This season I'll be codriving the Tatis Motorsports FR-S with Rad. I've always loved the twins because of their great formula; low cost, low weight, rear-wheel drive, naturally aspirated setup. I've never actually autocrossed a twin before so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was told they were easier to drive because they were quite forgiving at the limit.
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| Codriving the Tatis Motorsports FRS - 4-10-2021 |
On my first few runs I immediately noticed how different this drove to my other cars. For starters, it truly has no power at low RPM. I mean the S2000 is no power machine either but after driving to the event in the Cayman, waiting for it to accelerate was quite funny. You definitely had enough time to think about when you might want to shift. However, once the car got going, it was properly quick.
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| Rad getting ready to run |
On major difference versus the S2000 was how early you could get on the throttle. Power on oversteer was very controllable. I felt that the car really like to use power to rotate and not once did I feel I had to catch it. This gave me quite a bit more confidence in subsequent runs to give it a little more beans in the corners which is a must in this car. This car in particular has the stock diff and one other thing I noticed was that lifting off the throttle didn't really cause the car to slow down much which then caused me to overcompensate with the brakes, making me slow down way too much for corner entry. This isn't the car's fault of course. I'm just used to cars setup a certain way so it was initially unnerving for me to not feel even a slight braking effect when I lift off the throttle.
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| STX Results |
I only managed to get 4th but Rad did nicely placing in 2nd. This is pretty good considering the car hasn't had a ton of development time on it yet so there's tons of potential there. I can't wait for Rad to get the new midpipe though. It is comically loud and I blame at least some of my slowness on how embarassing it is to run this car at full throttle (true story bro).
