sig11's Journal... not that anyone cares

sig11

Just got back from the NASA SE "Santa's Toy Run" at Road Atlanta. Holy crap that track is amazing. Saw 5 red flags the first day.. I think I had only seen one or two total before. Drive was something like 28 hours there and back and burned 229 gallons of gas for ~1600 miles of towing. Went down with Fixxercask from my350z who competes in TTB with a nicely stripped down Z33.

This was my first time in HPDE3 and I was surprised to find out that there wasn't an HPDE meeting at all until after the first session. Biggest problem I had was that after the first session I realized the bushings in my right front upper control arm were shot. When I pulled the left side they were just about as bad. The second session was a "No Brakes" exercise which turned out to be a lot of fun and I picked up a decent amount of speed. Finding the way through turns 2 and 3 was a real pain in the butt at first and I managed to spin on turn 10a trying to carry too much speed after the straight.

Best time Saturday was a 1:53.622. There was so much traffic in DE3 that it was pretty tough to get a clean lap in. I was a bit too willing to move over for other guys since I was so unfamiliar with the track.

Sunday morning I was a bit hung over from the year end banquet and drinking with John/laze1 and some other folks so I missed the first session. A shower and a gatorade later and I was ready for the second session. Traffic kept me from improving my time again until the last session of the day. The track was nearly empty and I just decided to go for it. The sun was so low that it was nearly impossible to see the exit of the esses and the brake zone was just a bright blur... Hadn't ever had the sun play so much of a part. With back to back clean or nearly clean laps I managed to get my times down a ton with the best being a 1:46.114 on my next to last lap.

I was on an even faster lap but unfortunately I dropped a wheel tracking out of turn 7 and did a 180 across to the right edge of the track. No harm but I missed the cooldown lap and about crapped my pants as I slid toward the wall. I would really like to see the video of that spin to see if what happened again but the battery in the gopro was flat.


I think I have a new favorite track even though it's pretty scary/dangerous. I'll post some video as soon as I find disk space I can use to edit them. I've been really bad about working on my video this year.