We had great weather for this event! A little brisk in the morning, but warming up nicely. I ran my first session on Saturday on my H rated street tires again while my new (used) RA1's were being mounted up by Phil's Tire Service at the track. The street tires were howling so bad my instructor & I didn't get much accomplished we were laughing so hard! The tires sounded like a tortured dog when being pushed more than 6/10ths around the track!
The second session was much much better as I had now put the RA1's on the car (thanks Robert Allen for the great deal on the tires & to his Dad also for loaning me a jack to put them on!)
We worked on my line through turn 3 with great sucess - untill I had a brain fart & loss of talent and ended up turning in too early and went off into the gravel trap at the outside of 3 - but I drove through it, and came back onto the track and continued on to the hot pits to get the car checked. Back out on track then with no more incidences for the rest of the weekend.
I learned to carry more speed than ever before through turn 3, turn 9, and turn 10 - especially turn 10! This of course affected my terminal velocity at the end of the front strait, which made me have to adjust my braking point for turn 1.
My instructor also made me call out everything I was thinking, going to do, and doing to him as I was driving for the entire 1st session on Sunday to make sure I was situationally aware. So it went something like this:
Alright.. we're heading out of the pits, I'm checking my mirror for traffic as I enter thetrack - staying track-right - checking the rear view mirror to make sure no one is too close behind me - doing a brake check - checking the flagger station - double yellow flags - looking at my turn in point - waving aknowledgement to the flaggers - looking at T1 apex point - turning in - looking at my track out point - apexing perfectly - looking for my T2 apex point - tracking out - etc, etc, etc.
It was strange having to call out everything like that, but that must be pretty much what it's like being an instructor - all the while watching the student, where they are looking, what they are doing with their hands & feet, listening to their breathing, watching the other cars on track, and watching the flaggers as well. Instructors have a pretty hard job, and one of substantial risk considering they are getting into an unknown vehicle driven by an unknown person at relatively high speeds.
Here's the one video I was able to pull from the weekend.... Sunday second session "solo".
OctoberFAST (NASA) Summit Point HPDE2 from NOT///MPOWER on Vimeo.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
VIR, July '08
The weekend went well despite my RA1's being corded & having to run the entire weekend on H rated street tires. My instructor was very good at his job, getting me to look further down the track & eliminating shifts. I made my way around the track faster than ever before despite the crappy tires! A good weekend for sure. I got signed off "solo" for the second day, and he said that another weekend in HPDE2, and I would be ready for group 3! Woot!
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