Well the engine is still working and getting very close to the 216mph record.
Latest blog post from Dickie.
We’ve now completed our fourth active day of running on the salt and what a day it’s been. After exceeding the magic 200mph mark on Monday the Skoda team and I decided we really ought to use the rest of the week to chase our G/SP class record of 216mph.
We made a run late in the day on Tuesday evening to try some new fuelling and ECU tweaks made by Nick Kasberger from Revotechnik, a bone fide genius if ever the was one, and to also try the car without the boot spoiler. To put it bluntly removing the wing gave me the right willies. In previous runs the car had run arrow straight, but without the wing its weaving 10m or more left and right across the course from 190mph through to our eventual 5th mile average of 202mph.
Today we made another run, this time with further fuelling improvements and the spoiler back on. Up until now the car has suffered intermittent fuelling issues as it passes 6000rpm in 5th gear, resulting in me having to shift into 6th at just under 7000rpm (approx 195mph approx). This drops the motor back too far in the revs to hit the ground running in top gear, and with the salt rushing beneath our wheels at a hellish rate we simply run out of course. But not today.
It takes a few full-throttle seconds in 5th gear to I know Nick has really dialled the motor in well. Not only can I pull to 7600rpm in 5th, the motor pulls full boost (approx 24psi) in 6th. This gains us a tremendous amount of speed early in the run, so that by the time I entered the critical final timed section between mile markers 4 and 5 we were already travelling 10mph faster than I’d gone before.
It’s a strange feeling reaching down to pull a parachute release handle (mounted where the handbrake used to be) flat-to-the-boards with 215mph showing on the dash, but nothing compared to the buzz of collecting a timing ticket that shows we ran an average speed over the last mile of 214.756mph. That’s serious speed.
Now that we know the car stands a chance of taking a record the team has work to do on the car to make it comply with the strict Southern California Timing Association rules for cars that run above 200mph. There are also some tech changes required to ensure the Octavia vRS is fully compliant with the G/PS class regulations. Once these have been completed we’ll make an attempt to run in excess of the 216mph class record (late tomorrow afternoon when the air is cooler). If we’re successful we’ll then qualify for an official record run on Friday morning. It looks like we’re set for an unbelievably exciting end an unforgettable week.
We’re so close to a record we can almost touch it.
Loving it. I presume this is not a bog-standrad gearbox then if you are up shifting into 6th at 195 mph?
Any idea where we can see a build thread or something?
