Wow, looking at the entry list for Daytona a couple of days ago, I see 6 Gen3's signed up!!

That is pretty cool until I took a closer look at the drivers:

Brian Schofield, two time and current SRF national Champion.
Cliff White, last year's SRF national Champion
Mark Eaton, two time FE national Champion
Mike Davies, egads..... 11 time national Champion with a bunch of SRF titles and many others in several types of cars.

Holy Cow!!! What a list!!

Jeffrey Smith and I are the only non national championship drivers..... gonna be a long weekend!

Mick Robinson

How did the GEN3's perform at Daytona?

First of all let me say. WOW!!! The GEN3 is a blast! Its a spec racer on steroids!

Overall, my experience in the GEN3 was great despite the weather in Daytona. My first session in the car, and at Daytona in a few years was in the rain. In the three laps I ran in the first qualifying the car was easy to drive on the OLD Goodyear rain tires. The car ran fine, but I got a warning light on the dash and didn't have all of my gauges set up correctly so rather than be THAT GUY and blow up a new motor in the first session I came in immediately.

The Saturday race was also a wet session. This time I ran the current rain tires and it was SKETCHY at best. The car ran flawlessly the entire 20 minute race. At the end of the race the car would not restart but it was just the lead came off the starter.

Finally, we had a dry track for Sunday's race. My first dry session in the GEN3 and we only had 6 laps of green racing in a 30 minute race! I spent the race chasing Mark and trying to learn how to best use the wider power band. The infield at Daytona was right in between a 2nd and 3rd gear. 2nd Gear was clearly faster, if you could get the power down and make the 2nd and 3rd shift before finishing the corner. We did not get to do any real drafting because of the limited dry time during the weekend.

With 4 cars on track Mike Davies was able to do some ECU fine tuning which really helped the idol and the paddock drivability. I really struggled to give Mike feedback because the car was so easy to drive. It is just plane fun!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyVG5laF7dE

Looks and sounds awesome, thanks for posting, Cliff!

A couple of comments questions for those who were there:
1) in the two (that I can remember) videos that I've seen of Gen3's racing so far, there appears to be some disparity in the acceleration/power of the cars. I would think that the motors would be coming out of Enterprises very close to one another just like the 1.9's so a) am I wrong or b) is there another explanation (perhaps differing R&P?). For instance, Cliff looked like he had more power (even on the start) than the Robinson 72 car.
2) what kind of non-draft top speed differential did the Gen3 see at Daytona over a 1.9?
3) finally it sounded like 5th gear was almost unusable. It took forever to get there and once you did, I heard what sounded like only marginal increase in RPM (and therefore speed).

Thanks!
Denny

Denny, I was able to spend more time behind mark during the second half of the race. We were both trying 2nd and 3rd in the infield. When he used 2nd and I used third there was an initial jump where I was not on the power band and then the cars maintained a gap. When we both used 2nd we accelerated at approximately the same rate. I do know from talking with Mike that hitting the rev limiter cuts the fuel for some period of time. I think we will have to wait for Mick to chime in on the two points of my short video to see if he may have hit the rev limiter to cause the speed/acceleration difference.

I think mike said he saw 132 without a draft and 138 with a draft at start finish.

Hey Denny;

The difference in speed on the high bank, NASCAR 2, was because I didn't do the turn fast enough going back onto the high bank, so I did a slight lift to have Cliff catch me so we could run in a draft and catch the lead 2 cars. You can see he was not such a nice guy and stay behind me, instead he flew by. Anyway, I tagged onto him out of the chicane and we held our ground with them until the incident at turn one. After that, the 3 of us were pretty tight for the rest of the race, I don't think with more than a second between the 3 cars. They were all very equal, but I was up against: Mark Eaton, 2 time FE National Champion, Cliff White 2012 National Champion, Mike Davies 11 time National Champion and Brian Schofield 2 time national champion but did not race his car for some reason. The weather was rain for 2 days with a great day on Sunday. I almost left on Saturday after the miserable time in the rain and on these stinkin current rain tires. But I did qualify on the pole in the rain!

Interesting the draft didn't seem to work with these cars until 115 mph. Then, the cars would finally move up in the draft, much different than the 1.9's. I was 3 lengths behind Mark and then Cliff, but only started to catch up about 600 feet before the chicane and the same by the start / finish line.

The cars are a gas to drive!! If you want to own a Gen3 early, this one might be for sale.... just sayin.

So is my short lived GEN3 race Video....I was driving the Comprent GEN3....here is a couple of Gopro laps, including the the big NASCAR turn 3 / 4 crash
Mark drafts by me and I return the favor after the bus stop....it's going to be fun racing GEN3's in a pack at Daytona...132 / 133 MPH no draft and 138 MPH when I passed mark back and we bumped near the apex.

https://vimeo.com/94249607

Wow, sounds awesome. The shift points and revs sound great with that .385 versus
the in car from Cliffs car!

The first three production GEN3's had a dyno variation that was far far less than any three consecutive 1.9L's have ever had...its not even close by absolute numbers and if you take it as a percentage it's not even a number. All three were exactly 30 HP above the top of the 1.9L window; yes 30 HP. Shannon is not using peaks on GEN3, but rather area under the curve over the usable RPM range for the equalization.

Weather aside, I saw what I needed to see in Daytona...assembly instructions are beyond critical at this point, %&#!%*#$!# starters are changing (many identical starter options - easy fix), but these are production ready engines. Mike started with new firmware Friday AM and with almost no track time had taken another leap forward by Sunday. And I will say it many more times, Mike's standard of what isn't done versus what a driver could possibly perceive in the cockpit are two different levels. Hardware is locked...he can play with tuning (and even firmware) a little longer. The "map" has not really changed in months...Lambda is spot fricking on!!! and it is self tuning...he's down to accel / decel and the effects things have on idle. You read it above, Cliff perceived nothing wrong with what he started with. One car had 6 PSI too much fuel pressure...so what...it tuned perfectly on track anyways.

Great stuff, Erik!
Plus we know from Mikey that the Gen3 has been engineered to only require one hand for driving (that guy is straight up crazy).
Denny