continued from above
Costas had driven this BMW at a NASA TT event in 2010 here at ECR and set the track record for TTD at 2:12.9, which is still intact, but did it at the time on some shredded 265/35/18 Yokohama A048s. Our goal this day was to see if we could beat that time on a better prepped version of the same car (it's now at the limit for TTD preparation for points). This Bimmer now has a fresh M54 motor, fresh 285/30/18 Hoosier R6s, but the race seats have been removed and an emissions legal exhaust has been added (3" high flow cat), so who knows? Amy and I planned on swapping sessions between both cars, but with only one video camera and one lap timer (the dreaded G-Tech RR) we would have to do some gear swapping.
The driver's meeting was at 7:30 and immediately after they wanted the Advanced group to go on track - which Amy and I were both signed up for. Amy managed to get several laps in the BMW, but I was still mounting the video camera, wiring up the new Sony remote to that (which worked great! Now I can turn the camera on/off, record, zoom, and even snap pictures from this small remote that can be clipped to the E-brake handle - all while strapped into the race seat). I got out for one lap before the checkered flag, so I didn't bother to record that session.
The ECR crew was running everyone in about 20 minute sessions, split between the Advanced, Intermediate and Beginners groups. A few weeks ago the pre-registered car count was pretty low, under 22 cars, so I started hustling up some attendance online, along with several others that were going. We saw some SCCA autocross regulars that heard about the event from my Facebook postings and e-mail bombardments, many of which had never done a track day before. After today they were now hooked! With about 30 entrants in the beginner class it was nice to see a lot of new folks trying out an HPDE track event for the first time. Fresh blood - This is what its all about! Now they know first hand how much they need camber plates and better suspension parts...
Lots and lots... and lots of Mustangs. I think the final car count was 48, which was excellent considering that this was only one day past the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year, and we saw 101°F temps!) and the first event put on by Five Star Ford. Excellent event, catered food, relaxed atmosphere, instructors, perfect SCCA corner workers, and the usual great ECR track crew.
Costas (black GT-1 Camaro) had the field covered with his hardware and talent, bringing the lightest, most powerful, tube-framed race car with the largest tires. If you got it, bring it! His videos showed a best lap of 1:51, which is mind-bogglingly-fast, and betters the NASA TTR record by a good 4 seconds. He'd be foolish
not to bring this car to the October NASA event to potentially get his name in the record books again. His buddy Mike brought his Gold/Orange GT-1 Camaro for some fun laps, but it's not nearly as wild and wooly as the black one. He's still having a lot of fun tracking it each time I see him out there.
Brian Hanchey of AST/Moton USA brought out his new track toy, a 2005 GT with some go fast goodies and suspension. This was his first track event or any real outing in the car, so he and Moton-USA VP (and AI Camaro racer) Mike Patterson wanted to get some shake down laps in after it received a new motor and some other ex-World Challenge bits (big Brembos, engine stuff, Torson T2R). He arrived on some heavy 18x9.5" wheels and 255mm BFGoodrich 300 treadwear tires that came with the car, but I thought those skinny tires were holding the performance back a good bit. I had brought the 295/35/18 Nitto NT-05s on the D-Force 18x10s to show off and possibly sell, so we mounted them on his Mustang for one session. These were better enough to drop his best lap time by about 2.9 seconds - NT05s still are not my favorite track "street tires", but they are a damn sight better than 255 BFG Comp TAs! Once again we realized that
tires matter.
He got a lot of good laps in, blowing out the old track cobwebs and getting some good data logged on the car and set-up. He had to deal with some needless overheating issues at the event, but after checking data today he saw that it had a theoretical 2:06 lap (with merged sectors from other laps; this sector analyzing is done all the time) - which isn't too shabby for 200 treadwear street tires! Throw on some big fat R compounds and it is knocking on the golden 2 minute barrier. We've turned a few wrenches on this car (made custom race seat slider brackets + some exhaust mods), but most of the drivetrain work was done by a GRAND AM race team. The motor and exhaust sound MEAN on this car and once this hotted-up motor is dyno-tuned and running on real tires, this unassuming black GT will be a track terror. Brian really convinced me to quit screwing around and BUY the damned Torsen T2R, which he raved about in this car.
Vorshlag BMW and Mustang - On Track Impressions
So the track day event ran super smoothly, but how about some lap times in our cars? Amy went out in the BMW for 3 sessions, where I timed her from pit wall during part of one session (I came in early - after the steering rack's "death shudder" started), but we were mostly out on track together at the same time - hence very few on-track pictures of any of our cars or others' in the Advance group. It wasn't until days later that I had the in-car videos rolling to know the lap times in the Mustang, but we never got times in the BMW.
She and I both ran the BMW on track at the same time as Hanchey's Mustang, who was running a new AIM Solo GPS lap timer ($399, or $699 with optional wired OBD-II data option). That little timer unit is
nice, and
I want one. The OBD-II data stream was quite impressive. The Solo has a great mount, easy to read display, on-board battery, predictive lap timing, it already had ECR in its memory, etc. If you are on the fence about what lap timer to get - just
go to Bimmerworld (or your favorite AIM dealer) and get an AIM Solo and be done with it.
more below...