I finally got back on the track this weekend at our local track, Putnam Park. Great event put on by Kentucky Region PCA. The car felt good, lots of fun. I put the Recaros and rollbar and harnesses in just for the event. I forgot how comfortable the Pole Positions are. Always want to find more smoothness and speed. One session in the rain. One pucker moment involving marbles and tires and hay bales.
I find track days incredibly relaxing and stress relieving.

BTW, has anyone noticed how hard it is to pass gas while strapped down nice and tight in a race seat?

Hope everyone had a great weekend.

 

Hi Darrell, I remember you and Steve W. going back and forth on the WB's understeer. What have you done to the car between then and now? Tell us stories about how the C4 in the rain left the other cars crying for their mommas. :-)

Just a couple (100 miles worth) of joy rides over the weekend through the local horse country.
Wide open spaces, smell of freshly cut grass, and lots of twisties with the top down. Nothing finer.

 

On Thursday, went to a PCA DE. It was fun to be on the track again. It was my first DE of this year. Unfortunately, it rained most of the day.

Had a good weekend. Finally completed disassembly of an old water bed to make room for my GF's crafts. It will take a couple trips to the dump to get rid of the old frame. Its amazing how cheaply the frame is made and yet it held up for 25 years.

No Pcar work other than driving it as much as I can.

 

Says it all:

 

I used the regular C4 for the DE, mostly because I already had it set up for the seats, roll bar, and harness; and I did not have time to switch things over to the WB. I listened intently to Steve W's insight on the understeer experience with the WB. My WB has a couple of fundamental factors that will make it understeer incrementally more than my NB - the wider rear track width than the front, and a slightly smaller rear sway bar (20 vs 21mm). The "weak" tires on both cars are not making things any better. The rest of the issue lies in the nut behind the wheel, I am sure. For this event, I followed advice and experimented with using trail braking to get the car rotated more on the turn-in, so that when I squeezed back on the throttle I was already pointed more in the direction I wanted to go. (sounds like I know what I'm talking about, huh?) It really did work. I have a lot more to learn, but boy that was a ton of fun. It's more fun steering the car with my butt and right foot than the steering wheel.
The C4 is a hoot to drive in the rain. I made the mistake of going out with my tires at low cold pressure from the previous day, and the car felt really greasy. But still, in Turn-7, a >90deg turn, it's drop down to 2nd, crank the wheel and just mash the throttle, and the car just Goes (making any cars behind me disappear). So much fun. For the second wet session, I brought the tire pressures back up to stock, and the car was far less greasy, and the session was way more fun.
So many drivers had left early, that they combined groups and we had a 50 minute session to end the event. Wuhooo. There were only about 5 cars out there. My low fuel light came on, but I kept telling myself - Just one more lap, it will be OK. About 6 laps later, I decided it would not be cool to have to be towed in, so I called it a day and went home.
Life is good.

 

I spent the weekend out at the Sunriver Festival of Cars. It was Italian focus this year, so there were some fun cars: Ferraris, of course, Lambos, and my favorite, some Maserati Coupes from the 60s. Here are some pix of our group, and David Rice, who's freshly rebuilt Daytona was part of our road trip. We swapped around cars and drove the most-excellent Mckenzie route, that is closed in the winter.

http://flic.kr/s/aHsjw6C8tz