I had been running at the front of my club series earlier this year, picked up two wins. A few races ago, I had an incident battling for second and bent my axle. Switched to backup stiffer axle, it was no good. Got a new axle, same stiffness as the original, winning setup. I have had no pace since the crash.
I had no handling issues and later put the chassis on a table - it is straight.
The last race I went out and had no pace at all, data from my Alfaro seems to indicate that the drop-off was all over the lap. I was too slow to keep up with juniors, +2.0 seconds from my normal pace on a 50 second lap. I retired after a few laps.
I knew I was slow from a test day the Friday before the race. Over that test day I tried changing everything on the front end, track width, axle height, the changes made the chassis feel better and better, but the pace was not there. I did not feel like I had too much grip or that I was “stuck,” I pushed the rear track to 55" and did not improve. Tires are in okay condition, MG reds with 3 races on them.
I thought it might be carb or engine related, but I switched to a backup motor and did not improve. The backup motor had a fresh clutch. I had an engine builder look at both at the track, we couldn’t tell anything was off. Carbs looked okay. I had another engine builder look at the second motor afterwards, he couldn’t find anything obvious - the idle jet was a tiny bit clogged.
I was hitting redline around where I normally do, the engines did not feel that bad, apart from an inconsistent idle. My buddies said I looked slow off the corners when they were behind me, but did not notice anything different about my driving.
I have checked the chassis on a table multiple times, it is straight and scaled perfectly. Any ideas? Could the fuel be stale? It is three months old but non-ethanol.
I also checked for cracks, could not find any.
I am at a loss to explain the utter lack of pace.
Compkart 4r, LO206 385 lbs, MG Red tires.
