wstar's Journal

wstar

Had a fun weekend at TWS. We had a couple patches of ice on the track Saturday morning, but as the weekend progressed it turned out to be mostly perfect weather. Sunny enough to keep the track reasonably warm, cool enough to not sweat much in the car.

I switched over to my new 18x10 square wheel setup (+34 offset, w/ 10mm spacers on the rear, thanks Travis+Mike for offset info!), and broke in a new set of Hankook RS3's on them. My Saturday sessions were an exercise in traffic management (how fast can you throw out passing signals?), as the brand-new tires were slippery, I hadn't figured out my pressures yet, and I still had to develop some feel and confidence in them to boot. It was definitely a learning experience

My last best time at TWS-CCW was 2:08.49 back in March, and in these good conditions I should've been able to improve on that substantially by now, but, all of the above. My best time Saturday morning was 2:16 , but by late Sunday I had worked it back down to a 2:06. I still wasn't being aggressive enough with my braking, but that will come with a little more time learning to trust how this new rubber feels.

My overall impression of the RS3 is that I wish I had switched up to it sooner. After hearing about how R-comps and slicks have a finer knife-edge of traction, I thought they would be harder to drive than my old high-treadwear Conti DW's, but they were much easier once I got used to it. The breakaway is more linear and predictable, and they don't get suddenly greasy overheating late in the session the way the Contis did. I think I'll end up adding a little more camber all around to keep up with how hard these push out mid-corner, but I want to feel them out for another weekend or so before making any more changes.

Trailer stuff: I ended up adding another layer of 1x12 under the ramps from earlier (so 1x12 + 2x12 + 2x12 for front height), putting 45 angles on them all and a backstop, and also putting in some shorter rear ramps (1x12 + 2x12). Might be my suspension/tire setup, but more likely just my trailer wheel wells are taller than travis's. In any case, this is what I had to do to reliably open the door under all conditions:



Also, strapping the tires to E-track about a foot off the floor (and then another strap through the front of the tires to keep them together) worked out really well:



While I'm at it, random picture of my car+shop+lift. I'd like to say the complete mess in there is temporary, but it's been temporary for a long time now



And video of my fastest lap for the weekend. I think my ego trying to chase down that Audi gave me some extra oomph (But really, the only reason I caught him is because he lifted to let the silver car that was kicking both our asses pass him).

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Journal thread / Car setup details

wstar

Had a great weekend at COTA! MVP TrackTime ran this event as a 3-day weekend. Friday morning was mostly lost to weather (ice started coming down during my first session, and then all the second sessions were cancelled while the track was slick), but COTA gave us an extra hour on Sat+Sun to make up for the lost sessions, which was really awesome of them. Got to meet Mike (the Powerdercoater) for the first time, guru came up from Houston Saturday and brought us BBQ for lunch, and then he brought back some of the local Z-club crowd on Sunday to hang out.

The track is ridiculously technical and complex, and has both faster straights and tighter corners than I've seen before. It was pretty scary until I started getting comfortable with it. The elevation changes are dramatic as well. Even after staring at videos of the track for hours, I wasn't prepared for how those look and feel in person. It would probably take many more weekends there before I really started to get the nuances of this track down, but that's unlikely to happen given how expensive events there tend to be. Still, it was well worth going once and giving it a spin. Every sector is exhilarating when you nail it just right (or at least, as just right as I was going to get for this weekend!). The only remotely boring part of this track is the back straight from 11 -> 12, but that flies by quickly and it's a good chance for tons of passing to sort out trains. Honestly, I think I really need that straight as a breather between the complex stuff happening before and after it anyways.

No instructors, so I watched Mike Skeen's video from some practice laps last year in a Porsche over and over to try to have some idea about my lines. I eventually got down to 1:41.76 on a clean traffic-free lap, and that's about as good as I can do COTA currently. I had a back-to-back pair of clean laps on the session after that one and they were also high 1:41.xx's.

I kept it on the pavement all weekend, and I only had one maybe-spin in my final session Sunday that I blame on getting tired and sloppy. I thought it qualified as a spin, but they didn't flag me, I guess because I didn't quite get fully perpendicular to the track during my mad rush of poor over-corrections? Who knows, but no flag so I kept on trucking

No true equipment problems, but lots of things were showing signs of abuse - notably my trans fluid was fairly burnt out by the end of Sunday, shifts were getting sloppy. And some of the little surface checking on my front rotors was turning into real cracks after my final session. I don't think I can go another full weekend on these rotor rings. COTA is tough on brakes, be prepared if you go!

Anyways, all I've exported for now is my fastest lap. I plan to edit up a highlights/incidents video later as well with the interesting stuff from my footage.

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7AT Track Car!
Journal thread / Car setup details