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| I just completed the BMWCCA race school at mid-ohio.
Overview:
Day 1
* 4.5 hours of track time in the rain on a track with very generous patches of new sealer. Very many people spun out including yours truly. I'd start to feel like a wimp, pick it up a little, and just gently start to skate off the track. I spun when I tried to do a lift rotate. The rotation part worked great.
* First 3 hours were "track familiarization" with DE passing rules.
* 45min starting with about 4 laps of two cars abreast, changing sides every lap.
* 45min in groups of 3, practicing multi-car passes.
* The track time was good. The exercises weren't as challenging as some fwy interchanges in Providence.
* I didn't notice when I was driving, but I must have been tense. I was complete sore all evening and into the next day. My whole body.
Day 2
* Three abreast. Several chances to do left, right, and especially middle. On the left or the right, you just stay on the edge of the track. In the middle, you watch your ***. When you are on the outside, it's really hard to keep up. The rim-shot is not a good line and you have to drive so much farther. And, oh, we are all on slicks and the track is wet, about 1 degree celsius, and smooth beyond belief. And then a bunch of open track WITH NO PASSING RULES. That's right. Just pass. Just like a race.
* Practice starts. Pace lap to start/finish and GO FOR IT! Into turn 1 three abreast. One group did 4 abreast. There was an instructor in that group, who felt that the other people shouldn't have been there... We did a bunch of these.
Day 3:
* "Qualifying". First about 3 practice starts, then open track with no passing rules. Basically, we are racing.
* RACE. 1 real start, then go. Check the video of the first 9 minutes or so.
Side-lights:
TC Kline was there all three days. He drove two different cars, a 135i with TC Kline suspension, and his carbon-fiber M Coupe. He drove by us in all conditions as if we were standing still. Both cars very fast, but the M Coupe is a rocket. TC removed 300 pounds from the car. I saw it pull a GT3. TC says it also out-handles the GT3. It's cheaper than a GT3 too. And Much cooler.
Impression:
OMG that was fun. I couldn't believe how much fun it was. WOW. DEs are going to be like taking a shower in a raincoat now. Worth doing, but not the real thing. I really hope nothing gets in the way of actually racing really.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g57rK4h-ghc
It looks like my times got down to 1:53 flat, although none of those laps are in the video, due to the utter lack of anything interesting. In the video my laps are probably more like 1:54 something or 1:55. I wasn't slow man on the track, but it was close. Just about all of the other cars could pull me on the straights, although there were at least two cars which couldn't, but which were faster anyway. Looking at my driving in the video, I honestly don't know how I could have gone much faster. With some more days at the track I could pick up my speed a little in some key sections (listen for lack of screaming tires), but I'm nearly at my limit to understand what I could do at this track. I'm going to see if I can get some coaching based on the video.
Actually, one thing is that I was understeering everywhere. I just added some rear camber and the rear sticks better and hence the car doesn't really drift evenly. I'm going to see what I can do about this. Either more swaybar (kick it up a notch) or tire pressure experiments.
I was surprised to see the spece36 cars pull me on the straights. It must be the amazing mini aerodynamics at work, because the mini should have hp->weight.
Tomorrow I get to drive home. It took me 13.5 hours to get here. I hope the traffic is better going home. |
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| | Thanks for the recap. It sure looks like fun. Perhaps the SE36 v Mini issue is horsepower rather than power/weight. On the straights, I think aero drag is more important than overcoming inertia (mass). But, man, that looks like fun. |
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| I agree that the mini vs se36 is probably aero, with the power close enough not to be a big deal.
I'm going to make my car less understeery and we'll see how that helps. It was (seemed) faster last season after I added the front camber and before I added the rear camber.
The race school is fun fun fun. I highly recommend it for anyone advanced enough to be feeling like there has to be more than the A group, whether you plan to race or not. Just the track time per dollar was amazing.
-j |
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| Epilogue:
I talked to mike morris at schneller and we decided to back off on the rear camber by 1/2 degree to -1.5 degrees and to move the rear swaybar up one notch. The mini will now rotate with just the tiniest breath on the throttle at speed. As a result, it is very very fast around the track now. And, even better, I feel there is a lot of room for me to improve again. With the understeery car, I felt like I had hit a wall (so to speak).
Last year, the car was super super twitchy. It was a handful on straightaways. It was fast then too, but really too twitchy to be completely fun. I think this was because I had a little bit of toe-out in the back. This is probably linked to the stability issues I was having in straight-line braking as well. I had no issues at all coming into big bend yesterday, getting into and out of abs, depending on how good I was with the threshold braking. (At lime rock with the evil Audi club, which has very well run and very friendly events BTW.) This year the rear toe is set to zero which feels good on the race track. If it was an autocross car I'd go for the twitchier toe-out in back, and live with it being hard to drive over 60mph.
It's been interesting working through these suspension issues. If you don't know what you are doing, and you aren't really sure how the car should be handling, it takes a -really- long time to figure this stuff out. I didn't even know that it was possible for my mini to be easy to rotate without being undriveably twitchy. Yay!
Hoping this inspires others learners think carefully about their car setup.
john |
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