dantzig

This was my first time at Watkins Glen - what a fun track! It was a weekend DE put on by MetroNY PCA, who did a great job. Perfect weather too.

Friday I was a mentor in instructor training, and I also got some coaching from an experienced racer with a lot of laps at WGI. The video below was from Sunday morning. I feel like I am getting used to the RS, and I was starting to figure out the track. The first lap in the video was my best for the weekend, and the next two were similar, but I caught some traffic. Comparing TraqMate data with a friend who was also there, I can see where I could gain at least a second with faster entries into several of the corners. Wish I had one more day to try it out...

Jon

RSRanger

Very nice video.

Ranger (six silent men)

jenk12m

Thanks Jon, that's one of my favorite tracks

stujelly

favorite track. Ran there with my RS. Had a blast.

From indiana?? Are you one of Hal's BSers

dantzig

I don't think so, since I don't know what it means.

I did meet a guy at an event earlier this year at Putnam Park or Mid-Ohio who was named Jelly. Relation?

Jon

dantzig

Thanks, Mike. I used videos that you and Trakcar posted to help get me acquainted with the track before I went.

Jon

jenk12m

I wish we ad more time there. First day was rain and only had 1 day to try and get up to speed

dantzig

The thing is that you have to enter some of those corners so fast (2,5A,6,10,11 especially) to get a good lap time. But when you're learning the track, you have to build up to it.

TRAKCAR

Yup, its a difficult track anyway. Still pretty clueless on WG, I'd say its the track I have the most to learn still where I have been to. One day was not nearly enough...

Looking at my video might not have been an advantage
Nice driving and good lap time on damp pavement for the first time!

You are careful, smart. You left plenty of room on track out every where, you'd kept going doing the same exact thing for a couple more days on a real dry track and the lap time would have kept dropping without trying too hard.

The best way to crash is to push too much too early on fast corners ;-)

Thanks for posting, makes me ache to go back ASAP.

dantzig

Well, I can't claim that the track was damp. It was overcast, temps in the low 70's, but perfectly dry. Wish that I had one more day...

My student had a 997.2 GT3RS. The gearing in my '08 is a lot different from that. Your video helped me guide him on shift points, too.

Amen to that! There's a lot of Armco to collect your mistakes on over-eager trackout.

The fisheye lens on the GoPro makes it look like the car is farther off the curbs than it really is. For example in turn 1, it looks like I am 2 feet inside the first rumble strip, but you can hear the tires run over it. It's even more pronounced on the left side.

Yeah, Peter, you need to get back on track soon!

Jon

TRAKCAR

I can totally see that track out due to GoPro, I thought you times were low for that much room

MirageJHU

Said student chiming in here. Trakcar your video was huge because I was so confused after the first session running out of gear in the esses and then the downshifts for the "outer course stuff. So thanks for posting everything

The .1s seem to have better gearing for this place.

Also want to give a huge thank you to Jon. Phenomenal instructor, made me really comfortable with the track really fast. I had an awesome time, hope to meet more RL'ers on track in the future!

jenk12m

Yea the .2RS gearing makes you shift a lot more. Especially, when a bunch of us came from .1 regular 3s

Always great to see rennlisters meeting and having a great time on the track. John, I gotta get back out in the track with you. It's been a long time since barber

dantzig

Thanks for the props, Annand. You were an excellent student. I really like instructing for engineers - I ask them to turn in 8.6 feet later, and that's exactly what they do!

That would be great, Mike! I'll be at Road America with Badger Bimmers at the end of September.

Jon

jenk12m

1st, I need to find me a track car