Project Update for Feb 3, 2011: A little late, but here's the report from the track event last weekend (NASA @ MSR-Houston, Jan 29-30).
Pictures: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...ouston-012911/
On Friday morning we mounted two AMB transponders to the car: one wired transponder was registered for me in TTB as #193, and a second wireless transponder for Amy was entered as TTB #93, mounted straight to the front grill. The battery powered AMB mounted to the grill had a straight shot down to the ground, with no metal in its path. The wired unit was mounted to the inner fender, behind the strut on the RF corner, and also has a straight shot at the ground. We made an aluminum panel for the lighted switch panel that worked nicely.
AJ loaded up the car into the trailer Friday and Amy and I left at 3 pm; we made it from Dallas to MSR-Houston in about 5 hours, at a hair under 300 miles for the tow, of course with some traffic in downtown Houston. Somehow we managed to snag a good pit spot, in the dark, then unhooked the trailer and unloaded the car, and took it through tech at 8:30 pm Friday night. We got a logbook for the car and met a few NASA people while waiting in line, several of which mentioned reading this thread build-up. Reloaded the car in the trailer than went to find our hotel (luckily nearby - the race site is fairly remote).
Next morning at dawn we finally got to
see the facilities at MSR-Houston, and they were pretty impressive. Lots of buildings, nicely paved parking pit areas, a concessions stand, several buildings of garages, Sunoco fuel pumps, and even an active kart track that was running all day Saturday. The weather was a bit chilly off and on, but not bad, with overcast skies most of the day. We had our drivers meeting for TT and then another for instructors, and I was assigned an HPDE2 student. He didn't have a passengers seat (CMC2 race car) but he already knew the track well, and pointed out some areas to me to watch out for, since I'd never seen the track. Other than checking in with him all weekend, and keeping an eye on him when I was riding through with other students, there wasn't much for me to do there. This let me work with Amy directly most of the weekend.
The Time Trial group was merged with HPDE4 for the weekend, which made for a 27 car session (24 TT drivers). Ken O had his very well prepped TTB E46 M3 out on Friday testing, so he was very quick in Saturday's TT session one, running a 1:44.049 on Hoosier R6s, which was faster than all other TT cars except one (and his fastest time of the weekend). We only got 4 timed laps that session, due to session scheduling catch-up (the NASA folks did a great job of keeping the event on schedule), and the best I could get in traffic was a 1:58.907 (11th fastest). Since I was an instructor I was able to take Amy out and let her see the track while I ran that session, which let her see the track before she drove it.
Amy took the Mustang out in HPDE3 all day, but their small run group (about 8 cars) was combined with HPDE 1 & 2, just for the first HPDE session. This was a mess, as a very slow going HPDE1 student held up the entire field for the whole session, with 17 cars trailing in a train at parade lap speeds. This was because they forgot how to give a point by - and so did his instructor (we brought this up at the instructor meeting shortly afterward). We even came into the pits, waited, went back out, and still caught the train in 2 corners. Wasted session, but by session 2 they had HPDE3 all on its own, and Amy had clean laps the rest of the day.
Video of me driving in Session 2 - click to view
After the first session, T&S had times for everyone in TT so they were able to grid us up in order of lap times (fastest first, slowest last), which made it easier to get cleaner track time - well, as much as you can get with 27 cars in the session. It helped a little, and I managed to knock off over 7 seconds to a 1:51.199 in session 2, and managed a 1:50.503 in session 3. I was still 6 seconds behind the TTB leader Ken O, which is an eternity. Without real tires I suspect the car always will be. There were several other 2011 GTs out there, but all of them were in TTA running on Hoosiers or Continental Challenge slicks, and one of them was pretty damn quick at a 1:44.502 (TTA #50, shown below)
I was gaining less time per session, but I was still learning the track and getting the tires and shocks dialed in. The Radical that was holding me up a bit in the session 2 video found some serious speed in session 3 so he was ahead of me on the grid for session 4 (and considerably faster on track). Since he wasn't getting quicker times, Ken O switched to his Dunlop Star Specs for this session, so I gridded up behind him. I got some clear track time but Ken slowly pulled away from me this session. His best time on his street tires was 1:48.314, and I managed to meet my goal of "running in the 1:49s" by ticking off a 1:49.999 on lap 7, my last hot lap of the day. So Ken was still a solid 1.7 sec quicker in the M3 on similar tires in the same session, but at least it was no longer 6 seconds, which didn't
completely crush my ego.
For Ken on that day, his 275/35/18 Hoosier R6s were worth 4.3 seconds per lap. That's a huge chunk of time for one mod, but that's why its +11 points for his TT classing.
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