I asked this on the other Test n Tune post and figured I'd double down and ask here. Apparently at the test and tune, a new car (lakester/streamliner) has to make 3 passes under 150 to checkers things out (going off of Sparky's deal) on top of licensing passes? If I make it to this event next year, would I have to do the same thing at Speed Week? I'm curious how this works...
No you shouldn't have to. There were a couple specific things on the car that factored into the decision for the 3 runs under 150. Also this is USFRA not SCTA so they can require what they want and we had no problem running to their requirements and we learned a lot about the car and some changes will be done before SW. I think it is wise to factor into your schedule time for extra runs. There were some very high end cars at the meet that had problems that were probably never factored in back at the shop and these same teams have decades on the salt and probably weren't surprised that stuff was going to happen.
For us this test and tune saved days at SW where it can take a long time to put in the 5 runs that we did here. After the 3rd under 150 Sparky ran a 195+ 4th run and then was on a 250 run were he ran 225+. Something was off on the gear/speed/rpm chart he was using that resulted in the under 250 (not my chart
).
He put out both chutes to test them and one of the pilots didn't come out quite right so this will give him a chance to talk to Stroud before Speed Week and he tried the brakes hard to see how they would work and they had a momentary problem that put te car sideways but he recovered. Before SW he might change his master cylinder/wheel cylinder combo. Again all of this is stuff that is now out of the way and hopefully SW will be more productive.
Hopefully your car will work perfect out of the box but don't be down if it doesn't as that is more normal and the reason for the required runs,
Sum