I FINALLY made it out to my first track event this past Friday at Streets of Willow hosted by Speed Ventures (They were great and definitely suggest SpeedVentures events to anyone looking to hit the track for the first time). Made the drive up on Thursday evening to avoid having to wake up EARLY. This didn't really work out as planned since I was so excited ended up waking up at 3am and couldn't go back to sleep. Big thanks to Jaku for being my instructor and everyone else for giving me pointers! It was great meeting everyone and I'm soooooo glad I didn't sell the car!!

My impressions:

My fastest lap of session 1 was a 1.43 and eventually worked my way down to a 1.33 during my 3rd session as my fastest lap of the day. Since I was in the white group, traffic was holding me back most of the day but it was a great learning experience. Here are a few things I noticed about the car throughout the day:

Tires:
The RE01-R's were awesome and provided great steering feedback and really progressive slides. They would get really greasy by my 5th lap or so and in the afternoon as it warmed up, would get greasy by the 3rd lap. The great part was that even as they got greasy, they were still very predictable and made it easy to slide through the turn.

Catch can:
One BIG thing I really need to install is a catch can... If I really pushed it coming out of the bowl, I'd end up with a ton of blow by and HUGE clouds of smoke... This caused me to bog and have to limp through the chicane section until I could burn off the oil.
[NOTE: Funny thing is that when I got home, my catch can was delivered at my door ]

Suspension:
The Megan track coilovers did great. I think I could go up in spring rate a little but they held up great and worked really well with the RE01-Rs. For the money, I'd definitely recommend these!!

Brakes:
The Carbotech XP10's were awesome and let me gave me a lot of confidence. I definitely need to work on finding the limits of these pads and seeing how late I can brake coming into the turns.
(Note: The Carbotech brake dust is SUPER easy to clean off )


Overall:
The car did really well and I was surprised at how hard I could "push" the car. I really think I can break into a 1.30 or maybe even a 1.29 now that I know what I'm doing wrong and where I can improve. What really helped was looking at the videos I took and seeing where I can improve and where I'm messing up. I can knock of some big chunks of time if I can just work on getting more speed coming off the front straight, more speed through the bowl, and more speed into the chicane.
I'm also thinking I could use a little more power to keep up with the AP2 guys... All I have right now is an exhaust and HF Cat. Hmm maybe a header and E-manage would do me right

Check out my videos of Sessions 3 & 4 here:
Session 3
I got my 1.33 during Session 3. You can still see that I'm lifting a lot coming into Turn 1 and could easily have dropped my times by getting more speed through Turn 1 and coming into the Chicane.
Session 4
I was finally getting into the 90mph range going through Turn 1 and getting my rhythm down. What sucked was that during my "traffic-free" laps I got too throttle happy before the front straight (15:05), then suffered from blow-by on the next lap (16:05), then mis-shifted (18:08)... Excuses, excuses...

Ok, enough talk and here are some pics!!

(Props to Jaku and blkblks2k for the blazing times!)


The beautiful Devonshire Inn




The support vehicle! (Big thanks to my gf for taking off and driving up with me!!)


"My S in track trim" (Full interior, sub, and spare tire )










The track


Other cars























In action












Drift King

 

 

nice lap time and nice pictures

 

Awesome write up Chad
Your car is sweet! I don't know how you got those photos to looks so good but man am I glad I have Silverstone too!
:33 is an awesome time! I'm still happy with my times but next time I'm gonna get an instructor too.

Bloy by BLOWS I think we both learned that a catch can is a must.

Thanks for posting my drift pics! Its not fast but its fun

 

Awesome man. Hope to catch you at BW.

Just curious, what are you running for your camera setup? I noticed on inside and one outside.

 

The instructor really helped me learn the line. That was the big thing I needed. At BW we can take passengers so hopefully I can get someone to show me the line there to You know what funny is that I came home and my catch can was delivered and sitting on my doorstep!!

 

I have a modifry camera mount for the inside vids and a GoPro camera for the outside. I'm trying to get my vids uploaded and will post them soon

 

i really want to hit up these tracks, maybe this winter i will get a flatbed.

 

^i will join!


Great photos, write up!

 

nice pics!! what are your camber settings?