02.962. I started tentatively, turning the brake bias rearwards, so that the front brakes handled only 48% of the braking. For the first time since the start of the contest, the rear wheels of the car was handling the majority of the car's braking. This yielded some small gains - a 2:02.892. The rear brake bias did make the car slightly less stable under braking, but it also saved a chunk of time under braking. So what would happen if we turned it back further? So we tentatively turned the brake bias back some more to 42% front. We expected this setting to be somewhat scary over the swoopy, hilly section at the top of the mountain. But to my surprise, the AI driver had to do surprisingly few corrections to keep the car on the fast line. And it did so while turning a 2:02.740 thanks to the fact that the driver could hit the brakes harder and stop the car faster. ...what if we took it even further? 38% front brake bias seemed almost reckless, but the mad scientist inside me had to know what would happen. So I tried it. And boy, was I happy that I did. ChassisSim's virtual driver hammered out its fastest lap yet: A 2:02.682. Despite being slightly slower through the top of Mount Panorama, the car was now more stable than it was before. It turned out that the increased brake bias was getting the tyres hotter early in the braking zone. That extra tyre heat would get the tyres nice and sticky for the entire duration of the corner, resulting in more grip through the corner and faster acceleration while tracking out onto the straights. It also lessened the amount of nose-diving that the car did under hard braking, which meant that we could lower the static ride height even more. The final result of the brake bias experiment was a 2:02.585. The experiment was a resounding success. That night, I went back out to the garage with a renewed vigor and a bottle of waterless car wash. I then spent the last few minutes of my evening cleaning off the dirt that had collected on the Prelude's paint during its last track outing. It was the least I could do, after it had given me the inspiration I needed to break through the my mental roadblock. Setup Step 5 - Super Fine Refinements By this point, the car was a full 1.5 seconds faster than it was when I started. While this doesn't sound like very much to your average club-level racer, 1.5 seconds is huge in the world of manufacturer-built grand touring cars. It was time to stop making big changes and start focusing on the small, incremental refinements that separate the winners from the backmarkers. I experimented with the different rear wing settings and adjusted the ride height to match. The car proved surprisingly sensitive to aero adjustments. Too much wing, and the car would lose speed through Bathurst's long straights. Too little wing and the car would want to launch itself into the air through the hilly mountain section. We also ended up turning the brake bias back even more. We were now at just 35% front brake bias. Bizarrely, the car responded well to this change. Not only did this make the car faster, it also this reduced the amount of steering corrections the AI driver had to do through the corners. A few anti-roll bar adjustments later, and we were down to a 2:02.005. The car was really coming together now. It seemed that the car was happiest when I made the rear end work harder. Naturally, I wanted to see what would happen if I really kicked its butt. Bringing the rear roll center closer to the car's center of gravity would do exactly that. A few small adjustments to the inboard and outboard suspension pick-up points would do the trick. While I was in there, I added a small percentage of anti-squat to keep the car level under hard acceleration. I chuckled slightly as ChassisSim churned through the numbers. The simulation software made testing these highly intrusive suspension modifications so easy that it literally made me laugh. Adjusting the suspension pick-up points on a touring car isn't supposed to be this easy. The changes I was making should take weeks to test and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the sheer number of experimental suspension parts that you have to fabricate. And at the end of the test, you always end up with a giant pile of expensive, unusable suspension parts that you would have to chuck in the trash. Because I had access to ChassisSim, I wouldn't need to do any of that. I could just play with the numbers as much as I wanted in the simulation, figure out exactly what measurements I needed, and build production-ready parts using the numbers from ChassisSim. Imagine how much money that would save. $1000? $10,000? For a pro race team it would probably be closer to $100,000. The numbers were absolutely mind-boggling. All I knew was that it got the job done. Our GT3 car was now lapping Mount Panorama Circuit at a blisteringly fast 2:01.705. Our car was now faster than a lighter, more powerful Lamborghini LP560 equipped with its magic Super Diff. And we had only used 50 of our 100 simulations so far. I continued to make adjustments to the front and rear suspension geometry, shifting the pickup points to raise and lower the roll centers and adjust anti-dive and anti-squat. I also made some small adjustments to the dampers, which I ended up undoing after finding out that they yielded little to no performance benefits. Bit of a shame. They looked so promising on the damper histogram. ChassisSim supports a Mercedes F1-style Front-Rear Interconnected (FRIC) suspension setup, and I would have been remiss to ignore the opportunity to play with that option. I installed a small FRIC spring, ran the simulation, and immediately crashed the ChassisSim software. A friendly email conversation with Danny Nowlan revealed that I had forgotten to enable some necessary parameters to get the FRIC setup to work, and the lack of required settings were causing the software to chuck a wobbly. Correcting the issue revealed that FRIC offered very little benefit for a GT3 car around Mount Panorama Circuit. It wasn't all wasted effort though: I learned a bit of Australian slang. Another pass through the alignment settings revealed that I was going the wrong way with the car's camber settings. Dialing in some additional negative camber eliminated some understeer and brought the lap time down to a 2:01.660, or about 2.5 seconds faster than where the car had started. It was the hardest I had ever had to work to make any racecar go 2.5 seconds faster through a 2-minute lap. And it was all worth it. Setup Step 6 - Panic at the 11th Hour By this point, it had been three full weeks since the contest started. The deadline for the contest was over 6 weeks away. But at this point I was well and truly running out of ideas. I made some small tweaks to pass the time, changing anti-roll bar rates and tried to pull a few cheeky tricks with the bumpsteer curve. Nothing seemed to make the car any faster or easier to drive. I considered putting this car aside and making a second, separate setup off of the baseline car to see if I could get even better results. But curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see how well this first attempt would hold up against a practiced group of pro engineers. I scrolled through all of the 66 setups I had tested, grabbed the fastest one, and submitted it to the contest organizers. I would have to force myself to think about other things for a while. After all, the contest deadline still a full month away. It would be a long while before I heard back about the results. Or so I thought. A few hours later, my phone buzzed with an email from ChassisSim Director Danny Nowlan. He had taken a look at our car model, and found a problem with our submission. Uh oh. It turned out that the rear suspension pickup points and the front static ride height were outside of the allowed spec. Somewhere along the line, I had mixed up the limits on how far I could move the inboard pickup points and moved the outboard points too far from their stock location. And to make matters worse, the car file I had sent in still had the Super Diff activated from an earlier experiment. Technically, this could have been grounds for an automatic disqualification. Thankfully, Danny was as magnanimous as he is masterful. He offered to let me fix our clumsy mistake so we would have a legal entry for the contest. I immediately fired up ChassisSim, hastily put the suspension pickup points back to where they were originally, and put the locked diff back in the car. The patch fixed car ran a 2:02.482 - Significantly slower than our best attempt to date. And it was easy to see why. The aero balance of the patched-up car would fluctuate wildly over the course of a lap, and resulted in poor stability through every braking zone. It's amazing what happens to a car when you move the suspension pickup points by a few milimeters. This was no time to marvel at the mysteries of automotive suspension systems. We had to fix the car. The idea behind moving the outboard pickup points was to raise the rear roll center and bring it closer to the car's center of gravity. We had lowered the outboard pickup points of the rear lower control arms by a substantial amount to achieve this. Maybe we could achieve a similar result by raising the inboard pickup points of the lower control arms instead? There was no time to wonder. We had to try it. I raised the lower control arm pickup points by a full 40mm and ran the simulation to see what it would do. The wild shifts in aero balance had subsided, and as a result, the car was now significantly faster over the high-speed sections over the top of the mountain. More importantly, the lap times were back down to a 2:01.745. Not bad. But not quite good enough. If we were going to make a serious attempt at this contest, we would need to push the limits. So I made the call to go all-in on performance. I moved the inboard pickup points for the rear lower control arms upwards by another 9mm, right up to the limit of the rules. I also lowered the upper control arm mounting points a bit to make sure it would fit within the limits of the rules. I triple checked all of the settings to make sure they complied with the rules, and re-ran the simulation. The bug-fixed setup did a 2:01.475 - The fastest the car has ever been during the entire duration of the competition. Submitting this setup would be a gamble. The index of stability trace on the debugged car showed big spikes that weren't there before - Indicative of a car that was much less stable through the corners compared to our original submission. There was a good chance that the human driver would absolutely hate the car. But time was ticking, and we couldn't keep Danny waiting. So I packaged up the latest car model file and submitted it with a note thanking him for giving us a second chance. The Big Reveal Our second submission was thankfully accepted, and there was little to do except wait for the results. Yours truly tried his best to keep the contest out of mind, instead spending the time working out the bugs in the StudioVRM Honda Prelude and giving our ProjectCRX endurance racer a proper shakedown at VIR. We knew it would take some time to get a pro racing driver to do the Driver in the Loop tests, especially as prevailing conditions were causing more lockdowns across Australia at the time. Then, out of the blue, this message popped up in our team's Outlook inbox: I could feel the tears of joy welling up in my sleep-deprived eyes as I re-read Danny's email over and over again. Remember, I'm not a professional race engineer. I'm a club racer who studied this stuff in his limited free time. We were the minnows in this competition. The European Minardi F1 team of the club racing world. I would have been happy to finish in the top 50% of this field. And yet, I was getting a personal congratulations from one of the most well-respected names in the industry for narrowly missing the podium in a no-holds-barred racecar engineering competition. I was so happy that I didn't know how to react. I sent an overly excited thank you note to Danny and immediately hopped onto my social media accounts to tell my friends... all while forgetting that the official results hadn't been made public yet. Oops. Thankfully, the official results came out on the ChassisSim YouTube channel a few short days later: With it, we received our prize - A license for 25 simulation runs on the ChassisSim Online simulator, so we could use it on our real-life racecars. The All-Important Debrief As soon as I was off of the high of scoring a top-5 finish, I asked myself the big question: "What went well and what could we have done better?" While I don't have any detailed feedback from the judges at ChassiSim, it was pretty obvious that our entry was one of the "qualifying special" setups - Blisteringly fast over one lap; Extraordinarily difficult to drive over a full 60-minute race. The last-minute suspension adjustments played a big part in why the car was so difficult to drive. It would have helped to spend more time studying the angles of the rear control arms to see if there was a way to achieve the same speed without making the car so peaky in the corners. It was also clear that I didn't spend enough time tuning the suspension dampers. The fundamental strategy of using soft springs and copious amounts of high-speed damping worked ok, but the reality is that we missed a few tricks by not experimenting with different approaches there. I had enough simulations left over to play with the shocks some more. I just didn't do it. There was a good chance that the car would have been slower over one lap regardless of what I did. But it would have been faster when the human driver got behind the wheel in the Driver in the Loop segment of the competition. I'll take that tradeoff next time. The good news is that there were lots of positives to take away. The first was that we nailed our choice of ancillary software. I had seen Motec i2 in the past, but never used it for myself. What a great piece of kit. It's so intuitive that you don't even need the instruction manual. Because I didn't have to spend any time learning how to use i2, I was able to spend all of my free time focusing on setting up the car in ChassisSim. The second was the realization that the methods that we club racers (and sim racers) use when we tune our cars translates to real pro-level racecars. Sure, the cars are more sensitive to changes and the margins tend to be finer. But the basic concepts still apply. So if you are a student struggling to understand the fine art of automotive engineering, rest assured - Your long hours buried in the books will pay off one day. But the best thing, by far, is the fact that we learned a tremendous amount about racecar setup and tuning. The virtual driver in ChassisSim is literally the ideal test driver. It's lightning fast. It doesn't make mistakes. It doesn't guess. And it produces the same results whether it's lap 1 or lap 100. It always gives honest feedback. If you make an adjustment that makes the car faster or slower, you know that it was whatever you did that made the difference. Because I could get honest, accurate results for every single change, the two months I spent working in ChassisSim made me a better engineer. And as a result, our team's real-life racecars will go much faster in the future. How do YOU enter? Want to try your hand at ChassisSim? You could wait until the next competition. But if you are serious about racecar engineering (or just really enjoy making fast cars go faster), I wouldn't wait. A starter pack of simulations on ChassisSim Online costs less than a set of racing brake pads. My recommendation is to buy a bunch of simulations, download the software, and try it for yourself. Here's their info, in case you have any questions: ChassisSim Technologies (Australia): +61 425 219 375 (US): 678.671.6615 info@chassissim.com www.chassissim.com Who knows? Maybe your name will be immortalized in the winner's circle next time. In any case, that's all for today. Thank you very much for reading. I will see you at the track. Disclosure: Roger Maeda and StudioVRM.Racing are not affiliated with or supported by ChassisSim Technologies or by any of their partners or vendors. All entry fees and expenses were paid at full price out of the team budget, which currently comes out of Roger's own pocket.

Cover photo by Driver-Photographer Andrew Yoon Like many of you, I spent much of my childhood dreaming about racing fast cars on big racetracks. And like many of you, I came from a very modest background that couldn't afford to support that dream. I spent 6 years' worth of money from a part-time job to buy my first car. I spent three years developing my skills at the track in that car on a salary that could barely support your average college graduate. I loved every minute of what felt like a wild, high-stakes adventure and was ecstatic when it led me to getting my competition race license as well as my first dedicated race car. But looking back, I would do things a little differently. Because as it turns out, there was a smarter way to spend my $40k a year salary. One that would have helped me reach my dream sooner, and without some of the expensive trial and error that I went through. So here are five tips that I have for you budget-conscious drivers who aspire to become racecar drivers by climbing the track day / HPDE ladder: 1. Buy the best tyres, used (and in a popular size) As every car magazine on the planet loves to point out, upgrading your tyres make the single biggest difference out of any modification you can make to your car. Unfortunately, they are also the single most expensive modification you can make to your car. Unlike suspension upgrades, brake kits, or even an engine swap, tyres are 100% consumable. So that $1200 US that you spend on new performance tyres isn't going to be a one and done purchase. It's going to come back every year, maybe more often, depending on how much you care about absolute lap times. Because of this, I spent the early days of my track day career driving on sub-standard summer tyres. They felt mushy at speed, offered relatively little grip, and made the challenge of learning car control techniques unnecessarily difficult. They also wore out quickly because I was driving to work on them in between track days and DE events. As I later discovered, a better approach is to buy a cheap set of spare wheels and buy used racing tyres (also known as takeoffs). Not only will these dedicated race tyres perform better on track, they will make it easier to get a good, honest feel for what the car is doing. They will also last longer because you won't be using them on the street. A set of used racing tyres can be had for a tiny fraction of the cost of a set of new high-performance summer tyres: For example, a lightly used Hoosier R7 in 225/40R17 can be had for $125 US per tyre. Compare that to $240 US per tyre for new Continental ExtremeContact Forces in the same size. There are plenty of deals like that out there from reputable sellers. My favorites (in the US) include: UsedRacingTires.com John Berget Racing Tires USDRRT eBay Store The reason that these deals are so readily available is that racing tyres are most grippy when they are brand new. Once you put them through a handful of track sessions (measured in heat cycles), the compound hardens and they become slower. It's a difference that is barely noticeable for any of us racers-in-training, but for those at the highest level of professional and club racing, it's often the difference between winning and missing out on the podium. So many of them will spend tons of money buying new tyres every race and selling their old discarded takeoffs to these companies at a fraction of the cost. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Just make sure to inspect each tyre when you get it. Make sure that the DOT date code (or the date of manufacturing on non-DOT slicks) is less than 3 years ago and that there is no damage on the sidewalls or the shoulders. I should also mention that it helps to use a popular wheel size. If you can, try to get wheels in one of the following diameters and widths: 15" Wheels in 7" or 8" width 17" Wheels in 8", 8.5", or 9" width 18" Wheels in 8", 8.5", 9", or 9.5" width As of December 2021, these wheel sizes are the most common in top-level pro and club racing and will give you the best selection of racing tyres (new or used). If your car came with 16" or 19" wheels, consider running a smaller wheel so you can enjoy a better selection of tyres. As for which wheels to buy, look for sturdy, undamaged wheels with a JWL or TUV certification. Don't worry about the weight of the wheels. Contrary to popular belief, an ultra-lightweight wheel will make very little difference in your on-track performance. Instead, look for a set of wheels that look like they can handle a bit of kerb-hopping or the occasional off-track excursion. You will have more than a few of those during your high-performance driving career. 2. Skip the cheap coilovers, spend on maintenance It might be very tempting to spend your hard-earned money on height adjustable coilovers right out of the gate. My recommendation is to resist this temptation for as long as you can. The reality is that decent track-ready coilovers aren't cheap, and they take a surprising amount of setup work in order for them to work well on track. They also need the chassis underneath them to be solid, or they won't work at all. So before you make any major modifications to your car, spend your time and money on maintenance. This means getting your car on jack stands and checking the condition of your CV joints, ball joints, tie rods, and suspension bushings. Check your wheel bearings for play and make sure that there is no structural damage or heavy rust that might affect the car's handling. Replace any worn-out parts that you find with good OEM replacements (The RockAuto Catalog is your friend here). If you have an older car, consider investing in polyurethane bushings to replace your old OEM bushings. Do a compression test on your engine to make sure that it is healthy, check your accessory belts, change your filters, and your spark plugs. Check the condition of your fluids (especially the brake fluid) and replace them with high-quality replacements that won't break the bank. Brake fluid is particularly important for us high performance track drivers, so it's worth spending a few extra dollars to fill your brake system with something suited to track use. And if you look carefully enough, there are some very good ones for the price. For example, Bosch ESI6-32N is an excellent DOT 5.1 brake fluid that retails for about half the cost of Motul 5.1. Why spend all this time (and money) on maintenance items? The main reason is that you need to. Most street-driven cars are not maintained as well as you might think. It's surprisingly difficult for an average driver to notice a worn-out ball joint or a bad wheel bearing on the street. That is, of course, until you put the car on a racetrack and suddenly realize that your car is exhibiting some catastrophically frightening handling characteristics. Track day entry fees are not cheap, and you shouldn't have to spend any of your hard-earned track time troubleshooting a misbehaving car. The other reason is that you need to develop some basic mechanical skills if you want to race on a budget. Even with perfect maintenance, things happen. Components wear out, things break, and accidents happen. At minimum, you need to be able to change your brake pads, rotors, fluids, change your oil, do some basic engine troubleshooting, and be comfortable enough to replace a suspension component or two. What better way to learn than in the comfort of your own driveway or garage? If you do have some extra money to burn, look at suspension upgrades that let you make alignment adjustments. In particular, look for components that will let you dial in more camber. Most high-performance and track-only tyres are designed to work with a certain amount of static camber dialed into the suspension, and these components will help you make the best of them. Just don't throw out or give away your stock suspension components. You never know when you might need to go back to them. 3. Buy the best brake pads you can get Tyres and maintenance items aside, there's one other place where it's worth spending your hard-earned cash: Your brakes. But don't go out looking for big brake kits and cryo treated rotors. The biggest bang for the buck is in a set of good, track-ready brake pads. The reality is that most streetable high-performance brake pads won't hold up to track use. This includes the likes of the Hawk HPS, Carbotech 1521s, or anything made by EBC Brakes. As soon as you start using the brakes like you're supposed to (which, surprisingly, is quite aggressively), these pads will fade and crumble away on you. Look for pads that are designed for track or race use. These pads often cost several times as much as popular high-performance street pads (upwards of $200 US for a front or rear set for most cars) and are well worth the price. If you can keep a second set of track-specific pads and rotors that you can swap in before track days, you have a plethora of good choices: At the time of writing, Raybestos ST-43s and ST-45s remain our favorite all-round track pads, with  Hawk DTC-60s / 70s (depending on your application) and Carbotech's XP lineup being good alternatives. If you are lucky enough to drive a car that they make them for, WinMax's track-specific line of pads are consistently well-liked by track day enthusiasts for their excellent fade resistance and pedal feel. If you don't have the luxury of storing a second set of brakes, there are a handful of pads that are capable of double duty. Ferrodo DS2500s are still one of the best dual-duty street/track pads that you can buy. Hawk's HP+ produces quite a bit of dust and are noisy on the street but are similarly capable track pads that can be driven on the street. If you do choose to run these dual duty pads, remember to wax and clean your wheels. Both compounds produce sticky, corrosive brake dust that will ruin the paint on your wheels if left unchecked. The good news is that you don't need to buy expensive rotors to get the best out of these pads. In fact, we recommend that you do the opposite. Buy the cheapest decent quality blank rotors that you can get. A set of OE-replacement Centric, Brembo, Dynamic Friction, or Bendix rotors can be had for surprisingly cheap for cars equipped with cast iron (aka "steel") brakes. Skip the slotted and drilled rotors. If you bed your brakes properly, you will never need those extra holes in your rotors. The most important thing is to use these pads like they were made to be used: Brake hard and firm when you are on track and keep the pads within their temperature window. If you can do that, they will get you stopped lap after lap and will last a surprisingly long time. 4. Do your own alignments and car setup The first specialty tools that I bought for my car were a set of Longacre toe plates and a good tyre pressure gauge. A year later, I splurged on a budget-friendly camber gauge and a cheap probe pyrometer. As it turned out, these were some of the best investments I could have made into my on-track career. It turns out that a good, track-friendly alignment can transform the cheapest econobox, while a bad alignment will ruin a purpose-built track machine. And as many of you know, your car will naturally go out of alignment from regular street and track use. A badly aligned car will not only feel strange to drive, it will also hinder your learning and cause excessive, premature wear on your tyres. Why spend $100 US per session to correct small issues on an alignment rack when you can buy the tools and do it in your own driveway or garage? It's fun, interesting, will teach you a lot about how your car's suspension system works, and will save you a lot of money in the long run. A set of simple alignment tools can also help quickly find and diagnose issues before they become problems. For example, a quick check of your car's toe can reveal a bad tie rod or a worn ball joint well before it becomes noticeable in the car. A budget-friendly bubble-type camber gauge can help you spot a bad wheel bearing before you get to the track. So where do you learn to do your own track-friendly alignments? There are quite a few good resources that can teach you, but I recommend starting with MotoIQ's Ultimate Guide to Suspension and Handling. It's written by one of the most talented racecar suspension engineers I have met, is very beginner-friendly, and is free. So how do you use these tools? The toe plates and tyre pressure gauge will be useful on day 1. Start by measuring the front toe and rear toe on your car and keep track to make sure that it stays consistent between track days. If it changes, check your tie rods and control arms to make sure that nothing is worn out or damaged. Replace any broken parts and set the alignment back to where it should be. Look up the ideal operating pressure range for your tyres. Most manufacturers publish these numbers and will provide them if you call or email them. Adjust your tyre pressures so that they are in that ideal range when you are on track. This means that you will need to make your tyre pressure adjustments immediately after you come off track. This will help make sure that you are making the most of your tyres' grip at all times. As you pick up speed, you will want to adjust the camber on your car to get more grip out of your tyres. This is where the probe pyrometer comes in. Push it deep into the tread of your tyres to measure the temperature of the inner edge, middle, and outer edge of your tyre's tread immediately after you come on track. ideally, you want the inside part of the tread to be the hottest, followed by the middle of the tread, then the outside, with an even spread of temperatures (e.g. a 15 degree F difference) between the inside, middle, and outside. If the inside is significantly hotter, take some negative camber out of that wheel. If the outside is hotter, dial in some negative camber. Which tools should you buy? As far as what tools you should buy, I would recommend these budget-friendly options (but durable) options for the budding enthusiast: Longacre Toe Plates Longacre Basic Tire Gauge (the 0-60 psi model) Speedway Economy Camber/Caster gauge Longacre AccuTech economy pyrometer Not only are these tools budget friendly, they are sturdy enough to last years (or decades, as I later found out) as long as you don't abuse them. If you decide that you really enjoy racecar chassis setup and tuning (as some people do), you can upgrade your tools later on. I happen to be one of those people. So just as an example, here's what I have in my current alignment kit today: Longacre QuickToe Setting Tool Longacre Liquid Filled Tire Gauge Joe's Racing Camber / Caster Gauge eTape16 Digital Tape Measures (they really speed up the alignment process) Trilancer Elastic Cinch straps (since the QuickToe tool's magnetic arms don't stick to aluminum wheels) B-G Racing 4 wheel string alignment kit Lastly, and most importantly - Remember to write everything down! Adjusting your alignment can be a tricky and time-consuming process, so you will end up making most of your adjustments after you get back home. Good notes are critical to a good alignment, so don't skip that step and put your notes in a place where you won't lose them. 5. Practice car control in (gas) karts Here's an uncomfortable truth for all of you track rats: Track days and HPDEs suck for practicing car control. The reality is that the risks of losing control at 100+ mph are high, and the resulting consequences can be expensive. As a result, most track day organizations encourage their drivers to drive conservatively and stay well within their limits. But that makes it all the harder to go faster. After all, how do you know where the limit is if you can't step over it every so often? Thankfully, there is a cheap and easy answer to this conundrum: Rental racing karts. Racing karts are light, nimble, and viciously raw. They have no suspension and rely on a single rear brake, actuated solely by the muscles in your left foot. Driving 35 mph in a racing kart feels like you're going 100+ mph in a formula car. And for good reason. It takes a similar level of car control and skill to control a proper racing kart as it does a full-scale open wheel racecar. The difference is that average speeds are lower, and the consequences of spinning or tapping the wall are nowhere near as serious. Overcook a corner and end up in a massive slide? No problem. Just give it a ton of opposite lock and floor the throttle to power out of it. Brush the plastic barriers on the way out of a corner? That's okay. Just don't do it next time. The lessons that you can learn from rental karts make them the perfect way to learn car control in a safe environment for very little money. Electric karting places can be good for this kind of car control training, but if you have the choice, look for a place that uses gas powered karts. Gas karts are significantly lighter than their battery powered cousins and are much less forgiving when you make a mistake. This makes for better racing and does a better job of teaching the essentials of car control. I was fortunate enough to live close enough to Grand Prix New York that I could hone my car control skills on their Sodi RX series gas karts. If you're lucky, there will be something similar near you where you can practice driving at the absolute limit. Trust me, it'll be worth it when you get back on track. That's all I have for you today. Thank you very much for reading. I will see you at the track. Disclosure Section: StudioVRM and Roger Maeda are not affiliated with or sponsored by any of the vendors mentioned above. All of the products mentioned above were bought out of Roger's own pocket with his own money in the span of the last 15+ years.

2021 has not been kind to StudioVRM's racing program. A myriad of mechanical issues, from worn-out suspension components to oil leaks to a sudden wheel bearing failure sidelined our Prelude at every track outing. And to add insult to injury, the harsh realities of finances and scheduling kept us from taking up GogoGear Racing's generous offer to guest drive their USTCC Civic at Sonoma. But there was still one last chance for redemption. The hardcore club racers of the Honda Prelude Racing Group were planning a meet at this year's NASA Hyperfest at VIR. Yours truly has never been to VIR. Wouldn't it be so satisfying to finish off the year with a few glory laps with friends at one of the fastest tracks on the east coast? With that goal set firmly in our sights, we pulled the Prelude into the garage and set to work on the issues from that disastrous race at NJMP. A teardown of the front and rear suspension revealed a bad rear camber adjuster. This was very likely the cause of the uncontrollable weaving down the straights at NJMP. A new 2-quart Accusump arrived from Canton to replace the leaky unit that turned the passenger floor into an oil slick. As a precaution, we also replaced the seasons-old front driveshafts, which revealed that the left front wheel bearing was on its way out. Out came the old worn-out components, in went a set of new CV joints from Insane Shafts and a brand-new NTN wheel bearing. For good measure, we also replaced the washer on the oil pan drain plug with a new copper unit to eliminate the last of the leaks. Although the main objective was to get the car up and running, we couldn't resist the opportunity to upgrade the front suspension. So in went a set of K-Tuned roll center correcting ball joints for a RSX alongside a set of Raybestos ST-45 before the alignment was set back to race specs. There were only a few short weeks until Hyperfest, and only a few opportunities for a proper shakedown. Thankfully, MoeHPDE had a track day on NJMP's Lightning track at just the right time. Moe's well-organized events have quickly become a favorite of ours, thanks to their generous 6-session track schedule and strict safety standards that keeps drivers under control. The drive down to the track was punctuated with sudden bursts of torrential downpour, which fortunately was going in the opposite direction. We would only see intermittent spots of drizzle for the rest of the day - perfect for troubleshooting problems with the car. And right from the off, we would have a problem. Just as we were getting ready to roll of the grid, the clutch pedal went straight to the floor. The seals in the car's clutch slave cylinder had failed, and all of the brake fluid in the system had leaked out. A friendly grid worker helped push the car to a safe spot in the grass before I took a trip into downtown Millville for a $16 slave cylinder and a $45 vacuum pump to bleed the air out of it. A slave cylinder replacement is a job best performed with two people, but with a bit of struggling and a lot of pumping, I managed to get pressure back in the left pedal just before lunchtime. Gold. At 2:20 PM, the Prelude took to the track for its first on-track session of the day. I slowly wound up the revs as both the Prelude and I reacclimatized to being on track. It had been months since either of us had set foot on a racetrack. It took all of three corners to feel at home behind the wheel. We were back. And it felt good. A conservative out lap showed promising signs. The fixes to the suspension system worked. There were no sign of the odd handling issues or the passenger side oil leaks that ruined our last weekend. More good news came as I slowly started pushing on the next few laps. The car was turning in more sharply than ever before. It seemed the K-Tuned ball joints were performing exactly as advertised, regardless of the fact that we were using them in a blatantly off-label way. Things were looking up. That was right before things started going sideways. Literally. While passing a Porsche and an older Mustang coming out of the Lightbulb turn, the whole left-hand side of the Prelude's windshield suddenly clouded up. Then, in the middle of Turn 1, the rear end of the Prelude kicked out in a sudden and violent measure of snap oversteer. There was only one thing that could cause those seemingly unrelated symptoms: A big oil leak. Once again, the Prelude's oil dipstick had popped out of its tube, spraying a quart of Driven BR-30 break-in oil all over the engine bay. It had gotten into the crevices of the hood, leaked onto the windshield, and greased up the left rear tyre. Not good. Both oil catch cans appeared to be empty when the dipstick popped out, which was a bit strange. We would need to run the car again to see if it was excessive blow-by or something else that caused the problem. But first, we needed to get the oil cleaned up. Two cans of brake cleaner and a roll of paper towels only got the worst of the mess. But it wasn't enough. There was so much oil left inside the nooks and crannies of the hood that the corner workers immediately called us back to the pits when we tried to leave for the next session. I needed to get the rest of the oil cleaned up, but all I had to wash the oil away was a few bottles of Gatorade. Just as I was about to throw in the towel, ProjectCRX's Martin Szwarc made a well-timed entrance to the paddock. Martin saw the messages in our team's group chat and rushed down after work to help. Our friendly and resourceful teammate found a motorcycle racer on the Thunderbolt track with a case of orange-scented electronics cleaner and made a deal to buy the entire box. With a dozen cans of spray cleaner in hand, the two of us proceeded to clean the oily residue out of every corner and crevice of the Prelude's engine bay, leaving nothing but a pleasant orange after scent. Glass cleaning wipes seemed to do little for the oily windshield, so covid-killing alcohol wipes served as substitutes, ridding the Honda's forward-facing glass of both motor oil and deadly airborne viruses. The friendly grid worker from the morning checked our car for leaks and gave us the thumbs up, releasing us with a smile to get one last session before we headed home. Even though the dipstick was now ziptied down, enough crankcase pressure could cause it to blow out again. To combat this, we agreed to keep the Honda's H23 powerplant well below its redline, doing a few laps below 5500 rpm before gradually stepping it up to 6000 rpm, then 6500 rpm. Once again, the car felt fantastic. The front end felt eager to turn into whatever direction I pointed it to, effortlessly gliding through the fast, flowing corners of the Lightning track without batting an eye. The aggressive Raybestos ST-45 brake pads made hard braking much easier than with the old ST-43s thanks to the increased front brake bias. Even at 7/10ths pace, I could tell the car was already much better than it was before. But just as I was getting ready to step it up to 7000 rpms, I saw the black flag at the entrance to the Lightbulb. It turned out that the Prelude was smoking into the braking zones now. There was another oil leak, this time from somewhere behind the timing cover. This one wouldn't be an easy fix. Not that there was any time to fix it, of course. We messaged the symptoms to Powertrain Wizard Robert Oliver and loaded the Prelude onto the trailer. Martin had brought a slab of hazelnut chocolate cake from his bakery with the intention to celebrate a successful shakedown. We ate it anyway. And despite all of the problems that day, it still tasted good. The reality is that there are still some underlying problems with the Prelude's powerful new engine. But on the other hand, we were also able to squash the bugs in the chassis and pick up speed in every corner. In all likelihood, we won't be able to address the engine issues before Hyperfest. So, we are executing Plan B. Yours truly will be taking ProjectCRX to VIR in October. Make no mistake, the StudioVRM Prelude will be back. 2021 has us down, but 2022 season is right around the corner. And we will be ready for it when it comes.