3 consec lapping days on track (a record I may never reiterate, let alone break) and the talon is still shiny =). And it rained each day at mission, although on easter sun. the track was dry for a while. Ironically when the track was dry, sccbc instructors noticed that many students were getting sloppy and going offline.
I think it was dry when a brand new red Volvo s40 t5 awd scraped its entire right side along the concrete wall exiting turn 2 (sweeper). Driver had taken the sccbc course before but made an error. One person said he looked to the right at the trees or something (hands follow the eyes). I talked to the guy (in a quick 2nd gen rx7 race car) who was right behind the Volvo when it crashed; he said he’d been tailing it for 4 laps but Volvo wouldn’t give a point to pass. So perhaps Volvo ego was partly to blame.
sccbc’s race school was even better than when I took it last march: it wasn’t sold out so I got a dedicated instructor and better track spacing. He said I was “ok” sat morning but that I became an “excellent” student. But what I was most happy about was that heel/toe finally clicked for me sat afternoon, after a year of trying to maintain brake pressure when blipping (yeah I was really slow there). I think the key was that instead of thinking about blipping, I thought about braking. My instructor helped trigger this change in focus when he told me I was unnecessarily trying to be a “late downshifter”. So when I downshifted earlier, I still had to keep braking, so the goal in my head changed from downshifting to braking and my foot automatically did the right thing. From that day on I could do a smooth downshift w/ regularity.
No more downshift anxiety, but on sun afternoon I looked at my front pads thru the rims but couldn’t see any pad material. Uh oh, I guess 1 day on island mtn twisties and 1.5 days at mission killed them. Granted, they were cheapo raybestos organic pads, the only ones at lordco at 10pm 3 wks ago when I found out my last pir track day killed the prior Porterfield r4s pads (those lasted 1 day at pr and 2 days at pir). So I went to cdn tire 2 blocks from mission; the parts girl gave me the box but I opened it and said the pads are too small. Oops, they don’t have any in stock. Luckily lordco is a block away so I headed there. I opened another box, this time “higher end” ceramic pads. They were bigger so I paid and returned to the track paddock. Jacked the car, took out pads from a front side, then noticed I bought pads that are still too small dang it! my coworker/student was a pal and drove me to lordco to do the swap. At least they waived the higher cost of the proper sized pads =). I installed them and continued lapping w/o missing a session weeeee! Btw, the p5 gobbled up only 1 set of pads after maybe 8 track days! KE= ½ mv^2 so the difference must be the talon’s xtra 400 lbs and ~100hp.
On mon it was the “inside line” school taught by morrisport. I think it was the first road course event I’ve attended in which the majority of entrants was asian. I recall lots of integras (mostly itr’s incl 296whp turbo) and ae86’s, some m3’s, 240’s, porsches, 1 esprit and of course civics and crx’s. there were 4 run groups, so not as much track time as sccbc’s school, which has more instructors (since they’re veteran racers who volunteer) so larger run groups are possible. That day the “short” track was used; it’s a bit safer since it skips the chicane and turns 1 and 2. another change of pace for me was “buddy lapping” which I’d never done before at any track school. It was really fun since I got paired up w/ a fast, well driven integra rs race car (dsp autocrosser from kelowna who’d run inside line before). He told me it weighed 2120 lbs; no wonder it booked on the straight! We basically took turns following the leader, which was always the car w/ the instructor riding shotgun. In the wet I think his better yoko race tires and my awd traction evened things out for the most part in the corners. In the last session I was pushing it and had to countersteer a bit 3 times to get the back end in line. Gotta watch myself next time.
Other notes:
-there’s new “super pavement” in turns 7,8,9 to replace the rough, beaten parts. It’s very grippy in the wet such that the car will push/slide but then suddenly catch in the middle of 7.
-since it was rainy I opted to run on skinny 205/55/16 kumho 711 street tires; they handled well enough
-awd helped put the power down in the wet but I still had to temper my right foot =)
-there was a white ford cosworth sierra rs (looks like merkur x4ti) but due to mech/elec issues it only ran part of sat.; owner said it’s stock, 300whp and he brought it in via the 15 yr rule
-I think I’ll order some carbotech race pads; heard they’re good
