Prague trip race updates.
On the way there I’ve fallen asleep on the highway and touched the barrier 
And the worst thing is this is my friends car so I’ll be paying to get it fixed. 3 parts are damaged, and on 2 more the paint is a little scuffed but nothing serious, probably good enough if rubbing it a bit with gasoline. This is very much not good for my esk8con budget, but I’ll still be trying to make it happen some way if I can.
Then Friday kartplanet session the track was pretty wet and I only had a couple laps of ride time. We did the wet half closed layout though, which was pretty fun and a first for me.
Then a night ride with some beers
Then there was Pitland next day, but first a paragraph of bushing talk about the raceday setup.
I swapped in a softer bushing setup, because pitland is a very tight track - 93/93 WFB tall barrels front, 95 WFB tall chubby / tall barrel rear. First the front was feeling harder than the rear, so I needed to decrease preload to like 0.75 turn in the front and increase preload to like 1.75 turn in the rear. This made the setup feel significantly looser, arguably for many people too loose, not very supportive. But I enjoyed it on this track, which is very short, top speed probably about 50 km/h / 31 mph even for me. I would definitely want more support for longer tracks though. @Titoxd1000 I’ll go more detail in PM, but TLDR is now I am pretty much convinced dual chubby is too much volume for WFB, unless we are talking about long track exclusively, and I have some ideas of things to try which might yield even more improvements in truck feel. Now back to the race. [Edit: unproven theory - maybe temperature affects bushing feel, and what I felt now might be gone in the spring when it’s not freezing?]
First heat I started up very strong
Second heat I was leading the pack and I am not really good at that, don’t know how much to push myself, so I dropped down a little bit but not too bad. Third heat my rear thigh cramped up but I continued racing. When I got off the track I couldn’t move that leg for 5 minutes, couldn’t even bend down to release the binding. Then I got the same cramp just to a lesser degree every subsequent heat - and with that my position dropped down to 6th by the end.
I was also using the tire warmer setup and the WD40 as pre race wipe treatment for some of the races (didn’t bother for all) and they definitely helped with grip. Oh and the tire softener softened these by 8A. So a decent improvement. I think they could take a bit more softener for sure. There’s one downside to this though - they stink quite badly. I wouldn’t want to keep the tires in my room unless they are in sealed bags… I hope the smell will go away eventually. If it doesn’t, I will need to get a board bag.
After that there was an unofficial 5 lap position race just for some fun, there I started 6th (official race finishing position) and couldn’t get the jump on the start because both sides started pulling to the middle so I had to brake. I ended up 2nd due to not making mistakes and being able to take positions when a fall or mistake happened. Then defending the position even though I was slightly slower and having the hardest fight against my own legs 
Not really the way I wanted to achieve a podium, but a podium is a podium nonetheless 
And here’s a video of the race from spectator POV
Then the next day there was another kartplanet session. It started out feeling slightly wet and icy, but in the end it was dry just really cold, somewhere around freezing temperature. The tires needed some time to start working at all, but then the track was usable.
Did a 56.77, my current record is 51.99 but that time I had close to 2x as much grip, so given the conditions I think this is a good time. Now I was loosing grip around 0.7G, I had sustained 1.3G turns last time while staying within the limit. Can’t wait to get back in good weather though, with a potentially even better setup 
Then I did some Prague sightseeing and Christmas markets today and I’ll be on my way home tomorrow morning.
