Track Notes: MSR-Houston
We’re two weeks away from leaving for Houston for the race (at least for those of us who don’t live in Houston) and I’d bet that knowing you guys, several of you are starting to go full-bore looking at MSR-Houston videos on YouTube. As you may (or may not) know, the LeMons race last February utilized only about 1/2 of the track; the long backstraight and frontstraight were cut off and we ran on the access road from Bus Stop into the Carousel. That will not be the case this year and we will run the full MSR-Houston course.
To help our drivers with mental preparation, I thought I’d go through the track map (click it to see a larger version) and let you know what our gearing was on the track. Your shifting may vary given traffic conditions, etc., but this should at least be a good starting point. I’ll speculate on the stuff that we didn’t run last year from just knowing the car. I’ll also point out corner worker stations so you have an idea where to look since LeMons has gone to a lot of local yellows this year rather than all-track yellows. Comments are on, so if there are any questions or notes, please feel free to add them below.
We will be running the track in a clockwise direction, the same as last year. The start/finish line is basically perpendicular to the eastern end of that light grey box on the map, so that’s where I’ll start this narrative tour of the track. This gearing assumes that you aren’t stuck behind unbelievably slow traffic, but since this is LeMons, take it with a grain of salt.
Coming out of turn 1 you will probably be either in the mid-to-high part of 3d gear or low in 4th, entirely depends on traffic and how well you were able to set up the turn. There are typically cones on the left side of the pit straight as you exit 1, so make sure to avoid those. You will be in 4th gear for most of the Pit Straight, working your way over close to the wall that separates the pits from the straight. We hit our highest speed at the end of pit straight last year, 88 mph, before braking for Sugar & Spice (17/16). There is usually a corner worker standing
There is a very wide paved runoff area between 17 and 16 that you can use liberally unless they have covered it up with gravel. There is some pebbly gravel in that runoff area, but the end result is that you can carry a lot more speed through 17/16 than if you were staying strictly on the track. It is very possible to make outside passes in our car in this turn; it might even be the faster line if you can ride the momentum just right. 17/16 are 3d gear although you will be coming out of 3d and into 4th pretty soon after 16.
15/14 aren’t really so much turns as they are a couple of little kinks. You will probably be out of 3d and into 4th somewhere either just before or after 15, and if you clip the corner of 15 it really sets you up beautifully for 14. There is a corner worker stand to the left at 14.
Last year they had a tire chicane set up just before the creek goes under the track. There are rumors that this chicane won’t be there this year, as there was a nasty tendency to stack traffic up all the way back to 14 last year. If they do put a chicane, you can probably take it in 3d gear, especially after a couple teams hit it and spread it out a little.
13/Launch is essentially the only elevation change that you’ll see on the entire course, and it’s small. I suspect it’s a berm left over from when the course was a rice paddy. There’s a gradual rise and then it falls off kinda quickly off-camber just as you’re going into the right hand turn. Best practice in the MR2 seems to be to brake and dowshift into 3d, then brake again briefly to load the front tires just before the turn at 13. Then you can get on the gas just as you turn without suffering much (if any) understeer. We can handle this turn much better than about 80% of the other cars out there so you can put youself into a pass here - just make sure it’s clean and not close because it is right under the watchful eye of corner workers.
Remember that if the back end starts to step out on the MR2, getting on the brakes will probably make it worse. Your best bet is to get back on the gas gently so that the weight transfers back onto the rear tires, then they’ll hook up. The key is to do it smoothly, otherwise you’ll just spin the rears. Ok, mid-engine driving tutorial over. 
There is a corner worker stand on the inside of the track, either right at there it says Launch on the map, or just past that access road just past Launch. It’s a good ways back from the track.
13/12 is a pretty quick right left transition and a lot of fun. Depending on traffic, you might be able to make a quick pass on the very short straight before going into the Keyhole/11 mini-carousel. Personally, this was the most challenging part of the track for me last year and I don’t feel like I ever found a solution for it, so I’d love some discussion on the best way to drive this 11/10 combination. 11/Keyhole might even be a decreasing radius turn. I just remember always feeling like the car was going to come unglued if I pushed it too much in Keyhole. Plus, second gear always seemed to be slightly too high in the rev band, but third was too low and then I didn’t have good acceleration coming out of 11 and going into 10. A lot of the suspension work that I’ve done in between the races was with the idea of flattening out the roll so we could take this corner flatter and faster. We’ll see if it worked.
There is a corner worker stand to the outside of the track at corner 10.
Coming through 10 you will probably be in 3d gear. We are now getting to the part of the track that we didn’t run last year, so I’m going off of LeMons forum scuttlebutt and reports from test days from here on, so YMMV. 8/9 will probably be a 3d gear bit and probably is the most imporant corner on the track since we will probably hit our highest speeds on the back straight.
From 8 going down to 7, my bet is that you’ll upshift into 4th somewhere along the way there and then up into 5th somewhere on the back straight. From what I’m reading, the braking zone for 6 is critical because it’s so high speed but if you don’t get it under control by the time you’re going through 6 then you’ll never make it in 5.
There is a non-zero chance that we will have a tire chicane or some slowing-device on the backstraight. We won’t know if and/or what until we get down there for testing; Jay, Nick, and the LeMons crew won’t decide until sometime on the Thursday morning before the race.
5 is a very sharp, tight turn, probably 2nd gear. It appears that there is a wide runoff area here too so we might be able to take it in 3d, but we won’t really know until testing day. We will want to get some good left front tire temps after a test session to know if we’re good on pressure in that tire since it is going to be doing a hell of a lot of work on that turn. Given the predominance of right-hand turns on this track, we will probably want to give some serious consideration to doing a left-right tire swap overnight or even replacing the left sides with sticker tires.
4 will probably be either high in the 2nd gear range or find us shifting into 3d, after which it looks like its WOT until the Carousel. We coudl see another tire chicane somewhere along the Front Straight.
There is a corner worker station to the left just as you enter Carousel.
Carousel was a third gear then shifting into fourth gear turn last year. It is a consistent radius the whole way around and we are able to make some good passes here as anything bigger than our car is often holding on for dear life in Carousel. As you come around past the second access road on your right, the Carousel straightens out just before going into Turn 1. This is where Dave got hit last year. If you aren’t already in 4th gear by the time it straightens out, you can often get into 4th for a short bit there, then depending on traffic and how much the cones have been bumped out of the way, you can either downshift into 3d for turn 1 or leave it in 4th and try to take it flat and then you’re back up the pit straight.
The start/finish tower is shortly after you exit turn 1 and the entrance to pit lane is on the left as you exit the Carousel. Remember that we are going to be using the hot pits in this race and there is a 10mph speed limit in LeMons pits; violation of that speed limit is a mandatory 30-minute sit. We don’t have a working speedo in the car as of this writing, so just make sure to follow the directions of the pit workers and slow the eff down as you enter the walled section. You can drive it in low second gear.
Ok, that’s it for now. Hopefully that’s helpful for you. If you want to watch some video of our car last year, follow the link below. The on-track action starts at about 0:38 seconds and Sam in midway through the Carousel at that point. You’ll see that she overcooks it a bit on her first lap going into Sugar/Spice but she does pretty well after that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neOSQySl8ik
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