Yesterday I attended the "Jim Russell School of Racing" and took a high performance driving class. We all drove our own cars so their was a wide range of good cars. 2 BMW 335i an ix. 5 Porsches' two boxter S's, two 997's: Carerra, Carerra S , and a 2003 996 turbo. An S2000, a WRX a GTR and a Dyno'ed 364 HP Evo. My Z made 12 cars.
Over the day we did a slalom, turn entry, and an auto cross course, all with cones. This led to a final timed event which determined your track placement and how fast the lead instructor would lead. One instructor, Thomas drove a 370Z at last months Continental GT race at Leguna Seca for AM performance.
How cool is that.
I started with VDC on and was smooth enough to not engage it. The instructors said I was too smooth, get on it more. That required VDC off where it stayed. Holy toledo, our car is so capable, so controllable I had no idea how far below its limits I drive. I caught up to that fully modified EVO and stuck to him like glue until I was signaled to fall back. This was most satisfying as I felt he was the best competition that day. An ex top 5 racer praised me as well.
When we did our timed event, start in a box do two laps stopping back inside the box. Hitting a cone cost 5 seconds. I had a good run but gave up some tenths of seconds on the last turn and thought I could have done a tad better.
When they read off the times backwards with 1:08 and finished with me at 54 seconds. I beat out the next best, the EVO, by two seconds. The GTR was third but got placed with the 911 turbo. The pictures show which group ran with which. I'm with the EVO and the silver 911. We are the
fast group!
Driving the track was a real treat. I turned off the VDC even though I was advised (instructed) against it. I tried to film it but it I mostly got the interior of the car and some over exposed car ahead of me. The 911 was slowing us down. He kept falling back and we had to slow to let him catch us, repeatedly. We were the only group allowed to pass the other groups too. They used radios to communicate with one and all. The instructor had maximized the stock EVO he was driving which was fine by me as I had had enough anyway. I'll go faster next time. I could use some more practice on turn 7, a 100 foot descending 150+ degree turn. The fastest speed I saw was 110 but was told we crossed 120.
QUESTION:
I had no interest in looking down too much but did have a throttle cut off similar to VDC or over revving. I had my read out set to temp so mid track I turned it to MPG bar light. This is when the throttle cut off momentarily. When I switched off and back to outside temp it stopped occurring. Any connection? I still had half a tank of gas.
At the end of the day I had burned $50 of 96 octane fuel. Drove 76 miles at approximately 8.4 MPG. My tires new have 300 miles on them according to odometer but they look a little leathery. Pics included, one of each tire.
I hope to include some more pictures that were promised to be e mailed from spectators.
I highly recommend a $700 day like the one I had. I actually learned very little new info, but learned the limits of the car on a wide variety of applications.
EDIT
You must have an oil cooler. I was looking at temps of 240 with one.