The Blind Apex Podcast
The Blind Apex Podcast
Episode 155: Making Car Adjustments
GLTC Legend, Eric Kutil (joins me to expand on the thoughts about "if you aren't making adjustments ever session, you aren't trying to go faster."
If you like what you hear... share the podcast with friends and/or consider supporting the podcast through buymeacoffee.com/theblindapexpodcast
I guess I didn't even mention this yet, but the number one rule is one adjustment and that's it. One adjustment between a session and directly compare what that one adjustment did. There is times where I make a few adjustments at once because something is terribly wrong and I need to make a wild swing at it, but usually it's just kind of one minor adjustment. Go back on track, figure out what that adjustment did.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to the five apex podcast. We're amateur club racers do it to get faster.
SPEAKER_02:This episode is brought to you by D Twerk Fuel Systems. Use Apex10 at checkout to save 10% on fueling your passion. If you want to help the podcast grow, simply share it with friends. But also, you're going to want to check out the Instagram page, especially December 11th, first day of PRI, we're doing a huge giveaway for basically the wrap-up of 2025 and sort of celebrate the off season and going into 2026. So uh now that the business is out of the way, I can't remember where I heard it. I'm sure it was on somebody else's podcast because I'm a chronic podcast listener. But I heard somewhere if you aren't making changes to the car, you aren't looking to go faster. And I think my guest is always looking to go faster. Joining me, he's the hardest guest to get on a podcast. At least that's the rumor around the podcast circles. He's a JTC fanboy. Uh Honda, are you were you an engineer?
unknown:Honda Jan K.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I actually am a mechanical engineer at Honda as well.
SPEAKER_02:A Honda engineer, but I think he's really, really getting into this video editing side hustle that he's doing. So uh anyway, GLTC 2020 season champion Eric Kutil. Welcome to the podcaster.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, man, it's awesome to be here. And yeah, I'm I'm it's a little bit difficult to get me on a podcast, but I like to, you know, maybe give it a little excuse that I'm I'm kind of busy a lot of the times. Kind of. Especially now with all the the editing of the YouTube videos. So if if I get a chance to sit down and like do stuff, like I I kind of have to focus on other things. But no, like right now, end of the season, way less busy. So I'm happy to be here and uh talk to you about stuff.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, so I mentioned a giveaway, but this is gonna go out, excuse me, before your giveaway is done. So you wanna to plug the helmet giveaway you guys have going on?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so first of all, one of my main sponsors for a bunch of years now has been hybrid racing. And you know, every year we try to do something cool. And this year we actually teamed up to kind of make a helmet that's kind of inspired by my race car, inspired by hybrid racing. You know, it's got a SIG visor, it's a brand new Bell helmet, it's got a customized chrome tinted visor, sweet graphics on it, it's got hybrid racing decals on it, my decals on it. It looks pretty freaking sweet. And basically, yeah, if you go to my page link, basically hybridracing.com slash pages slash team dash eric dash katil. I'm sure there'll be a link in this podcast as well. But basically, go on to that site. That's kind of my team page. If you put your email in that, you can get a discount for hybrid racing parts and also gets you to enter, it also enters you into this giveaway. And then any additional dollar you spend on hybridracing.com gets you more entries. So that giveaway ends December 3rd. And right now is the perfect time to kind of get ready for Black Friday. Use my code, save some money, and also get a chance to win this sweet helmet and get yourself out there on the racetrack as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. It's it it's uh the fact that it ends on the other side of Black Friday is key because you know everyone tries to shop for a deal, so why not use those deals to help enter for a helmet?
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, and hybrid racing always has killer Black Friday deals, so I'm pumped.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, anytime I need something from hybrid, I'm I'm uh you know, I try to save some money here and there, so I'm usually shopping on Black Friday.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, as a lot of people do for any car parts, you know, black electronics, anything really.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure. So I I totally get how busy you are, you know. So earlier in this year, I think you guys were racing at some track. Uh we were watching on YouTube, and then when the live stream was wrapped up, uh it was the suggestion was uh like two tracks earlier for you. So I know you can get behind during the season. You're always you're hustling, you got a day job, you're trying to run your race program as professionally as possible. And uh yeah, I I just want to reiterate how how much I appreciate you coming on today.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm like I said, I'm I'm just glad to be here. So I'm glad we could finally make it happen.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure, for sure. So I stalk you on YouTube and Instagram, and I figured you'd be a really good person to talk to on this topic because it seems like and even today, uh, you know, the you you released a uh a video today, I think it was qualifying at pit race number two or something like that, uh, was the title, something like that. And uh you were making changes to the car or contemplating making changes to the car. And we talked a little bit before we hit record, so uh let's get into what you do or how you're making these decisions. What's the track side life look like for you when you're looking to make changes?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so obviously, you know, I'm trying to win, trying to win these races, and you kind of have to attack that at all fronts, right? You gotta make sure your car is fully prepped to the rules, make sure you got you know the best engine setup you can and arrow-wise, and then you kind of the last I wouldn't say it's it's probably the most important detail is obviously setup, right? You want to make sure the car handles good, you want to make sure the balance is perfect, you want to make sure the car is working great on that specific track for those conditions, and a lot of that actually starts in the garage for me, at least, right? Because every event I'm always putting the car on an alignment rack. So in my garage, I have a pretty simple alignment rack. I have kind of these uh I got them from eBay, but they're basically individual scale pads that you can level, make sure everything is leveled out and equal. And then you know, I do my car setup on that. So I have my corner balance, I use smart strings to set the car up, and I kind of have an idea of what I want to do in terms of setup for camber, toe, you know, how what the ride height I want, how much rake, how much you know, corner balance, corner weight, stuff like that. I already kind of have a general idea of where I want to be, and then I'll set the car up for that, and then I get to the track, and then that's where kind of the fine-tuning happens, you know, session to session.
SPEAKER_02:So, well, I've heard because oh well, I blame Evan and all the the um the TR guys, but they they were talking about the amount of data that you collect and what you're logging. Is that what's driving your adjustment track to track? Because you collected the data from last year or the last several years, or and then make those changes?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because so I'm kind of well known for this crazy Google Sheets spreadsheet that I have, and basically I track every single change I make to the car. So it maybe I could put up a picture somewhere on your Instagram or something, but basically I have here, I'm gonna actually bring it up on my uh computer here so I can kind of talk through it. But essentially, I have a column for pre-event setup. So I put all my corner weights there, I put how much ballast I run, where I put the ballast, what my safety margin is, you know, what my target horsepower and weight is, and then I go into stuff like camber, ride heights, caster, toe, my spring rates, you know, what kind of uh tenders I'm running, what my bump stops are, how many packers I have, then damper settings, control arms, what size, or sorry, uh sway bars, you know, what size my sway bar is, what I have it on the sway bar arm, and then I have more like specific things in terms of geo, so I can kind of adjust row centers, I can adjust how aggressive the camera gain is on this car, um, what the front to rear row center angle is, then I got arrow stuff, tires, uh brakes, uh just a bunch of stuff on the spreadsheet. So that's kind of the pre-event setup, and then I have a column for each session. So I have practice one, practice two, qualifying, race one, race two, race three, race four, and then I also have set down at the end of the weekend. So throughout the weekend at the track, you know, I have a lot of adjustments I could do, obviously. And I track it in this Excel spreadsheet, and then any change I make, it actually highlights in yellow, so I could kind of quickly see, all right, what did I do that weekend? Um, I have very specific, you know, tracking for tires, how many heat cycles the tires have, you know, what pressures I started on, what pressures were hot. Um, and then at the end of the weekend, I put the car back on an alignment rack at home, and then I re-measure everything because I want to double check, you know, did something change, or maybe all the changes I did at the track, you know. For example, you know, if I'm changing ride height or if I'm changing rake, my spreadsheet will automatically calculate what the estimated camber change will be, right? Because let's say I raise the front of the car up uh two turns on the coils. Um, I could put into my Excel spreadsheet right here. I'm gonna kind of walk through this right now, one second. If I raise the front two turns, it pulls about 0.3 degrees of camber out of the front, right? So this is all the stuff I already measured on the car, so I know what you know the ride height change will be, and that would also change what my estimated ride height is. So those two turns also raise the front of the car up 5.5 millimeters, right? So then that kind of gets calculated into how the roll center changed, how the roll center angle between the front and rear changed, what the rake is. So anyway, uh getting carried away here. Uh what I want to know at the end of the weekend is all those changes I made throughout the weekend, what is the end result? Um, and that's good to know because if the car worked really well after all those changes, then I want to save that final adjustment, that final result that I got. Or it also lets me know, hey, maybe something is wrong. Like let's say I was expecting 3.7 degrees of camera on the right front, and then I realigned the car at the end of the weekend that it was like 4.6. Okay, something must have slipped or something must have bent. So it kind of allows me to kind of look into that. Um, that hasn't really been a problem much anymore because the car is so robust that I can literally align the car at the end of the weekend, and it is exactly where I expect it to be. But you know, there is a situation where you know, like a year or two ago, I was basically bending rear trailing arms after every event because they weren't reinforced enough. So like the rear camera was always just a guessing game where it would end up. But yeah, it's long story short, I have these Excel spreadsheets and I have them saved year after year. So, you know, this past event, pit race, what I learned last year was that it was a very kind of low grip surface. The car didn't really have any grip, and I kept kind of going softer and softer on the spring rates last year, and the car still kind of struggled to thunder steer. So coming into pit this season, I was like, all right, we're gonna go once again pretty soft on the spring rates, pretty soft on the bars, because I really want the car to roll a lot, kind of grip up, and then we're gonna try to run a little bit more toe out in the rear than I would normally run. So that kind of allows you know the car to pivot a little bit better, oversteer, like that kind of sweet spot that I want. And that was basically the starting point for me setting up the car this year, is because I learned a lot of stuff at the track from last year, and it's all documented in my Excel spreadsheet with comments on at every session and you know what lap times I ran, what the track conditions were. So I have all this data, so it's important that I know how to use it, right?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, absolutely. We we always preach on this podcast about collecting your data being pretty meticulous. I mean, you're uh let's just say more advanced than most people are, but sometimes we're just coaching folks into okay, get your cold and your hot pressures, you know, do your tire temps and over time see how what you need to change, right? Um, but you've been doing this for years, right? In a in an amateur and uh semi-professional, professional setting. So you've got a system down, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I I uh yeah, I've been doing this for years. I started autocrossing back when I was in college around like 2011 or 12, got into track racing, 2015, did a lot of stuff with SCCA. Um, 2015 was also when I started working at Honda, and Honda actually has a volunteer racing team called Heart, Honda of America Racing Team. And I actually was on that team for I think like six or seven years. So I had a lot of experience and I learned a ton from that team. And when I first started, they used to run two ninth gen civic SIs in IMSA ST. And then eventually we went to um we went to a TCR Honda Civic type bar, and then we actually also had an NSX GT3 that we did, you know, 24 hours of Daytona, 12 hours of C ring. And I learned a ton on that team, basically, right? Because I was doing a lot of stuff with suspension at the time, and I did a few events as a crew chief, and you know, on a professional race team, you have way more tools, way more manpower, um, a lot more resources available. And, you know, just something as simple as you know, going out for an hour and a half long practice session, or I don't know, maybe it was like an hour, I don't remember. But, you know, you would basically run the car, you would do a lap. The driver at the time, you know, it was Ryan Eversley or Chad Gilsinger, you know, they would basically tell you, hey, the car is doing this, all right, car comes into the pit, you make an adjustment, you go back out, driver does basically three-fourths of a lap, comes back in, you make another adjustment, right? So in these professional environments, you have a lot more time to kind of fine-tune the car and the balance because you know, you have a crew that's able to make all these adjustments, right? If you come into the pits, you want to do a spring change, you know, your crew can do that spring change in about a minute or two minutes and then go back right out. And then the other nice thing about when you go to these professional events is that you normally bring an alignment rack with you. So after each session, you know, you could put the car in the alignment rack and then you can change whatever you want, right? As an amateur, you know, I don't bring an alignment rack to the track. Uh, unfortunately, my trailer is at max capacity already. I basically bring enough spare parts to build a second car. And now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should bring an alignment rack, but I don't really feel like setting up an alignment rack at the track every weekend. That's just that's miserable. But yeah, like as a club racer, I don't have an alignment rack. So I don't really want to mess with the alignment at the track because you know the ground is always gonna be on like unlevel. You're always gonna be chasing your tail in terms of camber and you know the toes, and you know, I don't have weights to put in the driver's seat to mimic driver weight, right? So an alignment at the track is is usually my last resort. I'm never really changing camber or toe at the track unless unless I have a fixed adjustment method. So, like, for example, on my EG sedan, I have honed rear toe arms, and they have like this, they have this teeth setup. So you can loosen this toe arm and then you can slide it, and it's a fixed adjustment. So I know every tooth on that arm adjusts the rear toe by about three millimeter. So I know I can do both sides equally, right? Another thing I have in the rear of my car is I have camber shims, so I can loosen the rear camber arms, pop a shim behind it, and I know exactly what that camber will change. But that's about it because any other adjustment on my car is kind of like a slot or you know, like a turnbuckle. Right. So I don't really like messing with those, but that's kind of the main difference between you know club racing and pro racing is just you know the lack of resources. And you know, sometimes at a you know a club event, you know, for example, the pit race video, the whole test day, it was kind of just me. So I didn't really even have an opportunity to kind of adjust shocks and pit lane or tire pressure. I kind of just went out, did a few laps, and then I would make the adjustment myself after. So, you know, sometimes you know, you don't even have help at a club track. But yeah, there's there's a ton of things I learned on the hard team. Unfortunately, due to my lack of availability and time, I I kind of stopped uh helping the team out around 2022 is when I was building the sedan. Um, but yeah, it was a great resource. You know, I learned a ton, and my my actual setup sheet is is kind of inspired a lot by what we used to use on that team. So yeah, just a ton of really useful knowledge, you know, that can be gained. So if anybody has an opportunity to volunteer for a professional race team, whether it's circle track, dirt racing, you know, club racing, or you know, even like some professional series, you know, absolutely take that opportunity and and go try it out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, man, make the food, roll the tires, do whatever you have to do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. There was so many different roles on that team that you would learn so much in each one of them. It was really a good experience.
SPEAKER_02:For sure. So, okay, so you you leave alignment as a last resort, and we've decided that on the amateur level, we're not gonna be psychopaths and level our own pads and set up alignment racks and stuff. So we're not generally gonna mess with the corner balance, I guess. Well, how are you prioritizing your changes?
SPEAKER_01:So I guess kind of number number one, right? The first thing, I guess, like rewind a little bit, is you have to be really attentive in the car when you're driving the car, right? And one of the things I actually do kind of struggle with is like I tend to drive around issues usually. So if the car is doing something badly on the track, I mean my my first instinct is to kind of just drive better, drive around it or try to mask it. And I have to almost kind of remind myself to think about what the car is doing because I can kind of just turn my brain off when I'm in the car and just drive and just chase, chase a laptop and just keep going and keep going. And it's one of the things I've really tried to kind of improve in myself this season is just to kind of think when I'm driving and think of what the car is doing. Think, you know, what do I want the car to be better? Um, and also, you know, kind of anticipate if I make this change, what is the car gonna do at the start of the race and what the car's gonna do at the end of the race? So the the important thing that I do at the end of each session is kind of write down, you know, a short paragraph or maybe you know a few sentences as to what the car did good, what the car needs to do better. So I have those notes, and that's kind of how I start making those adjustments. So then there's a ton of adjustments you can do, um but you know, stuff like I guess how how do you want me to explain? Like, do you want to you want me to kind of go through what I would kind of do first and then kind of change as a last resort? Is that what you're thinking? Yeah, I think so. I think that's a good way to go for it. So, all right, so number one is you know, tire pressures, right? You wanna you wanna make sure you're hitting a desired hot psi. So the kind of trickiest thing to do actually is to set your tires up before session and as the day goes on, because you know, if the conditions are right, you know, the car has not been on the track yet, tires are nice and fresh, you know, you can kind of set a cold pressure, and I know exactly what the hot pressure will be, plus or minus uh, you know, a psi or two. It gets trickier as the day goes on when you go session after session because then your your tires will be a little bit different after they don't fully cool down. But yeah, number one is you know making sure you're kind of hitting that target hot PSI. And you know, that helps when you have someone in pit lane or if you can check it yourself right after a session. So normally it kind of depends on the tire, depends on the car. But for me, I like to target like 28, 29 PSI hot, and that's a pretty easy adjustment that you can make, right? Just add a little bit more tire pressure. If you want to make the reel a bit looser, add a psi or two in the back. And then after that, there's a whole slew of adjustments that you can make at the track. Um, you know, number one, I think one of the easier adjustments is to mess with rake because I can kind of quickly adjust the ride height in the back, plus or minus a turn on the coil, maybe even more. And I like about my car is that the rear toe and camber doesn't really change a lot when you mess with ride height. So I can I can make a quick adjustment to the rear shocks, and I can even do, excuse me, I can even do like just one corner at a time, so you can kind of mess with um mess with wedge, right? It's what the NASCAR drivers always if you ever watch a NASCAR video and they put that wrench in the rear window and they turn it a few times, they're basically adjusting wedge, right? They're they're changing the height of that rear spring on that corner to give the opposite corner a little bit more bite. So most of the tracks you run, they're clock clockwise? Clockwise? Yeah, yeah, they're clockwise. So you're doing a lot of right corners, so you want to kind of you know, if you want a little bit more bite in these right corners, you're gonna lift up the left rear because that's gonna send a little bit more weight to the right front, right? So the right front's not really doing a lot because you know you're doing a right hand corner, it's lifting the right front up a little bit, but anyway, yeah, wedge is a super easy tool, um, or just turning both sides and and doing rake. Then after that, you know, you have sway bars, you know, you can easily adjust sway bars. I have uh I have a NASCAR style spline sway bar in the rear, and I have a custom NASCAR style spline sway bar in the front as well, so I can kind of easily adjust how much you know roll resistance I want, and then you can get it to spring rates. I have a I have a massive box of buy-box springs that I can mess with spring rates, packers, uh bump stops. Um, one of the critical things on my car is that it's obviously pretty low and sweet looking, but you know, you don't want the tires kind of burying themselves into the tubs, right? So I actually, you know, for example, I'll put tape in each of the wheel tubs where I know the tire will touch. And then after recession, I visually inspect, okay, did the tire hit the tub? No, it didn't. But if it did, you know, then maybe I want to consider raising the ride height, or I can maybe put in a few packers in there to kind of activate the bump stop a little bit earlier. Um, let's see what else. Um, like I we already talked about, I can make that toe change in the rear, I could do the rear camber shims as well. Um obviously I can mess with shocks. Shocks are a pretty adjust, pretty easy adjustment tool. Um and then, yeah, after that, you know, wing angle is a pretty big one that I'll mess with. Um basically I try to run as little wing as I can get away with. Um obviously, my car is is set up very aggressive to oversteer on the slow speed corners, which would make it kind of diabolically loose on any high-speed corner. Um, for example, turn one in mid-Ohio. So, you know, I gotta dial in a little bit more weird wing to kind of keep it stable. And then uh yeah, after that, it's it's really, I don't know. Uh like I said, the possibilities are kind of endless. Um, but one thing I don't really like doing, like I mentioned earlier, is I don't really like messing with any kind of slotted alignment setting. Um, so my front camera arms, they have a slot. As soon as you kind of mess with that, you kind of lose that known datum point that you've obtained in my shop on an alignment rack. And since I don't have an alignment rack at the track, you're kind of guessing at that point, right? And you know, there's ways that you can kind of zero out your camera gauge on the ground and then put it up to the wheel, but I I never really trust any of it because you just start chasing your tail, you know, you start getting these wacky numbers. So I don't really like messing with stuff like that unless I absolutely need to. And you know, the same thing with with toe. I'll do it in the back because I can, but I generally don't. Um, and then same thing with the front. You know, I like I could use toe plates, but it's it's never really an accurate measurement. So the the adjustments I do at the track, you know, I have a like I have a known adjustment value of them, right? It's it's something that I can physically it's like a it's like a known step, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I I feel uh I absolutely feel you on the don't mess with the slotted stuff because as soon as you enter that realm, you're in the hopes and dreams category instead of relying on your data and your pre-measured stuff, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and like if if you look like even if you found the flattest piece of concrete pad at the track, and you're like, all right, this is pretty flat, I could do my alignment here, I'll get accurate values. If that concrete is off by, let's say, 0.4 degrees, 0.4 degrees is gonna give you uh a camber measurement that is off by 0.4 degrees. I don't think I have adjusted my front camber on an alignment rack by more than 0.4 degrees. So if you're already like way outside of that kind of range I want to be in, just because of the you know the floor being a complete unknown, right? So anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So here's a question that's not on my list, but you mentioned it, you sort of glossed over it, uh covering everything. But so when you're making a change, are you seeking the change to make drivability better or lap times better or both?
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, I mean that's a tough question, but generally with better drivability comes better, more consistent lap time. So I would say that. Yeah, it that that's a tough question. I don't generally set the car up differently for qualifying versus a race. Okay, because we don't we don't we don't really have a lot of time at these grid life events. Let's say um you know Mid Ohio was a perfect example. You know, we had a whole test day planned through mid-Ohio the day before the event. The whole thing got rained out, the track got flooded, so didn't have any practice session there. Then the actual event came the next day. We only usually get one practice session at these events. That got rained out as well. So the first dry session I had at that event was qualifying, right? So basically what I'm trying to say is that you know, most of these events we don't have a lot of practice time to really dial in the car. You know, that we're not like F1 where we're setting the car up for one lap pace and then setting it up for a full hour long stint, you know, that's we're not that crazy. So generally, my goal in any grid life weekend is to just set the car up so that it's drivable. And I guess you know, if I was chasing lap times, you know, normally what I would do is just make the car looser and looser just to get it to turn. And if I can kind of manage all that oversteer, it's usually the fastest way around a track in my car, but it becomes quite a handful, and it's really easy to mess up a corner, and then there goes your entire lap. And then once you put that kind of setup in the car during a race, now you're not only managing you driving the car, that's very sketchy, but you're also going too wide around other people as well, right? So the last thing you want is to be chasing the rear end around and then you know, either spinning out or crashing into other people. So, yeah, usually I go for a more kind of consistent and drivable area, and I feel like My cars used to be my my EG hatch used to be pretty pretty wild. Um, but with the sedan, I kind of tamed it down a little bit, especially this season, just because, like I said, I don't want to be chasing the car when I'm going too well with people. I want to be confident in it. And especially on that first lap, you know, we're getting to the point in GLTC where you know these cars, they're so similar on pace that after the first lap, it's almost like F1. You kind of just lead follow each other. So a lot of the passes most of the time need to be made on that first lap. So if you have a car, especially a front wheel drive car, if you want that car to be loose in the middle of a race, you have to make it diabolically loose on that first lap, right? So that can lead to a lot of sketchy situations. So, like I said, I've made the car more drivable. So on that first lap, I know it's ready to go. I know I can lean on it, I know I can make those passes and those moves. And then maybe later in the race, you know, I'll struggle a little bit with understeer, but fortunately for me, my car was actually the lightest car in the field this year in like that front pack. So like tire fall off for me wasn't really a big issue. But yeah, to answer your question in a very long way, I'll make it short now. Is yeah, it's it's mainly for drivability.
SPEAKER_02:So in your opinion, do people need to collect gobs of data to start tweaking their cars or looking at making changes to go faster?
SPEAKER_01:Um, as a competitor, I'm gonna say they shouldn't. They should just keep doing what they're doing. But um, no, I mean I probably go above the normal, um, and I do think it helps me because I know these cars very well. I know the chassis very well. Like I've I've I've essentially been racing the same kind of chassis since I started back in 2012, which is kind of sad when you think about it. I've been I out across an Intier type R, I tracked an EG hatchback, and I'm tracking an EG sedan. So these are all the same cars. Um it's it's actually kind of funny. I I got into a CA Corvette a few weekends ago at Putnam and I was completely lost. No idea what I was doing. Um, Aaron uh lick these Corvette and he called me a big wuss. Um but anyway, yeah, I think um I think a lot of people, you know, it's very easy to get lost. And it's very easy to start messing with shocks and start messing with alignments at the track and chasing something that you think might make the car better when in reality it it might just be a driver thing, or you know, all the adjustments you're making is doing the b the wrong thing, right? And it it's it needs to start with a firm understanding of what an adjustment will do. You know, what is what is changing that shock rebound gonna do to the car, right? Because you know, some people have it backwards, right? They think, oh, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna increase the rear rebound a bunch to make the car looser and make the car stiffer. And you know, in reality, that's not doing what you think it's doing, it's it's kind of the opposite. And it's it also this you know, it's it's case by case, but you know, it starts with a firm understanding of what that setting adjustment is gonna do. And I just feel like a lot of people will get lost. So it's kind of you know, you gotta take it in kind of short steps and you gotta learn along the way. But I think at a minimum, you know, just after any session, you know, whether you're doing HPDE or professional racing, amateur club, you know, you really need to just kind of write down how the session went. What did the car do good? What did the car do wrong? What did you do good and wrong? You know, what do you think could be better? And then, you know, once you start kind of having those notes, then you kind of you know start coming up with a plan.
SPEAKER_02:So we have all these notes, and we have them for X number of events or over the course of a couple of years. What kind of changes are you making in between events and off seasons, and how are your notes driving them? Because I know you say you've been driving the same chassis, but I don't think you had the same kind of custom front sway bar, the same. I mean, I know Hone didn't make the same or those rear toe and camber links forever, you're not since 2012. You know, you have custom control arms. So what drove you? How did you know when it was time to make major changes and and the time and the money investment into those types of parts?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, I mean, it kind of all started. Um, so yeah, for those that may not be familiar, back in 2021, I was chasing for the championship at the last event, and I actually got in a pretty bad accident with the E.G. Hatch. It was wet, uh, went through the kink, kind of tried to go for a gap that didn't exist. A little ambitious, spun the car, went to concrete wall. That car was totaled. Um, Jeremy Swenson went on to win that championship, and I was kind of bummed I I stole the spotlight a little bit with my accident. But um, yeah, that that whole situation kind of led me down the path of building the sedan. And the whole goal with that car was that I had all this knowledge of the E.G. Hatch and the Integras and stuff, and I really wanted to kind of go to a whole new limit that most people haven't really been to with these chassis, and I wanted to kind of build my ultimate dream race car, and that's you know, where the sedan came in because you know I was heavily inspired by the Japanese touring cars back in the 90s. I mean, they they used to run the EG Civic Four-door Ferios for two seasons, and they just looked so sick. You know, they were these old school Hondas, they were slammed to the ground, they were running big 18-inch wheels, uh, very minimal arrow. So that was a whole inspiration behind my car. But um I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to kind of implement on that chassis, and then of course, getting it to kind of work at that really low ride height with the big wheels was also a ton of work. It required a lot of you know engineering, a lot of research, you know, a lot of suspension modeling. You know, we I I I tubbed all four corners of the car, so each of the wheel arches inside the car, they're about I think like two inches taller, so it just allows you to run the bigger tire, allows you to run it much lower. And so then you know that was a big part of it. And then you know, I had a lot of ideas, you know, all right, I want to have an adjustable sway bar that's pretty easy to adjust on the front of these things because you know the OEM sway bar, it kind of snakes in and out through the subframe around the exhaust. You you can't swap it easily unless you drop the whole subframe. So I was like, all right, well, you know, what if I welded these plates, put some you know, um sway bar mounts, and I could just run it through the engine bay, make my custom arms, and then you know, worked with you know my machinist Pat at Old Boys, he made some custom front lower control arms that have like these nice attachment pickup points. So I have a few points on the arm that I can kind of attach that sway bar to. And then a big thing on that car too was the whole lower control arm. Um, I decided to kind of work with hybrid racing to make a lower control arm for this car that's actually 15mm wider to increase the track width, and then also have a spherical bearing instead of the lower ball joint. So the bearing is actually in the LCA, which significantly lowers the roll center, and then it also makes the whole setup a lot more robust, right? So you're not blowing through ball joints, and all this was mostly required because of this kind of crazy ride height goal, but at the same time, it allowed me to have a lot more adjustability in the front suspension, too, right? So I I can shim the lower ball joint or the spherical up or down, so I could kind of fine-tune that row center. Um, the upper control arm, I can kind of shim it as well, so I can fine-tune the camera gain. So there's a ton of things that I learned on the old chassis that I wanted to implement on this new chassis, and just kind of give me that adjustability to kind of fine-tune these things, and then you know, you season after season, you know, the more you race, the more you know you realize, all right, what's what's the next thing that can be improved, right? You you're always you're always gonna find some kind of uh issue with the car or something that's just not up to you know competitiveness. So, yes, every season I kind of just sit down and I just kind of think. I I write, I have a whole X B XL spreadsheet once again for all the things I want to change in the winter. You know, what can I make better? Um, you know, a big adjustment. I think it was before the 2024 season is we went with a much wider wheel package on the front. We went to 18 by 10 and a halves, which required me to put flares on the front. Um, yeah, and I don't know, we just always kind of adjusting the car to make it better, right? So at the end of this season, you know, what was the biggest thing holding me back? And still have to think about it because uh, you know, it also is very dependent on the rule set, right? So if the rules change, you have to also kind of factor that in. I would say this season, you know, my car handled really well. Um, it just had no straight line handling, it was just kind of a dog on straightaway, and that's more so related to the rules, in my opinion, right? Um there's really nothing I can do to my car to make it better in that situation. Um, there's you know, I could probably fine-tuned gear ratios and powerband stuff, but that's kind of a more rule situation. You know, I chose to run the car extremely light and low powered compared to the competition. But yeah, um, it always starts with just just writing stuff down. You know, what can I do to make this car better for next season?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I I told James Houghton that he needs to talk to you about and have you guys sandbag for a year so they don't nerf the K series so bad.
SPEAKER_01:I don't I don't I don't standbag at CMP I was I was leading by like 10 seconds or something and I was like I should slow down I was like nah the the problem I have with with going um like with slowing down on a racetrack is that I I start to lose focus and then I make more mistakes right so if I'm kind of just locked in and just just running at my usual pace it's usually a better situation for me but yeah I don't I don't like the whole sandbag and for me you know like I'm I'm racing because I enjoy it obviously winning a championship would be awesome for me but I more so look forward to the awesome battles that I've had all year and you know the competitiveness and you know it might be a spoiler since my YouTube videos aren't out yet, but race three and four at Pitt were some of my favorite races of the year, and they were also my lowest finishing events or finishing races result of the year, but it seems because we had a great battle, but anyway, um I don't think the case series is gonna get BOP'd because my my case series was well in a straight line, but like I said, that was probably because I ran it at 1904 horsepower and I'm racing against Corvettes that are upwards of like 240, 250. I'm not quite sure.
SPEAKER_02:And they can't get any lower anyway. It's it's hard to muffle those things.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, I mean, I I don't want to get into whole rules discussion. Um, but yeah, it's the the the thing between my car and Maton's car is that they were so different. They were on both, they were on opposite spectrums of the rule set, right? They were built to the extremes. My car was built to the light extreme, Maton's car was built to the heavy extreme, and obviously those types of vehicles will be more favorable at certain tracks, right? So any kind of smaller, you know, more technical track, you know, CMP, Autobahn, LimeRock, my car was phenomenal. And then you take my car to a big track like Mid Ohio, Road America, which I didn't even bother going to because I know I was gonna get destroyed, you know, Road Atlanta, Road Atlanta was kind of a different situation. I got kind of lucky with the rain. And then finally, you know, pit, my car did very poorly there in the Corvette itself. So it becomes very difficult when you're trying to combine these two extremes into one class because there's usually never a track where they're both similar. The one's always going to have an advantage. And, you know, one of my biggest frustrations, you know, if you watch my videos, I'm always throwing my hands up in the air on a straightaway. It's because I can't stand getting passed on straightaways. You know, it's it's kind of the band of my existence in the series. Is you know, I'm working so hard in these corners just to not die and go as fast as I can, and then I get on a straightaway, I'm rolling through these gears, and then there's the Corvette, you know, not even shifting, just blowing right by me. And in a race car, I'm a little bit more heated, a little bit more emotional, so I'll throw my hands up in frustration, like, oh, this fucking sucks. Like getting passed again on a straightaway, and there's Corvette taillights in front of me now. Um, but yeah, it's uh it's it's pretty frustrating when when you just get driven by. But like I said, you know, it's the rules. Maton built his car to excel at those tracks, and at the end of the day, you know, he won the championship this year because he he picked a better mousetrap.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, all year um the both cars made speeds differently, right? Even at pit race on the back section, you were faster. Um you would either close the gap depending on whether you were in front or behind, or create a gap, and then uh on the front section, he seemed to be faster. Well, the at pit race, the front section is where the passing usually happens, I think. So yeah, he had he had the advantage because most of the passing area was in his area of strength.
SPEAKER_01:So um yeah, and it's it's one of the things you know, if we run if we both run the same lap times, which we did in qualifying, his type of car, I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but to me it seems like it's probably a little bit easier of a car to race against because if you can get in front, then you're able to defend a lot easier. Whereas, you know, most of the passes happen kind of into a break zone, whereas like my car, I'm getting gapped on these straightaways, so I can't even get anywhere close to the car I'm trying to pass into a break zone. So then it requires a sequence of corners for me to kind of reel someone in and then hopefully make a pass in a corner and hopefully get far enough ahead so that I can defend on the next straightaway. But yeah, pit race was kind of a worst-case scenario for my car because you know it had those two long straightaways in a row at the end of the track, and that really slow hairpin, and then another straightaway, pretty mediocre corner turn one, and then another long straightaway. So within those three long straightaways, there would be such a huge margin that I'd have to make up in the corners. Obviously, you know, it didn't really work out for my favor at that track.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so um you guys you're making changes because you're at least your annual changes, obviously staying within the rules, but you're in retrospect looking at what really held you back throughout the entire year. And so and one of the things you did or have done, especially with the front sway bar, uh, is make it easier to adjust. And I think that's pretty key. Um because yeah, you're right. It I usually remove the front sway bar on these cars, but um it yeah, I got opinions about that, but yeah, I I get it. Um it depends on spring rates, it depends on other things, but uh yeah, I have pictures of my car on two wheels because I was on yeah, I had the the front sway bar attached, so it was a little crazy, but I'm also in a McPherson car, McPherson Honda Civic.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's different, yeah, a little different for sure.
SPEAKER_02:For sure. But okay, so uh what if somebody's like okay, I want to go down this journey, I want to start making track side changes. Do you have any best practices for them?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mentioned a few times already, you know, just just taking the notes down and driving the car and and thinking about what the car is doing. Um, and then you know, yeah, go inspect the car too, obviously, at the end of the session. You know, the tire wear will tell you a lot. Um you know, if if you're running the car on this set of tires event after event, you kind of notice you're really killing that inside edge. You know, you might want to maybe reduce camera a little bit, or or vice versa. You know, if the outside edge is just getting murdered, you probably don't have enough camera. So there's a lot of things the tires will tell you. Um but yeah, it's you know, there's there's a bunch of things you can do. You know, you can do a lot of research, you know, there's there's really good books out there. Um, but you can also just ask, you know, someone at the track that you can trust, right? So that's that's probably uh the the best resource is you know just just talk to other people, people that you think or that you know are are pretty smart and know what they're doing, you know, and you know, kind of talk to them. You know, this is what my car is doing, what do you think I could do better? And then, you know, just just try things, right? And I think a lot of people will start doing research and they'll they'll find some you know, Facebook posts or some forum posts, or is this guy is preaching this is the best setup, and all right, I'm gonna copy that guy, or or I'm gonna ask this this dude what his spring rates are. Oh, okay, he's running this, this, this. I'm gonna put that on my car, and then you know, they don't even test it out themselves, they're just kind of blindly believing, you know, what people might say, which I kind of just contradicted myself, I guess. But what I'm trying to say is that you know, maybe kind of request information from other people, um, but it's always the best to just do something yourself and then just kind of experience what that change did, you know, yourself and and and believe yourself kind of first, right? And so that's you know, that's how I got my experiences, you know, over time, you know, I just kept messing with things and I kept adjusting stuff at the track and stuff between events, and I kind of naturally ended up learning a ton, you know, and I guess I didn't even mention this yet, but the number one rule is one adjustment and that's it. One adjustment between a session and directly compare what that one adjustment did. There is times where I make a few adjustments at once because something is terribly wrong and I need to make a wild swing at it, but usually it's just kind of one minor adjustment. Go back on track, figure out what that adjustment did, and then okay, if it worked and if it didn't work, maybe you undo that adjustment and then try something else. Okay, what did that now do? So that that's kind of always rule number one. Everyone's gonna tell you that is just one adjustment at a time, and yeah, like I said, just like start with the simple things first, you know, tire pressures, ride height, adjust the sway bars, adjust the shocks, and then you can go into more detail after that with you know camber and stuff, and maybe you know, align the car between sessions. But like I know a bunch of people who road race and they only align the car once a year, you know. So I guess just you know, do what makes you feel comfortable and you know, or just do whatever you think is fun and chill. I don't know, it's kind of up to you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I really I I've been it's been suggested to me that I like go to a practice day, set all my shocks all the way around at in the middle, and then crank the front either up or down, rebound or compression, see what happened. And then and then go the opposite way, then put that one in the middle, and then work my way to the back, do the same thing. Um, just to learn what's going on with my car, because what some people are doing, or I don't run spring rates like everybody else does, so with my car. So the way they would set their car up is gonna be no it's gonna be different than how I would do it. They're gonna run different camber than I would. And so it's been a learning experience, and I think that's one of the biggest things is when you start trying to make changes outside of the driver, right? Everybody knows you look at your data and you go, Okay, I'm an idiot in turn three or whatever corner you're struggling with or making consistent mistakes in, uh, you know, adjust yourself as the driver, those are separate from adjusting the car, but you you're it's a learning experience to be ready to do that, you know.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah. And it's funny because you know, I get questions all the time, you know, hey, what spring rates are you running? If I told you, like if someone with a pretty you know standard EG track civic put the spring rates I run into their car, it would be a mess. The car would probably understeer terribly and it would suck to drive, right? So obviously, my car is so much has so many more differences to other people. And you know, I can I can set up my car in completely different ways to achieve the same thing too, right? So there's always other people that have different preferences. Like for you, example, you said you don't run a front sway bar, so you probably run more front spring rate, whereas for me, I run a relatively stiffer front sway bar and less spring rate, right? So everybody has their preference, but what I'm trying to say is that you know my car is so unique and it's so specific that you can't just copy paste my setup onto any other car, right? There's there's so many things kind of behind the scenes that are going on, right? So you can't just blindly throw someone else's setup onto your car. You just gotta try it yourself and kind of go with it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there's so many variables in each person's setup that you know, down to what offset they're running, right? You know, on their wheels.
SPEAKER_01:And like and and driver's skill too, right? I guarantee you if someone hopped in Jamie Howten's TSX, you know, they'd probably spin it in the first corner. That would be me. Just because his car is so aggressive, you know, he's got this big long TSX with a really long wheelbase longer than mine. So really the only way you can make that car turn is to put some steamrollers on the front of that thing and then run probably a crap ton of toe out in the back and then just hold on for dear life in these corners. And he has no arrow on top of that, right? So his car is is is always diabolically loose, but he can drive it that way. Not a lot of people can't, right? So that that's another huge kind of change with with setup, is it's it's always going to be tailored to the driver as well, what the driver thinks is fast. Because you know, Red Bull's struggling with this whole situation in F1 where you know the engineers are designing the car to be as fast as possible, and it's causing it to be so knife edge that even Max Verstappen had struggles with it, you know, in the middle of the season, right? Because they're engineering it to be as fast as possible with a very specific driving style, and you know, the best driver in the world is having a hard time, right? So, you know, back to your question earlier, you know, the most important setup tool is to, in my opinion, set the car up so that it's drivable, you know, so it's you know, driver has confidence in it. Because if the driver can't extrapolate or can't extract the full potential of the car, then you know it's just gonna be slow.
SPEAKER_02:For sure. For sure. So I have a segment that we always well not always end on, but we're gonna end on it this week. So here's my question What is your favorite racer excuse?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I got a few. Um my favorite racer excuse. Um the rules are unfair.
SPEAKER_02:That one I don't actually I don't know if anybody said that yet this year.
SPEAKER_01:I yeah, the rules, the rules may need better parody. Because that that was my whole frustration this year is just getting passed on the straights. But yeah, I don't know. Um I try to you'll you'll probably see in my video, you know, I'll I'll start going on some random tangent of oh, this is why I didn't do well, and then I I usually try to reel it back and just say I just gotta drive better. Um, so my favorite racing excuse is probably you know V8 torque just destroying all of us. But really, I just gotta drive better. That that's kind of the you know the the root cause is me as a driver. And then sometimes, you know, I I can't, you know, drive any better. So then maybe there's a more valid reason why I didn't do well, but yeah, I don't know. I it's probably my excuse.
SPEAKER_02:I haven't got to that point where I the root cause is always I can drive better. I haven't got to that point where I'm like, I drove the crap out of this car and there was nothing left.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm always yeah, I think I've had a few races this year where I felt like I was 100% on it. Um race three and four at Lime Rock, I felt like I was just in the zone. Um race four at Autobahn, just defending the lead against Andy Smedgaard. I felt like I did everything to the best of my ability, zero mistakes. Could I have gone faster? Yeah, probably still. But you know, that was probably my proudest races of the year. Um, and it usually helps when you're winning. When you when you win a race, you're like, oh, okay, I don't need to do any better because I already won. But there's always stuff you can improve in. But yeah, usually it's it's when I don't win. I'm like, ah, something, something because of this reason or that reason, and then it's like, all right, maybe I could have just drove better, or maybe I should have just stopped misshifting that whole race. Maybe I should have rebuilt the gearbox before this event because I was just having nothing but miss shifts all all the time. Ton of excuses. I mean, the skew excuses are endless.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, what case series, folks? We can always blame our transmissions. That's easy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's it's it's usually the transmission. Yeah, Mid Ohio was a miserable event for me because you know, I was in the garage and I was like, man, I should really drop the gearbox and fix it, but I was I think I was kind of lazy, and I was like, nah, it can survive one more event, and then it just kind of bit me in the ass.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. They tend to do that. So well, Eric, I really appreciate you coming on, sir. It's been a pleasure. I'm glad we got to work this out and you were uh able to make some time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, it was fun. You know, talking about setup stuff, it's uh I mean I I could go on this stuff for hours, and there's there's so much detail, and you know, I can you know share my Excel spreadsheet and we can comb over through all the details and nerd out, but um, yeah, I don't know. Um I just think it's setup is like the last most important thing to you know getting wins, you know, and I I kind of told myself that no one was gonna outwork me this season in terms of you know car prep, setup, you know, work ethic. And I think I kind of you know proved how val valuable that was, you know, with you know 100% race finishes, you know, zero DNFs, except for race two at Pitt. That was driver error. Um, but in terms of you know reliability, I didn't have anything fail on the car. You know, I finished every single race, except for that DNF. Every single race I finished in the top five, I had the highest average finishing position of any GLTC racer ever in the season. And it was just kind of just down to me looking at every single detail, me looking over the car at every event, alignments before the event, alignments after the event, you know, setup adjustments after every session. And, you know, I think I did the best I could this year and you know, still came up short, which to me shows you know how competitive this series is, and it also you know shows why I love it so much, right? Because you know, I love winning, but I love competition, and I I love having a good race even more.
SPEAKER_02:For sure. I I almost don't care where I finish as long as I got to race somebody and we had a heck of a race, right? Hell yeah, yeah. It's it that's what makes it on track. Your adrenaline's pumping, your mind's racing, you know, you're it's a chess match at a hundred miles an hour, right? Like we're trying to figure stuff out, and it's the best feeling in the world.
SPEAKER_01:So um yeah, I love it. I that's why I do this, it's why I'm busy almost every single day. Oh, I have no doubt you're busy every day. And you have no idea what's coming up next, either. So there's some cool stuff.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Well, I can't wait to see that news. I won't ask you to drop it here because I'm sure it needs to be close hold for a while. So it'll be a while for sure. Thanks again, Eric.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Hey, thanks, man.
SPEAKER_00:It was fun talking with you. You too. Until next time, keep working on yourself. Keep working on the car. And let's get faster.