TRACK TEST PREP

First track test on the calendar. Last week was the sprint to close the gap. Three big ones got done — and one of them was an actual drag-out fight with the drive inverter. o o o RADIATOR MISTING PROTOTYPE EVs derate when they get hot. Battery and powertrain loops both share a front heat exchanger, and once that gets cooked under load your fast lap turns into a not-fast lap. For a two-hour Lemons stint, thermal management is the performance question. So we’re building radiator misting. Fine spray onto the front heat exchanger during track sessions, evaporative cooling does the rest, and the cooling loops get a fighting chance against a stint’s worth of full-load running. The prototype: 12V pump on a Ryobi battery, feeding a coil of misting nozzles. We wanted answers to the boring questions — what flow rate gives full coverage of the heat exchanger without just dousing it, and how long does a tank last at that rate? Numbers came out workable. The in-car install will plumb nozzles in…