93FD

Well, another weekend, another track event. This one was at Blackhawk Farms raceway, on the Wisconsin/Illinois border. Thankfully this time I had (new) proper track brake pads and everything went real well. My RA-1’s are still holding up, and since I left them full tread when I bought them they came through huge when it rained a bunch on Sunday. My lap times in the semi-dry were nearly the same as the totally dry Saturday, and I was able to lap as fast as the NASA race cars in the wet. Normally I’m off their pace by 5-10%. It was also amazing that even in a total downpour I could hit 100+ on the main straight and the car felt pretty stable.

Here’s a pic that Bruce took Saturday when Damian and I went out for a HPDE4/TT session in the afternoon. I’ll post the rest of Bruce’s pics in the gallery. (Thanks Bruce!!)

For those that don’t know the NASA weekends have alot of different groups all running in one day. They have everything from completely new people on their first track day running with instructors to full out 750hp race cars in sprint races. It makes for a really interesting group of people and mix of cars to watch.

I had talked to Bill Marquardt about running the Time Trials via email and he had told me that NASA requires people to move up from HPDE1-4 and then progress to time trials. Since I had run a HPDE3 day already, they would let me start there, and if everything went well, then I’d be able to progress to 4 and TT the second day. Well, it all went really well, and by the third session on Saturday I was in 4 already. The 4 and TT run group is combined and also open passing so it’s about as close to racing as you can get, without actually doing it. The funny part was, the timing/scoring people thought I was in TT already, so I ended up with a trophy (for 2nd place behind Damian) even though I was not actually competing. Oh well, the second day I did beat him up, because I got a dry run in the morning and he only got to run in the wet in the afternoon because of his competition school classes.

All in all, another successful weekend at the track.

I of course have another 6 hours of footage, and no time to spend turning it into a cool video, but hopefully at some point I’ll get that together. I do have that second Autobahn video that I promised a while ago nearly complete, so that will be up fairly soon.

First event went down over this past weekend… It was standard operating proceedure, we got there the night before at 1am because of all the things that were not ready to go. Woke up the next day to 25 degree temps and snow on the ground and ice on the track! Was a bit sketchy for the first couple sessions but it started to warm up later in the day. Once again we hit the place in Elkhart Lake for a Raj Pall (steak) saturday night. Sunday was much warmer, with temps starting in the 40’s and getting to the 60’s. Overall good weather once again at RA.

Unfortunately on the second day I ate up all the brakes I had by the second session, and I went into turn one at 140+ and my brake pedal went to the floor 4 times before I gave up and slid the car sideways through the turn. I got back to the paddock without any brakes and the front left was smoking alot. Checked it out and I had actually put the piston all the way through the metal distribution plates, through the backing plate, and through what was left of the pad and onto the rotor itself!!! Needless to say that wiped out the piston quickly and I pushed it right out of the seal. So all I was doing was pumping brake fluid onto my wheel. I did manage to get everything back together for the drive back home, but my brakes were really poor. I’m going to have to do a caliper swap for the next event this weekend and then rebuild the calipers.

Other than that the actual driving went real well. I felt more confident in most turns, the new RA-1 tires worked really well, and hardly wore at all. I’m hoping to get at least 10 events out of them so that’s a good thing. The car ran like a champ the whole time. The only issue I have is with the oil catch can filling up. I’m going to attribute that to the carousel, since it doesn’t happen at any other tracks. I was pushing out 1/2-3/4 of a quart every session. At other tracks I don’t even fill it half way in 2 days.

Damian and I were testing out the new bullet cam setups, and after not being able to figure it out saturday we had to check the manuals back at the hotel and got it working for sunday. We’re going to be able to get some killer footage with these deals. If I ever have time I have a great couple vids to make.