carmudgeons.com - Summit Point, tomorrow….

Well...

I think it's time for a LONG overdue update from this past weekend.

Anyhow, this past weekend, I attended the 19-20 June "Shiny Side Up" Driver's school with the National Capital Chapter of the BMWCCA at the Summit Point Main Circuit. Unfortunately, the demographics of the school were skewed so heavily to experienced drivers that I got bumped into the novice, or C group. (It was, after all, my third driver's school, and people with dozens of schools were getting bumped from the A group to the B group.)

On Saturday, I met with my instructor, a competitive SCCA Showroom Stock C racer by the name of Barry Brown. I highly, HIGHLY recommend him. At least for me, he was unbelievably helpful. While I had brought my old set of Kumho Victoracers with me, I didn't put them on the car and told Barry that I might like to use them later on if, and only if he felt comfortable with the idea. We got out onto the track, and I overdrove the car a bit as I often do while I'm getting myself situated. I REALLY need to work on this as it's a real problem.

By the second session, I'd gotten myself settled down and really started working on the technical aspects of my driving. Historically, I've always had trouble hitting apexes properly -- I tend to be about 12-24 inches late. Fortunately, Barry was making real inroads on this. Among other things, he was able to yell at me any time I didn't look ahead far enough. That's always been a big issue with me. Of course, my judgement still wasn't perfect at this point, as was demonstrated by a somewhat interesting incident when I earlied Turn 4, or the 'chute by about 12 inches. Running that far up the curb literally kicked the car halfway across the track. Fortunately, I kept my foot in it and retained control.
At the end of the day, Barry had me working on what limited race craft one could practice in a driver's school environment with limited passing rules. Backing off a few car lengths behind a slower guy before charging into a turn can be fun--although it can get a little hairy when you have to slow down on corner exit because they didn't give a passing signal. My other problem was predicting other driver's behavior in Turn 1 and Turn 4. By and large I was both late AND trail braking into these turns, something that seemed to make some other drivers a bit nervous. :p I had a couple incidents where it looked like people saw me coming and started staring at their mirrors instead of looking ahead. Having someone slow to 35MPH in the entrance to Turn 5 is NOT cool. There's a very limited downhill braking zone in which I was slowing from about 100MPH to 50MPH that day. After the third session, Barry told me to put the track tires on the car for Sunday. He did warn me to be a little careful, as I was already the fastest driver in my run group by a fair margin.

Sunday came around, and we went out onto the track with the Victoracers mounted. I took it easy for a lap to get the track pads and the tires warmed up, and then went at it. OH MY GOD! Keep in mind that I was lapping many, if not most of the cars in my group BEFORE I put the track tires on. There were three cars that I hadn't been fast enough to catch up to in a 20 minute track session the previous day (let me just say that it's really annoying when you start reeling a guy in and they throw the checkered flag at you), an S54 M Coupe, a WRX STi, and a Trans Am. Within a fairly short period of time, I had passed all three. Easily. Although I did have a little trouble while accelerating through Turn 2 to make the pass on the STi. Put just a bit too much power down and had to countersteer. Still made made up most of the two car lengths that had remained between us at the beginning of the turn and he waved me by. Immediately after that, I had a BIG oh shit moment following an E36 M3 down the 'chute. He was moving down a pretty good line at a very decent clip, so i was following pretty closely. Unfortunately for him, he ran out of brakes going into Turn 5 and went off the track. I'm VERY glad that I was following him at his pace--if I'd come through the 'chute at my pace and caught up to him there, that could have been bad.

Throughout the day, my speeds continually increased. I was regularly accelerating well into 5th gear, hitting something like 145MPH on the main straight, going to around 110-115 before Turn 3, going through Turn 4 at somewhere between 100 and 110MPH, and hitting at least 125 going down the back straight into Turn 9. I was going so hard that I boiled my brake fluid and started getting pad fade. With TRACK pads. (YES KOBI, YOU WERE RIGHT, I WAS WRONG. I'm ordering Castrol SRF before my next school.)

Take away points from the school were as follows:
1) Cool it while you're getting oriented, dammit!
2) You're really, REALLY fast when you focus on technical accuracy instead of trying to go fast.
3) Keep the eyes up! Make use of ocular driving.
4) My instructor said that in his student evaluation, he'd advised them to never, ever consider bumping me into the novice group again. it wouldn't surprise me if I really frightened some of the folks out there.

Barry also gave me a bunch of advice outside of simple in car technique. He strongly recommended that I start getting my butt out to Fridays at the Track (FATTs), as I would get a lot more track time--especially if I decided to become an Instructor in the relatively near future. Free track time is DEFINITELY something I could use. A day at the track is pretty damned pricey before you even factor in the entry fee. He also encouraged me to consider getting into club racing in a couple years, and gave a great deal of advice on how to go about it.

All in all, this weekend was an absolutely fucking blast. I just wish I was still out there.