My first track experience
 

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending an SCCA PDX event at the Daytona International Speedway. For $90 you got four 20 minute sessions which is probably the best deal on Earth :)

I ran in group 3 with the other novices where we each had an instructor for the day. The hour plus in the seat with an instructor was more valuable than the accumulated knowledge I had gathered doing a year of SCCA Solo events.

What I took away from it was that road racing is hard. As you get faster, mistakes are amplified by a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHYI3bqGCA

Any tips feel free to share them with us noobs ;)

Some things I noticed about my car:
Under heavy braking the rear tends to get a little loose. Two times it felt that it was about to break loose.
Also, my rear end did not feel as planted as it should have during some high speed turns. What would be the logical path to adjust this via suspension tweaks. I have KW v3's installed and I am running Billy's settings
Learning to heel-toe is a must for smooth transitions. I skip shifted a lot and felt dirty for doing it.

Wing.

I skip shift but still heel-and-toe the shift. No need to feel dirty.

After watching your video I'd suggest you try to keep your thumbs along the inside rim of the steering wheel, not wrapped around it. This will keep you from holding the wheel with a death grip. The lighter hold of the wheel will allow you to feel more feedback from the wheel.

Nice job for your first track day. All those autocross sessions paid off with a nice steep learning curve.https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/public/st...t/thumbsup.gif

sweet driving. What alignment spec are you running? You can probably play with rear toe-in to reduce oversteer and gain stability for high-speed turns. Work on heel-toe to reduce the jerky-ness and messing up your weight transition, also you can reduce the time by braking and shifting at the same time. I personally like a bit of oversteer because I use it to rotate the car, plus I love the feeling of my rear end breaking loose.

But overall, good work man. Looks like you had fun out there. :thumbup:

Thanks I'll try to keep the thumbs out to avoid death gripping the wheel.

Alignment was:
Front caster: unknown
Front camber: -1.0 (i need more)
Front toe: 0

Rear camber: -2.5
Rear toe: 1/16th toe-in

Do you have a square set-up, or are you still staggered?

Don't you run STR locally? (Deland events)

255/40/17 RS3's on TR C3 wheels.

Yes, please give me all the advice you want because I've seen you put down killer times. ;)

Does autox teach/enforce bad habits or something? :)

$90??? Up here they charge $250!! :mad: If it was that cheap I would be at an event every weekend.

The PDX events are only 2-3 times per year. They piggyback with the SCCA Drivers School who pay the majority of the cost.

If they had this every weekend I'd be there ;)

I'm sorry, what I meant was that you learned very quickly on the track because of your solid car control skills learned from autocrossing. I don't autocross but I've seen many of my students that were experienced autocrossers get up to speed on the track in just a few sessions.