Capital Driving Club Discussion Forum

I expect it will be a warm breeze. Maybe in the 100* range. Who's with me? My last instructor said my point-bys were exemplary so, Goldbach, if you want to join me in group 2 I am ready.

Will be there, now for the rush tog et the car ready.

I just signed up for 3

Planning on bringing twice as much water as normal and depending on how much the cooling upgrades to the car end up totaling out to, might cave and buy a canopy and electric impact wrench...

I need to get back in to do a couple of track days with you boys... I seem to be missing out on all of the fun.

When are you planning on your next event?

Summer breeze in August and then I think I'm doing SCCA PDX in September. NASA NE is at Watkins Glen in September though, I could do that one instead if anyone wants to go...

Here is my plan:

August 9/10/11 VIR Chump Car
August 17/18 Main Circuit NASA
September 14/15 Main Circuit SCCA
October 5/6 Shenandoah Trackdaze
October 19/20 Frederick CDC
November 2/3 Main Circuit NASA
November 16/17 Frederick CDC

My sister is starting to like driving/cars so i sent her the cdc schedule as i think starting with atuoX before trackdays is a safer route, so those events might be in her jetta inside of the mini. i thought about bring the wagon to the autoX yesterday as the mini is still mid oil cooler install but had to stay way late at work on Friday

Via an email from SCCA I discovered another event! September 1st (looks like it is advanced only but has club racing and proceeds go to charity which is cool)

Phil bringing some goodies for me next weekend...

Nice! i really need to get a camera....

Looking at the data off my low 1:27.XX laps I still have plenty of room to improve all over... lol a mixed blessing i suppose. The big one to work on now is through turn 10, slowing down to high 70s through it right now which seems excessive :-/

Max Gs:
Lateral 1.43
Braking 1.12
Accel: 0.46 <- ouch lol esp as our chump car does: 0.73

Just had a potential brain wave about why my speeds through 10 were lower. This event was the first time I was gaining enough out of 9 to need to require a shift to 5th before 10. So instead of just tapping the brakes I had to downshift to 4th as well which meant I was on the breaks for a smidge longer. I can’t think of what else todo other than be better at downshifts… any ideas?

Bizarrely enough my speeds into turn 1 were higher… I was topping out 5th for the first time before braking into 1

ACoopeR wrote:Just had a potential brain wave about why my speeds through 10 were lower. This event was the first time I was gaining enough out of 9 to need to require a shift to 5th before 10. So instead of just tapping the brakes I had to downshift to 4th as well which meant I was on the breaks for a smidge longer. I can’t think of what else todo other than be better at downshifts… any ideas?

Bizarrely enough my speeds into turn 1 were higher… I was topping out 5th for the first time before braking into 1

Change gearing, make more power or exit speed higher so you are in 5th longer, bouncing off the limiter in 4th, or just work on heel/toe into turn 10.

I am limited on gearing/power, so I just bounce off 4th a bunch when I want my absolutel fastest lap to the 1/10th. If I am just doing laps or can spare a couple tenths, I work on my heel/toe through 10.

D_Eclipse9916 wrote:Change gearing, make more power or exit speed higher so you are in 5th longer, bouncing off the limiter in 4th, or just work on heel/toe into turn 10.

I am limited on gearing/power, so I just bounce off 4th a bunch when I want my absolutel fastest lap to the 1/10th. If I am just doing laps or can spare a couple tenths, I work on my heel/toe through 10.

Thanks for your thoughts! That is useful to know that you get your fast laps banging off the rev limiter, where between 9 and 10 do you run out of gear? I know you GTS guys crush my lap times lol maybe in a couple years I can strip and cage the mini and have the skills to join in, will want to have at least a year in TTD before making that leap though.

I simplified my experience a bit in that usually I would hit the limiter in 4th after the bridge and just feather the throttle for a second but that day I was hitting it before the bridge and felt due to the length of time on the limiter it would be faster to try 5th but that was just a guess. HPDE3 was pretty crowded on Saturday so didn’t get that many clean laps back to back to compare, and on Sunday the rain meant I was going slower.

To be honest I think the cooler temps must have helped the car’s power quite a bit as despite exiting 10 slower I was hit 5-7mph faster than ever before into 1 which make no sense unless I found some extra horses. That might explain why I was hitting the limiter out of 9 earlier, though as I get to be a better driver even the 90+F days I will start running out of gear.

I was back at main this Sunday running between the MARRS events. It was pretty hot and my times were ~.5-1 second slower, but there were very few cars so I got chance to try alternating approaches into 10 and riding the limiter was quantitatively faster. Thanks a lot for the suggestion dude!!!