NE Track Day/Autocross/Racing Reports

[GBMINI]

"Saint Lawrence Motorsports Park" is a go-kart track online? I know the MINI is small, but ...

[snid]

Yup, it's a go-kart track. It's wide enough for two cars to pass safely, though. Not that we've ever done that. And it has really nice curbs on many of the corners.

[snid]

Here's some video from my car at the first SLMP event of the year:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...85377078014468

[NoWin]

Devens, Mass Solo2 National Tour - June 10-11

MCs's take the top 3 trophy spots in GS

MC takes top HS trophy

Results: http://www.scca.com/Event/Event.asp?Ref=2723

[snid]

Another Vermont autocross, another top 10 overall finish for me. yay!

And, I almost had a faster time than the really quick Saturn that I've always finished behind. My last run was faster than his fastest, but I hit a cone. I didn't think that I would ever catch up to that car & driver combination... perhaps I have a new goal now.

I have video on my camera, perhaps I'll edit together something.

[jwardell]

Saturns can autocross!?!

[snid]

So it has been just a little over a year since I started doing these track days and autocrosses. One month ago, I had a slight setback as I had the first time I went out and didn't improve my performance over what I'd done in the past.

Last weekend, I made up for that. Back at the same track, I was able to improve my personal best time for the track by over half a second (from 1:02.9 to 1:02.3 - last month my best time there was 1:03.1). What was even better than improving my time is that not only was I faster, but things seemed to be happening more slowly out there on the track. There was more time to think and do things smoothly, while I was actually going faster.

The only change in my car from last month was that I used some race brake pads on the front brakes, Ferodo DS3000 pads. They did give me shorter braking distances, but more importantly they were more consistent lap after lap.

Next up for the car will probably be some new R-compound tires. Either that or another set of Falken Azenis tires.

There's one more event at this track this summer. I haven't decided what my goal will be for this last event there of the year. A 1:01 would be great, but I'm not sure that I can actually pull that off.

Before that, though, is a 2-day event in early August at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant - a new track for me. And I have another new track for me in September - Watkins Glen. Two new tracks that are the biggies around here, which was my main goal for the summer - to get to new tracks.

Video from last weekend's SLMP event will show up at some point.

[jwardell]

New stickers for your rear window then.

[snid]

I realize that some people still have one more track day this season (tomorrow), but my second track season is over.

I just looked at my little notebook, and I was suprised at how few track days I have under my belt. It sure seems like I was out there more than I really was, especially last season. I only had 5 days at NHIS last season, 4 days at to go-kart track, and 4 autocrosses (not counting the MINI of Peabody thing and the BMW club skills school). It sure seemed like more than that.

This season, 1 day at Lime Rock, 2 at Tremblant, 2 at NHIS, 2 at Watkins Glen, 6 at the go-kart track, and 5 autocrosses (not counting the MINI of Peabody thing).

So, that makes a total of 12 days at "real" tracks, 10 at the kart track, 9 autocrosses, and 3 skills school days. I guess you really can measure how long brakes, tires, etc last in days / hours.

Counting only big track days, it doesn't seem like that many to me. But add up all the "closed course" events, and I'm at 34 days, which I guess really is a pretty good number.

I'm not sure what my plan will be for track time next season... perhaps much like this season and one event at each track. Possibly adding Mosport to the mix. Although I also like the idea of getting more time in at at least one track (most likely NHIS) so I can see if I can make improvements.

What's really disheartening is to compare my personal best times to the times from the COMSCC time trial events... I'm so far at the bottom of the heap with those folks.

I'm planning on building a website with my reports / videos / pictures from this season, and detailing any work I do on the car for next season. Somebody bug me to actually get it done.

Successes from this season:

• new tracks, and I didn't make a fool out of myself
• solo-ed at all tracks except Lime Rock
• much improved heel-toe shifting
• starting to play with trail braking
• had fun in the rain
• recovered from some medium speed mistakes (starting to spin at ~60mph)
• survived my first 2-wheels-off experience

Goals for next season:

• use the brakes less - go into the corners faster
• don't pay as much attention to the cars in my mirrors
• trail braking
• if I get really ambitous, left foot braking

[GadgetGav]

Sounds like a lot of track time to me Jason, I'm very envious..!
Do you have a favorite track..?

[snid]

Quote: Originally Posted by GadgetGav (original)

Do you have a favorite track..?

Hmmm... I've been thinking about this for the last day since I read the question. I sort of have to take the lame answer of "they're all good".

Only counting the big tracks (NHIS, Lime Rock, Watkins Glen, and Tremblant) I think NHIS may be the kindest to the low horsepower of the Cooper. My accelleration realy dies off around 80-90mph, and NHIS doesn't have too many opportunities to get up to that speed. I've also been there the most times, and that helps because you aren't learning the track, you're refining how you drive it. The oval rocks, but you don't usually get to run it. Turns 9 and 10 coming down the hill back onto the track are great fun. The infield facilities are great there.

Lime Rock... I guess it's also not too Cooper unfriendly. It is higher speed than NHIS, but you get to stay at a pretty high speed for the whole lap, so accelleration isn't as crucial. I think Like Rock is actually a pretty easy track. The downhill - the last turn coming on to the front straight, is a great turn. The facilities - well, there aren't any. And local lodging is too expensive. I think for average lap speed, Lime Rock is actualy the fastest track I've been to, which surprised me.

Tremblant is the most difficult of the tracks I've been to. Some very fast turns, some very slow turns, and lots of elevation changes. Again, the facilities at the track are non existent. But the camping at the track is great. Turns 1-4, the long right, is scary. Fast, blind at times, ove rthe crest of a hill, and too short a braking zone heading into the last right which is much tighter than the first parts. There's a good high speed kink heading down the second straight. Scary blind turns heading under the bridge. Evil hairpin before the front straight. It's just a tough track...

Watkins Glen - kinda like Tremblant but not as much. Fast turns, slow turns, and hills. But not to the extreme on any of those that Tremblant is. Good facilities / garages. The hills do make having low power a bit of a problem. The carousel and fast left are great turns. The esses would be more interesting in a higher powered car - in my car they're pretty easy to take flat out. I'm sure the busstop can be taken much more quickly than I did, and could be great fun.

There's not one of those tracks that I don't want to go back to. It feels wrong to put any of them last on a favorites list. But if I had to make a list...

1) Tremblant
2) NHIS
3) Watkins Glen
4) Lime Rock

The first three are all really close, and could go in any order.

NHIS lets me "play" more, and throw the car around more.

Tremblant is a challenge, which is great if you want a challange, but it's easy to drive around at 7/10ths because of the fear. And driving around at 7/10ths seems like a waste when you get home.

I'm sure I could go much faster around Watkins Glen, and parts of the track are exhilarating turns. But a lot of it is just going straight with your foot on the floor (at least in my Cooper), which isn't really all that exciting. And the long laps mean that you don't get as many laps during a day, so it's harder to experiment.

I'm probably not looking at Lime Rock the right way to take advantage of what it offers - a high average speed and short laps. I guess that would mean it's a great place to practice high speed turns. But it's easy to think of it as a pretty simple almost oval (with that extra left hander thrown in), and only two elevation changes. I have yet to hit the uphill fast enough to make it anything special, but the downhill is a blast. I guess the fact that Lime Rock really has only 6 turns, and one of them is the uphill which isn't much of a turn, makes it fall to the bottom of the list.

Counting turns where you have to actually do something / pay attention - it's hard to figure out just what to count :

NHIS (using south chicane): 8-ish turns Drop the count by 2 when using the oval.

Tremblant: 12-ish

Watkins Glen: 14-ish (though I really want to count the esses as 1 instead of 3

Lime Rock, 6-ish

Did that answer the question?

And Saint Lawrence Motorsports Park (the go-kart track), is actually a great playground. Sure, the speeds are down, and there's only one car out there at a time, but it's got a good mix of turns and you can fairly safely push to get just as fast as you can.

[GadgetGav]

Quote: Originally Posted by snid (original)

Did that answer the question?

And some..!! Thanks for the comparison. I've only been to NHIS, on the track anyway, but I've been a spectator at Lime Rock a few times and I know someone who lives nearby, so lodging wouldn't be an issue. I heard they resurfaced Mt Tremblant last year or the year before. That would seem to make it more attractive than Lime Rock which seems to have a patchwork surface! I guess I'm surprised that there's no facilities at Mt Tremblant. I thought it was a significant circuit...

Anyway, thanks for all the in depth info. Look forward to seeing your web site on all this and hopefully I'll get on the track next year...

[jwardell]

Jason the sheer number of days you've put in is impressive, in addition to the effort you really make each time. It's really cool to see someone outline their successes and future goals. I certainly envy you! And I wonder if I'll ever make it to a track day, just for the fun of it.

It would be great if you put up a site. I find that that (even knowing HTML quite well) the task seems a little too much and keeps you from doing it, which is why it's nice to take advantage of some of the blog software out there where everything is already done for you, you can literally have a site going in a few minutes. You can always tweak it later on. Similarly my site started very simple and later I spent more time on it. It's best to get the info up there first, if for nothing else to keep track of the info for yourself.

[snid]

Reviving this thread momentarily...

I got elected / volunteered to be the events coordinator for the Sports Car Club of Vermont for this year. So, I've been assembling event calendars for various area clubs. I did this in iCal (Apple's calendar software) so it was easy to make web pages from the calendars. You can also download the calendars or "subscribe" to them in many calendar applications - those links are on the webpages.

Anyway, here's one big calendar with everything:

driving-events

Unfortunately, making a calendar group seems to lose information about which sub-calendar an event is on, so here are links to the individual calendars:

SCCV events: SCCV

NER-SCCA events: NER-SCCA

COM events: COM

BMWCCA events: BMWCCA

SCDA events: SCDA

[blalor]

Excellent! Thanks!