04/09/2026
Sending all our best of luck to Lone Wolf Racing for their World Time Attack Challenge journey
Make sure ya give his page a follow to keep upto date with posts and wrap ups
WTAC Thursday Practice Day Recap
Long time since I've driven at SMP. It's a great track but the main straight soaks up HP so is not my friend this weekend. I need to focus on the rest of the track which as a driver is the best part.
Was only a warm day but the sun/uv made it feel quite hot. The improvements I made to my cooling back home seemed to be non existent and I was back to managing temps more carefully each lap.
Session 1 and the car was quite nervous, both in the steering and the rear end stepping out too much. Made it feel like I couldn't push much and pointed to a toe setting issue. Steering wheel was also crooked which supported the theory I had stuffed up my rushed wheel alignment the day before I left home. I also discovered I did the alignment on freshly fitted tyres and didn't check the tyre pressures. Turns out the shop set them to 40psi and they need to be around 25psi for ride height/alignment - so when I dropped the pressures the car aero also dropped below minimum legal height 😖
Luckily I am in the practice of marking my alignment bolts and I still had the previous alignment marks in place. I also recalled approximately how high the car was for that alignment so I put everything back to how it was from the last test day and hoped that would do the trick.
Session 2 came around and it was a different car to drive and felt alive again, Nervousness was gone and I was able to push and learn the track a decent amount considering where I was starting from (last time here on track for me was 2018). Still a little bit more oversteer than I wanted so after the session I went to a softer setting on the rear swaybar.
Session 3 was more of the same with a bit more pushing. Maybe a slight improvement with less oversteer - or maybe it was just better lines and throttle application on my part. In hindsight I probably should have explored and pushed a bit more but it's also bad to rush things.
All in all even though I worked hard nearly all day the car itself ran flawlessly and if it feels the same come tomorrow I will be pushing as much as I dare. Tomorrow is forecast to be the best conditions for the weekend for track grip.
