wstar's Journal

wstar

I made it to TWS this past weekend. It was cold and wet at the start Saturday and the end on Sunday, but we got in a few sessions of merely cold and dry runs in-between the rainy bits. I wasn't going for record times or anything. Mostly I was trying to avoid freezing to death It was a good shakedown on all the car's changes though.

I ended up setting the SPL front arms at roughly -2.5 Camber and +5 caster in the front (and slight toe-in), and I left my old Conti DW tire setup on the car (with plenty of tread) because it looked like the whole weekend would be wet, and I didn't want to try the brand-new RS3's for the first time in the wet. The first two sessions on Saturday were wet, then we had a mostly-dry and an even-more-dry session. Sunday started with two dry cold sessions, and then finished up with a ridiculously wet one as a storm system was moving in from the north. They cut the day short since a lot of instructors and drivers had to drive back in the direction the storm was coming from.

Anyways, a couple of video clips via RaceKeeper. I'll just re-paste the YouTube description instead of trying to re-describe them w/ the embeds:
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Driver's Edge - Texas World Speedway - Sunday Nov 24, 2nd yellow Session.

Final two laps - one where I was following another 370Z and talking with my instructor about line differences, and then the final lap where I hit my best time for the weekend at 2:09.86. It was a cold wet miserable weekend in general, but the track was dry for the late Sat and early Sunday sessions, including this one. It was still fun though

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Driver's Edge - Texas World Speedway - Clockwise, Sunday Nov 24, final yellow session - Wet, wet, wet.

A lot of us were tip-toeing around the track, rain was coming down at a decent rate, puddles all over the place. It was a lot of fun, but eventually Turn 6 got the best of me. I came in off-line after a pass, turned a little too sharp on the wrong patch of the track, and the rear came around too fast for my skills to catch it in these conditions. I did try to counter-steer a bit at first, but I think my reactions were too heavy for how delicate the track surface was and I gave up pretty quickly. Ended up spinning around and rolling backwards off the track on the inside, which killed the engine. The annoying buzzer in the final second or two is my low oil pressure alarm (because the ignition's still on but the motor isn't, so it's reading zero). No damage to the car, and I was able to restart and drive it back onto the track and into the hot pit afterwards without a tow.

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