Had a really great weekend with the F1 at 45th annual FSEARA race this weekend in Florida. I've had a few practice weekends with the car but this was the first real action against competition, very good F1 class here in FL. Was able to take overall P1 after a good battle in 10 min main.
Some observations:

• MC Hamilton is an awesome dude and knows this car. I was able to shoot him a few messages here and he gave me few pointers. Thanks so much!
• You need to spend time on the track running batteries through this thing. There are so many adjustments and you really need to experience the different combos. My final setup sheet is below but really I experimented so much that I this isn't necessarily where I would start for then next race. Put in the time, you will get the output. One of the few cars I've driven that was so responsive to small changes. I could MMs of difference.
• This car carries a ton of corner speed. It was easily .3/s faster than my F104 and 26 Xray before I even tuned a setup. It's what kept me going through the trials. I knew this would be faster overall once I figured things out.
• Tires were a struggle. We mostly use team powers or exotek tires here. Top guys all run exo's but they can be a bitch to glue and find the right balance. I def struggled with finding balance. The usual go to is Y rear and Red front, but I could not get the yellows to be stable at all. I ran my fastest laps this way and is what I would usually run, but the car would not have it. I would 360 spin if i let off the throttle too much on the apex of the sweep and sometimes getting too hard on throttle coming out of hairpin. I tried a number of things, but couldn't get it safe enough to trust in a race. Track temps were all over from 90-115F. 14 heats and F1 was the last so the track was greasy and grippy depending on where the shade and cloud cover was. The whole field struggled to find the right tire. I saw R/R, R/RR, Y/Y, Y/R. I went Y/RR for the main. It worked to my advantage as I could drive harder for the first 5 mins until those R came in on the other cars. I paid for it by pushing hard on exit in last 5 mins, but my entry was better and 2nd could never get the edge on me with entry and couldn't make the outside pass stick.
• Car is very sensitive to ride height changes, especially front.
• Went too thick on side dampener grease. I need to find a better/faster way to change that. I ran 3 cars and taking things apart to clean out the dampeners was too long. maybe i need to just get a few sets to run
• i started red springs in front, settled on green. i want to try reds again.
• only tried black v2 bumps. didnt have clear, oranges i think would numb the steering too much but didn't try. i'm still learning the adjustments here between the bump screw and the front plate screw. I don't have a good handle on flex plate adjustments yet. I got it stable and left it alone. There's tuning here to be had I think but it got to be too much all at once.

In the end I couldn't find a tire combo that gave me both entry and exit the way I wanted. I was still faster than I would have been on my other cars so maybe it's learning to drive this differently, particularly letting entry set up exit better. Red F/Yel Rear was fast and I want to work on getting this stable. I want to see how Joshs new tires will work, looking forward to trying them soon. Exo ball diff worked fine, but did order the new gear diff to give that try and see if that helps with rotation on power/exit. Setup sheet attached.

Still a lot to learn on this car, but big first step forward.