New GridLife Touring Cup series
 

A Christmas present... new rules to benchrace over, sweet!!


I think it works well with STL and ST5 cross-overs. There's some other classes that I'm missing for sure. I like this rule-set more than the RM "club". Though I know this had a lot more thought put into it.

The pointy end of this class in a NA/NB would be something like Ryan's chassis, but ballasted up to 2265lbs with 166rwhp flat from a TSE kit :party: A more realistic combo could be Dan's ST5 car at 2250lbs, 205 or 225 R7s and a peak cap of 170rwhp. I think there's lots of combos that could do well, including some FWD ringers. I would suspect the class to be filled up of cross-overs for the first while, though.


I could easily see myself dipping into this next year for funniez since I plan bump up to ST5 next year.

Flat, 3" splitter
We're allowed 5" sideskirts, top of the fender wheelwell venting and behind the tire fenders cuts.
Plastic windshields allowed, but must be 1/4". That's cray cray. Carryover SCCA rule? 3/16 is allowed almost everywhere else.
Reads like we can delete bumpers/support, rad supports, etc, but can't partial tube frame. It'd be pretty easy to get my car under 2100lbs range with no bumper beams, TimeAttack style.

A Supermiata S2 with a big boy motor capable of a 160+ whp high power map would be fun to drop in, but it would be tough to get an n/a BP miata down to 12.5:1.
2100/165 on 205 R7s with an airdam and wing. Or pay the penalty to add a splitter.

I wish the Street tire chart started at 245, and went 265/285/305. We know that a 205 R7 is still significantly faster than a 245 Rival S, especially in a 25-35 minute race. Giving light weight cars a 205 R7 or a 4% Comp Balance credit with 225 Street tires is still not enough.

This series is doing pretty well, 30+ car field at the latest event at Gingerman. Field is spread out somewhat since prep for all cars isn't 100%, but it seems like there's several packs of racing going on/always somebody to race with despite how fast/slow you might be.

My current plan is to do GLTC at Road Atlanta Aug 23-25 this summer. Registration opens this weekend I believe. I'll be woefully underprepped, 135rwhp @ 2300lbs, splitter/airdam/wang, R7s. This will be an exercise of getting my feet wet with GLTC. I'm honestly considering GLTC to be my 1-2 W2W races a season and spend the rest of the time doing TT(4/5).


Pondering future setups.... ~170rwhp N/A @ 2250lbs or ~180rwhp turbo @ 2400lbs. Budget wise, N/A should be less expensive than FI in the long run. Though, FI has more a ceiling to run TT4 more effectively.

8800 lbs minimum weight and drop from a 315 to a 225 tire. Gee whiz, I'm gonna need a LOT of tungsten.

No purpose build FI cars have shown up and the folks in charge are already a little leary about what the parity will be like when they do. I suspect FI cars will be getting more weight and/or restrictors.

Relevant, sorta.... to FI dreamz

https://www.miataturbo.net/build-thr...7/#post1282529


I'm sure there's several ways "to skin the cat" here for super "low" power on a 6258 hot-side setup. Restrictor, timing changes, others I'm not thinking of....... but which route would be the most reliable?

EFR 6258 is overkill for this.

And, as far as I’m aware, TIRs work pretty darn well at putting a hard limit on power output.

You'd have to have a pretty dang small TIR though...like 30mm, maybe even smaller? Not sure how an EFR would play with a TIR but the rally guys have been running them on Subaru turbos since pretty much the beginning of time. A TIR combined with boost control and tuning might be the easiest way to have a safe power limit of 180ish hp. You can only pull so much timing before it starts to cause other issues like sky-rocketing your EGTs.


I’d also argue that a 180whp turbo setup is probably cheaper than 170-175 N/A, even in the long run. There’s a big difference in cost going from a 155-160hp N/A Bp to a 170-175 hp. Those other 15+ whp really start to get expensive.

As the owner of a 160-170whp BP, I agree on the FI being the more cost effective path at this time. *looks at build cost and weeps because going NA after turbo was supposed to be cheaper*

Oh hey, I did GLTC at Road Atlanta. Way under-prepped, but it was still a blast! I was at 135rwhp peak, ~2320lbs, 9LR prototype aero package of air-dam/splitter/ducting/wang, R7s, 800/500 Xidas. For actual prep on the class I would either need 40hp more or 530lbs less to be at the adjusted ratio for my car.



First w2w weekend and this is my fourth race. I was being really timid on passes and extra safe in place to avoid any 4-offs and such. My goal was to complete the race weekend clean.

Yes that's a mini-van, yes he waxed me, yes he has 280whp 3400lbs, no I couldn't shit around him at all. :rofl: Fun race on running down the FCP Euro Benz too.


If you're thinking about doing a GLTC, just go do it! You won't regret it.

6spd with a 4.30? Lots of shifting.

Free points way to wake up a dumpster motor that doesn't make power, mostly. ;)

Welp...

My 173whp N/A BP4W is going GLTC racin' this weekend.
2297lbs
3" splitter and Singular/APR GT250
225/45/15 R7 on 9.5" wheel

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9fb196f74f.jpg

Button: Many of the grips

saturday was a fun day...

sunday was a struggle...

GLTC does such an incredible job with coverage of their events. The livestream with multiple camera angles and good announcers is pretty insane for such an accessible club racing series. The Gears and Gasoline (and others) videos of time attack cars and racers are great too. GLTC looks like a blast. Having a year round racings schedule and so many different groups on the west coast makes it easy to get track time, but probably fragments things too much for anything comparable to take off out here.

Said it before, Grid Life is a media company that uses their events at race tracks to generate content. They are "events" in the sense that GL does a better job than any other amateur track event promoter and making them "must attend" events. The coverage, extraneous activities, social media buzz, graphics, branding. If enough buzz and hype is generated around a dumpster fire, you'll click and think about going. GL events are just the opposite. Well organized, fun, safe with the ability to make great memories for all that attend. The great brand exposure for all the sponsors being the engine that drives it all.

Considering we spend about 98% of our time thinking about cars, talking about them, wrenching on them, and only 2% driving them on track it seems like GL has a pretty solid plan.

They also have a good presence in iRacing and Forza, which is where the main announcer (Kyle) gets all his practice running SYMTV. I raced with these guys all winter in iRacing and am going to Alpine Horizon despite the ~20hr tow from Sac in part because of interacting with them in sim (and also getting to see Texas track homies). Pretty sure DJ got looped in via the iRacing league too and he won a race last weekend at MidO. I'm pretty much planning to drop my car off with TC asap and move in the direction of GLTC / ST4 so that once I move back East I'm ready to party. Great group of folks that have a good thing going.

I'm really hoping they run as a support series at COTA again next year for Super Lap Battle. Doing my best to finish the K swap and be dialed in by then so I can drive that event. This year I think there were about 20 entries. Increasing that to 30 or 40 entries would be an insane sight to see at an F1 track especially with the coverage they can provide there with the bird's eye view from the tower.

I think 40 entries for a COTA isn't unrealistic.

jelly

If this happens during SLB again, what if you guys made an effort with Vegas? Detuned version of S1 maybe?

Post vaccine, maybe. Pre-vaccine, no way.

Wait...wut?

Are GridLife events hot beds for the ‘Rona?

no, but there's always a risk.

there's some more exciting news that should be announced this weekend at alpine horizon...

So was the news that event at NOLA? I've been there once with GTA, they had poor turnout for two years and didn't go back. The best part was definitely being able to go party on Bourbon Street at night with everyone, I liked the event. Gridlife will probably have a better chance of drawing a crowd, the facility is large and the track is halfway decent. Just wish it wasn't 100% flat and way less bumpy.

The news was NOLA. Great venue (paddock is yuge) and track is actually really fun, hopefully #GRIDLIFE can breathe some life into the place since like you say it's typically not a well attended track. I'm planning on throwing myself and doggo in the van and headed out for November road trip and going to NOLA whether car is ready or not (going to TC in Oct).

NOLA!!!

we're pumped. I've been there once for the OLOA a few years back and loved the track... we'll be doing the OLOA there next year so Becky is going to get a few sessions in.

That track is going to race great... now just need to figure out how to get the car down and back.

The one thing I will say for sure is do not get caught outside at that track near dusk or dawn. If you camp out prepare to seal yourself inside your trailer/van/truck whatever and possibly invest in a mosquito net. They have the WORST mosquitoes I have seen in my entire life, huge clouds of them come out and swarm everything, bug spray and citronella candles aren't going do to shit. We learned the hard way on setup day when we got attacked and ended up running to a bunch of rental cars and hiding in there trying to kill the handful of mosquitoes that got inside with us. Luckily we were staying at a nearby hotel so just ended up heading out to go party at that point. During the day though it was fine.

good note... i'm sure we wouldn't have even thought about it...

2022 rules posted.

2022 rules “provisional”

They're here https://docs.google.com/document/d/e...WZLvgjgv3u/pub


Tire rules changed drastically.
No more Hoosier, no more nankang CR1, or Goodyear 3R. GLTC has gone in the “traditional” 200tw direction, but stopped just shy of a spec Falken RT660.
Tire width chart by competition weight also removes the street tire width credit, so it’s previous Hoosier-sized 200tw moving forward.

Transmission options now pretty open and penalized accordingly. PDK/DSG/DCT/Sequential/Dogbox/whatever.

Any flat power/engine de-tuning is now penalized. 1-7% depending on the severity of detune. (Without an avg power formula, this penalty is subjective assessment by the rules folk)

Forced induction gets a stand-alone/additional .5% penalty.

Splitter rule re-worded to close an underbite allowance and now 3” max blade regardless of bumper overhang.

Assuming a standard 3% for good flat tune I think it's still the way to go. Using mini-bore + turbo modifer I come out to 184whp at 2350lbs (cut off for 225's) or 178whp for 3% flat tune. Would think flat tune would still be way faster in most scenarios, but it's certainly better than the exclusive 2% FI mod from last year, which made the 3% flat tune a no brainer.

Yeah some interesting changes. I like most of them.

Anybody got any idea what the "spec tire" is going to turn out to be? I'm not familiar with every choice on the list... but looking like everyone will be on Falken? And for full wets maybe Extreme Contact Sport or or Pilot Sport 4S?

Falken RT660
Hankook R-S4
Maxxis VR-1
Federal 595RS-Pro or 595RS-RR
BFG Rival S
Bridgestone RE-71r
Kumho v730
Cooper RS3-R/RS
Continental Extreme Contact Force
Michelin SC2 Connect or Pilot Sport 4S

Transmission Penalties, good because dog boxes were previously no modifier. Interesting they allowed sequentials but they're penalized so hard probably not worth it, also it's by "approval only" so who knows what that means.

Interesting that they don't allow swapping in DCT's to other cars but maybe it was to stop a BMW DCT war so that's fine by me.

Splitter bumper overhang loophole closed. Cool.

The turbo modifier moving to 0.5% is cool but also kind of useless, if you're turbo and not manipulating your power curve for some degree of flat tune then I don't know what you're doing.

The wide range of totally subjective penalties for flat tuning is kind of lame. I wish they would just use math here for power under the curve.

Rewards weight also got changed to a percentage based system, which is good because the heavier cars were definitely effected less by a flat rewards weight system.

FWD handicap got cut in half, from -2% to -1%, good news for us RWD guys.

Rain lights, was thinking of doing one but guess I'll add that to the shopping list now.

Aftermarket ABS (like Teves mk60) is currently under observation, sounds like a modifier might be incoming. Not cool for the people that went through the effort to develop and install that stuff.

Also I don't really like how they did the season championship points. It's your average finishing position of a minimum of 20 races. But if you do more than 20 races, all those races still count towards your average. So if you only do 20 races you get a boatload more "drops" than someone that participates the whole season.

There's going to be some more info coming out around the mod% for flat tuning, but general rule of thumb for now to have an idea is 1% per 1k rpm of flat tune. Swenson (detuned C5) and Jensen (detuned LS swap FRS) were both taking 4% this season fwiw, but Jensen will be getting hit with the 2% dog box rule now.

From purely competition standpoint the new championship rules might not make sense, but from GRIDLIFE standpoint of just wanting people to come out and race their homies clean for the sake of good racing it makes sense.

Initial discussions seem to point to the Continental ECF as potentially the tire to have. I think it’s also listed as one “they’re watching” so it might get nerfed 1/4 of the way through the season. The Conti is like 30-40% higher priced than the RT660.

There’s also thoughts that the best tire may be temperature dependent…like one might be better in the heat of the summer versus the spring or the fall.

I’m probably just going to order a set of RT660s and go from there…

The Conti ECF apparently is the quickest out of the options, but rumors that they chunk.

It seems like there are always rumors for tires though, so who knows. I certainly prefer the price of the RT660 too and I know Tom was having his fastest laps on them in GLTC towards the end of the race.

Not sure if the v730 will be a contender or not, but here's a TireRack on those 3 plus the excluded Yoko: https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/testDisplay.jsp?ttid=273&tab=TestReport

For the bigger cars I'm wondering if one of the Michelins will be the wet setup

I'm def starting at RT660 for cost and I'm at best mid pack Larry anyways 😂

RT660s for me as well, guna stretch em on 9.5s :rofl: When does mid-pack start?!

the rival s is still a very quick tire when setup well... still goes under the radar imho.

which street tire everyone uses will need to be more based on track temp, vehicle weight, and setup rather than put on a set of r7's and go.



the season points change is very good - emphasizes what's important to the series.

Underrated comment. I cant wait to buy 2 sets of each potential top street tire in my size, shave a set of each and see how they respond. That will really save me a bunch of money compared to just buying one set of R7s for 2-3 weekends.
Edit: I'm clearly not going to actually do that, but the idea of saving money by going to street tires have been rebutted by both top level autocross and "budget" endurance teams. Disallowing 40-180tw tires isn’t a magic money saving silver bullet, IMO.

Yeah I don't know how I feel about the tire change either to be honest. I like racing on R7's. But I'm also in the biased camp where I was winning a lot of them too.

I guess the thing that kind of bothers me is that I thought Gridlife would have much more success in securing contingency winnings for consumables than they did. They just had the plain Hoosier one and maybe a couple others but it's the same as one NASA class with 7 cars and almost no event coverage or advertising value. Given the unparalleled media presence and live race coverage I just thought they would have more leverage I guess, coupled with 50+ car fields etc.

I'm not saying that going to street tires can't lower costs but having so many options and adding in shaving is going to be expensive for some to figure out the setup.


The 1 percent per 1000 RPM thing penalizes people running tall gears and rewards people who can operate in a small RPM window with close ratios. Swensen ran with transmission that had faceplated gears as well which is also a dog box unless he gave up on that and went back to a normal T56. The dog box one is a good penalty and one I'm surprised didn't exist before.

Also I still don't like the champ points system, that may be their point of view but the way I proposed with just plain drops actually gives you more incentive to show up for more races.

The best explanation I've heard of the new points system is that it's now more of a "best overall / most consistent racer" award than a season points champion. With the old system you could show up to 20 races, have 3 DQs for pass under yellow, 2 blown dynos, and one crash, and still win the points championship. I guess that's still possible with the new system, but there's a lot less incentive for risky decisions when you know you can't drop any races.

They have always designed their rules and class structures around the people/cars that were actually showing up. They have never penalized anything based on it's potential, only actual results. On one hand, this requires spending from top runners to prove things are OP before they get penalized. On the other, they bring cool cars out of the woodwork for an event or two.

Theoretically, one or two events shouldn't break the Championship, but this year, one event did. I've been meaning to dive into this, because the GLTC circle jerk is strong with all the retaliatory meme-ing about v8s, corvettes and street tires.
Jeremy went to PPIR and collected 77 points in the Championship by beating a field of traditionally mid-packers. Nobody at PPIR won a non-invert race the whole year, nobody at PPIR who finished top 8 for the season won anything at all, and only a few non-PPIR podiums from the entire PPIR field.
Heitkotter collected 92 of his 257 points at PPIR, is a current Pro, finished p9 on the season with only 5 events and was Jeremy's only real competition at PPIR.
The flipside being NOLA, where Kutil would have maybe swept if he didnt DQ himself on P:W. At least McGrew(p6 Champ and multi-podium at other events) was there to keep him honest.
I feel like Jeremy's car will be credited for banning the AO52 midseason and CR1 post season, as well as adding or strengthening the penalties for dogboxes and engine detuning. I think everybody and their mother has theorycrafted a detuned C5 vette to break lots of club racing rules, but GLTC left the most doors open for opportunity.

P1 Jeremy (9 wins)and P2 Eric(6 wins) both attended all but one weekend. Their 77 vs 25 takeaways at those events wildly differs from their end of season points spread of 6 with the last race(an invert in bad weather) being a 15 point swing towards Jeremy
P3 Aaron and P4 Tom both missed 3 events, but won 5 and 7 races, respectively. Tom had the highest win percentage, and probably gets the Champ title in 2022 rules(I'm not doing that math).

Edit: theres no way to lay this out without throwing shade at the competition, so please know I am also a midpacker who finished 51st in the season. I didn't even land on the I-Made-It-Up podium of people who only contested one event, I think im 4th on that list. lol

Should also be noted that while the main discussion around streets seems to focus on cost, the primary driver is actually better racing. At the end of the day if you were the kinda person that stickered up every weekend then you probably won't save any money. If you're the kind person that didn't sticker up and ran your same R7s for 2-3 weekends then you stand to be just as competitive while potentially saving money. If you were the kinda person using streets anyways, then you stand to spend the same/similar money and be more competitive...especially miatas that were allowed 275s, but 275s don't exist for 15s and probably wouldn't be faster anyways.

Also A052 wasn't banned, it was placed in the hoosier category. For 2022 it's banned :p

I thinking making street tires more attractive to the entry level driver. I know Adam has said many times that the goal of GLTC was to be good racing and to bring club racing to a group who really didn't know about it. If someone has a budget and aspires to be at the front of the pack, seeing the top drivers on affordable tires (without regards to how many they are bringing with them as weekend) makes it look more attractive. The drivers are the pointy end of the field will always find a way to spend more money and time to keep their competitive advantages. Be it on the best tires, more of the best tires, shaving the best tires, testing days, or constant development of their car, ect. As a mid-pack hopeful as my car develops, I'll be the one happy to just carry cheaper set of tires that I'll probably run a weekend or two.

I think overall street tires will be a less expensive option. There will certainly be drivers and teams that go all out like y'all have mentioned. I do like they limited it to 2 sets of tires per event as well.

I'm going with 1 set of RT660s and another set of 200tw soon enough, not sure which one though. Maybe another set of RT660s and keep em for rains and deep tread depth. Maybe I'll wait to see the new offerings of 200tw for 2022, rumors of new Toyo compound and the RE71RS coming state-side. I think Hankook is overdue for a new 200tw as well!

Also, am I the only one that uses R7s more than 2-3 weekends?! lol

I ran 255 RT660 on my NC in heavy rain at Putnam 2 weeks ago. They were decent during light rain with no standing water, but they got super sketchy once the rain picked up and there was standing water on most of the track. They were surprisingly not bad with light standing water in the corners, but at 90-100+ on the main straight they were darting all over the place. Literally did a full car width lane change on me one time with zero steering input.

That set of RT660 had about 4 days on them and still had a lot of tread depth remaining. I love them in the dry but I'll definitely be buying a set of ECS or something else as my rain tires.

Yeah I should stop using Dan the Man as my "this is ok" gauge :rofl:

He's on 205 R660s here:

Conti ECS is no brainer for rain tire imo since we're allowed two compounds per weekend. I already have some lightly used 205 on 8s so just gonna leave those be. Then just rip through RT660, Rival S or whatever on 9s.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. LOL That lap was super fun though connecting the drift from T9 to 10A.

I ran RT660 at both Mid O and NCM in the wet, and i'll for sure be using something else, probably 205/50/15 ECS unless Michelin or Conti decides to grace us with a UHP Summer in 205/40/17.

-leichty would've won this year based on next year's season champrules
-cost is not the primary reason for the tire change.
-while a lot of people credit the a052 reclassification on swenson, many forget that houghton did that first, and continued to collect and share data on them while he's been confined to the great white north...
-cr1 wasn't placed on the approved list in part to it's performance, but also to its limited sizes, and the uncertainty in the supply chain (to put it mildly)

the new bridgestone potenza sport has potential to be good in the wet as well...

That was just a very high level generic baseline provided to work from. What the actual rule will be and what you will actually be assessed after sending in comp forms/dyno could differ a good bit. I think they've made it pretty clear the goal is parity, not creating a ruleset that can be "gamed".

The rules being a living document, there were some changes to season championship. Think they've struck the right balance at this point. It's now your 4 best weekends + finale. No individual drop races, it's all or nothing per weekend. Still promotes people showing up as much as possible to min/max points, but places importance on consistency over the weekend vs going for broke.

Looks like the WF were testing at Putnam Park this weekend and they were only ~1-2 sec slower than their R7 times on RT660's.

Worth noting Putnam is ~1:12-1:14 lap times. I've driven on track a few times with the RT660s on my car and they were more fun than I thought they would be. I ain't mad about the change!