Glad you had fun and could make it out there....BTW, FAST lap for your first time there!

 

Once you get turn 9 right you instantly fall in love with this track. I only got a feel of what it would have been like to take this turn perfectly once.

As for my day it was a long time since I had been at Big Willow. Perfect weather and almost no traffic made this a great day all around. If we could have removed the oil and the Mustang wanting to take the short cut up Omega through the dirt it would have been even better.

I wish I would have had video of the do or die session, it was a blast to run around the track with only Albert and Mike. Mike definately had some slip angle through T2. Fun to watch for sure. I'll wait for the write up but David learned my saying "no good deed goes unpunished".

 

Albert -

Chris is right, that is a great lap time for your first day at Big Willow. I have thousands of laps on that track and my best in an S2K is 1:37.xxx, and best in any car was 1:34.95 in my track day Evo VIII RS. You will get faster at WSIR with seat time. Mike was running 1:33.xxx I think. You will be competitive with him with more practice.

 

+1. The oil all over the track may not have technically been the Infiniti owner's fault, since he said he had his oil changed the day before, apparently they didn't tighten his oil plug, and it just backed out. But it sure pizzed me off and ruined about half the day. The first clean-up in Turn 1 was not adequate. I'm driving around the track in a really nice NSX, and Turn 1 is very high speed with lots of slip angle -- don't want to lose any traction there, it could be catastropic. That Mustang was one of the few cars in Red Group that I was faster than. That NASCAR style truck was crazy fast, and so were Gordon and Andrew in their forced induction Miatas. All in all a fun weekend, even with the track downtime and my mishap with the S2K on Sat. afternoon.

 

I was pretty convinced we could have gone faster if the Mustang wasn't there. I was catching up to you so I could finally pick up your draft for a little extra speed, but that was fairly short lived...haha...and holymoly that Mustang really wanted to fly!

 

I'm thinking 1-2 seconds.


Thanks! It was all the hardtop! Btw, you weren't kidding about the wind noise. As you know, the passenger side was a tiny bit too high, but enough to be pretty loud, lol.


Thanks! I was pretty satisfied with the time. Aside from the oil, the track conditions seemed pretty nice. Not too hot and recently repaved surface (although I don't know how it was before). Mike's car seems really dialed in to the way he likes it. When I sat with him it seemed like it was absorbing those bumps like nothing.

But I was more impressed with what David was doing in his nonstaggered CR. It was his first time too.

 

Albert and David both had some REALLY fast times for their first times at WSIR... I think David's time was something like 6-7 seconds faster than my first time?

Impressive.


I guess all that time with a super loose rear paid off I'd imagine David was doing pretty much the same thing since he has no toe in the back... or worse

 

So what happened with the mustang? I don't think I saw whatever incident it was. Was it the white mustang with blue and green stripes in red group? Even if not, that guy should stop signing up for red group. I remember him complaining about aggressive passing at buttonwillow because he was "warming up his tires" and then I am pretty sure Aaron moved him to green lol.

 

It was white with stripes, not sure of color. Fixed highish wing. Basically would pull down front straight and by the middle of 2 we all caught him. This went on for a lap or so. Albert let me by down the back straight probably to gap himself from the stang. Next lap I was on his tail from turn 2. He put the power down too early right after 3. Got sideways then for a brief second I thought he caught it. Wrong, snapped back on him and he shot off driver right up the embankment. It threw him back on the track catching the candy stripe as he landed. Pretty hard landing. After that, red flag session 4 over.

 

Sounds like a fun track day... I don't have the cajones yet to tackle that track and decided to hit the autocross at ACS with Bullwings to work on my car control skills, had a great time and learned a lot... As long as I'm not wasted from working the SEMA show I'll be at SOW...