This rambling post is mostly just to get my current thoughts down now that I've had time to reflect a bit more on my recent HPDE and everything related. The act of writing clarifies them, and I'll be able to review them myself down the road. Feedback on any of it is welcome, but mostly this is a public conversation between me and me
Reviewing the raw footage from the green and blue runs, it seems like in an ideal world there would be a group in-between the two that I would've fit into best. Not limping around the track like some of green and really holding up the show, but not quite as experienced as the average blue-grouper. I passed a few cars in blue, but I got passed a lot too, and I'm definitely in the lower range of speed and skill for that group. Still, at least here on my "home" track (MSR Houston), that's probably the group I need to run with going forward to improve. As I branch out to other nearby tracks, I think I do need to start back in green on them at least for a while, because I'm not adept enough to learn the course on the fly so fast.
Looking at lap time stuff: My best lap running solo at the informal lapping event before was 2:04.00. My best lap from the HPDE on the same track came in at 2:02.13. So I improved by almost 2 full seconds, but really I think of it as more than that in some virtual sense. I think there were a number of new complicating/distracting factors at the HPDE relative to how I was running by myself: I was forced to learn to look more broadly (helps planning and better overall, but harder to nail the current point compared to staring in front of the car), forced to pay attention to flag stations and understand them, there was a whole lot more traffic on the track, and I had someone talking in my ear the whole time. That last one in particular is interesting in the after-analysis. It's common in the video replays to see me getting some feedback on the corner we just finished, and my brain gets just distracted enough processing that feedback that I screw up the next corner a bit. I think that will fade as I get more comfortable and able to multi-task better, but again it's just another slowing factor compared to when I was running my horrible/unstable lines solo.
As far as specific driving technique/mistakes go: I need to learn to unwind the wheel a bit more/faster on corner exits while applying a bit more throttle, and trust the car dynamics to do the right thing there. I keep trying to add more throttle without the steering change, which results in my oversteer slip-ups. I need to keep trying to extend the range of my virtual line in front of me. Right now I'm visualizing the upcoming corner and the entrance of the next at best, I need to be able to start visualizing through multiple upcoming corners all at once when they're tightly connected. I need to get more aggressive, too. There were a lot of times I slacked off on the acceleration parts and/or the straights because I was busy thinking and processing things, when I could've picked up some easy time there. I also had a tendency to really back off and be too nice when a driver in front of me seemed slower, and that just complicated passing. I need to just get up on his *** and be ready to pass aggressively instead of worrying about how he feels.
Also, there was a consistent pattern where every time I nailed corner X a little better and came out of it faster, I'd end up entering the next corner too fast and screwing things up, and then maybe next time around I'd try to move the braking zone back to account for it. I need to start handling all of that in one cycle when I can. If I know I entered a corner better and I've got more speed coming out, part of the initial planning process in my head needs to be to move up the braking spot automatically to compensate.
My inter-mediate range plan and goals for now is to keep running HPDE-type (and occasional Auto-X) events at various local tracks, and to shoot for getting my times at MSR Houston down to 2:00 flat or less consistently, barring traffic holdups. I'm going to try to avoid any further major upgrades to the car until I reach that goal, because otherwise it gets hard to track my progress vs the car's progress. I'm still not sure what the long term plan is, or if I'll ever graduate to trying to do something competitive, but I think that's a ways off and I have time to reflect on it and consider the costs.
As far as car upgrades go, the basic lineup of remaining items is about the same as it has been: add some better coilovers dropping the car very slightly in the process, a better LSD, some good seats, fuel starvation fix, and continue stripping out interior weight over time. I think I'm going to hold off on any cage+harness work until the car becomes at least 95% track-only and/or I have a competitive plan and know what regulations I'll need to adhere to, both which are probably around the same future timeframe, whenever it is.