wstar's Journal

wstar

Just wrapped up a fun weekend at MSR Houston. Brakes were a non-issue functionally, and the new front ducts from Stillen worked out well.

As for the new Z1 rotors: mostly, they bedded and operated flawlessly. One of my rears, however, had some visible heat cracks in it starting from right after my first session. They were pretty shallow and not causing any big surface effects, and I didn't feel any braking problems from it. Over the course of the remaining sessions the crack landscape on that rotor evolved: wear would erase a few, expand a few more, then erase those, etc.

I'll have to inspect super-close tomorrow, but probably most of the cracks are gone now, I don't think any were very deep. I suspect the cause is that the cross-hatch pattern (that they lightly etch into the surface to help initial bedding) was accidentally cut a bit too deep on this one rotor, as it took forever to wipe out those cross-hatches on just this one rotor as well. The matching rear rotor on the other side killed its cross-hatch pattern much faster and never developed any visible cracks.

Still pretty happy with them though, I think this was just a one-off QC issue, and the price is awesome.

I got to do a few solo sessions this weekend. I'm not "solo certified" with this group yet, but I guess they're giving me a few test sessions to see how I'm doing on my own, and I did fine. All in all, I think it was a really good weekend skills-development-wise. My traffic management and general "awareness" downtrack and to the corner workers is getting better, finally getting myself to lift my head up a lot more. Starting to get a much better feel for the edge of traction, and getting better at car control. My lap times were "meh" most of the weekend, because I trying to focus on problem areas and taking it easy in others.

Still having psych issues with fear management getting the better of my lines and throttle input in places, especially The Launch (the big hill in the track you'll see in the vid). I know in my head the right way to go over that is to be on full throttle before, during, and after it, but convincing my gut that it won't lead to a nasty off-track excursion is hard. I ended up holding back on a weak/stable throttle and easing through it every damn time most of the weekend. Finally got over it at full throttle on my last session, and wished I had done it sooner .

Anyways, I only put a couple laps up on Youtube. These are from a solo session back on the first day. Lots of mistakes to focus on for next time

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