Event #8

[justkickin]

Congrats to Chris on the class win and top pax time of the day.

Was a great event. Enjoyed the course. Found it mixed speed and technical elements nicely. The small speed adjustments in the middle are fun and really reward looking ahead and are offset by the heavy braking at the pivots, which today turned my rotors blue from the heat. 

Chris's run 4.

 

My slightly slower run 4. 

 

[Magner]

Thanks for posting Tim,

Overall pretty fun but I have to admit this course was overly favoring cars with power, the start was a wide open drag strip, the pair of north walls were straights and the finish was flat from the last pivot to the finish, all of which required more horsepower than skill. That's not a great recipe for parity or fun for all in my opinion. Would prefer to see tight starts that don't require a drag launch or finishes that force throttle lifts or braking between the pivot and the finish.

 

How I didn't hit that last pointer before the south pivot is a miracle on my 4th run. I did however manage to throw away my faster 3rd run by running over the last 2 cones on the wall exiting the south pivot, dumb dumb move.

 

Alternate views:

My 3th:

 

Tim's 4th:

 

[nishanna]

What speed were you at when you were hitting the rev limiter in 2nd gear?

[justkickin]

On 7/9/2017 at 10:44 AM, nishanna said:

What speed were you at when you were hitting the rev limiter in 2nd gear?

It's about 113. My last run was the only time I didn't risk the shift to 3rd through the finish. Unfortunately Harry's never made it to the finish so I don't know what speeds I was hitting through the lights on the first runs. 

[MRS Joe]

If the limiter is 113, that was too fast by the rule book. It's fun once in a blue moon but that is riskier when/if an off happens. Not many cars can do over 100 in second. 

 Nice job of wrestling the car around. Chris, over drove/over worked though as I do at times. Tim was smoother at times but both could use a bit of throttle modulation. I think I see double inputs several times on Tim ( outside of correcting oversteer) and you just were hanging the back end out lots chris. 

Could be setup on the new tires that the rear is looser but a tighter line with less walk from the rear would be a bit faster. Did either of you try third through the course? I found that easier in a vette on a quick course once. 

Then again, who am I to critique, I just wish I was there  

Nice job guys.

 

[Magner]

4 hours ago, MRS Joe said:

Then again, who am I to critique, I just wish I was there  

Nice job guys.

 

Absolutely need to work on throttle modulation, my Calgary videos made that very clear, I consciously worked on it last event, but there's more room to improve. Come teach me at the level 2 school this week.

Car is slightly loose at St Andrews, but was near perfect on the grippy surface in Calgary, I suspect any changes done locally will need to be dialed back for Lincoln (where our local cars are extremely tight if setup for St Andrews). Since you made me think about it I would say the car is neutral on turn-in, it can get neutral/slight oversteer mid corner but it's mostly oversteering on corner exit on throttle (duh, it's a 400hp car on 265 wide street tires). I suspect a wider rear tire or slightly stiffer front bar or less rear rebound, or more toe in the rear would help balance that sightly at St Andrews but I'd rather be forced to learn to drive with it. The biggest correction on my 4th run was from the painted X going south, it had just stopped raining before my run and made it slick, I didn't make a mental note to hold back just a tad before the run, and the correction pushed me off line until the pivot. The other correction never felt like whoa moments, just keeping it online. One of the fun parts of running with Tim is comparing how differently we approach things on course. Definitely have a few things to learn from each other.

 

[justkickin]

Joe, can you explain more the "double inputs" please? I will be at the L2 if you care to have a go on some old Z2's and stock front pads. 

My plan this weekend was to go out fast, then tighten and tidy things up over the next 3 runs. I feel like I succeeded with my plan, just didn't accelerate it enough to beat Chris. 

As you all know, I don't mind getting beat in my own car and I am having a ton of fun learning from Chris and v.v. as we both strive to go faster. The fact that the car is under tired just adds to the challenge, something we will have more tools to cope more with soon enough, so I can save the stock shocks for resale (that is my story and I am sticking to it..lol). 

P.S. Chris, adding rear toe is easy, don't even need a jack...food for thought. 

[helix]

Thanks for the feedback, will take note of the high-speed start and heavy braking before pivot. Will further dial the speed down in future events, but overall, I thought this is one of the slower course I have designed thus far, and the # of cone calls has dropped significantly compare to previous events.

[Shawn]

I think the cone calls dropped because it was a fairly simple layout and simple elements with some room to get it wrong. I still have not had a chance to look at my video but I to can get to 113 at the top of second and I only hit the limiter in the north section. Clearly I wasn't pushing as hard as I should have...but I guess I knew that already based on my times.

[MRS Joe]

14 hours ago, justkickin said:

Joe, can you explain more the "double inputs" please? I will be at the L2 if you care to have a go on some old Z2's and stock front pads. 

My plan this weekend was to go out fast, then tighten and tidy things up over the next 3 runs. I feel like I succeeded with my plan, just didn't accelerate it enough to beat Chris. 

You weren't turning the wheel once and holding it to keep smooth arcs between elements. You would turn the steering twice, instead of setting the steering and then using the throttle to position the car in the corner/element. Additional steering input loads the rear more laterally, and will make the rear looser then it actually is at peak lateral g when sustained, as your currently not riding the peak grip but working it back and forth from it and chris is going beyond that peak grip limit  

The only correction I try to do is for slides.  Set and hold, where you seem to have some extra inputs. Maybe as you turned in early or the back wiggles making it unnerving.

but I'm watching through an outside cam. In car catches more detail there. 

I'm not that much of a fan of that view as you only see how far your off cones in your view.

If it doesn't make sense we can discuss it. I'm not in L2 but there's a very small chance I may pop out Sunday. 

Helix, simpler courses will have less cones and as such have less cones hit. 

If you place the cones further offset from each other, less cones can still control speed well. I'd just have had a cone on the far side of the course to go around instead of a drag start, and adjust a few elements for higher offsets through the mid section. 

[Beau]

I enjoyed the course this past Saturday! Yes, it was a bit fast in a couple of sections, but that's not the end of the world. It's good to have a mix - maybe one or two higher speed courses followed by one or two lower speed courses. That way you get equal number of complaints from guys with slow cars and guys with fast cars! You'll never please everyone. 

BTW, I'm talking about small changes here - "higher speed" would be around 105-110 km/h in a 'vette in a couple of sections, where lower speed would be nothing over 100 km/h for the entire course. Subtle differences, not drastic ones. 115ish is a tad too fast for true autoslalom, but it's not crazy. I've driven faster ones and they are fun, just not strictly adhering to the guidelines of the sport. If you designed all lower speed courses you'd have complaints of being too technical and tight and not as fun (esp. for newer folks), so there is that risk of not being as much fun and not enticing more people to keep coming back to the sport. So like I said, a healthy mix for our local courses is good! When it comes time to run a regional/national event, then we should try to be more faithful to the guidelines in the rulebook.

I will try to upload my videos later in the week if I remember. I need to trim them first - new laptop doesn't have the same software. Any recommendations? WMM was just okay. I wouldn't mind trying something else. Just looking for basic video trimming (start and end) and ease of use, and free.

[helix]

Feedback well received, thank you all. Apology for my unorthodox approach, my personal preferences are keeping each event as lively as possible with fairness and safety in mind without bending the rules (on speed) too much.

[Beau]

Here's my fastest run: 

https://youtu.be/K_WPnMX9MRM

P.S. How do I embed the Youtube video? If I click on "Insert other media" it only gives me an option to insert an image from a URL.

[justkickin]

@MRS Joe Thanks for the input, I will work on that. My in-cars are just above Chris's. I am thinking my double inputs are catching the rear, but maybe not. I will pay more attention to that over the next few events to make sure my corner entries are maximizing my exits. This last event I was heavily focused on the exits which likely resulted in the inputs you're seeing. 

On 7/11/2017 at 2:31 PM, Beau said:

Here's my fastest run: 

https://youtu.be/K_WPnMX9MRM

 

P.S. How do I embed the Youtube video? If I click on "Insert other media" it only gives me an option to insert an image from a URL.

Your comments on course desigh were well put and I agree, let the law of averages prevail as no single course will make all people happy. 

Did you buy a Mac? WMM is still included in Win10, you may have to get it from the store though. For basic trimming, I haven't really found anything easier. VSDC and VirtualDub are used by a few I know. For inserting, I just paste the link and it inserts. 

[Beau]

Thanks Tim. I was overthinking it and actually clicking on the little "Link" button before pasting the link. Silly.

Here's my 4th run, which I shut down after the south hairpin. I made a few glaring mistakes and was pretty sure it was going to be slower, but still had some hope before totally wrecking the hairpin. At that point I just shut it down. Notice the pretty drastic difference in top speeds between my 3rd and 4th runs in some of the faster sections. I'm assuming it's mostly due to the increased grip from the sun warming up the track and drying up all the rain.

 

[MurrayPeterson]

Pretty car

 

It's nice to see my car still being driven for autox.  I love our new car, but I will always miss the S2000

 

[Shawn]

Here is the video of me driving my Audi motorcycle (really poorly at times). I would blame the fact that run 3 was in a bit of rain and the track was still a tiny bit wet on my last and fastest run, but you all know it's just my normal sloppy driving.

 

And from the inside: