Spent yesterday at Willow Springs at my very first-ever track event. Talk about a GREAT time! There is nothing like being able to drive the S2000 the way it's meant to be driven ... legally . A big THANK YOU to John and Aaron (fluxen and Desert Tortoise) at Wurth Motorsports for putting this event on - you guys are great!

It was also nice to meet the other board members there, and put some faces with some names.

I am still like this ----->

 

what was your best time?

I am still bummed I couldn't go.

 

me and UL were running 1:35s on medium-R tires.

I'm sure Hayashi will blame his intensive knee surgery that barely let him drive the car for letting Aaron beat him by 1 tenth of a second

there were 6 people faster than me, here are my excuses:
2 had superchargers
2 had suspensions
2 had hoosiers.

 

Ran a 1:38.6 in a bone stock S2000 . It should be noted that the configuration was different than most people are used to who have driven SOW. The configuration yesterday used the "new" back section that many groups choose not to run. The times are somewhat higher than most people are used to seeing on this track in it's more typical configuration. I usually run low 1:20's in the normal configuration.

 

well i didn't get the timing because i knew i'd get smoked. i did stop watch time a lap myself and it was only 1:40. but i have tons of legitimate excuses. my purpose was simply to get some car control seat time... which I did. i recorded about hmm a good 10 power oversteer spins.

hopefully used S2K prices come down soon. I love driving it (thanks John).

 

Transponders are wonderful. No better way to really assess your driving.

That said, the Unabageler and I are going to have to pick up some spare wheels and Hoosiers, or at least Kumhos. The R-compound class is too tough to mess with on A032Rs and RA1s.

Oh, and while I was a couple tenths off of Unabageler's time, I must note that I set my fast lap on my last complete lap of the circuit. And I was on a faster lap (at least 0.5 sec :-) when I hit fuel cut coming out of the bowl getting ready to pass Strike. Ran out of gas. Pretty darn good excuse, isn't it? ;-)

If that's not good enough, I'll blame it on the extra weight I carry around, or maybe the VAFC Una had, or the front swaybars on 3 of the faster cars....Of course, Doug still has the best excuse with the bum knee - I didn't even think he'd show!

Many props to J. Keeney and jzr for running competitive lap times with the supercharged guys - Streets isn't a hp track, but hp does help and they were right there on stock motors. I give no props to Aaron and Doug though, who were the fastest - they had Hoosiers and roll bars - no fear of being smushed in a roll over is worth at least 2 seconds :-). Not that Aaron seems to have any fear anyways...:-)

UL

 

Yes, it was a very fun day, many thanks to the organizers, who did a fabulous job once again. No incidents, tons of track time, well done!

Couple things I learned:
*My last few laps were done with 0 bars, and I ran out of gas after about 100 feet down the road outside the track. Our tank has excellent baffling, as the car had no problems at very near empty, even on Kumhos. It took about 12.2 gallons to refill.
*UL's point about the roll bars is a good one. Once you've got the car set up and are comfortable with driving it, the final frontier is cajones.

There were a couple tips I got from Jason Keeney - tips to which I must accredit most, if not all of my success yesterday. His help easily took 4-5 seconds off my lap times, and had I followed his advice to the t, I probably could've been .5 seconds faster. Unfortunately at 4:00 I was out of time, gas, and cajones. But oh well, guess I did okay for my third time at a racetrack...

It was nice to have met everyone I did, and to match faces to errr, online aliases. Hehe.... Hope to see you again at Spring Mountain!

 

4-5 seconds in tips? C'mon, you gotta share! :-)

I can attest to the gas tank too. When I hit fuel cut I finished the last 1/4 mile or so of my lap and parked the car. Then drove another half mile to the track pumps and put 2 gallons in. Then drove the 5-6 miles to the gas station and put in 11.1 gallons. I had to be close to nothing when I hit the fuel cut and I was fully loaded in the banking of the bowl turn.

UL

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ultimate lurker
[B]4-5 seconds in tips?

 

Yeah, I'm familiar with T1. When you're going that fast, you really can't lift unless you want a big scary dose of opposite lock. Interesting about the back section though. Obviously that was new to almost all of us. I was lifting and tapping the brakes just before the crest and then going to steady state throttle to balance the car through the 1st and 2nd S's. When I got it right I would exit the last turn at around 64-65, but usually I was closer to 61-62. Certainly staying on the gas and braking later would be faster. I'll have to try that next time.

I was following Jason for a couple of laps and one area where I simply couldn't keep up was the skidpad turn. He'd pull a little through the middle of the turn, but about 3/4 of the way through he'd start putting the power down and would pull a couple lengths at least down the straight. I had to wait much longer, regardless of what line I took. The combination of tires and shocks made a big difference there and it was frustrating because nothing I could do made a difference, and it was such an obvious disparity in corner exit speeds.

UL