Racing Ready

Things happen fast at Harris Hill Road, and not just the racing cars.

Within 10 minutes of arriving at the Porsche Club of America DE (Driver Education/Driving Event on 11/8/2008), I found Eric who tracked down Bo Rivers (his father-in-law & owner of Harris Hill Road).

Bo said, “Let’s go!”  We went into the garage area of the club house and jumped into his Panoz GT Racer.

Bo wanted to get out before the Porsche drivers started their event.  I climbed over the wide sill & plunked down into the racing seat, getting the 4-point belts on and adjusted quickly, while Bo got out on track.  At 8:40am the track was cold and so were the tires.

As a true race car, the biggest first impression you notice is the noise.  With the combination of straight cut transmission/transaxle gears and NO sound insulation, you heard all sorts of mechanical noise.  It was SO loud,  It was hard to even hear the cold tires slide & protest their way around the corners.

There was only one problem with this drive-along, it was only 2 laps - TOO short!  But I did value this good, quick introduction to high performance, road course driving.  In only 2 laps I found it more involving than the 10 laps I did with Ron this past July.

That Panoz might not look like much, but wow, it’s a balls to the wall, meaning business, full-on race car!  It can take full advantage of their 1.8 mile road racing track.  Here’s a little shot from the back of Eric’s business card:

Later in the afternoon, Eric (he manages the day-to-day operations at Harris Hill Road) sat down with me and strongly recommended I come back up to H2R during the slow winter season & get some track time with one of their cars.  I WILL be definitely be in touch with Eric about this proposal.

Racing Ready really does need to get some serious seat time to get beyond wannabe racer status!

Dan

It was a long & busy weekend - I had to “rest & recover” at work today.

A very brief overview:

• Saturday, 11/8, at Harris Hill Road, watching a variety of Porsches & other vehicles with a couple of interesting surprises

• Sunday, 11/9, at the SASCA AutoX #11 at the AT&T Center, learning to deal with my car’s & my driving shortcomings, on a very interesting, varied course

It’s good that I have gotten out of my comfort zone and started to autocross my Nissan Maxima.  In 2 weeks, for the SPOKES autocross, I have committed to co-driving with Jerry (my mentor) in his stock 1990 Mazda Miata.  I think that will definitely increase the fun factor at an autocross event for me.

I made a decision (that could vary) about what I will do at future autocrosses.  Up until the 10/19/2008 autocross, I was enjoying visiting with people & learning about their variety of rides being flogged about the course.  Subsequently, I’d have plenty of content to provide you, dear reader, to post in this blog.

You would think after a busy weekend at 2 events I would have plenty to write about here.  It was not so - twice the opportunity & about 1/3 the content.  Well, I’m thinking I will autocross every 2nd or 3rd event & play the blogger/observer role the rest of the time.  I may also co-drive with other owners cars, if they’ll have me.

Still working through my path here…forward with Racing Ready.

Dan

This weekend I will be busy with 2 local motorsports events;

• Saturday, 11/8, I’ll be at Harris Hill Road, watching the Coastal Bend Region of the Porsche Club of America (out of Corpus Christi, TX) running hot laps (& I may be able to get a few in myself!!!)
• Sunday, 11/9, I’ll be at the SASCA AutoX #11 at the AT&T Center, here in San Antonio, TX

Therefore, there will be light to non-existent posting for the next 2 days.  Not to worry, it’ll be for a good cause.  I’ll be getting more information to post here & more real-world racing experience.

Team Racing Ready will be busy, out in force this weekend!

Dan

OK - yesterday you saw the video.  Today, here are the hard, official numbers & results of what happened at my first participating autocross (at the 10/19/2008 SASCA event).

I have talked about tire pressure adjustments previously.  Here’s what I did with my 2000 Nissan Maxima SE, on ‘BF Goodrich g-Force Sport’ tires.  Since I knew that SASCA provides compressed air right next to the starting grid on site, I drove there on my standard 36 PSI in all 4 tires.

I got different air pressure suggestions throughout the day.  In general, you want to increase your tire pressures much higher than you would ordinarily drive on daily.  Here’s a table with the pressures I ran on with their associated runs.

The changes & adjustments were based on what the car was doing, handling wise.  I asked a number of co-competitors for advice based on what I had experienced from the previous run.  It felt relatively balanced on those last runs - tha’t probably where I” start at next time.  I also had to borrow somebody’s water spray bottle to assist in cooling down my overworked front tires - they got very hot.  I couldn’t leave my hand on them.  In contrast, the rear tires just seemed along for the ride - they were hardly warm.

BTW, while letting air out of my tires in preparation to drive home, I noted that my tires’ sidewalls stated that the maximum tire pressure should not exceed 44 PSI…whoops!  Hmmm?

In the afternoon, during the 2nd heat, I started to experiment, in an awkward fashion, with left foot braking.  It sure seemed weird, but after a few runs I sort of understood what it could do to negate my car’s whale-like tendency to understeer.  It also brought back memories of riding, then driving with Bob Bondurant in another parking lot, here in San Antonio years ago - but that’s another story, for another post here.

My run times went from ho-hum, to atrocious to finally, sort of, a little better.  Overall, I did improve my initial time that I started with Ricky, the SASCA Vice President.  He rode along to make sure I knew what I was doing doing my first autocross out in 15 years.  Here’s a table of my 8 runs and the associated times - not exactly the story of consistency…

I have gotten over the initial disappointment I had & will take myself & the next event (this Sunday, 11/9) much less seriously.  I’ve got to realize, I’m with friends, working on the racing dream, having a good time.  I think going to something rear wheel drive in the future will increase my fun factor.

The final results?  I was 5th out of 7 entries in the Novice (Pax) class.  I’m happy I wasn’t last!  Pax is a formula based system of handicapping to compare times of cars which are not in the same class.  If you’re really interested, here are all the times from the 10/19/2008 SASCA autocross.

Racing Ready wants to acknowledge & thank Wei for giving great & sensible advice during the day.  He tries to help anyone who ventures to ask for help, and he’s a great guy, too!

As to improvements for this coming Sunday’s SASCA autocross?  Nothing in the performance arena, I’m afraid.  I spent it all a month ago on replacing all 6 ignition coils & new plugs (but it’s still acting likes it’s misfiring on the same cylinder).  I replaced both fog light bulbs last weekend, and I found out 3 out of 4 side marker lights are out.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any good ‘Net information as to how to get access to them yet.  I’ll be damned if I’ll pay the local Nissan dealership $65 plus tax just to replace 3 little bulbs.  If you can point me to a forum or other site that can help, I’d really appreciate it.

Till the next time…

Dan

Here’s more about my first autocross & discovering some handling quirks of my 2000 Nissan Maxima SE (at the 10-19-2008 SASCA autocross).

One of my initial concerns was that my car is in the same class (G Stock) as cars such as VW Golf GTIs.  That didn’t seem fair to me.  But upon reviewing the video that Brian took of my runs, I found an amusing common autocross handling issue with both of our vehicles.

They will both lift their rear inside tire upon severe cornering input.  This is an action shot of Paalo at speed in his VW Golf GTI, at the SPOKES autocross on 10/5/2008.  Look closely (or click to enlarge), you can see that inside right rear tire lifting up.

Installing a front anti-roll bar would greatly reduce the major tendency for my car to plow (aka: understeer) through the corners.  For now, I think I’ll save my money.  Anyway. see for yourself how my car “danced” through this course with 97K miles plus on the clock.

These are screenshots of moving video - excuse the lack of detail, but you can see what I mean.  Here’s a better shot (with all 4 tires on the ground)!

For those of you who’ve been waiting, here’s my first run video on YouTube:

I will post more about the learning progress, how I made my way through my first autocross of this century.  Racing Ready was there to document this for you!

Dan

Looking at an autocross layout map, even walking a course can only somewhat familiarize yourself with a new course.  Running the course at speed is a “whole ‘nother kettle of fish”.

Take the case in point of the last SASCA autocross of 10/19/2008.  I can relate to this event more any of the previous autocross events that I’ve attended this year.  This was where I lost my autocross “virginity” after 15 years.

Below is the original, unmarked course layout map.  This is the “before” version.

Before...

Below is the revised, course layout map I had marked up/edited.  This is the “after” version.  Click on the image to see better detail of my drawn line versus the cone locations.

After !

You may beg to differ on my sketching of the layout - that’s fine.  I’m new at this.  This is what I felt was close to the best line for my front wheel drive car, on that 1st day for me.  Competitors of different cars & experience levels would probably define a more educated, different path.  Whatever…

Let me illustrate how driving through a specific corner a number of times helps to better find the proper line on corner #2.  This happened to be the same corner I had done corner worker duty (details here).  While watching many drivers go through that corner, we were better able to see what would be a better line than we thought initially.

Here is an illustration of an initial “bad” racing line (red line w/purple arrow) & an “experienced” racing line green line w/ blue arrow) for corner #2.  Doing what “Mr. Green Racer” did, swing wide before that final cone in the left-handed sweeper, set him up better for that right pointing cone that many competitors hit in the first heat, and hardly at all in the second heat.

My point here is that these lines aren’t so easy to see until after driving them a number of times.  Thankfully, we had eight runs to try to get it right.  I improved only slightly, but the key is, I did improve!  More about my full-on experience on another day…

Racing Ready is willing to learn more…

Dan

wheelspecs.com window sticker

Paalo, of Golf GTI DSG (Direct Shift Gearbox) fame (and purveyor of wheel specifications fame at wheelpecs.com), had sent me the following, to give me some pointers for preparing for my first participatory autocross, on 10/19/2008.

Golf GTI on grid waiting for Paalo

Start at 45 front and 50 rear.  Be sure to re-check them before runs.  If you can get some clean runs in, but still feel like you want a little more precision from the car, bump them up another 5.  The trick is getting in some runs you feel at least slightly happy with before you start trying to change things.  If they start feeling really slippery, they’re getting greasy and you’ll need to start spraying them to cool the tires, but it’s not something I’d worry about your first time out - just want to make sure you know there’s a difference between slippery due to greasiness and wonky handling due to pressures.  It’s already getting cooler so greasiness shouldn’t be much of a factor although your compound does get harder with age ……..  Just have to drive em’ and see.

Paalo at speed

Thanks to the useful resources of SASCA (a source of compressed air to increase tire pressures), I went back & forth with tire pressures between 50 PSI to 42 PSI.  Having 8 runs to get my car sorted out got me a chance to learn how my car reacts with different pressures front & rear…

I had planned to post more information about my first autocross run specifics, but I haven’t yet been able to get the screen shot images to save correctly.  I’m working on this as I want to show you something fun, something my car has in common with the VW Golf!

Racing Ready is working to show you more…

Dan

Obviously I enjoy most aspects of the motorsports scene.  It’s why I write this blog.

But I want to take this blog beyond the “hobbyist” level.  I’m trying to make the look & feel more professional, and I’ve to moved onto a third theme.  This theme is of the 3-column variety, and it gives me more flexibility to be creative.  You will be able to navigate the site more intuitively and you will be able to view & interact with other content and ads more professionally.

Again, as most of you know, this IS a work in progress - please be patient.  Besides the look and feel, I am slowly working on building site visitor traffic.  I REALLY appreciate your time spent reading my thoughts, observations and enjoying the photos.  I DO ask one favor - please let your friends know about RacingReady.com.

Racing Ready thanks you for your readership & I look forward to any comment, suggestions or even rants that you may offer.

Dan