S2000 Chrono Series - Round 1
02-13-2012, 11:46 AM
#23
Registered User
Hold on wait...are we naming the drivers or are we naming the cars? Cuz el guapo, the miracle, and especially the flying carpet could be references to the cars. Just sayin'
02-13-2012, 01:37 PM
#26
Registered User
By the way, here’s how my 1st round of Chrono was like:
Thanks to Ramez (RamezPower), I was able to join the competition for dirt cheap! I feel that I am still not completely confident with my current setup. I am still in “shake down” or “testing” mode so this track day was exactly what I needed.
Night before:
I didn’t make the decision to go until about 10pm. I informed Ramez of my interest to take his spot and he responded quickly. As soon as I got the go, I immediately proceeded in prepping the car for track.
-changed brake pads
-changed brake rotors
-changed wheels/tires
-installed rear wing
-installed g2x data logger
-searched, found, and mounted radar detector
-changed engine oil
-changed diff oil
-packed car with tools and all track related stuff
I was finally done right around 12 midnight. I then cleaned up and went to bed for some much needed rest before the drive. Yea…that didn’t happen. I ended having my eyes closed for over 3hrs with absolutely NO sleep. I finally said Eff it, got up, and just started getting ready to leave for the track. Left for the track around 4am.
Arrival at Thill:
After getting gas and breakfast, I was able to get to the gates at 6:45am the plan was to take a nap since the gates aren’t scheduled to open until 7:30am. Less than 5 minutes from my arrival, the gates open. Greeeat. There goes my potential power nap. After signing the waiver, went ahead and found some nice covered spots and reserved 5 additional spots for the homies. Afterwards, I took a look around and as it turns out, the crazy fog that I had to go through on the way up also covered the whole entire track. Not to worry as the weather report states that it was scheduled to burn off by 10am. Everything was going okay so far…until the announcer announced that the Chrono meeting was not until 9:20 and that we are not required to attend the regular driver’s meeting. Awesome…that means I could’ve slept all the way until 7am had I been able to sleep in the first place! Oh well….can’t do anything now….
As I waited, I went ahead and adjusted my suspension to a base setup. Having absolutely no clue on where my clickers should be yet, I had them set at just a tad more than half for both rebound and compression all the way around and planned on adjusting throughout the day. This is a great test day for me since this will be the first time I’m running the car without a passenger. Now I can just focus on what the car/suspension/wing is doing versus talking to my passenger the whole time.
Practice:
Track was somewhat damp and the fog was still burning away. First lap out (warm up lap) a mysterious white s2000 with a gt wing and orange wheels and mirrors
goes off on turn 10. A few laps in, patrick’s orange 350z’s power steering goes out permanently. I took this session at an extremely slow pace of 2:07 just to feel out the suspension and see what I should adjust first, see how my body is coping with the no sleep, and to try and get familiar with the track once again since I haven’t ran bypass in quite some time. I was unable to finish my session not because of car issues or breaking anything…but because...well….i had to throw up 
no sleep or barely any sleep the night before a trackday is EXTREMELY challenging. Not to mention VERY dangerous as your body is in a somewhat unpredictable state!
Nevertheless, I was able to pin point what I wanted to adjust on the car first. I wanted to only adjust 1 thing at a time to see what kind of improvement, if any, that one thing changed. One thing to note though, I was still having TONS of issues with my tune. On my last trackday (first trackday with the AEM EMS), I was having bogging issues on turn 1 and 8. Now it seems to be happening all over the track. I think I know now what the issue is and it has nothing to do with oil (or at least from what I understand). I won’t get into details with this as Jei and I already plan on data logging on the March 4th Blacktrax Trackday to see what’s going on.
Qualifying:
For this session, I decided to add more rebound in the rear and leave everything else alone. It worked just as I thought it would! Now the back slides around with just the right amount. I drove around as much as I can to feel how I like or don’t like this setup. Unfortunately, my session was once again cut short because I was feeling nauseous and felt like round 2 of vomiting action. Yup. 2 round happened. Track was great and was completely dry at this point. I don’t recall of any incident happening in our group. It went pretty smooth from my opinion.
Now that I was able to push it a bit more, I found a TON of push on high speed corners. This and the bogging issues combined did not help me much with getting any real competitive times logged in. All I was able to get was a measly 2:04.6xx (can’t recall the exact figure).
Lunch time:
The plan was to have a relaxing and somewhat healthy lunch at subway. As I got to the gates of Thill, I heard and felt this noise coming from my brakes. Turns out I cracked yet again another front rotor if you don’t know, this is where “sir breaksalot” was derived from. So instead of sticking to the plan, I had to get my lunch to go, re fuel, head back to the track, eat my lunch as my brakes cooled down, swap out rotors.
First Chrono Heat:
Prior to the heat starting, I decided to back my wing out by 1 notch reducing the rear end downforce to see if it would help with my high speed understeer. This is it. Game time! I don’t know where everyone’s positions were. All I know were the 3 people infront of me. It was Ivan in the Apex Blue CR (guy that previously owned Martin’s S2000), a white 350Z with green wheels, a modified 370Z and myself. Warm up lap. Ivan lets the 2 Z’s pass. He then eventually lets me go ahead of him. Before the warm up lap was over, the white 350Z lets the 370Z go. I kept some distance between them and myself just to get a nice time. Warm up lap over and first hot lap was a go! I immediately caught up to them by turn 2. The white Z was a bit sloppy. Nowhere for me to pass cleanly as they had more hp. I tried to be patient and stayed behind. As we finished the first lap, I tailed them extremely close just to give them a heads up to let me go. nope. Nothing. More sloppiness. Slideways on some corners. Not a nice drift slide, but just twitching out of control slide. I stayed back before lap 2 was over to see if I can get a clean lap. Lap 3 I caught up too fast again. Still won’t let me pass and more sloppy driving. On turn 8, they unexpectedly slowed down a bit too much sending me into some slideways action at over 90mph. SCARY! I had this weird vision in my head that I was going to go off and flip my car! At this point, I figured I was not going to get my clean lap and would much rather just end it before I feel like vomiting again. Or worse, go off track. So instead of finishing my third lap, I just got out.
As I was driving around the paddock, the track went into complete silence. I figured Chrono session was over. I kept driving around to cool the car down. 5 minutes into driving around, the whole track was still quiet. I started driving back to my parking spot and noticed that none of the chrono guys were back yet. I looked over and I see Adam stopped on top of turn 5 with a red flag . Crap. I parked and asked what had happened from the spectators. I was informed that the white Z that was infront of me had crashed and flipped the car multiple times coming out of turn 8 (typically a 100+mph turn for the front runners). It happened on lap 4. The lap right after I got out. Had I not gotten out, I would’ve either had a super close front row seat of the incident, or possibly would’ve been part of it.
Scary stuff indeed! In the end, the guy was alive and well. How he managed to pull that off, we have no idea. Photos and Video’s will not be posted by me out of respect for the guy. This served as a reminder to me and everyone else out there that although this is an extremely fun and exciting sport, it doesn’t go without its dangers.
In my 2 laps in, I was only able to knock out half a second recording a lap time of 2:04.143
I decided not to change anything in my setup as I did not get a chance to really feel out the car and what it was capable of in its current settings.
Second Chrono Heat:
Car felt great! Backing out the wing for Heat 1 worked! This time, I had no traffic infront of me, so I was just able to concentrate on getting my times and feeling for the car to see what to adjust next. Well, that would’ve been an easy task had it not been for my stupid stomach turning, feeling nauseous, bogging which I believe was adding up to at least a full second maybe-more-maybe-less, and the horrific accident on turn 8 making me lift a bit due to fear.
This time, I was able to finish 3 clean laps before needing to get out early, yet again, and head straight to the bathroom for the 3rd and final round of vomiting. I was only able to clock a time of 2:03.3xx inching close to anish’s best time of the day, but still failing to beat it.
Third Chrono Heat:
As much as I wanted to beat Anish today, and this was the PERFECT session to do it in since the temperatures have now warmed up to a nice 60 or 61 degrees, lots of open space due to attendees not being able to attend the last and final heat from mechanical failures and what not, I failed to do so. I had to sit this one out due to my still feeling nauseous and my vomiting. I’ll get you next time Anish!
Conclusion:
First round was a success. It was definitely a lot of fun despite all the incidents throughout the day. It would’ve been more fun had I gotten some sleep and had there been more presence from the likes of jenn, vu, dan, and everyone else. Nevertheless, I was able to dial in my settings a bit more. I still have more work to do as my car is still not setup the way I want it to be, but it’s getting there.
Special thanks to Martin for driving my car home as I slept I’ve never had that happen before and I must say, It was very nice to just relax and not have to drive for 2-3 hours back home after a long trackday for once.
Thanks to Ramez (RamezPower), I was able to join the competition for dirt cheap! I feel that I am still not completely confident with my current setup. I am still in “shake down” or “testing” mode so this track day was exactly what I needed.
Night before:
I didn’t make the decision to go until about 10pm. I informed Ramez of my interest to take his spot and he responded quickly. As soon as I got the go, I immediately proceeded in prepping the car for track.
-changed brake pads
-changed brake rotors
-changed wheels/tires
-installed rear wing
-installed g2x data logger
-searched, found, and mounted radar detector
-changed engine oil
-changed diff oil
-packed car with tools and all track related stuff
I was finally done right around 12 midnight. I then cleaned up and went to bed for some much needed rest before the drive. Yea…that didn’t happen. I ended having my eyes closed for over 3hrs with absolutely NO sleep. I finally said Eff it, got up, and just started getting ready to leave for the track. Left for the track around 4am.
Arrival at Thill:
After getting gas and breakfast, I was able to get to the gates at 6:45am the plan was to take a nap since the gates aren’t scheduled to open until 7:30am. Less than 5 minutes from my arrival, the gates open. Greeeat. There goes my potential power nap. After signing the waiver, went ahead and found some nice covered spots and reserved 5 additional spots for the homies. Afterwards, I took a look around and as it turns out, the crazy fog that I had to go through on the way up also covered the whole entire track. Not to worry as the weather report states that it was scheduled to burn off by 10am. Everything was going okay so far…until the announcer announced that the Chrono meeting was not until 9:20 and that we are not required to attend the regular driver’s meeting. Awesome…that means I could’ve slept all the way until 7am had I been able to sleep in the first place! Oh well….can’t do anything now….
As I waited, I went ahead and adjusted my suspension to a base setup. Having absolutely no clue on where my clickers should be yet, I had them set at just a tad more than half for both rebound and compression all the way around and planned on adjusting throughout the day. This is a great test day for me since this will be the first time I’m running the car without a passenger. Now I can just focus on what the car/suspension/wing is doing versus talking to my passenger the whole time.
Practice:
Track was somewhat damp and the fog was still burning away. First lap out (warm up lap) a mysterious white s2000 with a gt wing and orange wheels and mirrors
goes off on turn 10. A few laps in, patrick’s orange 350z’s power steering goes out permanently. I took this session at an extremely slow pace of 2:07 just to feel out the suspension and see what I should adjust first, see how my body is coping with the no sleep, and to try and get familiar with the track once again since I haven’t ran bypass in quite some time. I was unable to finish my session not because of car issues or breaking anything…but because...well….i had to throw up no sleep or barely any sleep the night before a trackday is EXTREMELY challenging. Not to mention VERY dangerous as your body is in a somewhat unpredictable state!Nevertheless, I was able to pin point what I wanted to adjust on the car first. I wanted to only adjust 1 thing at a time to see what kind of improvement, if any, that one thing changed. One thing to note though, I was still having TONS of issues with my tune. On my last trackday (first trackday with the AEM EMS), I was having bogging issues on turn 1 and 8. Now it seems to be happening all over the track. I think I know now what the issue is and it has nothing to do with oil (or at least from what I understand). I won’t get into details with this as Jei and I already plan on data logging on the March 4th Blacktrax Trackday to see what’s going on.
Qualifying:
For this session, I decided to add more rebound in the rear and leave everything else alone. It worked just as I thought it would! Now the back slides around with just the right amount. I drove around as much as I can to feel how I like or don’t like this setup. Unfortunately, my session was once again cut short because I was feeling nauseous and felt like round 2 of vomiting action. Yup. 2 round happened. Track was great and was completely dry at this point. I don’t recall of any incident happening in our group. It went pretty smooth from my opinion.
Now that I was able to push it a bit more, I found a TON of push on high speed corners. This and the bogging issues combined did not help me much with getting any real competitive times logged in. All I was able to get was a measly 2:04.6xx (can’t recall the exact figure).
Lunch time:
The plan was to have a relaxing and somewhat healthy lunch at subway. As I got to the gates of Thill, I heard and felt this noise coming from my brakes. Turns out I cracked yet again another front rotor
if you don’t know, this is where “sir breaksalot” was derived from. So instead of sticking to the plan, I had to get my lunch to go, re fuel, head back to the track, eat my lunch as my brakes cooled down, swap out rotors. First Chrono Heat:
Prior to the heat starting, I decided to back my wing out by 1 notch reducing the rear end downforce to see if it would help with my high speed understeer. This is it. Game time! I don’t know where everyone’s positions were. All I know were the 3 people infront of me. It was Ivan in the Apex Blue CR (guy that previously owned Martin’s S2000), a white 350Z with green wheels, a modified 370Z and myself. Warm up lap. Ivan lets the 2 Z’s pass. He then eventually lets me go ahead of him. Before the warm up lap was over, the white 350Z lets the 370Z go. I kept some distance between them and myself just to get a nice time. Warm up lap over and first hot lap was a go! I immediately caught up to them by turn 2. The white Z was a bit sloppy. Nowhere for me to pass cleanly as they had more hp. I tried to be patient and stayed behind. As we finished the first lap, I tailed them extremely close just to give them a heads up to let me go. nope. Nothing. More sloppiness. Slideways on some corners. Not a nice drift slide, but just twitching out of control slide. I stayed back before lap 2 was over to see if I can get a clean lap. Lap 3 I caught up too fast again. Still won’t let me pass and more sloppy driving. On turn 8, they unexpectedly slowed down a bit too much sending me into some slideways action at over 90mph. SCARY! I had this weird vision in my head that I was going to go off and flip my car! At this point, I figured I was not going to get my clean lap and would much rather just end it before I feel like vomiting again. Or worse, go off track. So instead of finishing my third lap, I just got out.
As I was driving around the paddock, the track went into complete silence. I figured Chrono session was over. I kept driving around to cool the car down. 5 minutes into driving around, the whole track was still quiet. I started driving back to my parking spot and noticed that none of the chrono guys were back yet. I looked over and I see Adam stopped on top of turn 5 with a red flag . Crap. I parked and asked what had happened from the spectators. I was informed that the white Z that was infront of me had crashed and flipped the car multiple times coming out of turn 8 (typically a 100+mph turn for the front runners). It happened on lap 4. The lap right after I got out. Had I not gotten out, I would’ve either had a super close front row seat of the incident, or possibly would’ve been part of it.
Scary stuff indeed! In the end, the guy was alive and well. How he managed to pull that off, we have no idea. Photos and Video’s will not be posted by me out of respect for the guy. This served as a reminder to me and everyone else out there that although this is an extremely fun and exciting sport, it doesn’t go without its dangers.
In my 2 laps in, I was only able to knock out half a second recording a lap time of 2:04.143
I decided not to change anything in my setup as I did not get a chance to really feel out the car and what it was capable of in its current settings.
Second Chrono Heat:
Car felt great! Backing out the wing for Heat 1 worked! This time, I had no traffic infront of me, so I was just able to concentrate on getting my times and feeling for the car to see what to adjust next. Well, that would’ve been an easy task had it not been for my stupid stomach turning, feeling nauseous, bogging which I believe was adding up to at least a full second maybe-more-maybe-less, and the horrific accident on turn 8 making me lift a bit due to fear.
This time, I was able to finish 3 clean laps before needing to get out early, yet again, and head straight to the bathroom for the 3rd and final round of vomiting. I was only able to clock a time of 2:03.3xx inching close to anish’s best time of the day, but still failing to beat it.
Third Chrono Heat:
As much as I wanted to beat Anish today, and this was the PERFECT session to do it in since the temperatures have now warmed up to a nice 60 or 61 degrees, lots of open space due to attendees not being able to attend the last and final heat from mechanical failures and what not, I failed to do so. I had to sit this one out due to my still feeling nauseous and my vomiting. I’ll get you next time Anish!
Conclusion:
First round was a success. It was definitely a lot of fun despite all the incidents throughout the day. It would’ve been more fun had I gotten some sleep and had there been more presence from the likes of jenn, vu, dan, and everyone else. Nevertheless, I was able to dial in my settings a bit more. I still have more work to do as my car is still not setup the way I want it to be, but it’s getting there.
Special thanks to Martin for driving my car home as I slept
I’ve never had that happen before and I must say, It was very nice to just relax and not have to drive for 2-3 hours back home after a long trackday for once.
02-13-2012, 02:32 PM
#30
Registered User
Same excuse, few times! LOL.
That being said, why a lot of people worry about posting crashed car or something? Shame?
I love posting video of my crash. I make mistakes, I'm human. From the video I can learn from my mistakes and others can too. Remember, the best drivers in the world crashes.
That being said, why a lot of people worry about posting crashed car or something? Shame?
I love posting video of my crash. I make mistakes, I'm human. From the video I can learn from my mistakes and others can too. Remember, the best drivers in the world crashes.