It was great fun and I have a whole new appreciation for what the Beast can do!
I went to the
Driver's Edge event at
Texas World Speedway last weekend. It was my first track time other than the M5 DE and it was truely awesome. There were about 100 cars there divided into 5 run groups according to experience. My group (green) was the novice group and was pretty busy. There were four sessions each day.
The first session was a basic familiarization with the track. Second session they allowed passing but most folks were so overwhelmed they didn't remember to check their mirrors, much less point anyone by.
By the third session some folks were starting to get up to speed and there was a bunch of passing and things got really busy. I started bringing my speed up and by the final laps, I was getting worried because I was still trying to memorize the track instead of just looking through the turns like I should have. I was also distracted by a squadron of Subaru WRXs that were just tearing it up! I let them go past me as soon as I could since they could really cook through the esses. About that point, the DSC had the brakes getting pretty heated up. I could smell the stink of the pads every time I tried to accelerate out of a turn. I was really glad I had put in the brake ducts and had fresh ATE Superblue on board! I never got brake fade the entire weekend.
While waiting for my next session, someone grenaded a supercharged C5 corvette at the end of the back stretch, leaving oil in one of the quicker turns on the course (7). They red-flagged the track and put down oil dry.
In the fourth session, everything started to come together. I gridded closer to the front so I wouldn't have to pass so many people. I shut off DSC since I decided it really couldn't save me if I screwed up big enough, and I had figured out that you need to power through the turn or the car just understeers like mad. Traffic cleared out the oil dry in turn 7 pretty early and by the end of the session I was back to full speed through it. I was starting to look through the corners better, and with the exception of the Subarus, very few people were quicker. I actually started seeing the corner workers since they are positioned inside the apex, where you need to be looking if you're going to get through the turn well. I was hitting the rev limiter in 3rd on the back stretch and 4th on the front! I was coming down off the banking at about 110, and braking to 80 before turning into turn 2. I think I actually entered slower after scrubbing off some speed, but I was too busy to look.
The next day was much cooler with constant cloud cover. The first session went pretty smoothly with everyone getting back into the groove.
Then it started to rain.
We pulled all our junk into the nearest garage and waited as other groups ran. They pulled us green folks into the class room for a talk about where to be especially careful - like turns 1 and 12 where if you go off, you will slide across the slick wet grass without scrubbing much speed and into some drain culverts. That would be Bad.
By the time we finished the talk, the rain had dried up and with a couple more run groups before us, the track had dried out nicely in time for the second session. This one went pretty well also. I [might have] lapped my wife who was running her Z3 2.8
[EDIT: upon further review, I think she may have gridded ahead of me that run, so maybe I didn't lap her. Maybe we need some timing and scoring equipment, but perhaps its better not to know! As the Car Talk guys say: sometimes it's better to be happy than to be right.]
We broke for lunch and sure enough it started to rain again. We helped one of the Subarus bleed their brakes. Those WRXs have the tiniest rotors for how quick they are! At the start of the third session, the rain was steady enough that they had us run windows-up and use the turn signals instead of hand signals. I left the DSC on and felt some wiggles but never got sideways. There were 8 spins in our group. At least two were the Subarus
For the final session, the instructors told us to take it a little easy since we'd be getting tired and you don't want your last memory of the weekend to be taking your car home on a trailer. I started out with DSC on, but the track dried out pretty well, and there was red Audi TT that I just couldn't catch because DSC wouldn't let me power out of the turn. By the time I did switch it off, I was down to just a couple laps left. I caught the TT, but didn't have enough time left to pass him. I took solace in the fact that he was still braking in some of the wrong spots.
Driving "fast" on the street is just not the same anymore. It's actually pretty boring and pointless. I do have an all-new hatred for people that don't let you pass
I need to score some more track time!
By the way, good to see you again Andy! Were you able to get some lap times with that timing equipment ? I wonder if there are some reasonably cheap data loggers I could tack onto an old laptop. I'd love to know how fast the turns are and what kind of G-loads the car is taking.
My track day at TWS last weekend
Linear Mode
