2010 Evolution X Team
I hate the Mitsubishi Evolution X…
There. I said it. I hate it. I hate it like girls hate blondes with big boobs and short guys hate tall guys. There is just something about the car that rubs me the wrong way. After the Fall DE at Watkins Glen I now know why I hate it. The car is a cheater…a dirty rotten cheater.
Mitsubishi rolled out the EVOX as a clean sheet redesign over the EVO9 and for the first time in 20 plus years the 4G63 was not part of the equation. Replaced by a newly designed all aluminum 4B11T turbo charged engine it sports 291hp and 300ftlbs of torque. The engine features variable valve timing on both cams and a 16g style turbo slightly smaller then the previous one in the EVO9.
The real news is the chassis and the drive train and new full-time AWD system called S-AWC which uses an active yaw control to send a different amount of torque to any wheel at anytime. I’ve seen and experienced similar systems in Corvettes but until this Fall I have never been a big believer in what they can actually do.
Lets rewind to early October. Steve, my One Lap co-driver, has just been promoted to the instructor group which means he and I will be able drive in the same group again. We haven’t done that in years and because of a particularly over eager course worker giving me the blue flag of shame I frankly don’t like to talk about it. But this time it was going to be fun. I was piloting the One Lap car which has a distinct Hp advantage over the EVOX so being passed shouldn’t be an issue.
In the morning session on the first day Steve and I were able to get out on the track together and as expected the One Lap car’s Hp advantage allowed me to easily pull away from the stock EVO. Without a lot of wheel to wheel action to speak of I didn’t really have much of an opinion of the X. The rest of the first day Steve and I were not able to be on track together again. The One Lap VR4 was also having some issues with power that I tracked down to a failing fuel pump. It just didn’t want to make any pressure so I just babied it around the track feathering the throttle to control the knock and prevent any catastrophic failures.
By the second day I was ready to give up as the car could no better then 45-50psi of pressure no matter what. As in any car if you don’t have fuel you don’t have power. I covet track time so I just went out and practiced trail braking and giving passing signals. On the third and what would be my final run of the event, Steve grabbed Mike to show him how the EVO drives and I managed to tag along behind him.
At first Steve was driving his normal perfect line. It’s like he’s playing a video game out there. There was no way I was going to pass Steve with no fuel pressure but I was determined to at least keep up. I have my pride you know. So after a few laps I am struggling to keep up. Steve just doesn’t make mistakes and the EVOX goes around a corner with as much grip and speed as the One Lap VR4. Even though I’ve poured my heart into making that the best handling VR4 on could, it was just about even with the new EVO. So I make my peace with reality. The EVOX is just a great handling car and when driven by somebody who knows how to drive it’s a pretty good match for me. What happens next is just not fair.
Steve turns on the active yaw control or whatever black magic he has and proceeds to demonstrate to Mike its uncanny ability to save your ass. Steve begins by entering a turn off line, way to fast, and trail braking. A combination that would send me into the wall. The EVO just turned the corner. I can tell by his exit speed that he was on the gas the whole way. Repeat that for the next corner…same crappy entry..same result. The car just turns and goes. Great the car can save you but here is where it gets painful. Even with his God awful line I still can’t catch him. In fact I can’t even gain any ground on him. No matter how bad he drives the car just goes like snot.
I didn’t learn about the use of the Yaw control until those two giggling idiots rolled themselves out of the car. Grins from ear to ear…its not fair. Some of the things they did out there should have put them into the wall and yet the car just hustled itself around the track. What is this world coming to? Can anybody now just hop in a car and tear up the track? Where is the justice? Where is the humility gained from struggling, learning, pushing yourself?
I had enough. I put the ailing VR4 on the trailer and went home. I hate the EVO X…I really, really do.
1The oldest trick in the book
This is proof that it doesn’t matter if you have a killer car, if you won your class at this years OLOA, and even if you finished in the top 10, you can still fall for the one of the oldest tricks in the book. And we are not talking about a land war in Asia folks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF13ADyxXWc
…and now featuring another angle!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvgY2w9yABo
The 24 Hours of Autobahn
I had the pleasure to recently attend an AMS organized event at the Autobahn Country Club that ran the South Course for a six 30 minute session day. I drove there friday night which took about 10 hours thanks to a fatal accident closing down the main entry from the east to the Chicago area. There were literally hundreds of cars and trucks sitting on the highway and nobody really knew how long it would be. So I moved a few construction barrels out of the way and did a U-turn hoping I could challenge my Garmin Navigator to find a way around the mess.
Turns out Central Ave was a pretty good shortcut to another on ramp except that it was closed for construction. This sent me north of the highway into a “financially challenged” area of the city where you actually would really need an SUV to navigate these rough roads… and a bulletproof vest probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either! Luckily I made it to my hotel in time to have 4 hrs of sleep before heading to the track in the morning.
After arriving at Autobahn I had enough time to unload the car and get the car teched. Already it was pushing 80* F and the sun was bearing down with no relief in sight. After the drivers meeting to make sure everyone was on the same page, they sent the Intermediate and Advanced group out for some parade laps to get a feel for the course. Then I decided to follow some of the lines that the more seasoned drivers knew for this road course and ended up driving the car so hard that the brakes boiled about 20 minutes into the session. Luckily I was able to slow the car down with my feet out the door and bring the car into the pits for inspection. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Girodisc 2 piece rotors and Raybestos ST43 pads were so good at stopping It might have ended much more dangerously.
Luckily just a quick re-bleed of the Racing Blue brake fluid seemed to have brought them back to life and the second session was fine assuming I got some cooldown laps after doing 4-5 hot laps. Plans are to get another set of ducts to cool the rotors directly in addition to the ducts that cool the caliper area, swap to higher rated brake fluid, and swap in some titanium shims. By session 3 I started to feel more comfortable again but still decided to stick with learning the proper line and not really going for absolute best lap times. One thing that reared it’s ugly head again was the fuel sloshing around in the tank during longer G corners. The Evo X just does not like running below half tank or less on road courses and I was forced to let a race prepped BMW go by when it just wouldn’t hold the turns when powering out.
Session 4 was interesting in that I rounded the corner to the back straight and spotted a red waving flag. This can’t be good! I scanned the area and noticed a white Evo planted up on the tirewalls, apprently his brake line(s) ruptured at ~120 mph and he was unable to stop. It also turns out that 3 laps before I lost my oil cap after not screwing it down all the way and getting distracted by onlookers in the pits. Apparently Pep Boys sells an oil cap that has a threaded end but they had to look it up as a 2009 since the 2008 just failed to list it!
Hopefully I’ll have time to run another track day at Road America with AMS as I had a great time and got another track under my belt reasonably well. Basically this was “The 24 Hours of Autobahn” for me since I drove ~20 hours round trip, 1 hour extra to reach the open house at AMS. and spent about 3 hrs total out on the track. It turns out that 24 hours of driving in 3 days really takes it’s toll and felt worse than the One Lap trip since there was no co-driver to share the overload of driving!
Session 3 video (available in 720p):
I started to have fun with the car and avoided abusing the brakes too much knowing I had to drive home after this event!
Session 4 video (available in 720p):
This video has a few laps with a passenger along for the ride, then as we round the turn to the back straight I noticed a red flag waving and spotted a white Evo up on the tire wall.
0Watkins Glen May 2010 HPDE with Niagara PCA
So what does one do before the 2011 One Lap of America?
Tune the nut behind the wheel and improve the car so that it’s ready for next years event!
I’ll share some experiences with how my Evo X faired at the May 24/25th HPDE event down at Watkins Glen earlier this week. I was coming down off a high placing well at the One Lap event and wanted to see what the car could do at my home track by pushing it a bit harder without breaking anything. Well at the end of my first video I found the one weakness the car might have and did a small off track detour but it wasn’t anything too major. Luckily they had just revamped Watkins Glen for safety and areas that were gravel traps were now paved over with improved safety walls set in place in case the paved run off areas weren’t enough to recover.
It seems that while the threshold braking is amazing with the Girodisc 2 piece front rotors and Rabyestos ST-43 pads, even the Yokohama AD08 have their limits for traction when on the binders hard. At Watkins Glen there seems to be numerous braking zones that are downhill, and once the ABS engages fully, it really doesn’t slow the car down nearly as well when compared to threshold braking where the ABS is just about to kick in. What caught me off guard at times was when I would get a late pass point bye in the black (advanced) run group, most of the cars weren’t lifting as we approached the turn so being stuck passing offline meant I had to extend my braking zone into the apex of the turn, make corrections at the apex based on how early I entered, and then power out with relative safety if I did it right.
When I really stomped on the brakes and got full ABS to kick in, the car became very greasy and didn’t want to rotate very well at all when at the limits. I had the ASC turned off one touch which meant at least the power was not being cut, but the ABS were supposed to still be there to assist in steering the car to where I had the wheel pointed which didn’t always seem to be the case. It seemed that if the system was overwhelmed it would just understeer and kick in 
antilocks so much that I likely had to let off the brakes, correct the angle, and then get on them again in order to make it work. I probably could have also gotten on the power and power drifted the car around the turns when overcooked but figured it should work with using braking control as well. I experimented with turning the ASC off for 5 second push so that the ABS assist for turning was off as well but never got into a situation where I could definitively say it made the difference.
Last year I vividly remembered that the Porsche GT3′s were about equal on the track for power, braking, and handling where as a certain black 2007 Z06 driven by a nice guy named David was tearing up the track when he had race rubber and most everyone else was on steet tires. Well this year with the Coilovers, stickier street tires, and possibly slightly better driving I noticed a change. While the power on the straights was still similar since I detuned the car to around 500 crank hp at 25 psi, I could outbrake those GT3′s and easily turn inside of them in the corners now. The Z06 that I attempted to pace last year which warped my brakes after 1 lap overdriving the car was now within sight for a couple laps, and by the last session of the 2nd day I was able to keep pace doing 2:15 laps and the car seemed to hold up fine without any worries. After talking it seems that when he gets a clean lap he can lap around 2:10 or slightly better so my next goal will be to tweak a few things to see if I can pull that pace off on a street tire setup through increased reliable power (~650 crank HP goal), wider street tires (295mm?), and possibly a few suspension changes.
Overall the BC Racing ER series coilovers performed quite well and I increased the stiffness of my shocks bound (compression) and rebound to a stiffer 20 (of 30) setting all around with a few tweaks after that. Overall the car had minimal tire rollover on those settings with the -2.5* front and -1.5* rear camber settings and the stiffer shock setup. Still you could really toss the car around and not have any worries that the car would suddely experience snap oversteer, and besides the ABS taking over control at times, the car turned in amazingly well for 20+ minutes of track time and allowed accurate vehicle placement without having to muscle the car. As I pushed the limits a bit more on the 2nd day, I started learning the technique to get more bite out of the tires where you release the wheel and turn in again. The only places the car felt a bit dangerous was up the esses so I was still letting off slightly and boosting 20 psi until the car felt more settled before powering up to the back straight where I was reaching 145-150mph before getting on the binders at the 400 ft mark leading into the bus stop.
The only major issue I had was fuel starvation, and with the new found handling and more aggressive cornering it turns out that a 2nd session is not possible without topping off the tank since the left hand exit from the off camber turn 9 caused fuel starvation I would rather not experience again. Luckily I brought my 5 gallon fuel tank and just refilled that when making my mid day refueling trip in town. Plans are to get a fuel surge tank setup in place along with a 400 LPH fuel pump matched to the Deatschwerks 1500cc injectors I have yet to install. Basically at 7 MPG I go through about 1 gallon of fuel every two laps at Watkins Glen long course (3.4 miles) and that means after 12 laps (~27 minutes) the car is approaching half a tank of fuel.
I’ve got about 50 minutes of in car video footage from the various sessions over the 2 day HPDE and tried to list a brief summary under each video. The first one has the most traffic where I must have passed over 20 cars during the entire session and the last video shows that Z06 on race rubber that I’m keeping pace with just barely. So go to full screen mode and turn up the sound because it’s “almost” as good as being there yourself.
You’ll have to double click the videos to enter youtube in order to see the full descriptions.
Day 1 – Session 3 (Heavy Traffic, passing 15 cars in this 10 min clip)
Day 1 – Session 4 (Passing Steve’s near stock Evo X on back stretch, caught silver Z06)
Day 2 – Session 1 (Late Passing Exercise with Steve at start, later doing some 2:16 laps)
Day 2 – Session 2 (4 wheel drifts down the chute and late passing practice)
Day 2 – Session 3 (Pacing Black Z06 through traffic with around 2:15 lap times)
02010 One Lap of America – Evo X Race Summary
After 9 days of driving with over 4500 miles under our belts, we returned from a successful rookie year fielding my 2008 Mitsubishi Evolution X. With 1st place in the Mid-Priced Sedan class out of 10 cars and 7th overall out of 68 cars, it’s hard to imagine that we could have done any better for our first year out. Our strategy for this year was to shoot for a top 20 finish without risking the car since it’s also a daily driver. Since we didn’t previously drive any of the tracks before this event, we knew that our morning sessions would be about learning the course and that the afternoon session we hoped to improve more than the rest of the field on average. You know when the entry list includes Leh Keen in a well prepared Porsche GT2, last year’s 
champion GTR team, another GTR piloted by Catesby Jones and Jose Callado, and a well sorted out Corvette pilotted by Danny Popp and the team, you are going to be up against some stiff competition in the top 10. As the events progressed it was obvious those teams were a cut above the rest and we had our work cut out for us.
As Brock Yates Jr said to the rookie class this year, “it doesn’t matter how well you run, if you aren’t there on the last day, you don’t have a shot”. Prophetic words, or maybe just lots of experience being passed down to the next generation of one lappers. From day 1, the first goal was always just to finish and being there on the last day can be it’s own victory. Going into a race event like this you have to know up front that reliability & consistency is absolutely key when it comes to accumulating points for overall placement. While our teammates Tim and Steve in the VR4 were battling brake issues for a combo that needed some more track testing, the Girodisc 2 piece rotors and Raybestos ST43 pads that were provided by Tunersnation and Girodisc were absolutely flawless. While the race pads weren’t recommended for street driving, I didn’t want to compromise ultimate braking power and there was no way we wanted to swap pads every event. Luckily these are some long lasting pads as they wore less than 2mm for the entire week of driving and weren’t that hard to tolerate for the mostly highway driving between events. The pads always had ample stopping power and when mated to the Girodisc 2 piece rotors, the combination gave positive, direct feedback at the limit. Knowing that your car is going to haul down from 150mph to speeds that will allow you to survive corners that you have never seen before can make all the difference in the world with car confidence.
With the typical time attack format you are given some practice sessions on the road course before going for your best hot laps. With One Lap of America, you get a single scouting lap and then begin 3 hot laps from a standing start. When it comes to clicking off fast laps, having previous track experience on that particular road course can play a huge role as does having ample seat time with your current car setup. Our team unfortunately had neither as we were still tweaking suspension setups up to the day we left for South Bend. Neither one of us had any track time on the new setup and the first time Sean drove the Evo X at the limit was at Mid-America. Luckily we found that the car really shined in it’s ability to keep itself on the track despite being piloted by drivers that didn’t always know what to expect around the next corner. If we had to assign a number to it, we were able to consistently drive 8-9 tenths, where as most of the other drivers were attacking corners at 9-10 tenths from what we saw. Keeping the ASC off with a single button push meant that the annoying power cut feature was turned off while retaining the ABS assist to help turn the car when a bit over driven. The AYC (Active Yaw Control) setup on this Evo X mated to the BC Racing ER series suspension on 10k springs gives the car slight oversteer at the limits 
and predictable handling. The guys at Darkside Engineering were great when deciding the rough setup we should go with and they were pretty much right on as to where we should start the suspension tuning. We ended up keeping the suspension on middle of the road street friendly settings that were just stiff enough for the smooth tracks, excellent for bumpy tracks, and livable on the street. We found out quickly that the wet skidpad can be a handful if the rear end is too stiff and you have ASC turned off completely.
When you are at the track from 8 am until 3 pm and then have an 8 hour ahead of you before even thinking about sleep, the last thing you want to worry about is fixing the car or resolving an issue. This was a key reason we decided to detune the car down to 25 psi where it was likely only making around 500 crank HP. Spending that extra week on car preparation and maintenance goes a long way to making sure you finish an event like this as well. Missing even one event with a DNF is a huge hurdle to overcome and the #6 Subaru Sti that we were battling for the class win was a prime example. Their driving was excellent on the road courses but due to a 52nd result on the Wet Skid pad, they were forced into catch up mode through the first half of the events. We edged them out at the drag strip mid way through which helped us stay ahead and remain 1st in class.
We knew all things being equal, we would have had to crank up the boost and get more aggressive with the driving to hold them off for the second half which was a dangerous proposition being our first year out. As fate would have it, they literally drove the wheels off the car and the launches at the drag strip took their toll resulting in a snapped axle at the Gateway oval and a double DNF for the day. At that point, we decided that sticking with the same strategy we had from the beginning would be our best plan in order to hold onto the class win and still stay in the top 10 overall standing: be consistent, drive 8 tenths, and finish each event. If we had more experience with the road courses we were driving on and more seat time in the car, we could have 
pushed for a top 5 finish but the risk for failure and breaking the car was too great. Even if we did push harder, the cars at the top were very well-prepared with incredibly fast drivers and it would taken more than an extra tenth to catch them.
Next year we will definitely be pushing the car harder and hopefully drive a few of the tracks before the event starts. Based on the numbers, we’ll need to pick up the pace 2-3 sec a lap to stay competitive in class and 6-7 seconds per lap to even think about challenging the front runners. Next time around we plan on having all of the improvements track tested so that there won’t be any surprises and more seat time behind the wheel will be critical as well. The BC Racing ER series coilovers held up excellent for the events, although with all the rough public roads we tortured the car through, we found that some of the components started to loosen up and needed to be tightened down again. When going over the car after the event, the driver’s side rear swaybar nut was missing so that’s one more place we’ll have to watch like a hawk when tracking this car. Running through a checklist before each days events is likely a very good idea since even small problems can end up being a nightmare when at speed on these tracks.
The Yokohama AD08 tires were also impressive as they are some of the best street tire handling I’ve ever driven on. With about 7mm of starting tread depth, we found that the inside edges of the front tires wore about 2mm where as the rest of the tire wore about 1mm with the -2.5* front and -1.5* rear camber settings and close to zero toe. Finding a tire that performs any better would be hard to do but we’re looking forward to more testing this season 
at Watkins Glen to see what might work even better in wider sizes. Before the event we took a serious look at the Dunlop Direzza Star Spec’s as they had been run by our team mates in the VR4. We had initially wanted to use that tire, but as they did not have any sizes we could use on the 19″ wheels, we were forced to go with the more expensive Yokohama’s. Would the Direzza’s have worked as well as the Yokohama’s for this event? We would certainly welcome the chance to compare the two to find the best options for the money.
Gas mileage wise we were able to double check how accurate the in dash calculator really is. While at the track we were getting a horrid 6-7 MPG, on the highway we saw a much more eco friendly 27-30 MPG. After some refills I double checked the mileage based on replacing the fuel and miles traveled and it appears that it is only about 5% optimistic at worst. That means an indicated 28 MPG was about 27 MPG actual which isn’t too shabby considering 2 people and a fair amount of tools and gear in the car for the trip. We tried to make sure we were always topped off for all the road courses but were tight on time when we arrived at NJMP. Turns out that just under a half a tank WILL result in fuel starvation when pulling that long right hand sweeper at WOT that lasts a good 15 seconds. You can be assured that we’ll have a good anti-surge fuel system in place for next year!
We want to give a big shout out to all of our sponsors this year, but especially our main sponsors:
TunersNation
Garfield at TunersNation has been fantastic to work with. He was always on top of what we were looking for, was always willing to help in any way he could, and was sincerely looking to help us succeed. There is no doubt in our minds without his help, we wouldn’t have performed as well as we did. Be sure he will do what is needed to help you out for any of your parts needs.
GiroDisc
Johann and Martin at Girodisc have been providing great products for the Evo community. The 2 piece floating rotors they provided to us through Garfield are no different. Right out of the box, they are about as close to brake art as you can get. The quality was incredible and the functionality was even better. When you are throwing a 3600 lb car down a track at 140+ mph, the last thing you want to worry about is your brakes. The floating rotor designed kept them straight, true, and effective at all heat ranges and pedal pressures. Mated with the Raybestos ST43 pads and some well routed ducting, they didn’t show one sign of warping, gouging or runout issues. You beat the crap out of them and they just keep coming back for more. Sean was so impressed, he is looking to replace his brake setup on his Evo IX track/autocross car with the same rotor setup.
ThreeSpeed
Harry has been a long time supporter of the DSM and Galant VR4 communities and a long time friend to the Galant VR4 OLOA team. His scattershields are top notch and are run on some of the fastest 4G63 powered cars. His support of the team, both the EvoX and the Galant VR4, helped us be in a position to be successful in our One Lap of America campaign.
Darkside Engineering
The guys at Darkside Engineering worked with us when we were looking to upgrade our suspension to something that would give us the handling and durability we needed to run the One Lap. Their suggestion was the BC ER Series coilovers and we were very happy with the results. The ER series gave us the adjustability and flexibility we needed to get the car in shape in a short amount of time. Without Darkside’s help in the initial setup, the car would not have been as behaved as it was as we would have spent much of our time dialing in the basics instead of testing entry, mid-corner and exit states. For a mid-priced sportsman suspension, the BC ER series are extremely capable and definitely worth a look if you are looking to get into tracking days, autocrosses, or just make your car handle better.
Many thanks to our other sponsors and supporters:
All our friends and families!
Here are some in car videos of the Evo X in action. Eventually we’ll have a full set uploaded to our main site so be sure to check back later. We’ll try and answer any questions people may have here as well as post an update when major updates are done to the site. Next year we’ll probably run with an external dump tube, for now you’ll have to turn up the volume a bit to hear the car.
Chris Wirth at NJMP Lightning Raceway – Session 2 (complete with overcooked corner in 2nd hot lap)
Sean Caron at Nelson Ledges – Session 2
We had a great time meeting tons of new people and will definitely be back next year. Thanks to some great new sponsors that are going to make funding this trip much easier in the future, we will be raising money for a good charity for next year and have fun doing it! If you would like to get involved in our 2011 One Lap bid, please feel free to contact us through the RochesterDSM One Lap page for more details. Thanks for reading!
Chris Wirth and Sean Caron
#15 2010 One Lap of America
1st Place – Mid Priced Sedan
7th Place Overall
