Tuning For the Roadcourse

Tuning for Road Course Racing: What Every Serious Driver Needs to Know

Are you taking your build beyond the drag strip and onto the road course, autocross, HPDE events, or other high-abuse driving environments?

If so, your tune needs to do more than just deliver peak horsepower.

In our newest episode of the On the Dyno series, Bob Morreale dives deep into the specific tuning strategies you should be using for high-stress, long-duration driving — where heat, transients, and knock control become the true enemies of performance and reliability.

🔧 What You’ll Learn in This Video:

1. Why Tuning for Road Courses is Different

  • Drag tunes are about short bursts of peak power.

  • Road course tunes focus on thermal management, reliability, and consistent fueling over 20+ minutes of abuse.

2. Proper Dyno Testing for Road Course Loads

  • Forget one-pull dyno sessions.

  • Bob explains how to use dyno load control (5–15%) to simulate the heat and stress of real track conditions.

3. Fuel Before Boost

  • For boosted applications, it’s critical that fuel delivery starts before boost builds — not during.

  • Learn how to identify and fix fuel lag in transient throttle zones.

4. Richer AFR Targets for Safety

  • Bob recommends running about 0.5 AFR richer than normal in road course scenarios to prevent knock and hot spots during prolonged abuse.

5. Advanced Knock Zone Mapping

  • Using graph overlays in VCM Scanner, Bob shows how to replicate spark tables and visualize knock trends.

  • You’ll learn to track and adjust specific zones where knock is likely — especially around peak torque.

6. Analyzing Time in Cell (TIC) for Tuning Focus

  • New tip: Use the “Counts” function in the scanner to identify where your engine spends the most time during sessions, and tune for those cells first.

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