Pushin' Papers

Smart Racing Products proudly aims to simplify the process of “car set-up”. By nature, this is a complex thing so it can only get so simple. However, even on your own car going from doing nothing to properly setting toe and camber will put you light years ahead of those that don’t. Beyond that when you look at what is being done at the top levels of racing you’d be in awe of the number of set-up values that are being analyzed at any given time.

Have you set the angle on your flugelhorns? What about the blanking on your cheese wedges? Damper canister pressures? Blow off valving? No? Well, surely you’ve set your diff preload and tunnel exit heights. This is just a sampling of what ends up filling a binder after binder with notes-turned-data each weekend.

All this data is recorded by the mechanics and presented to the engineers. They will have a debrief after each session where they overlay these numbers with track telemetry and driver comments. This drives decisions on changes to the chassis set-up, aero adjustments etc. The crew then apply these changes and…. wash rinse repeat. The key is to carefully measure, record, analyze, change, measure, record. This constant loop of information provide confirmation if you’re doing the right things, and a trail of breadcrumbs should you get too far off.

Fun fact, I’ve worked with some truly amazing drivers over the years. And some have been an amazing pain in the ass. I was the front-end Mechanic for 5 years with the same driver and managed among other things his comfort in the cockpit. In addition to the chassis set-up book we also kept a complete record of every dimension of the interior that he interacted with. From pedal dimensions and seat belt measurements to the thickness of every pad and seat surface. If it was off by even a few millimeters he knew right away, and it would rattle his focus. That book was my bible, and still have it to this day…..Just as a reminder of the importance of record-keeping down the smallest detail.

This photo below shows some not all of the pages from a weekends set-ip book on an IMSA DPi car.