I am new-york bound this weekend to see my girlfriend and my dear friend Nick. I can't remember how many times I have been to New York City, but no more touristy stuff. Just food, old friends, and girlfriend is enough. I was sitting at the airport pissed-off at delays and bad Jetblue customer service. I thought this was a perfect time to get some work done, look at my track data, and write my report. So here goes!
Some mixed feelings with this track day. First and foremost, the e-bay coilovers held up fine. Nothing broken and although I have not taken measurements yet, the ride height looks the same. I event went off the asphalt this day and it survived it just fine. I think the perches and sleeves work well although how it will do with 100+ mph incidents remains to be seen.
Conditions
It got very hot starting from very early in the morning. 80's throughout the morning and 90's past 11AM. In car temps must have been over 105 when the car wasn't moving. Very humid also. It reminded me of when I was living in Thailand.
Changes from my last event
Tire pressures: 36 front, 32 rear, later changed to 31 and 37.
Random eyebaleld toe-out settings
Max front camber (probably 2.5+ degrees)
Front ride height: 5"
Rear ride height: 5.5"
No corner balancing
(alignment and ride height set with 180lbs ballast in driver's seat)
Mobile 1 GL4 synthetic transmission fluid
Mobile 1 5w30 oil (I used to run 0w30)
Session 1
I immediately notice how much the car likes to oversteer. The oversteer hurt speed everywhere. The car would turn-in at much faster speeds but would not stay stable. On corner exit it punished me every time I got on the throttle. This session I managed to put two wheels off coming out of turn three. I spun out another time after turn-in at turn one. Not enough rear grip. Embarrased, I cut the session short and came back into the paddock area. I detached the rear sway bar and went right back out.
Session 1.5
Much better. The car was drivable again and I started adapting to the newly set-up car. The biggest thing I noticed was that the car was harder to drive. Not only was it faster in all of the corners and was more responsive, it was much less forgiving. I knew this would happen but experiencing it firsthand was something. By less forgiving, I mean that the envelope of "optimal" is a lot narrower. It felt like the tires had a smaller range of acceptable slip angle. I can't quite wrap my head around it but I hypothesize that the added grip is from a better contact patch resulting from better camber control, and the edginess is from decreased tire compliance from the higher spring rate. This session was spent trying to get used to the thinner performance envelopes. Tough! Even though I do not think I was driving as well as my later sessions, I logged my best time this session of 1:02.5 due to optimal temperatures.
Session 2
I am figuring out some new lines with the car's setup. The drive out of turn 3 completely depends on how smooth you were throughout turn 2. As hypothesized earlier, turns 5-6 became a double apex corner with this better handling setup. Fast time 1:02.7. I am starting to get more consistent. I am no doubt just driving better than I did last time.
I took a bit of a break after the third session to cool off and hydrate. I brought my awning. Thank goodness. Shade helps so much. Plus, it makes you instantly more popular on the track. I did get to meet some new people that day, but I was able to stay focused. I'm really a pretty social guy, but usually at the track I try and force myself to be a track loner so I can concentrate on driving.
Session 3
Last session, I spotted another Miata on track and I followed him a couple of laps. The car had more body roll than mine but it was definately not stock. I was curious on how it drove. The owner was a nice man named Mike. I offered Mike a drive in my car in exchange of the same in his. Some people get selfish about their tires and car. Not me; it was always beneficial to gather more data about different cars and different setup, especially if you have some way to log your data. Plus, if you are dealing with a better driver, you can learn a lot about how your car can be driven also. To my relief, Mike wasn't selfish either.
Mike's Miata is the same 1.6L Miata, with some sort of handling package installed. I had originally thought the car oversteered too much from watching him drive. However, I was pleasantly surprised. First, the power steering was nice. It made steering the car a lot more pleasant to drive, albeit at the expense of steering feedback. Second, due to the lower spring rates, the chassis and suspension reacted slower as wheels go through their travel motions. This gives you much more time to figure out what the car is doing and anticipate what is about to happen and react timely. The car did not oversteer and it was very neutral. It was comparable to my FM spring setup.
This car had front and rear sway bars. I think running adjustable front and rear bars with lower spring rates is really the answer, instead of eliminating the rear bar and running higher spring rates like most Miata guys do. My car is in the latter camp. It is hard to tell from data if that is better or not since my car's exhaust and lighter flywheel makes it accelerate faster, so I will have to wait to drive Mike's car again to use my butt-data-logger.
Session 4 and 5
I am beginning to experiment with different lines going into the turn 7-9 complex. This time I am entering the corner much faster; the new setup allows me to shift the weight of the car around and make the left turn right at the geometrical apex. I still can't figure out if coming in fast and barely making the lines is faster, or if coming in slow acellerating earlier is faster in this section. Data says coming in slower is 0.1 seconds faster than when I dive-bomb it. Unfortunately, in this session someone had kicked up dirt right after that apex so I could never tell if it were faster. It seems that I am losing 1-2 mph worth of acceleration from hitting the dirt.
On session 4 I went off-course. I think I almost flipped my car coming out of turn 3. At one of the laps, I had a very good drive out of turn 3. I was not used to all the speed and got two wheels off the track, maybe three. I flew back on, sliding. I thought to myself, "I might just flip this car in a few moments" as I was correcting the oversteer, thinking that I was going to end up in the grass on the other side at a bad angle. I didn't. The ebay sleeve/perches survived that. I think I must have been doing 50 mph at the time.
Conclusion
I was kind of disappointed because my lap times kind of sucked. This is partly because of the hot weather. Still, I felt that I learned a lot more than I usually do from this track day. Maybe that is why I have a much longer entry. Stiff cars are faster but harder to drive. I felt that in my bones today. Being smooth pays off, and you should experiment with different lines and always use real data to make judgments on which is faster.
Notes on fitness
I am a pretty fit guy. I have stamina stacked up somewhere from my fight training days, and I still excercise a lot despite school. This summer, I have had two jobs and I barely get to train. So basically my fitness levels have dropped. I found myself taking longer breaks. I found the heat from the sun, firewall, transmission tunnel distracting quite a bit. This bothers me; I want to develop a mental toughness and get back into shape so that I can drive hard. Just like fighting, I think practicing hard driving under adverse, fatigued conditions is what makes you faster when you are not tired.
Air temperature
Fastest time 1:02.5. Only 0.2 seconds faster than my previous record. I think this shows how much impact air temperature has on laptimes. Data says I probably would have gone a full second and a bit more faster if the air temps were the same. 2% faster in all the corners, and the better handling balance allowed me to get a much better drive out of the corner. My rudimentary math shows that on this track, temperatures of 10 degrees differences nets about a second difference. Of course, if it gets really cold I think grip levels change also so the curve is probably not flat.
Some mixed feelings with this track day. First and foremost, the e-bay coilovers held up fine. Nothing broken and although I have not taken measurements yet, the ride height looks the same. I event went off the asphalt this day and it survived it just fine. I think the perches and sleeves work well although how it will do with 100+ mph incidents remains to be seen.
Conditions
It got very hot starting from very early in the morning. 80's throughout the morning and 90's past 11AM. In car temps must have been over 105 when the car wasn't moving. Very humid also. It reminded me of when I was living in Thailand.
Changes from my last event
Tire pressures: 36 front, 32 rear, later changed to 31 and 37.
Random eyebaleld toe-out settings
Max front camber (probably 2.5+ degrees)
Front ride height: 5"
Rear ride height: 5.5"
No corner balancing
(alignment and ride height set with 180lbs ballast in driver's seat)
Mobile 1 GL4 synthetic transmission fluid
Mobile 1 5w30 oil (I used to run 0w30)
Session 1
I immediately notice how much the car likes to oversteer. The oversteer hurt speed everywhere. The car would turn-in at much faster speeds but would not stay stable. On corner exit it punished me every time I got on the throttle. This session I managed to put two wheels off coming out of turn three. I spun out another time after turn-in at turn one. Not enough rear grip. Embarrased, I cut the session short and came back into the paddock area. I detached the rear sway bar and went right back out.
Session 1.5
Much better. The car was drivable again and I started adapting to the newly set-up car. The biggest thing I noticed was that the car was harder to drive. Not only was it faster in all of the corners and was more responsive, it was much less forgiving. I knew this would happen but experiencing it firsthand was something. By less forgiving, I mean that the envelope of "optimal" is a lot narrower. It felt like the tires had a smaller range of acceptable slip angle. I can't quite wrap my head around it but I hypothesize that the added grip is from a better contact patch resulting from better camber control, and the edginess is from decreased tire compliance from the higher spring rate. This session was spent trying to get used to the thinner performance envelopes. Tough! Even though I do not think I was driving as well as my later sessions, I logged my best time this session of 1:02.5 due to optimal temperatures.
Session 2
I am figuring out some new lines with the car's setup. The drive out of turn 3 completely depends on how smooth you were throughout turn 2. As hypothesized earlier, turns 5-6 became a double apex corner with this better handling setup. Fast time 1:02.7. I am starting to get more consistent. I am no doubt just driving better than I did last time.
I took a bit of a break after the third session to cool off and hydrate. I brought my awning. Thank goodness. Shade helps so much. Plus, it makes you instantly more popular on the track. I did get to meet some new people that day, but I was able to stay focused. I'm really a pretty social guy, but usually at the track I try and force myself to be a track loner so I can concentrate on driving.
Session 3
Last session, I spotted another Miata on track and I followed him a couple of laps. The car had more body roll than mine but it was definately not stock. I was curious on how it drove. The owner was a nice man named Mike. I offered Mike a drive in my car in exchange of the same in his. Some people get selfish about their tires and car. Not me; it was always beneficial to gather more data about different cars and different setup, especially if you have some way to log your data. Plus, if you are dealing with a better driver, you can learn a lot about how your car can be driven also. To my relief, Mike wasn't selfish either.
Mike's Miata is the same 1.6L Miata, with some sort of handling package installed. I had originally thought the car oversteered too much from watching him drive. However, I was pleasantly surprised. First, the power steering was nice. It made steering the car a lot more pleasant to drive, albeit at the expense of steering feedback. Second, due to the lower spring rates, the chassis and suspension reacted slower as wheels go through their travel motions. This gives you much more time to figure out what the car is doing and anticipate what is about to happen and react timely. The car did not oversteer and it was very neutral. It was comparable to my FM spring setup.
This car had front and rear sway bars. I think running adjustable front and rear bars with lower spring rates is really the answer, instead of eliminating the rear bar and running higher spring rates like most Miata guys do. My car is in the latter camp. It is hard to tell from data if that is better or not since my car's exhaust and lighter flywheel makes it accelerate faster, so I will have to wait to drive Mike's car again to use my butt-data-logger.
Session 4 and 5
I am beginning to experiment with different lines going into the turn 7-9 complex. This time I am entering the corner much faster; the new setup allows me to shift the weight of the car around and make the left turn right at the geometrical apex. I still can't figure out if coming in fast and barely making the lines is faster, or if coming in slow acellerating earlier is faster in this section. Data says coming in slower is 0.1 seconds faster than when I dive-bomb it. Unfortunately, in this session someone had kicked up dirt right after that apex so I could never tell if it were faster. It seems that I am losing 1-2 mph worth of acceleration from hitting the dirt.
On session 4 I went off-course. I think I almost flipped my car coming out of turn 3. At one of the laps, I had a very good drive out of turn 3. I was not used to all the speed and got two wheels off the track, maybe three. I flew back on, sliding. I thought to myself, "I might just flip this car in a few moments" as I was correcting the oversteer, thinking that I was going to end up in the grass on the other side at a bad angle. I didn't. The ebay sleeve/perches survived that. I think I must have been doing 50 mph at the time.
Conclusion
I was kind of disappointed because my lap times kind of sucked. This is partly because of the hot weather. Still, I felt that I learned a lot more than I usually do from this track day. Maybe that is why I have a much longer entry. Stiff cars are faster but harder to drive. I felt that in my bones today. Being smooth pays off, and you should experiment with different lines and always use real data to make judgments on which is faster.
Notes on fitness
I am a pretty fit guy. I have stamina stacked up somewhere from my fight training days, and I still excercise a lot despite school. This summer, I have had two jobs and I barely get to train. So basically my fitness levels have dropped. I found myself taking longer breaks. I found the heat from the sun, firewall, transmission tunnel distracting quite a bit. This bothers me; I want to develop a mental toughness and get back into shape so that I can drive hard. Just like fighting, I think practicing hard driving under adverse, fatigued conditions is what makes you faster when you are not tired.
Air temperature
Fastest time 1:02.5. Only 0.2 seconds faster than my previous record. I think this shows how much impact air temperature has on laptimes. Data says I probably would have gone a full second and a bit more faster if the air temps were the same. 2% faster in all the corners, and the better handling balance allowed me to get a much better drive out of the corner. My rudimentary math shows that on this track, temperatures of 10 degrees differences nets about a second difference. Of course, if it gets really cold I think grip levels change also so the curve is probably not flat.
I am on my plane now. It has been an annoying and agitating night with multiple delays. Getting yanked around here and there. I kept getting told that it was weather, but when I pressed the issue I discovered it was due to maintenance. This poor girl in front of me swapped tickets just like I did for another faster flight; except she believed the weather excuse and paid 40 dollars to do so. Turns out that staffing the second flight was contingent on the first flight. Wow! Airline staff could have figured out. Basically, this girl gave Jetblue 40 dollars so she can be late anyways. Caveat Emptor! Experience definitely counts in the airline business. Delta, while as ghetto as Jetblue, runs its flights much smoother. I don't understand why I keep flying Jetblue, it is really not worth the 30 dollar savings over Delta.
Note: Sorry, my report is over a month late. With the multiple jobs that I have been working I simply could not find the time to do this. Plus, I have been kickboxing-crazy. Every spare moment I had I spent at the gym. I am getting better and better, training with very good fighters. Every day something is bruised and I'm trying very hard not to fall asleep at work. I usually fail. Please forgive me, the head coach is a legendary former world champion! You wouldn't pass up this opportunity either. Back-dated on July 16th, post made on around July 9th
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