build diary

October 3, 2005: Another track day.
This one was "Octoberkross", a two-day event put on by the same guys who ran the autocross a few months ago. They're still new at this and it did show on the first day. The event was aimed at the "sport compact" crowd, so it was a younger group and there were a lot of FWD cars. Most of the drivers were complete track novices. It's good to see them out on a real track, learning performance driving. In many cases, their exposure to high performance driving has come from watching showy videos - that's good and bad. The format of the weekend was a practice/qualifying/tech day on Saturday and the actual race on Sunday. I'll go chronologically.

After some confusion and some frustration on my part, I was allowed on to the track at around 5 pm on Saturday. They had saved the big guns for last, the Fiat (remember him?), myself and a collection of Subaru STis and an EVO8. My own driving wasn't good. The new brake pads apparently have much greater front bias and I had to make massive changes to my bias setting. It didn't help that there is little weight on the right front wheel and that my hardest braking took place on a slight right turn where it was unloaded. I'm tempted to install a proportioning valve in the front lines to help balance this. I also had bad understeer on a couple of right corners while the balance felt pretty good going left. Probably has something to do with the location of the driver! Elsewhere on the track was mayhem. A number of self-styled "drift specialists" were going off the track (usually nose first) all over and the EVO8 was a total loose cannon. I suspect that if he'd tried to go 5 seconds slower, he'd have gone 5 seconds faster. I finished the day with a time in the 1:05.99 range with an STi hot on my tail at 1:06.06. Too close for comfort and 0.4 seconds slower than my best. It is good for your confidence when the starter recognises you, shakes your hand and says "You still own this track!". Janel did well, taking nearly two seconds off her previous best. She's a smooth driver who takes care of her car. She was appalled at how much some people beat up on their cars. Rick Weldon showed her how it's possible to be smooth, gentle and extremely fast when we were at Thunderhill and she took it to heart.

That night, I added a touch of camber to the understeering left front and gave it a turn on the spring perch, hoping to add a bit of weight. I also dropped the tire pressures a touch. This track is a weird one for tires, being a bit too fast for autocross but not as demanding as a real track.

Sunday worked like clockwork in stark contrast to the day before. Being on "pole", I was the first one out. I shaved a tenth off but still had some balance problems. The STi was a bit off yesterday's pace. A turbo Civic turned a 1:06 and made it quite clear who the target was. The Fiat was struggling a bit. Even the out-of-control cars from yesterday were behaving themselves a bit more.

While spending some time flagging, I thought about what was going on. I realised that it all came back to braking. I had been relying on trailbraking to rotate the car on these tight corners and it just wasn't working all that well. I still had too much front bias. I turned it back fairly aggressively and lined up for my next session. The car immediately felt much better, turning in harder and being easier to toss around. My biggest problem was coming from the turn on to the front straight, as the understeer there was costing me a lot of speed. There was a short, fast left just before this 180 degree right, so I used this as a "scandinavian flick" to get the tail out. On the second and third laps, I got the tail out a bit too far and ended up going around the last corner on full opposite lock. I'm comfortable driving sideways and the Seven really takes care of you in this situation, so it was easy to control the slide and smoothly exit on to the front straight. It wasn't any slower than the understeering method judging by where I had to shift on the straight and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. I knew it was a quicker lap - not my lap record, but fast enough and consistent over all three timed laps. The end result was a 1:05.7 or so. Nobody else dropped below 1:06.

At the end of the day, I got the chance to go out and play. I was mostly driving like a meathead but I did find a few spots where I picked up speed. I was disappointed that my final result - with better brakes and more horsepower - was not faster than my previous best but since I only managed to get about 10 laps in, I wasn't as sharp as I had been at the Open House.

One piece of news from the Se7ens on the USA tour. Two couples got married at the Little White Chapel drive-through in Vegas, one couple in a Caterham and one in a Westfield. That's my kind of people!

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