I was very looking forward to go racing this weekend with all the other bullshit going on for me right now. Relaxed all day Friday, gassed up the car, topped off my tires so I could bleed them down once I arrived. Went out and had a good times with some friends, and called it a night.
7.15AM saturday, and I am welcomed with a noticeably (to me) low left front tire. Get out the gauge and it reads 28psi. That means it lost 5 psi in about 12 hours...great. The valve stem ball/pin needs to be tightened, and surprisingly my dad claims he has the tool, but obviously not with him. Put 5 psi back in and got on my way to the track. The thought was that being a metal valve stem with an o ring at the cap, i shouldn't really have to big an issue...and i do carry a spare electric pump anyway. An uneventful ride to say the least.
Arrived at the track, rolled into the paddock, and surprisingly my dad was already there and had the EZ-up up and providing shade...sweet. I set on to unpacking my car, get registered (at which point i found out I was being bumped from novice to intermediate run group), tech'd, etc. Had a half hour to kill before the drivers meeting so I re torqued my spacers, and a few other rituals, and set all 4 tires to 32psi.
It was a great day weather wise to be racing, although we quickly found the track temp was above its optimal zone and in the slippery hot zone.
Decided to run on some of this for the day (put 4 gallons in a half tank of 93, and put in another 2 gallons when i was at 1/4 tank). And let me just say, even though I'm tuned for 93, the car definitely has a ballsier feel to it.
1st session - Mentality was to just go make sure i have the muscle memory of the proper line and do a couple 7/10th's laps to see where i was at. Quickly noticed that the exit/trackout point of turn 2 and into the braking zone of turn 3 was covered in dirt and rocks. This lead to having to re adjust your double apex of big bend so that you could stay way inside out of the dirt. That sections leads itself to stabbing the brakes and getting ABS lockup even without the dirt... Either way, did a hot lap and wound up surprising myself when I clicked off a 1:06.62, already beating my previous best by a full second. I felt like I hit none of my marks whatsoever, and literally felt the rear end jumping around under braking, and definitely had to counter steer a few times.
Second Session - Was kind of a waste, I wound up in bad traffic twice because they kept black flagging a guy and then releasing him back on track at not the best time. Did some slower laps to make sure I could identify all my marks, and then clicked off another 1:06.xx.
After a cool down, and 2-3 minutes sitting, the guys in the pit next to me gave me their infrared heat gun. outside edge of my calipers were over 500 degrees, rotors were upwards of 600 degrees. The wheel was even too hot to touch, and that's after the heat travels through a 20mm thick metal spacer. The extreme heat did me the favor of removing all my wheel weights from the barrel. This made the ride home down the mass pike well...interesting.
I also started having issues with downshifting into 4th gear and 5th gear ground on the way in once. The downshifts make sense since I'm granny shiftin, not double clutching like Dom says I should. Sorry Fast and Furious flashback. Basically I need to figure out heel toe soon, or a more effective braking strategy to be completely done braking and then blip the throttle. It's also possible that at 60k miles my clutch is pretty worn and needs to be adjusted and/or its not releasing all the way at high rpm. Have a few things to try this winter to get it to shift better as previously mentioned.
Third Session - By now i was fatigued and low on gas, even after putting in two more gallons of VP100. Traffic was a little better and i clicked off a 1:06.8x, 1:06.7x and finally a 1:06.6x. Midway through the session I went to take the hill at turn 7 and the car sputtered and was acting like I had some weird boost/rev limit. Turns out what little gas I had in the car was too far from the pump. I called it a day at that point.
overall:
I was literally and figuratively out of gas, and became pretty convinced that my brakes were used up. I didnt want to put more 100 octane in at $9.99 a gallon, and figured I wasn't gonna get any faster. Of course right as I'm packed up and session is called...instant cloud cover rolls in and I bet the track came down 10 degrees dammit.
Again...super impressed with my car. Only change from last time was the 60 dollar mini battery. the change in feel of the car in the turn 2-3-4 complex was very positive. That, combined with my goal of the day (which was literally "trail break the shit out of everything") led to going 1.5 seconds faster than last time out. I'll take that.
Observations:
I appear to have my tire pressures dialed. The rollover looks pretty good...could aregue both ways against/for another pound.
I think I over heated/smeared my pads. The CL pads i run have an interesting failure mechanism. As opposed to other pads who just over heat and the mu goes off a cliff (leading to stepping on the pedal and getting nothing at all), these slowly compress giving you a longer pedal almost like boiling fluid. My pedal did get longer but...i dunno.
In the end, the car has done great. Specific to this track I think with some well thought out changes there may be a second per lap still left in the car. I'm at the point where I am almost positive the spring rates are the limiting factor. Id love to jump to coilovers next season, but to many annoying things to take care of that cost a lot to do this winter. I also need to get out to more tracks that involve more than two gears.
gonna re read this in the next few days and edit/add/etc, as well as finish editing the video...check back!
