When you have a good day at the track, all you can do is be thankful at the end of it.....and maybe a bit tired. I'm both!
Weather was BEE--YOO--TEE--FULL. Maybe a tad windy, but who cares. Today's great weather was very very appreciated.
The theme of the day was wheel swapping. I can't even count how many times I swapped tires today. It has to be at least 5 times. The guy next to me actually said something about it. He was like....."uhh....how many times are you gonna switch wheels today??"......Yeah that was tiring....
So, the day started out wet---even more wet than yesterday because it rained during the night, buuuuuut today was sunny and there was a solid breeze blowing. It didn't stay wet for long.
Today was a Test & Tune day hosted by the track. There were two run groups. Basically Faster and Slower. They put me in the slower group. At first I was a bit bummed by that. The slow group was full of 944, Boxter, Cayman, old Porsche I don't even know what they are, etc. I had in some cases almost 400 more whp than some of those cars.....plus big aero....plus....ah whatever......You know what? I didn't really care. I was just thankful the track let me sign up. In the end, I made it work for me and it was great.
Session 1: I actually skipped the first session of the day for two reasons. 1. I didn't want to dance around the wet stuff. I figured I'd let someone else deal with that. 2. I needed to change brake pads and I wasn't in a hurry to get to the track this AM. So, I took my time and swapped brake pads, along with rotating the tires in an X-pattern.
Outing 1: Started with the tires that did my fast lap yesterday. I wasn't trying to be first in the grid, but there was no one there when I showed up. I didn't show up early......where the heck was everyone? I don't know, but I was in the first position. Annnnnnnd then everyone showed up. Whatever, no biggie. I go out, and it's the usual problem----people show up late to grid and get tossed out onto the track in front of the cars on their first hot lap. So it was messy. I came into the pit to reset, and went back out during the same session and I had open track. Rolled a 1:30.3.
Outing 2: Kept the same tires on the car. Decided I needed to change my track entry strategy. The sessions were 30 minutes long. I don't need that much time. I decided to wait and let the first 10 minutes of the session go by before getting on the track---basically let everyone else get on track before me. Where I was pitted, it was easy to see the downhill to T12. I could count the cars and watch for gaps. So that's what I did--found a big gap on the track and jumped on track in the gap. The strategy worked well. Had open track. Rolled a 1:29.8 (new PB).
Even though this was a track-hosted event, David Murry was at the track. Basically, PCA pays him to stay the whole weekend and be available to people for feedback/advice/video and data analysis. I made a video with overlay of the 1:29.8 and I asked David to look at it and the AIM data and give me comments. He came into my trailer and we talked for half an hour. He was very insightful and very nice. He gave me more notes than I could keep in my head for one session. But it was great. We talked almost 15 minutes into my next session. Perfect.
Outing 3: For this session, I had swapped tires to better tires. The weather was nice (67ºF) and I was hopeful that I could push harder. I go to grid 15 minutes into the session after talking to David, and......everyone is sitting in the hot pit......I don't know what happened on track, but they were all just sitting there. A minute later they let everyone back out on track, so I hang back and count to 30 after the last car left---at least [hopefully] no one would be showing up late! Then I go out on track. And again, that strategy worked great. First hot lap, 1:29.6 (new PB). Took two off laps because I had to pass someone. Then I went for it again. Rolled a 1:28.7 (new PB). Was happy with that one. It ain't perfect by any means, but I was being more assertive.
The last two sessions weren't noteworthy.
Looking at the data, I was surprised to see that my top speed had increased significantly from yesterday's top of 153mph. On the 1:29.6 lap, my top GPS speed was 159.1 mph. And I still managed a 158.6 mph on my fast lap a few laps later. I'm wondering if I can hit 160 with good tires in 50-something degree air on a first hot lap. Hopefully we can find out on Saturday.
My confidence/comfort level on the track took a big step forward today. Was happy to see that. I was very tentative on Monday when I started. It wasn't helped but the fact that the new scrub set I started on felt TERRIBLE. I tried them again today after the fast lap and the car felt AWFUL---was shaking, no grip.....I'm throwing those out. Ah well, sometimes you get scrubs and they just don't pan out. That's the game. The scrub set I had at COTA was great.
I was able to secure a set of new DH. The DM's are still available to me, but I was happy to get a set of DH. I will decide by Saturday if I'm also taking the DMs......we'll see.
I also found out today that Global Time Attack does not have the Yoko tire requirement in place for Road Atlanta in May due to supply chain problems, so I could run whatever tire I want......hmmmmm....may consider that event.
Tomorrow is day 1 of the PCA weekend. There's 46 cars in the run group, so it will be a day of trying to see if I can find open laps. If I can, then I will commit to running good tires on Saturday. The weather on Saturday looks incredible----high 56ºF. If not, then I will just cruise the track and be happy with what I ran today.
Here's the fast lap:
And I guess you need the gratuitous Michelin tower shot....but look at that pretty sky! Gee, I wonder...am I over the rain?
