We at Doug Rippie Motorsports would like to thank the Nord Stern Porsche Club of Minnesota for their hospitality at Road America Raceway this Thursday and Friday July 29th and 30th 1999. We had two of our C500/RSR car owners Al Korbel and Steve Melnick bring their cars for some HOT weather testing. The air temp in the shade was 99 degrees with "out of control" humidity. But this was a great opportunity to continue testing the 500hp RSR's. The first order of business was to test some new tires from Hoosier Racing Tire. We had 275-35-18 in front on 10" rims and 305-30-18 on 11" rims in the rear. Hoosier's road race compound is the only available compound at this time although an autocross version should be available soon. The results were extremely promising and we now feel that we have the optimum setup for these tires. Hoosier makes a great D.O.T. race tire and we would also like to thank them for their assistance in this tire test.
One things that separates us from the "engine tuners" of the world is the way we can balance a car for a particular type of tire. Right now we have 4 completely different chassis setups for 4 different types of tires. This way our RSR customers will have a proper handling car regardless of which tires they choose to run on. For example, we will change ride height, camber, caster, toe and tracking to optimize the car. The tires that have been tested to this point are the following. BFG g-force KD street tires, BFG g-force R-1 race tires, Hoosier D.O.T. road race tires and Goodyear Eagle racing slicks. Our second order of business was testing under the extreme conditions of a Midwest heat wave in July. C5 Corvettes often have problems with brakes, transmissions and rear ends overheating. We can proudly say that we had no heat related problems whatsoever. Over the two days at this event we ran a total of eight 30-minute long sessions on Steve's car alone and NEVER experienced any brake fade. Water and oil temps were well within safe limits. These RSR cars can go until the gas runs out and still never get too hot. That's Rippie engineering at its best. For information on our C500/RSR car click here.
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