Let's file this one under: It's fun to see everyone, but a win is nice too!
I attended Bimmer Challenge at Buttonwillow yesterday. The day started out foggy. The 8AM start was delayed until 9:20AM. Not bad considering that the SDC event on Friday was delayed until Noon because of the fog.
With the car being down for so long, it had been a long time since I was at Buttonwillow. The last real lap I did was in Dec 2022 at the Bimmer Challenge event, so in anticipation of this event, I went to the Speed District event a couple weeks ago. The pavement at Buttonwillow is deteriorating and the grip is noticeably reduced compared to a few years ago, and the pavement is really chewing up tires. It's a bummer, and I don't see a repave anywhere in the foreseeable future due to all the resources being poured into the 2nd track.
I started the day in a dilemma about what tire strategy to run due to the fog. I had brand new A7s with me, and I was debating when would be the best time to run them. It was cold and foggy, and the pavement in the paddock definitely had patches of mist/water in places. Even walking on it was a tad slippery. So, was it really wise to run the good new tires in the first session when the track could be slippery? Was I throwing away the new grip on a cold and potentially unpredictable surface? Unknown.
The car was sitting on old DH scrubs that I had been running since the summer. They were not great. Plus, DH are terrible in the cold weather on the first 2 laps of the day---literally undrivable until they warm up---and it was in the low 40's. This is difficult to deal with when you're in a competition where they only give you one lap to warm up. I also wanted to start first in the grid in the first session because I was hoping for a shot at a clean lap in the first session.
By comparison, Hoosier A7s in my opinion are the ultimate tire for cold weather starts where you only get one lap to warm up. You can crawl on an outlap in any temp and just zoom the last couple corners and they're good to go with max grip. (Your brakes might hate you, but the tires are good to go.) It's an autocross tire, so it's not too surprising.
Anyway, I made the decision to swap the A7s onto the car. I really did want to start first in the grid, and I wanted to make sure that all the cars on street tires behind me wouldn't be crawling up my tail pipes since their tires didn't need any warm up.
I'm happy to say that I made the right decision. The track was totally dry, the A7s were nice and grippy, and I got good use out of the tires. Won Bimmer Challenge B1 Class, and ran the fastest lap of the day in that first session. It was a fun and somewhat unexpected result. But it was a nice conclusion to a motorsport year that started with quite a bit of frustration. My driving chops are still a bit on the rusty side---I'm still braking early, my turn-in is tentative, I'm still getting the gas pedal feel back. It's getting there, but it's very weird for me at Buttonwillow---I know how I'm SUPPOSED to drive the track because I've done so many laps there, but I'm not driving it like that because I'm still building back my confidence, and so I hedge my driving towards the conservative side, which is great for safety, but terrible for lap times. My car catching skills are all good to go, so that's nice.
And it was a super social day out there, which I always enjoy. Although, someone, and I don't know who they were, came up to me and said, "You know, you're pissing a bunch of the B1 guys off." I didn't really even know what they meant, but my response was, "Oh well".
In the 2nd session, while on a hot lap, I had a weird encounter with birds on the track while approaching Bus Stop. Over 30 birds were at car height fluttering all around, and I was approaching at over 100mph. I cannot believe I didn't hit any of them. I captured it on video and put it at the end of the lap video below. Of course, that lap was over.
My fast lap is below, along with he bird encounter. It's not my favorite driving, but it is what it is. And thanks to Steve Lee for getting some pix/video of my car! I really like his intro vid of a bunch of us starting the session.