TMSBOSS said:

This last weekend a NASCAR Cup car over revved. They changed the valve springs and raced it the next day. Engine lived. I know our cars are not meant to last at those engine speeds. My point it to share that the part(s) they saw as most effected were the valve springs.

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True but this NASCAR cars are made to do 9500 RPM the Gen 2 5.0 can barely do 8000 RPM. As I said my engine is running as it should but it's losing oil I will know more when my dealer check it on Friday.

Dealer did a compression test and filled it with new 5W20 Motorcraft. I did 110 miles drive on the highway with it trying to vary RPM's and the oil level was stable. No Missfires or Codes on the computer as well. I think I dodged the bullet but will try to keep an eye on oil consumption.
Next event is Dracon Speed Cup R2 27.04 can't wait to see what it will run with the A052's there.

Track-Speed released the official video from Serres if you are very careful you might see the blue Mustang in that sea of supercars

Dracon Speed Cup R2 - Dracon - 27.04.2024

So after the Money Shift scare at Serres which luckily was short lived and required only an oil change and compression testing to be solved. It was time to go to Dracon for the 2nd round of the Dracon Speed Cup.

This was going to be the first real test for the A052 tires which to be fair didn't looked any good after the 51 laps at Serres.



For me this tires are amazing on the road they don't tramline a lot, they are quiet and have insane levels of grip. All of which made for a great trip on the way to the track. It was raining a lot the last week but it was cold and clear on the way to the track. It was supposed to be a nice weather for track. I arrived very early around 8:00 and prepped the car.
Something that I noticed during the Serres event was that the A052 was wearing on the middle which suggested that I was driving them overinflated. So I decided to put lower pressure mind you this pressures were set after an 1 hour or so highway driving.




I think the rear was really low as this comes down to 1.6 bar when cold.

The car was ready for tracking at 8:36:



The drivers briefing was at 9:30 and the difference was that this time the sessions will be 12 minutes instead of 15 minutes. The driving started at 10:00 and my first session was at 10:35 I recorded my cold pressures and temps on a piece of paper and exited to drive the Air temp was 18C(64F). In the first lap however there was a red flag and the session was interrupted a driver from the other class has flipped a car on it's roof so it required medical but he exited the car on his own and had only scratches on the hand from the glass in the windshield the car was an old VW Polo I think. It took 20 minutes or so to get the car out and the Ambulance back on position so we can start driving again.

I was getting around 2.0 on the front during lapping and 1.9 rear so couldn't manage to get uniformed pressures. The temps of the tires which I took after the session showed higher temps in the middle of the tires but It was taking 3 laps to get them high enough for a good lap.
I only manage to do 1:07.001 on the end of the session in the 6th lap. The BMW 440i did 1:04.7 and was first in class I was second. My driving was very hectic because the 295/35 tires moved the shift points a lot. Which lead to a lot of confusion. My brake pads R12 were also on there last moments as after Serres I only have around 30% or less brake pad left.

After the session I took tire data, checked the oil (no visable oil burning) and checked the brake pads they looked good.

Second session was at 13:24 Air Temp 22C (71F) so the tires were cold by then so was the engine. I again didn't manage to get the tires working fine though I did a very very slow warm-up lap so I can give myself a lot of space to the other people on track. First flyer was only 1:08.54 and the second only 1:06.99. I cooled down a bit the motor. The Power Pack 3 did an amazing job I only saw a high of 108C (226F) CHT and 1 lap was good enough to drop the temps down to 99C(210F) CHT. This allowed me to do my fast lap of 1:06.788 (only 0.05 against the worn out AR-1's) at the 7th lap of the session.

After that session I checked the oil again and no burning again. I guess the fast corners on Serres combined with the faster overall speed lead to oil burning will need to have that in mind for next time I'm there. The problem was brake pads though they were done:



So I decided to sit out the next session the only car that was close to my time was a Megan R.S. Ultimate who was 3rd in class and was running both Street (on a different set of tires) and Street Tuning on Nankang AR-1's. His best time after the 2nd session was 1:07.290 but with weather getting hotter so was the track. I didn't have chance to improve so waited for session number 3 to see if he can improve. However he started to run into some brakes issues (Dracon is really brake intensive track) in fact his four piston Brembo callipers both started leaking fluid from the bleed valves. I guess there is a huge design flow with this bleed valves. So at the end he was not able to improve his lap times.

I spend the next 5 hours having lunch at the track, talking with people and packing. The Awards ceremony was at 18:00. My class was like this 1st BMW 440i : 1:04.7, 2nd Me with the S550 Mustang 1:06.788 and 3rd the Megan R.S. with 1:07.290.

This marks the end of Dracon Cup for that configuration on the track. The track is closing end of May for a resurface and change of the configuration.

Тhis is how the front Right looked today:



As well as the cold pressures:



I'm not sure with the hot weather this year and with no brake pads in side I will be able to reach my goal of 1:05 before end of May.

So what is next:

I need new pads both street and track for track I can ether buy new GLoc pads the R12 hold 209 laps (282 track miles) but they are not up to task in terms of force and the rear R8's have 343 laps on them.
I guess this leads to moving to R16/R12 for track set and probably GS-1 for street use.
The tires situation is also grim the fronts on the A052 looks very worn out on the middle and the rears I guess are not good ether.
Will need to figure out what to do for tires ether a new Set of AR-1's or run the A052 till they are slicks or corded.