wstar's Journal

wstar

Made it out to TWS this past weekend, had a blast. I'm still a little rusty, but I'm getting my confidence back stronger than it was at MSR-H in Jan. This is my first weekend at this track (other than like 4 laps a year ago when my brake problems first happened really badly). Since MSR-H in Jan, I've put on a fresh set of Conti DW tires, added the CJM fuel starve solution, and the RaceKeeper datalogger.

Brakes: My brakes are still juddering. Most likely there's just some physical issue with a caliper's alignment, or a sticking piston somewhere, or perhaps a caliper is flexed out? No idea, but it's clear to me that swapping out every related soft component still isn't fixing it in the long term. In any case, I was able to mostly put it out of mind since I know the car's holding together fine and it's a rotor getting chewed up or whatever.

RaceKeeper: I don't have the HD Video export (or multi-camera) yet, but regardless the video quality is less than stunning. It's fine for review/datalogging purposes, just doesn't look great for e.g. Youtube. With multiple cameras all on a single HD export in smaller frames, though, it's probably plenty enough resolution. Importantly the video is a lot more stable than using e.g. a phone. The OBD-II data came out nice, it's interesting to see a whole weekend of data graphed out with things like coolant temps, and to see how my intake air temp varies in different sections of the track. Their comparison features are also really awesome for seeing what you did different between two sessions/laps. In general I'm pretty happy with the system, and it's way less buggy and troublesome. Just jump in the car and hit the record button at the start of the session, pull out all the data later via USB stick.

CJM Fuel Thingy: Worked great. I was starving out on certain bad right-handers at over 3/4 full on the gauge before, and topping off between every session. This weekend I just filled up once each morning, and ran the car down to just under 1/4 tank by the end of each day. Never a single fuel hiccup

I uploaded most of my final session from Sunday to Youtube, shown below. The first few laps are the best part. Chased down a red 'vette, finally closed the gap when the other vette in front of him spun out, tailed him for a while, then he blew me away on the main banked straight, and then I reeled him right back in when we got back into the corners and he had to give me the pass Had my fastest lap of the weekend right after that stuff, on Lap 5.

Most of the issues I see in the video/data here still basically comes down to confidence, which I need to keep building up with seat time. I do some light braking consistently before 3 specific corners on this track when really they need just a little lift to nose it over at best, and then I'm usually not back in the gas hard and fast enough to really track out all the way. It's all just about overcoming fear and becoming more confident in the car's (and my own) capabilities. Made a lot of progress learning the track in any case. My best lap of the first session of the weekend was 2:21.50, and my best lap below at the end of the weekend was 2:08.49 I think the real badasses in the higher rungroups all run somewhere in the neigborhood of 1:57 -> 2:02 -ish.

__________________
7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details