Well, that weekend couldn't have gone much better. Great cars, weather, and people. It was nice to learn a few new things about the S2000. First, a wing makes one hell of a difference (thanks Kevin!). Any of you tracking often without one should definitely consider one. Second, the power difference between my stock AP1 and Mike's AP2 with a test pipe and Flashpro is nothing short of insane. His car hauls ass!

Hopefully winter goes by fast. It's only Monday and I need another dose of the track. I'll try to get a video up sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Also, I'm glad that we all made it home with our cars still in one piece. I don't think I've ever seen that many crashes at a Track Daze weekend before.

 

Man I had a long post written up and I hit the back button on my mouse.. f@#king POS. Great weekend guys, I'll type it up again later.. lol

 

Got some pictures up from the weekend here: http://sdrv.ms/GDFwr2

This is just from the Black/Yellow run groups. If anyone got shots from the blue run group of my car I'd appreciate it if you could send me a link to d/l them. I'm no professional photographer but there should be some decent ones in there. Files are all RAW from a T4i. You need a later version of lightroom or photoshop to convert to jpg. If anyone wants them in jpg I can batch convert a bunch and reupload them. Figured I'd leave them in RAW so it can be easier to tweak exposure/tone curve/etc.

 

It was a fun weekend, everyone made it out with their car in one piece and none of that wet stuff coming down from the sky. Big thanks to Dave and Thomas for hauling out those tents, chairs, and grill so we had shade. It was quite hot out there under the sun and it made it bearable.

First off, I should've went for a ride with Dave on Saturday vs. Sunday. Going for a ride with a better driver than you certainly opens your eyes. I went out for one session with Dave, and he clocked a 1:47 on a stock AP1. I felt like I was just gliding around the track in the passenger seat. FWIW, I think I got my quickest time of the session after riding with him, a 1:50. Not great, but an improvement over May when I hit 1:51 and it was cooler out then. I practiced my heel toeing throughout the day and finally felt semi-comfortable with it by the end of the day. Another lesson learned is that there's a very fine line between overdriving/drifting and a controlled slide. The s2k's like a good deal of trail braking into some turns to carry moment through the corner and rotate the car.

Also had my first spin on track (got sloppy and let clutch out after turn in which unsettled the car). Lesson being don't mentally take time off or it'll bite you in the ass. I spaced out for a few seconds after the main straight and got sloppy. All in all it was uneventful as my rear tires just went in the dirt but my front tires were still on pavement. Another time I botched my heel toe shift to second on the trigger and unsettled the car. Couldn't hold it and just went slightly off track in the grass. No harm. Lesson being don't clutch out mid turn (I think staying in 3rd is just as fast but I wanted to try it out) and there's a whole lot more room off course and time to slow down than you think. My first track day I thought that if you went off track it meant a certain impact with a wall, but clearly that's not the case at all.

Some other notes.. Oil temps got a little toasty and hit 260 in the afternoon sessions. This was with ambient ~89F. Earlier in the day they were only hitting just over 250F. Definitely something to keep an eye on. The brake cooling kit was installed for the track day, but I was too lazy to actually test it out by measuring temps. I'm sure Dan or Jim could've used it much more than me.. Not having a set of carbotechs last two days is rough on the wallet (and apparently calipers ). Also, the Sumitomo Z3's have been good, but they squeal like a pig all the time which makes things seem much more dramatic than they are. I'm going to try a set of Direzza Z2's or RS3's.

I'll try and post a video up, but it'll probably take some time. I tried datalogging on Saturday with RaceChrono (although it didn't register laps on my phone since it seems the start pt isn't on the track..?) and tried Harry's lap timer on Sunday, but for some reason it missed my last two sessions..? I used an external Qstarz GPS receiver. If anyone has tips on combining the data via racerender (haven't used it before) please let me know.

Sorry for rambling but hopefully others new to the track can find the info helpful coming from another track noob.

 

Got a few videos up already

Battling a Lotus Elise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OivTWDkOIdM

Spinning out in the morning session. Run #1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj-zXJ0sktU


Enjoy!

 

This is from session number two. It involves a orange lotus, a mustang, and a few others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80xyMSSFfO0

 

Nice meeting some of you guys out there. ETECH photo was there taking pictures and they have them for sale. You can contact them at etechphoto@usa.net. Here's one of my favs:

 

Here's a video from Saturday. First time trying to use a lap timer, unfortunately it didn't work on Sunday. The shenandoah track for Racechrono has the start/end point where I guess Trackdaze runs the pits from, so I just had to open the track in the app on my phone, and create a new start/stop point, and the software was able to recalculate all the data and add laps. Prior I just had a long stream and I never passed through the originally marked start/stop point, so it showed as all one lap.

Considering racechrono is free, I'm pretty impressed. For $75 for an external gps sensor and an android phone you have a half decent datalogger. I find it handy to see if I'm improving or not, come to realize Saturday I was slower than in May. I tried using HLT on Sunday but it ended up missing a few sessions (perhaps user error). The phone was just sitting in the center console flat so perhaps that's why the accelerometer data looks off with the little bullet. Lesson being the phone needs to be mounted solidly. Not one of my fastest times but nice being able to go back and look at the data. The GPS signal seems a little sketchy at times even though it was supposed to be at 10hz, which is why sometimes the speed looks like it lags.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk9fKzsWCds