During a race series, such as the Prowear NZ Superlap Series, it’s easy to make assumptions. From the outside, it might appear that a team has things under control, or their driver can’t drive, or that’s just simply how well, or how poorly their vehicle performs. This happened plenty last season, mainly with the Team RevolutioNZ monster Mitsubishi Evolution. From the outside, times weren’t what they should be, and many out there didn’t know any better. At the end of last season, Team RevolutioNZ reached out to us and told us of their troubles with the Evo. A cracked block had been the stem of most of the issues last season, so this season we asked if we could be updated after each round so you all know what is going on with the fastest time attack car in New Zealand. After all, we all have much to learn from Team RevolutioNZ. Alright, enough from us, over to you Team RevolutioNZ.
Team RevolutioNZ.
We struggled at the second round of the Prowear NZ Superlap Series, mainly with setup issues. This resulted in Garth driving around issues, such as ‘hop’, with our data showing a 30kph discrepancy between the front left and right wheels.
Another issue this season has been the Schedule A aero rule, which we think in total has cost us 1.4-seconds around Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park. Pushing hard to overcome this, we also torched a brand new set of Advan A050s without any noticeable improvement in times over an older, used set.
As a comparison, the Tilton Evo gains two seconds per lap on a set of green tyres around Eastern Creek. Basically, Schedule A is seriously limiting our lap times. Alongside these issues, our data showed we were experiencing clutch slip under power, but even after softening the power delivery, we lost 0.3-seconds.
Another issue we had at this round was heat. Despite making up an intercooler sprayer which emptied five litres of ice cold water during just one lap, temperatures peaked at 78-degrees celsius by mid-lap causing a power loss of 140hp at the wheels by the top hairpin.
Although times have improved since Taupo last season (which we knew they would) it was only by 1.5-seconds. This was a bit disappointing considering we ran the earlier event on a five-year-old set of tyres and had a massive boost leak, but had our big aero. Problems aside and with the big front splitter, we should see times in the 1:26-range. The current data from the weekend had the car at a lap time of 1:27.4 if we joined our best sector times into one lap.
Because of the intake temp issue, the car is having a turbo and intercooler upgrade prior to the Manfeild round (RD3). We will be installing a BorgWarner EFR 9180 and a custom Hypertune-built aero-tube intercooler. We will miss the Mad Mike Summer Bash round due to this upgrade but are planning to attack the final round at the international track in an attempt to beat whatever time is set under the current NZ Superlap governing rules.
Until then,
Team RevolutioNZ.