Honda Challenge H1 Mid Ohio April 12-13.
OK, where to start? The off season has been a busy one for myself. I had planned on a bunch of changes for the #62 Honda Challenge H1 car. First off the body was redone with a 99-00 civic front end conversion along with a full respray of New Formula Red. The engine is the same 2006 K24a2 from last year but with a new Password:JDM carbon intake, Hytech header. R-Crew 3" exhaust and Hondata K-Pro tuned by Evans Tuning. Next came the suspension, Koni 2812 race series double adjustable coilovers, Eibach springs, Password:JDM tower bars and new ASR 24mm rear sway bar. The brakes feature new Stoptech 2 piece rotors and Spoon 4 piston calipers with Carbotech XP12's up front and XP8's in the rear.
This event is out of my normal Mid Atlantic region but I really needed to get the car out on track to sort out the new setup. So I signed up for a test and tune day on Friday before the race weekend. Thursday morning I checked the weather for the weekend and it doesn't look good. Rain and cold Friday, Saturday and Sunday. None the less I packed up the truck and loaded the car in hopes that the weather would cooperate.
Friday morning I wake up only to see that it's cold and raining. The first thing I needed to do was to get the car through tech for my 2008 yearly inspection. After an 1 1/2 hours and missing the first on track session the car passed tech and was finally ready to go on track. Overall the day was a wash. The rain did let up for at least one semi dry session on Friday but I was only able to try a fraction of the available adjustments on the shocks. The other major change I did was the brakes, the Spoon calipers proved to be very sensitive when compared to my old ITR caliper setup. The first session out I was locking the brakes so it took a bit of getting used to. Overall the car felt decent but I really needed more dry track time.
Saturday morning the clouds were gray and the temperature was in the mid 30's. The practice session was slick, the combination of the cold track and cold tires were not making for any decent times. The car seemed to be understeering pretty bad so for the qualifying session I tried a little more bump and rebound in the rear to help get the car to rotate. It helped a bit but the session was short and I could not find any open track to put down a decent time. I qualified 5th with a 1:40.394, so I was a bit disappointed. Then came the race, the track was dry with a lite drizzle here and there. We did a standing start, I had Chris Fries in his H22 Prelude on my right and Matt lang in his K20a ITR in front. The starting lights go out and were off, I got a great start and was able to pass Matt Lang for 3rd. After a couple of laps I was able to catch and pass Kelsey Smith in his S2000 for 2nd. Now the only one left was the Honda R&D TL Type S driven by Jeremy Lucas. The car is really fast on the straight but needs to brake early due to the weight. I didn't want to push the car too hard because my main focus of the weekend was for testing so I stayed right on his rear bumper. With about 2 laps to go I missed a shift on the back straight and lost a ton of speed, enough for Chris Fries to squeak on by. Crap, just when I thought I was home free. Anyway, it was a 1,2,3 finish with only .5 sec separating us all. I did end up putting down the fastest lap of the race with a 1:38.339. People were saying that the the track was at least 1-2 seconds slower then it was during nationals so I'd say the car is well on it's way for some really fast times.
Sunday's forecast was calling for snow and rain all day so we just decided to pack it up and hopefully get some more testing before our next big race, Hyperfest at Summit Point, WV.
-Chris Drabouski
#62 H1
posted by Chris Drabouski at
2:59 PM
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