Sunday February 16 - Competition Day 2 - Part 1 (haha!)
If we thought that Saturday had a bunch of spectators, that was nothing compared to what we saw on Sunday. On Sunday, COTA was hosting a Cars & Coffee in their parking lots. In the Sunday AM driver meeting, Jason from GTA mentioned that they made a deal with COTA that anyone who had paid to enter Cars & Coffee could come and check out SuperLap. You wonder if that really would lead to anything? Haha I don't think anyone was ready for the answer!
I don’t normally drink caffeine but in the AM, I decided I wanted a little booster, and I had 1 hour 20 minutes before I drove, so I decided to go to the little gas station right outside the track to get some 5 Hour Energy. You would not believe the number of cars arriving at the track for Cars & Coffee!! There were massive lines of cars down both sides of the street waiting to get into the facility. It was a HUGE event! I was actually worried about having to sit in the entry line with all the other cars. I made a deal with an exit security guard that I could re-enter via the Exit lane. I was thinking that, if even a portion of these people came to check out SuperLap, it would be a pretty wild day. It did not disappoint!
Sunday’s weather was noticeably warmer than Saturday, And again like Saturday, my first session wasn’t until 9:40AM. I really don’t like that……it’s too late as far as I’m concerned. They should give the fastest cars a shot at the coldest air. I’ve talked to GTA about it in the past. They understand what I’m saying, but in their minds, they’re trying to give the fastest competitors with the craziest builds more time in the AM to get things ready to go in case they had to be up all night fixing things. I guess I can understand that to some extent, but it’s still freaking annoying. So, we didn’t have the same cold weather for the start of Day 2. Bummer. But I was still hopeful because I could see in the data, that as I was getting more comfortable on the track. I didn’t need to rely on the horsepower as much to go sub-2:20. But, the data was clear, the horsepower CAN help. On that first lap of Saturday, I was able to gain up to 1.3 sec just from Turn 9-12 with cold weather/fresh engine horsepower over my other laps. I figured I didn’t need a whole 1.3 sec…..just half a second was enough and I felt the weather was fine for that.
So, I was amped up and hopped up on caffeine and ready to go!! So, the first session comes around. My garage mate, Ryan Schimsk, who ran the fastest lap of the whole weekend didn’t attend the event on Sunday. He had been working with a data coach named Michael Skinner who did show up on Sunday and was hanging out in my garage. So, I started chatting with Michael, and he indicated that he was happy to help me look at data, video and would be willing to check tire pressures during the session if I came into the pits. I really appreciated his offer and accepted. What’s funny is that he has a very nice GT3 and he asked if he could park it in the garage. Of course, I said yes. And I gotta tell ya, his car was getting some SERIOUS love throughout the day! Those darn Porsches get a lot of love! No doubt.
I had a brand new set of slicks on the car for the start of Day 2. I had the track fresh in my head. I was watching video of my best driving from Day 1. I felt like I had a real shot at going sub-2:20. So, I go out first session. And I just wasn’t hitting the marks. In the first part of the session, I ran 2:21.4, 2:21.2 and 2:20.9…….argh! So I came into the pits and Michael checked pressures. They were actually a bit low. I was encouraged to push the car harder. I collected my thoughts and went back out. The session had time for only one more hot lap. I went out and ran a new fast lap—2:20.13. I mean, how close can you get without getting it? Hahaha. In the video, you can see my hands go up in the air in disgust! Hahaha. But at least we were now getting closer. I mean, can you inch towards something any more painfully???
So, I come in. And immediately, we jump on the data……and it’s the saddest thing I have ever seen. I gave away a 2:19 in my fast lap. Well, let’s be more specific. I gave part of it away (0.2 sec) in Turn 8 by braking too early and too hard. And the car gave away the rest in Turn 9 (0.3 sec) because it hesitated shifting from 2nd to 3rd. Oh man, I was bummed. Let’s take a look at the data: In the first picture below, the blue line is my fast lap of 2:20.13. The red lap is my fast lap from Day 1, the 2:20.29 (the AIM calls it a .31….whatever.). So, as I approach Turn 8, around 5500 ft, I’m .45 sec up from the fast lap of Day 1. Great. I’m in 2:19 territory. But then the blue lap brakes too early and slows too much. Then as I start accelerating at 6250 ft, the car hesitates shifting from 2nd to 3rd. That’s not my fault! Ahhhhh! Hahahaha The hesitation causes the car to slow and I lose another chunk of time. That was it. The 2:19 hopes were lost at that point……bummer. But I was still hopeful that in Session 2, I could clean up that stuff. Again, I wasn’t relying on fresh cold air horsepower to make this happen. I was getting into the flow of the track and doing things better.
So, the 2nd session rolls around and I’m super pumped. I got lots of stuff in my head. But the day is getting warmer. I started several laps as good as my 2:20.13 best. And then I get to Turn 8 and I clean all that nonsense up. I’m good to go! In the chart below, you can see that by Turn 11, I’m .50 sec and .60 sec faster than my 2:20.13. I could contend for 2nd place at this moment!!! But then, the warmer air is killing my acceleration down the back straight……and on both of those red and orange laps in the chart, I brake just slightly earlier than the blue fast lap at the end of the back straight. And by the time I get off the back straight and exit Turn 12, the three laps are even. I did well on the Red and orange laps entering T16,17,18, but my exit speed wasn’t great and both the orange and red laps overslowed for T19. And those two laps were the last shots I had at 2:19 for the rest of the day. After that it got too hot. To me, what this shows is that I don’t have enough experience to be consistent at the track to be going for ultimate lap times. This simply comes with more seat time at the track. I am confident that on my next trip to COTA, I can go under 2:20. However, I don’t have any plans to return at the moment.
And then at the end of my last hot lap of Session 2, they hung the meatball flag out for me. Now, you have to understand, at COTA, they put the fear of God into you that if you damage the facility or drop massive amounts of fluid on the track over large sections, they are coming after you to pay for the repairs and clean up. So, I see the meatball and I’m like, oh god, please don’t tell me I’m leaking fluid on the track. But the car is driving fine and I don’t have any warnings on the dash and I don’t see anything behind me and they’re not waving the flag frantically. So, I come in and the safety worker says that it looks like I forgot to latch my hood on one side. So I come in and check it out and one of my hood latch pins broke. I kept the OEM hood center safety catch when I moved to the AeroCatch hood latches. And this saved me from having any issues. I didn’t have any spare hood pins. Of course, I didn’t want to drive like that, so the race was on to figure out a solution. And here we go, time to start thanking ANOTHER person!
But before I could deal with that, there was the lunch time Pit Walk for the spectators. Earlier in the day, via the COTA PA system, they asked all the drivers in the garages to please park their cars on Pit Lane at lunch and to please hang out with their cars so that spectators could visit with the drivers and check out the cars. Previously, I mentioned about how the Cars & Coffee crowd was welcome to spectate at SuperLap. The question is, would they come? Haha OH YES! They did most definitely come!! All I can say is wow!!!! There might have been 1000+ people in Pit Lane during that hour. Check out the 8 seconds video I took that shows the crowd.
It was like that whole time. Tons of people! It was awesome! So many people came up to the BMW and gave it some serious love!! I had tech problems to deal with, but I put all that on hold to chat with people. I really enjoyed it. During that time, the announcer Cuban Rodriguez came around on the live feed and interviewed each driver briefly. He asked me why I run in Unlimited. I told him I didn’t want to run 100TW tires. Haha!
Ok, time to pause here as the post is getting long and there’s still half a day left.
I would like to end this post with some very cool pictures I just received from someone who connected with me on Instagram. @__jayzuniga reached out and sent me these pix. How cool are they?!! Thanks for sending these over!
Next up: Competition Day 2, Part 2