WRX Club Sprint – Lap Record Hat Trick

In less than ideal track conditions Clayton managed to set a new WRX Club Open Class record with a time of 1:19.30.  This is the third straight club circuit lap record for the AVO WRX this season.

Preparation for Sandown included some general suspension maintenance and the addition of a LinkPlus G3 ECU.   The LinkPlus G3 is the latest in high-end aftermarket engine management and the result of about 15 years of research and development. 

The new ECU was chosen to provide a foundation for further development. The G3 offers a range of advance features including, anti-lag, launch control, flat shifting, closed-loop knock control, individual trimming of fuel and ignition channels and much more.  A DisplayLink graphical dash display will also be installed in the coming months, which will replace the standard dash and also provide enhanced engine data logging.

Race Report
“I was hoping to back up the results at Winton and Philip Island with another personal best and new club record at Sandown.  There were no dramatic changes to the car other than the ECU upgrade and we were going to Sandown with the car making similar power to the last event, so I knew the car was good for it.

The day started with some minor drama – during practise the car was displaying a miss-fire at full boost.  This was a bit of a surprise as the car ran perfectly on the dyno.  We assumed it was just something simple like a dodgy spark plug – something easily sorted during the break between sessions.

Steve and Jake from AVO were on their way to the track as it came time to go out for the next session.  It was decided to try running lower boost to see if that helped.  Thankfully, it did reduce the miss-fire enough to make the car driveable.  

Other than the unexpected miss-fire the car was handling perfectly – a credit to the meticulous preparation by the team at AVO.  It turned out that the new bushes in the rear end took quite a bit of twitchiness out of the car, which inspired confidence when it came to tipping the car into turn one and the sweeper at the end of the main straight.  As a result I was able to brake quite a bit deeper and carry more speed through both areas of the track and managed to take 0.24 seconds off my previous best for a time of 1:19.30.  

I was feeling pretty good about dipping into the 1:18’s after than run and could see from the data that with the miss sorted it should be achievable.  Unfortunately, it was not to be.  As Jake was working on the miss, I began to re-torque the wheel nuts, as I do after every run (a bit crazy I know), and noticed a couple of decent cracks in the front brake rotors.  So, unfortunately that meant the end of the day.

As it turned out there was probably no great loss as oil was dropped on the track by on of the other competitors just after my first run and it seemed that everyone struggled to improve their times after then initial runs.

I am now looking forward to Calder, as we haven’t had a chance to run the car there in its current form.  Counting down the days!”