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Greg Laps Laguna
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This year - my 2nd time at Laguna Seca with Tracquest - I ran in the "intermediate" or "blue" group. Last year I ran in the novice or "yellow" group. The red group is restricted to instructors only, and a few known racers. In Blue, there was a Ferrari 360 Spyder, a 355, SteveR's M5, a couple 993 twin turbos, a couple C4S's, multiple 996's in C4 and C2 variety, Corvette's, M3s, and a boatload of misc Audis, Boxsters and Miatas of every vintage and designation - some with chips, r-compound tires, the works. These are serious guys and most of them track their cars much more than I do.
But in over 250 miles on track, I never encountered anyone I wasn't able to catch, pass and pull away from once they let me by; I was never passed (and I wasn't blocking anyone.) I credit this to decent, but certainly not outstanding driving skills, and an absolutely outstanding, amazing car. All of my instructors (day 1) and passengers (day 2) were blown away not only by the power, but by the brakes - so let me get to the "data" by starting there.
Last year I started to get some fade on the 2nd day. I decided to replace the stock pads with Pagid Oranges for this trip, and I replaced the stock fluid with ATE Super Blue. I had ZERO fade, and I was really, really using the brakes. Laguna is hard on brakes to begin with - the end of the front straight is 120mph+ DOWNHILL into a 40mph hairpin, and there are many other places where you brake from over 100mph. I don't yet know how much life I took out of my rotors, but the brakes were just phenomenal. (And they didn't squeak the whole way home. Wonder if that will last?) I had a seasoned Boxster S driver ride along with me one session, and a friend with a 360 Modena in another, and both felt I had WAY more brakes than they did.
With the exception of the brake pads and fluid my car is 100% stock. And it was just plain fast. I left PSM on, but there were definitely times it intruded. I learned how much I could drift or toss the car without it coming in and tried to stay there, because once it does come on it will scrub a little speed in a hurry. I'm pretty sure I have the skills to manage the car in the situations where it was intervening had I turned it off, but I chose NOT to use Laguna Seca as the place to find out. Believe me, if you want to explore the "beyond PSM" limits of this car, you have to be driving REALLY hard, and you better have plenty of runoff room as you learn. I wasn't racing - and my decision to leave it on may well have cost me some time - but I was never overly angered by it either (as in the M5.)
The SmarTire system was both a great tool and a security blanket. By default, its temperature alarm is set for 179 degrees (I have no idea why they picked this) and I saw no reason to change it. But as I got better (and the track got a little warmer) I was showing temps near 200 degrees - and that is hot, any way you slice it. I rarely see more than 110 on the street, and that is on a hot day. So the alarm started to go off. I was able to quickly check and ensure that the pressures were all still fine, though, so I didn't worry about it and kept right on passing people.
The stats:
I ran 7 30 minute sessions - these are usually 14 hot laps plus warm up and cool down makes 16 laps. LSIR is 2.238 miles around, so you're doing 35.8 miles per session - for a total of 250 track miles.
I was getting 5.6mpg !!!!!! (Or, 1/2 gallon a lap, or 1 quart per minute.) I tried running 100 octane (which was available at the track for (gulp) $5.50 a gallon. I am pretty confident that the 996TT (stock) doesn't get any benefit from it. I think it runs as strong on 91, unlike the M5.
Top speed on the track is about 125. The tiny analog speedo is impossible to read and the digital speedo takes a little time to update (I saw it jump straight from 120 to 123 once, and I was in the throttle for another second or so - but I never saw it read higher. When I went back to the video I could see the tach and I think I may have had another mph or two.
I set a goal of breaking 1:50:00 lap time. (My best time last year was 1:51:60.) I didn't do it, but I also never got totally clear lap. (I only ran one session without a passenger - and the passengers cost me about 1.5 seconds a lap.) The lap in this video is 1:50:40 - and that was more than a full second better than last year. Moreover, you'll see I slowly caught another Porsche (he was fast!), but my power advantage came on strong up through 7 and I had to back off early going into the corkscrew. He let me by going into 9, but I had to abort the race line to make the pass. I think that was worth at least 0:00:40, so I'm awarding myself a "virtual 1:49" anyway.
I am now officially ready for new tires - my original Pirelli's have just over 10K miles and the rears are now decidedly devoid of meaningful tread.
Cheers -
