Quote:
Originally Posted by nilfinite
Reflecting on this Sunday's event (8/7/16) with SFR SCCA. Was one of the more talent-loaded weekends from the National Tour/Pro Solo. These guys were prepping for Nationals. They built the course nationals-style unlike the traditional bay area style. What that basically meant was a lot of new elements, lots of slaloming + some annoying offsets.
Since I'm used to the bay area style, normally I'd have to guess the proper method of tackling 1 or 2 elements in the course. On this national-style course, I was guessing how to manage at least 5 elements lol. It was fun getting that exposure but was again not happy with the 5 runs to perfect them lol.
Lessons learned:
- Need much more seat time on the technical courses. Need to go to as many AAS events as possible since those are more technical than usual.
- Should get a co-driver to help warm up tires. Hankooks are inconsistent until up to temp. I found their sweet spot temp to be 130+ degrees after a run. The tires hovered at 110 degrees this weekend. RS3s weren't sticky at all to the touch. The RE-71R or Rival S tires are consistently grippy cold or hot. This is for next year.
- "Drive the car, don't let the car drive you." Lesson learned during an Evo School. Do the best with what you have, don't force the car beyond its limits and then let the car drive you. The car drove me several times this weekend. Depending on previous grip experience, spun the tires a couple of times. Was OK spinning a couple of times because to get the temps up. But the tires hovered at 110 degrees no matter what I did. Didn't give up this effort until the 4th run (3 cones) and was at least able to get a clean run for on the 5th run.
Was great to hang out with a couple of the really good drivers. Des Toups in his V6 Mustang led the pack. He's going to co-drive with last years GS national champ (Mark Scroggs) at Nationals this year in FS in the V6 Mustang. Wicked fast guys. Michael in the M3 was his usual couple seconds ahead of me. Met John in the 1LE for the first time in person (met and been chatting over Camaro5). He's a really awesome driver. It was great to benchmark against known-good driver like him with the same car and to commiserate over the Hankooks lol. Sean and Rich did not show up in FS because they aren't going to Nationals this year in the M3. They didn't care anymore lol.
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William, great to meet you, too, had a lot of fun The course definately had some challenging aspects, but you really drove well and drop lots of time
. I am going to tweak my alignment to help the understeer.
Looking forward to seeing you at the AAS events and having RE71's in our future.