surlynkid

Gale won the last race in a 1.6. The 1.6 can beat a 1.8. Babot did run out of gas though.....

Brainofjjj

Thanks guys!

onefastviking

Gale and I both still feel the 1.6 is a better platform, although, the 1.6 leaves no room for errors. Make a mistake in a 1.6 and you have a few corners or so to gain momentum again and build up the speed as the "pack" drives away from you and takes you out of the draft, make a mistake in the 1.8 and the added tq of the car helps you make up for it much quicker and keeps you in the game.

I do also feel that when learning how to drive an SM fast that it's better to learn in the 1.6 because it makes mistakes so painfully obvious, and makes the times that you do it correctly so rewarding.

My personal car is a 1.6, although I will be selling it soon so I can free up some funds and time to work on some other projects that I need to, and want to, complete.

onefastviking

Here is a video for you, Spec E46 will be slower than this but this will give you the correct line to drive.

sierralima

Ahhh...good to know. And painful is an understatement.

Padishar

Hi,
can you please give some feedback on this lap and help me understand why I went off in Turn 4 at TWS?
Thanks

Veloce Raptor

You were a couple feet off the apex, which put you farther left at track out than you would like. When the left rear tire when into the dirt, on power with a lot of steering lock, shooting right was inevitable. In the future, if you miss the apex of 4 by a lot and when you find yourself using every inch of that track out rumble strip, straighten the wheel...

Hope your car was ok!

Thundermoose

Probably a good idea for you to get an instructor to jump back in your car. You're off line through much of the track. Just a few laps with someone will help tighten things up.

TXE36

Last weekend at TWS was a bit different for me. Overall a fun weekend, learned new things, and learned of new challenges. First some back story. Two weeks ago I spun the car at T6 TWS CCW across the apex curbing and managed to scrape up the frame and trash two brand new tires. Tires replaced and car thoroughly inspected, a primary goal of last weekend was to shake out the car. Car was pretty much okay, but discovered I'd also damaged the right rear wheel bearing as it started growling and got louder as Sunday progressed.

Since my confidence was a bit shaken, and prior confidence of the car was in question, I decided to tone it down a bit and work on consciously being ahead of the car by thinking in the moments before a control input what do I expect the car to do and what kinds of corrections I might need.

The following video clip isn't all that impressive, and frankly, I've had better "saves", but this one is very unique for me. I can honestly say I anticipated this reaction beforehand. Went into T3 at a really good clip and trailbraked it such that I got the car rotation done early - in the moment the track just opened up in front of me past the T3 apex down to T4 and I got on the throttle harder than I normally do, but thinking the rear could step left - and then it did it and it was caught quickly without the bottom of my stomach dropping out. This moment of "brilliance" lasted through T6. The "zone" didn't last long, but it happened. Need to figure out how to make it happen over and over again .


That was during the best session I had for the weekend while chasing down SierraLima. We discussed it afterwards and then arranged a game of cat and mouse. That's next.

-Mike

TXE36

The Cat and Mouse session with SierraLima (SL) was a mixed bag in the end. It was fun, and was a good exercise in extending situational awareness, but SL's video showed I wasn't driving as good as I thought. A lot of my apexes were nowhere near as good as I thought. My lap times driving normally are lower than hers, but I'm convinced I was beating her primarily with horsepower

We set the game up before hand with me out first, her following. About 1/2 way into the session, we switched places. On the front straight I sandbagged it to about 110 MPH so we would stay together.

With this little game traffic management was a bit different. We were caught a couple of times by groups of faster cars and working this traffic while staying together added a bit to the task.

At 9:29 we switch places:


I found out after, SL ran a camera and got some video of myself. I don't have a lot of this and it was cool to see but also showed me that:

• I wasn't as fast in the corners that I thought I was without a rabbit in front of me.
• My apexes were nowhere near as tidy as I thought.

These are SL's clips:




I'm curious if there is more that can be gleaned from this.

-Mike

TXE36

Finally, SL and I were going to do another cat and mouse session, but her SM wouldn't start, so she just rode shotgun. Only worthy of note here because the 2:03.4 on lap 1 is my PB with a passenger in the car. I was still sandbagging T7 in particular and overall was being more careful with a passenger in the car, so there has got to be some improvement in there somewhere.

Session was short, lap 2 had a yellow at T3 and lap 3 the car was running out of gas. A the end of the vid, I share my secret to a quick getaway after the weekend is over .


Had an another ignition coil go intermittent, so I guess it's time for a set and a wheel bearing before the next track outing.

-Mike

surlynkid

Come to April PDS, and I'll jump in with you to help get your line squared away.

sierralima

Dang it! I thought I was hitting the apexes perfectly, too. ;-) Always good to see yourself from behind.... Fun to have someone to play with and analyze their moves. And yes, I still need to get rid of death grip on steering wheel and stop tilting my head in an attempt to get the car to go the direction I want. I do that watching videos, too....

That howl I've been describing is really evident around turn 1-2. In the car it is more vague and echoes through cabin so is hard to pinpoint. It sounds like it is closer to mic - lower frequency than engine.... It may be nothing new since I'm now paranoid with having some sort of mechanical issue approx. every other event....

Veloce Raptor

Apexes matter...

sierralima

Details....

Lol...if you look on the dash by my left hand you can see some white tape. I put that there after loading the trailer to tell me where my tires were. I am in the green group as far as trailer loading and getting on the scales.

With the M3 I followed the advice here to daily drive hitting the bumps in the road to get a better feel for tire position. Since I don't daily drive Miata I don't have that opportunity. The tires are not where I think they should be.

Putting an external camera on M3 helped me with this, too.