2015 WRX Project Northstar – CSCS Round #3 iCar Mirabel, Quebec

Just back from my journey out to Quebec for the third round of CSCS hosted at iCar in Mirabel Quebec. This is the first time attack event CSCS has done outside of Ontario and we hope this will continue in the future. It was exciting but also intimidating going to compete at a track I had never been to, for that matter none of the competitors in Street AWD had either. But then again that’s what makes racing such a fun sport to compete in, the unknown and challenge. @NBK; and I cruised down from the shop to Montreal (Laval area) Saturday so we could be well rested. Northstar ended up getting around 8.74 calculated fuel economy cruising at 120KM/h, that’s loaded up with helmets, full set of wheels/tires and some other miscellaneous things. Pretty damn good and I’ll likely be trying to improve upon this with some dedicated cruise fine tuning with OnPoint Dyno. Mark the owner of Mooresport invited us for a private tour of their facility which was awesome, we’ll be doing a write up on this separately.

Sunday morning we cruised over to the track and we set-up the pit area with Mooresport who is a sponsor of CSCS. The pit area at iCar is actually in the middle of the track which is pretty cool as it makes it easier to watch and see more of the action on track. With the simplicity of Northstar all I had to do was remove the front plate, install the tow hook and swap on the Team Dynamics wheels and Hankook RS-3 Tires. Due to the smaller expected turn out CSCS ran 2 groups with 20 minute sessions which was pretty good as you could go out halfway through and still get a good amount of time on track. First session out on track was pretty nerve racking, I definitely had no idea what the next corner was and spent this time just getting a feel for the track. My first thought was that the track had low grip levels (it had rained up until the early morning) and that if you lost it in some of these corners you would be into the steel barriers pretty quickly. Unfortunately someone in the group lost control and ended up nose first into a barrier after about 3 laps. Luckily no one was hurt and the clean up was relatively minimal.

Second session was better and I was starting to learn the course and make some strides towards actually putting in some times. One thing that took some getting used to is that the curbing is not really meant to be hit in some places and is designed very bumpy to keep you off of them. Also the track is really varied with really no 2 turns being overly similar and I kept finding myself waiting to get on the gas only to realize that I could have gotten on the gas earlier. I also reverted back to bad habits such as not looking far through the corner. I believe this was likely due to not knowing the track and not totally trusting the grip levels. The second session most of the dampness was gone and I was able to put in a lap of 1:54.324 which I wasn’t sure at the time if it was good or bad since this was the first timed session. Third session I got more comfortable and was able to begin analysing the corners and trying different paths through the corners to find what felt the best and what I could achieve consistently. This session saw me do a 1:54.208 which put me in 3rd out of 5 at the time for qualifying. In this session I started to find the brakes fading after 2-3 laps, mainly due to the few hard braking zones which are spaced out but with the stock calipers there’s not enough time in between for the set-up to cool down. RooDucts has provided us a set of their ducts to test fit and we will try these out and see if it helps at all.

Session four is when I really started to get comfortable and was able to put in 3 laps in the 1:53’s with the best being a 1:53.002. A lot of the time made up came from finding references that I could use for getting on the gas and braking consistently. Last sessions didn’t end up doing much for overall time as every fast lap I came upon a slower vehicle in a non-passing area. Instead of trying to force the issue I spent the laps focusing on the weak corners to try and gain some more time back. I managed to stay in 3rd place for qualifying so I was going out 3rd on track behind team mate and friend @NBK. Luckily the competitors in our class all know each other and we all agreed to give each other as much space as possible so that no one got held up on track. It’s great to be involved in a sport where all the competitors are looking out for each other. On track my first lap was decent but I made a few mistakes cheating (turning early) into corners which cost me some time. I put down a 1:53.018 on the first lap but I felt the car had a little more left in it. I made sure to be patient and not rush any of the corners and be smooth with my steering and throttle. Second lap was a 1:52.635 which ended up being my best lap for the day, third lap was very close at 1:52.687. I always like to see consistent laps back to back, if I can’t be consistent then it’s very hard to improve the car and my driving. CSCS’s lap timing system put me down at 1:52.445 which is mainly due to the slightly different start/finish position where I set it up on the AIM SoloDL. I felt good about my times and luckily this was good enough to put me into 3rd place again for the second time this season. I’m really excited by the result and am still hoping to get some good brakes on there soon (COME ON STOPTECH!!!).

Congrats to @NBK for his third 1st place finish in a row, he’s really been dominant this year and I’m hoping we can help him continue the streak! Another congrats to Ryan (RHD GC) who finished second with an awesome drive, really great to see new and old faces pushing their cars at the track and having fun! Presently I’m sitting in 4th position with 50 points between me and the third place in the championship.