Paolo Castellano
Enthusiast
Roadcourse: I know everybody said I should get a pro driver to run the car for me.....
Nick Wong had a hotshoe driver drive his Skyline and the car blew the connecting rods out of the bottom of the block as he crossed the finish line for the hot lap...
I was very appreciative that Paul Mumford offered to drive my car around the track for me before the competition. He is THE MAN for sure when it comes to the road course.
As much as it seemed appealing to have Paul drive my car so I could be a points ***** for the win, I ultimately decided to drive the car myself.
I need to do some more work to get the car to run cooler maybe with less power for the road course. The supercharger belt and pulley are just not that easy to swap out in the time frame between the events. The flexibility of Twin Turbos would certainly be nice, where I could dial down the power to 600 RWHP with the adjustable boost controller for the road course and crank it up for the dyno and 1/4 mile............
Back to the roadcourse: a 900 RWHP car(CATS OFF) around the corners was not really a problem at all. Linear power curve = easy throttle modulation.
HEAT was the problem. The nature of the beast is the following: to go around a roadcourse, you are usually in the 4500-5500 RPM range.
On a tight roadcourse in 90 degree heat, the car simply ran too hot to really get into it for more than one lap. Just realize that any supercharged car with this kind of power would run this hot or hotter.....
I had 10 min. to learn the course. I thought it to be infinitely better to get a feel for the general line after the first time I spun the car as the 2nd turn was slightly tighter than the 1st. So at the limit through the 1st turn you are bound to spin in the 2nd turn.
I went around in 4th-6th gears learning the track. With all the handy information of oil temp, EGT, and the usual coolant temp. I was able to know how hard I could run my car safely.
One problem I found with the roadcourse was that there were no braking markers of any kind. Also, running NOT AT FULL OUT, to learn the course, gave me no feel for exactly how fast I could take some parts that the other cars could take flat out. Also, the other cars would brake at a certain point on the straight(Going 110-120 MPH). So if I went balls out down the straight and was hitting 150-160 MPH, where do I brake? HMMMM...... This was the problem for me. The other problem was the fact that there were walls everywhere since thes portion of the track in inside the oval. The [******] talking Chicago Skyline guy's car blew up and there were plenty of parts left where I knew I could dominate.==> He was a chump for telling me how he could rev his car all day long @ 10,000 RPM and the car would be "bulletproof"...==> I did not want to be a bigger chump who crashed his car before the acceleration parts of the competition I could most likely dominate. I wanted to represent the Viper Community positively and show what the car could do in ALL the categories. I spent all the money I have to get the car where it is. Some may disagree with this outlook but this was the way I chose to do it! I will go there in the next few months and hopefully do a driving school. As it was, I was only 2 seconds slower than the fastest Supra and Skyline from last year. I know 2 seconds is a lot, but finishing the competition and showing the competitors the awesome power of the Viper was my goal for this year's competition.
I ran the roadcourse dead last in line to give the car a chance to cool. I knew I had only one lap to run balls out before the car would be too hot for another hour or so..... So, I took one light load 5-10 inches of vacuum warm up lap doing side to side slalom to put heat into the tires. The car was still at 160 deegrees of coolant and oil temperature.==>
Nick Wong had a hotshoe driver drive his Skyline and the car blew the connecting rods out of the bottom of the block as he crossed the finish line for the hot lap...
I was very appreciative that Paul Mumford offered to drive my car around the track for me before the competition. He is THE MAN for sure when it comes to the road course.
As much as it seemed appealing to have Paul drive my car so I could be a points ***** for the win, I ultimately decided to drive the car myself.
I need to do some more work to get the car to run cooler maybe with less power for the road course. The supercharger belt and pulley are just not that easy to swap out in the time frame between the events. The flexibility of Twin Turbos would certainly be nice, where I could dial down the power to 600 RWHP with the adjustable boost controller for the road course and crank it up for the dyno and 1/4 mile............
Back to the roadcourse: a 900 RWHP car(CATS OFF) around the corners was not really a problem at all. Linear power curve = easy throttle modulation.
HEAT was the problem. The nature of the beast is the following: to go around a roadcourse, you are usually in the 4500-5500 RPM range.
On a tight roadcourse in 90 degree heat, the car simply ran too hot to really get into it for more than one lap. Just realize that any supercharged car with this kind of power would run this hot or hotter.....
I had 10 min. to learn the course. I thought it to be infinitely better to get a feel for the general line after the first time I spun the car as the 2nd turn was slightly tighter than the 1st. So at the limit through the 1st turn you are bound to spin in the 2nd turn.
I went around in 4th-6th gears learning the track. With all the handy information of oil temp, EGT, and the usual coolant temp. I was able to know how hard I could run my car safely.
One problem I found with the roadcourse was that there were no braking markers of any kind. Also, running NOT AT FULL OUT, to learn the course, gave me no feel for exactly how fast I could take some parts that the other cars could take flat out. Also, the other cars would brake at a certain point on the straight(Going 110-120 MPH). So if I went balls out down the straight and was hitting 150-160 MPH, where do I brake? HMMMM...... This was the problem for me. The other problem was the fact that there were walls everywhere since thes portion of the track in inside the oval. The [******] talking Chicago Skyline guy's car blew up and there were plenty of parts left where I knew I could dominate.==> He was a chump for telling me how he could rev his car all day long @ 10,000 RPM and the car would be "bulletproof"...==> I did not want to be a bigger chump who crashed his car before the acceleration parts of the competition I could most likely dominate. I wanted to represent the Viper Community positively and show what the car could do in ALL the categories. I spent all the money I have to get the car where it is. Some may disagree with this outlook but this was the way I chose to do it! I will go there in the next few months and hopefully do a driving school. As it was, I was only 2 seconds slower than the fastest Supra and Skyline from last year. I know 2 seconds is a lot, but finishing the competition and showing the competitors the awesome power of the Viper was my goal for this year's competition.
I ran the roadcourse dead last in line to give the car a chance to cool. I knew I had only one lap to run balls out before the car would be too hot for another hour or so..... So, I took one light load 5-10 inches of vacuum warm up lap doing side to side slalom to put heat into the tires. The car was still at 160 deegrees of coolant and oil temperature.==>
