wstar's Journal

wstar

Had a great weekend at MSR-H!

New engine seem to be running great! Only have a couple minor things to look into: oil temps looked a little higher than expected (240-ish but it was a very hot weekend), and upshifts were a little slow and clunky on Saturday (but gradually got better for some reason; could have been me subconsciously adjusting shift timing or lifting throttle. Could also be that the fluid level's a little off?). Car's already back on my mini-lift for basic maintenance. Going to swap out the engine oil (since this was the first fill for that engine since the salvage lot), check trans fluid level, replace front rotor rings (finally, and replace studs+lugs while I'm in there), bleed brake fluid, etc for the coming weekend at COTA.

I did my Red-group check ride for MSR-H (Driver's Edge does these per-track, so the one at TWS was separate from this) on the first Sunday session and that went great, so I got to spend half my weekend in Red. Kevin was my check-ride instructor; his line advice was amazing, but it will take a while for me to get out of my old habits and pick up speed from what he was saying

I did scrub in the Conti GT-O slicks in the final session Sunday. As usual, my fears were all in my head. There was no problem controlling that tire, and it felt amazing. We had about 8 hot laps that session. I spent the first 6 slowly edging my way up on laptime and trying not to put any big slip angle in them, then the final 2 laps I ran at my normal pace for the RS-3's and I could finally start to feel a little slip. You could tell the tires were nowhere near their limit at my RS-3 pace. At places (and speeds) where I'd feel unstable or fighting the car way out at the edge of acceptable traction in the RS-3, the Contis were just rock solid and predictable. There's clearly 2-3 seconds I could take off my laps here if I adjusted my pace up to the tire's limit with slicks like these. (Then again there's also clearly 1-2 seconds I could shave if I made some basic line fixes; who knows how much those two figures overlap).

Also, they look great on the car



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Fastest lap for the weekend was 1:52.21 (second-to-last session of the weekend, still on the RS3's):

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