sig11's Journal... not that anyone cares

sig11 · 04-11-2013, 09:02 AM

Finally had my first track day of the year! Went down to Mid-Ohio with the North Ohio BMW Club for three amazing days on track. Friday was a test and tune for instructors and advanced students and Sat/Sun was a normal HPDE.

All weekend the cold made for some fun warming up tires in the morning. Every corner was oversteer crazy for the first lap or two. I was thankful for my fire suit keeping me warm Friday/Saturday too.

Friday was a TON of track time like last year. I even spent a session chasing an E46 M3 race car (I'm pretty sure that is the right model) that turned out to be my instructor for the HPDE portion of the weekend. I think I have some video of that to be edited and uploaded soon.

Saturday morning I swapped my tires left to right to try to squeeze some more life out of my nearly used up R6s. Unfortunately I filled my SD cards Friday and didn't have enough disk space to dump data onto my laptop. My best video Saturday came from my friend Derek in his Lotus Exige:
https://vimeo.com/63684096 This was the last session Saturday and I completely forgot to fill up between sessions so I was being very light on throttle on the exit of the Keyhole and the right hander into Thunder Valley. We were running fairly consistently in the mid 1:46 range even with my fuel problems. I don't think he would have been able to keep up had I not been so low on fuel. I am pretty sure the VLSD is cooked too. I had to be very gentle with throttle in a few corners or I would smoke the inside tire. I knew it was coming but didn't ever experience it so badly as this weekend. I intentionally smoked them for the camera at 5:50 or so.

Sunday morning I got to the track a little late... right as the drivers meeting was starting and it began to lightly rain... My instructor threw on his rain tires and I stood around like an idiot watching since my street tires are pretty much treadless at this point. When the rain stopped I started looking over my car and noticed that I had cracked the front left rotor. Then I rolled the car a bit and the front right was cracked as well. Since I had no spares that was the end of my weekend.

My first trouble with cracked rotors. If I wasn't switching to the 350Z I would be getting the brake ducts in ASAP. I just had the brakes rebuilt a few days before heading to the track and they had to replace 3 pistons. I'm not sure if that contributed...

Out of lazyness I'll just link the pictures I posted on faceyspaces full res:

This weekend is the season opener for 3Balls Racing at GingerMan raceway too. I was trying to get ahold of THM without much success earlier this week for a set of replacement rotors but since I wasn't able to get them I have my fingers crossed that I can get a pair of OEM rotors locally.

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04-11-2013, 09:02 AM	#1 (permalink)
sig11 A True Z Fanatic Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Detroit Posts: 1,294 Drives: 09 370Z Red Sport-MT Rep Power: 20	Finally had my first track day of the year! Went down to Mid-Ohio with the North Ohio BMW Club for three amazing days on track. Friday was a test and tune for instructors and advanced students and Sat/Sun was a normal HPDE. All weekend the cold made for some fun warming up tires in the morning. Every corner was oversteer crazy for the first lap or two. I was thankful for my fire suit keeping me warm Friday/Saturday too. Friday was a TON of track time like last year. I even spent a session chasing an E46 M3 race car (I'm pretty sure that is the right model) that turned out to be my instructor for the HPDE portion of the weekend. I think I have some video of that to be edited and uploaded soon. Saturday morning I swapped my tires left to right to try to squeeze some more life out of my nearly used up R6s. Unfortunately I filled my SD cards Friday and didn't have enough disk space to dump data onto my laptop. My best video Saturday came from my friend Derek in his Lotus Exige: https://vimeo.com/63684096 This was the last session Saturday and I completely forgot to fill up between sessions so I was being very light on throttle on the exit of the Keyhole and the right hander into Thunder Valley. We were running fairly consistently in the mid 1:46 range even with my fuel problems. I don't think he would have been able to keep up had I not been so low on fuel. I am pretty sure the VLSD is cooked too. I had to be very gentle with throttle in a few corners or I would smoke the inside tire. I knew it was coming but didn't ever experience it so badly as this weekend. I intentionally smoked them for the camera at 5:50 or so. Sunday morning I got to the track a little late... right as the drivers meeting was starting and it began to lightly rain... My instructor threw on his rain tires and I stood around like an idiot watching since my street tires are pretty much treadless at this point. When the rain stopped I started looking over my car and noticed that I had cracked the front left rotor. Then I rolled the car a bit and the front right was cracked as well. Since I had no spares that was the end of my weekend. My first trouble with cracked rotors. If I wasn't switching to the 350Z I would be getting the brake ducts in ASAP. I just had the brakes rebuilt a few days before heading to the track and they had to replace 3 pistons. I'm not sure if that contributed... Out of lazyness I'll just link the pictures I posted on faceyspaces full res: This weekend is the season opener for 3Balls Racing at GingerMan raceway too. I was trying to get ahold of THM without much success earlier this week for a set of replacement rotors but since I wasn't able to get them I have my fingers crossed that I can get a pair of OEM rotors locally.