Track-Speed 1st Premium Track Day 2024 23.03-24.03 - Serres - 1:30.527
After we manage to somehow fit the tires on the wheels and barely clear the car (at full lock I touch but this was the case with the 305/30/19 as well), on 21st I called Ford and found out my Check Valve is here so left the car at the Dealer and they promised to have the car ready on Friday Morning (22nd). The car was ready but sadly I don't think the Check Valve solved the issue I guess a new brake booster needs to be added. On Friday evening I was waiting for my friend with the 718 Cayman to finish work and to take off to Greece it's around 200 km's drive but it toke around 4 hours because the traffic is that bad. I have a new issue with the FP PP3 in traffic the IAT's are very high. I think I have seen 152F IAT. This is obviously not good for the engine. Ether way we got to the hotel at around 21:00 and naturally it was beer time. Few beers later we want to bed as we had to be at the track at 9:00 AM. We woke up to a lovely blue sky and sun and 59F air temp.
We arrived at the track at 8:50:
It took us a little while to run through registration, initial cars preparation etc but in a while we were ready:
To say the cars were Premium would be an understatement the list of cars included: Lamborghini STO, 992 GT3 RS, 992 GT3 , 997 GT2, BMW M2 F87 TA spec (fastest one in Bulgaria) , BMW M2 G87, Porsche Cayman, GR Yaris, Ferrari 488 etc.
And besides that the parking was full with even more cars and all very well build.
Just as a refresher the last time I was at Serres was 2 years ago when the AR-1's and the Ohlins were brand new in 77F temps and the Mustang did 1:31.87. The new tires combined with the new 7500 rpm red line allowed the car to literally drive the whole lap at 3rd and just put 4th and 5th on the front straight.
My first session with the new A052 I manage to did 1:31.3 when verified that everything is good with the car I did another 2 laps and did 1:30.578. The Cayman did 1:30.589.
My 3rd session was actually the scariest session in my entire track career. In the 3rd lap on the back straight in the only upshift at 90 MPH I hit 2nd gear instead of 4th and let go of the clutch it only took me less than 1 sec to realise what I have done and press the clutch back and shift up but the rev limiter went up to like a lot. Did a slow lap to figure out if the engine is damaged or not but no check engine light shown so I decided to push it a bit to see what was going on. The car was doing the same speeds so even it has an issue I hope it was minior. I exited the session and did a read. Turns out I did have 2 errors recorded a freeze frame that was extremely scary Cam Position sensor miss match on bank 2 at 98% load with 7500 rpm. I don't know why it didn't recorded the engine over rev error though. However the error was saying pending confirmation so I took the car out for another slow session and the errors cleared after that.
The Cayman dropped to 1:29.9 in mean time and the weather got really hot so we want for more fuel (Shell in Greece is terrible) my car was doing 26 L/100 km before the fuel change and 36 L/100 km after so the V-Power 100 in Greece is not the same as the one in Bulgaria but also it's twice more expensive.
My lap times dropped to 1:31.5 and my friend with the Cayman asked me for the keys so he can turn a few laps. He did and said that for him the suspension need to be firmer. We got the car on the jack and added 4 clicks of rebound for new base setting of -13/-15 clicks from full stiff. The car responded very good I went out and in the traffic dropped the lap times to 1:31.0 or so.
I want for lunch. My friend go for a thrill ride in the fastest BMW M2 in Bulgaria as he knew the owner that M2 did 1:19.589 to be the fastest car on track for the day. So my friend learned a lot and since my car is closer to the M2 than the Cayman he asked me for the keys again and did 1:29.845 with the car in the hottest time of the day.
He then did the same with the Cayman to do 1:28.956 so same driver same tires back to back runs the Cayman is faster by 1 second.
I did 1 more session when the car cooled down but again the 4th gear just refused to go in (don't you just love the MT82) and I only did 1:30.527 when I lost over 0.5 sec in that miss shift alone. Ether way I was thrilled for the next day. According to Live Timing I did 51 laps that day but my Racebox was showing only 36 because it doesn't count in/out laps and with 11 sessions in total thats a lot of laps. The tires were done:
So around 18:00 we want back to the hotel to prepare for a lovely dinner with all the Bulgarians on the track. This are the results from Day 1:
Have in mind that even though my name say 1:29.845 this is my friends time (making him the fastest Mustang driver on Serres) and my time was only 1:30.527 or so.
The dinner was amazing the Owner of the Lambo STO who btw also owns the White AMG GTR from Dracon that does 1:02 was telling us stories about super cars and the BMW M2 driver was giving us a very long tour on how hard is to setup an TA M2 to actually be consistently fast. The Driver of the 488 was actually the Son of the Lambo owner and he said that he was behind me when I miss shifted and he said I puffed a lot of blue smoke (not surprising I guess). Everyone was excited for Saturday and we had a lot of Beers and laughs.
I want to bed at around 1:00 and woke up and 5:50 to watch the 6:00 AM F1 Race so happy I did what an amazing race and Forza Ferrari. But after that I decided to check the oil of the car I was down to minimum oil while I was full on Friday. I was hoping something as common as 5W20 Castrol Edge to be able to be found in the local Shell but was disappointed to find out that no one had any and my spare bottle was sitting on the shelf at my Garage in Bulgaria. Sometimes I'm an idiot. Without oil I was forced to watch how people try to run fast laps funny story at 9:30 AM the AIR temps were the same as 15:30 the day before. So naturally even though people were with the faster tires no one was improving. My friend with the Cayman only did 1:29.1 while all the others were around 1 sec slower than the previous day.
So around noon we decided it's time for us to hit the road.
I got to Sofia at 15:30 after a lovely but noice drive. Also something that is happening for a while is my pedals got super hot when driving for some reason I'm guessing CAT's or Exhaust leak but it's really annoying this was happening long before the FP PP3 and the Miss/Money Shifts going on but still super annoying.
Want to a carwash and they said give us 2 hours so I want for cake and the end result was amazing whatever tire or brakes I had on my car as well as bugs and road dust on the car after 2 days on track was gone:
Naturally it started to rain just when I took the car from the car wash. But I still manage to get home a really really clean car. In fact I don't think I have seen this car so clean in the past 6 months.
What is next:
Obviously I need to do a compression test at least and figure out what I did to my motor.
I need to change my oil with a fresh one and start monitoring consumption.
My front R12 brake pads are gone gone and my rears are not great as well.
I also have to do full sit down with the car to figure what else might have not been good.
And by the looks of it I need new tires as well.
And a new Brake Booster
Dracon cup Round 2 is on 27-28 of April so I don't have a lot of time to figure out logistics.