- We're here at GReddy's headquarters in Los Angeles
with Nathan from Tuned by Nate
and behind us we've got Ken Gushi's FRS.
The Scion FRS.
Now this is a fairly well know car.
Actually a little bit of history on the car.
This was given to GReddy to develop
prior to the release of the car.
So they actually had this chassis before anyone
in the world had seen the car out there in the wild
and they basically had to start building this
as a kind of a secret project.
Now this car has been campaigned for two seasons
in the U.S. Formula D series
and more recently it's been converted
to campaign in Pike's Peak
with some reasonable success.
Let's start by talking about the development of the car
and the first thing we notice with this car
is it doesn't have FA20 in it anymore.
What's the engine package in the car, Nate?
- It is an EJ25, they had went away from
the FA20 at the time because the development
was not quite there and it needed to be,
they needed to have pretty much a ready to run
package right out of the box when they first
campaigned it in the Formula Drift series.
- Now again, that really comes back down to
the fact that this car was developed
before the FA20 was really out there at all
so they wanted to use something that they're familiar with
and the EJ25, you knew you could make the power out of it.
So what sort of power is it producing?
- It makes anywhere from 550 to 600 horsepower.
That's basically the limit for these engines
before it starts becoming unreliable.
- What sort of boost pressure are you
using to make that power?
- In this last iteration,
25 pounds of boost is what we're running.
- Can I assume E85 fuel?
- Yes E85 is run exclusively, yes.
- Now the electronics package on the car,
it's really got a full house Motec's electronics package.
Can you talk us through the components
you have fitted to it?
- Sure, so this particular application,
we decided to use the M130.
We felt that at this current time when it was built,
like five months ago that we would be going
a little bit backwards to go with the M800 or the M600.
Moving forward I think the M130 is the ultimate
ECU to use with a GPR package.
We're also using the C125 colour display logger
as well as a PDM30 to kind of make sure
all the power side of the car is handled.
- I see you've also got that Can Keypad
in there to control everything.
- Yeah, we wanted to make sure
this car is as simple as possible.
With the race grade 15 keypad,
you're able to have multiple functions
with recallation of the status of each
controlled device without having
huge amounts of toggle switches
and lights and whatnot.
This thing's pretty integrated.
- For those who aren't familiar
with that Can Keypad, what you're
talking about there is a keypad
that communicates the status of each of those
buttons or switches on the keypad via a can.
So instead of a traditional harness
where you've got wires for each
of the switches, these can based keypads
only have four wires.
They've got 12 volts, they've got a ground
and then they've got can high and low.
Really, particularly when it comes to
the poor wiring harness guy, it's
simplifying his job enormously.
Plus it's giving a lot more control
that you wouldn't normally get
with a traditional switch keypad.
Is that fair?
- Yes absolutely you hit all the right points, yep.
- Now the other thing as well with
the PDM, or power distribution module,
the PDM30 so that's a 30 channel
power distribution module which is
effectively an electronic, sort of solid state relay,
which is, - that's right
- Computer controlled so you can
control all those functions
and again, that's just simplifying
the wiring harness in the car.
We don't have traditional relays.
There's no need for circuit breakers.
And again that can all be controlled
via that can based keypad.
Now when it comes to tuning a car
like this for Formula D,
the cars are getting beaten up
on pretty hard but they're also
banging on the limiter a lot.
Is there anything in particular
that you'll take into account
with your tuning strategy for a drift car
as opposed to a conventional circuit car?
- No, all the same rules apply.
If you're banging on the limiter,
the chances are we probably need to go up,
I mean sorry, go down in the diff ratio
or change the gearbox ratio
to match the course that we're trying to run.
With the M1, it actually has a really, really good
soft limiter, so he can actually be on
the limiter all day long if he wanted to.
But at that point, when you're on the limiter
you're opening up the gate, you're actually
losing power so the idea is not to be
constantly banging on the limiter.
- In terms of the strategy of getting power
to the ground, obviously with drifting,
the wheels are spinning for a lot of the course.
Are you using anything like gear based boost
to control the power delivery of the engine
relative to vehicle speed?
- No we're not doing that at all.
With drifting, I think the misconception
is that there is no grip, actually is false.
Drifting requires a lot of grip,
it's just a perception of smoke
and the tyres spinning but without grip
you're not really going anywhere.
A lot of people who watch drifting
thinking that we're just burning up the tyres
it's not necessarily true.
There's a method to the madness.
- I think that's one thing we've
seen with professional drifting.
It's come a long way over the last,
perhaps five or six years.
Maybe back in the early days of drifting
that was true and the cars were
being set up with very low grip
so the drivers could effectively
get the car spinning sideways
with low engine power.
Now particularly in Formula D,
we're seeing the strive for
there's a number of cars now running
over 1,000 rear wheel horsepower
and it's really become a challenge
to increase those traction levels.
In that respect, is the set up
that we're seeing in a professional Formula D car
now starting to perhaps mimic more a road racing
style of set up where grip is really a priority?
- Actually, it's more closely set up
to drag racing, believe it or not.
The amount of suspension travel
required to get the optimal traction
in the rear and the way the entire
car is almost set up is almost like a drag car.
Yeah, I mean that's the evolution of
the sport at this point.
- One other thing that's immediately obvious
when we look at this car is the lack of cooling system.
Well at least, a lack of cooling system
in the convention spot.
And again, we've seen this with a number
of professional level Formula D cars.
What's the sort of reasoning behind
moving that radiator into the boot?
- It's just about weight balance, really.
And also, we want to try to get critical items
such as the cooling system away
from a high impact zone.
Having moved it towards the rear
not only accomplishes weight balance control
but also saves the car during an impact.
- So if the driver ends up clipping
a wall or something like that
and takes the front end off the car
or the bumper at least, you can probably
put a new bumper on it and keep racing?
- That's right.
That's correct.
- OK.
So now, moving forward, you've gone from
Formula D and now the car's competing
at Pike's Peak with Ken Gushi
driving it at Pike's Peak.
What sort of changes were made to the car
to get it ready for Pike's Peak competition?
- Given the limited time from the announcement
of we are going to be entering Pike's Peak
to the time when we actually arrived at the track
we didn't actually have time to really do anything.
The car was literally in Formula Drift set up
when we arrived on the mountain.
Other than we changed the engine management
and the electronics systems in the car
which used to run Pectel.
We changed everything to Motec.
That was the only major change.
We learned pretty quickly though
when we started to test up in the higher
altitude that the cooling for the oil
and water was definitely far from efficient.
We spent probably about three days trying
to figure out how to make it better
without having to redesign the car, I think.
(laughs)
- When you're against the wall
and you already at an event that major
and you've got limited testing time
what sort of things can you sort of
pull out of your box of tricks
to kind of improve that situation?
- We added a bigger oil cooler
and we tried to add bigger ducts
and tried to, whatever little aid
that we could to try to make things better.
It was just so late in the game really
there wasn't a whole lot that we could have done.
It is what it is when we got up there, yeah.
- Still given those cooling problems
the results, by the sounds of it, were quite impressive.
How did Ken go in the car?
- He drove so masterfully.
He was literally, I felt like
he was born to drive this mountain.
Anybody that watched him drive
basically said the same thing.
When you're really struggling
with the set up on the car
it was actually having really hard time
turning through the hairpins
and we're having a huge team discussion
and somebody brought up and said,
you know what, it's a drift car,
maybe we should drift it.
Sure enough, Ken started to drift the car
up the mountain during testing.
He was able to gain significant time
when he drifted the course.
That's what we stuck with when
he ran the entire mountain.
- That's impressive.
Probably not so good for tyre wear
but definitely more impressive for the spectators.
From a tuner's perspective, Nathan,
what are you looking for out of the data
at Pike's Peak to improve on
the performance of the car?
- Naturally the lambda is making sure that
it matches what my aim target needed to be.
I had previous discussions with
the Motec engineers in Australia
about what we should do.
Whether we're going to run a 4D map with baro comps
to try to compensate for the changes
in atmosphere as we're climbing up the mountain
and they assured me that if I stuck to my guns
and tuned the engine properly
and had the proper settings in the VE table
that everything would work out fine.
It absolutely did.
We were on the money.
- With this particular car being turbo charged
and you've got control over that boost pressure.
Obviously as you climb at Pike's Peak
and the air gets less dense,
you've got less oxygen there.
Naturally the engine is going to be making less power
Can you start ramping the boost up
to make that turbo charger work harder
as the altitude increases to
regain some of that lost power?
- Absolutely, that's exactly what we did.
At the top section, we were flying.
Ken was so happy with the power delivery.
Even the Porsche Cup guys that were running NA,
they were struggling super bad up there
and we were just flying.
We definitely ran some impressive times
up there and that's where he made up
a lot of the time, at the top,
where other cars were struggling.
- You've already said he's been drifting some of the course.
That M130 with the GPR package has the ability
to run traction control, probably less important,
maybe as launch control.
Are you utilising any of that function
or it just doesn't matter?
- No, not for the Pike's programme.
We didn't even have wheel speeds
because in FD, we're not allowed to run wheel speeds
so we didn't even have that option.
Not enough time.
- Given the opportunity to revisit Pike's Peak
next year and maybe put some more development
into the car, is there anything particular
that you feel you would change
to improve Ken's abilities next year?
- I think the team would probably want
to focus on improving some of the aero package
and definitely the way the cooling was ducted.
At this point in time there is no ducting
and I think that's what really hurt us.
Definitely improving the cooling ability of the car
and getting a little bit more aero
would probably help out.
We really want to try to break that 10 minute mark
and I think that will be the key.
- With Ken in the car and what he needs to see,
you've said you've got that Motec C125
display dash logger unit in there.
Are you setting up anything specific
for certain parameters that Ken wants to see
or is he just solely focusing on that shift light module
and that's the end of it?
- We haven't set up any crazy strategies
in that thing yet, but the next time around
we definitely will.
He's a pretty natural driver
and the only thing he really pays attention to
is probably when the warnings and stuff
starts flying and he says, "Hey Nate,
what's going on here?"
That's about the only time really.
- OK look, thanks for giving us some
more detail behind the car.
It's certainly an impressive package
and it's got some impressive results.
Despite what obviously was a limited
amount of testing and development
for that event so we wish you all the best
for next year and thanks
for filling us in on it.
- Thanks guys, appreciate it.