Duane Black
Curbs go brrrppp
Alrighty @Boone , you asked, here we go...
The Leadup
I want to back up a few weeks and tell this story starting with VIR in March. I had an engine fail in spectacular fashion in the 1st session of the day at VIR on Sunday. My mind immediately went to COTA....
COTA fell on the end of my spring break, and with a teacher work day I could miss on Monday to follow, the opportunity to run COTA without missing work and in more suitable spring weather made a swing to COTA work... Chin, uncharacteristic of Chin but maybe characteristic of the type of event you usually see at COTA, actually are the most economical option these days of what I can find. While the engine will be a costly and stressful thing, my mind is basically wondering if I can get the car to COTA and complete this event in just one month.
Well we get an engine in 3 days, and the car is rolling on down the road 14 days later. In 10 days, we will leave for COTA, and in 12 days, it will be on track.... no problem, things are working out well. I have a friend of mine align it for the trip, some A-arm bushings are replaced (the front ones, not the ones that will come loose in this story later) and off we go....
The trip out
I leave on a sunny, cool Wednesday for Atlanta. I ran an errand for @Apex3V and spent the night with the people who actually introduced me to HPDE, fittingly, in Dunwoody, GA.
I leave Dunwoody with a goal to make it to about Shreveport, LA that night. I detoured slightly. As a historian, the voting rights marches in Selma are something I am intrigued by and it's actually an illustrative example of the social movements leading to government change in AP Government that I teach. (Fun fact - the light fixture in Kings house in that Selma movie is actually in my friends from Dunwoody's dining room now....)
On the way out, the street tires are getting into the 4/32nd's area in some places. Alas, I want to wait until summer to replace them. Well decisions are made for me in Jackson, Mississippi, when something punctures the tire and immediately exits in a noisy fashion. It only takes me a quarter mile to get from the left lane to the exit ramp to put a race tire on as a temporary fix.. but already, I know I don't want to go 500 miles or so to the track on a race tire... so I find a used tire for $40 to get to the track. No one in town had a new Continental Extreme Contact Sport 02 in my size... but a call to the Discount Tire closest to COTA has a set arriving for me Friday afternoon.. so we will have a fresh set of wet tires for what is promising to be a wet start to a track day. No worries, but $1700 is an expense I had planned for later down the road than this.....
That Thursday night, I stay in Shreveport, Louisiana. I know I'm in trouble when my prebooked hotel warns me to park my car with tires on a trailer under their security camera in view of the lobby all night or I may not have tires in the morning.... the town is sketchy as can be. That rattled me and everytime I wake up that night, I go downstairs and make sure it's all still there anyway..... it survives....
Friday -
We get the new tires in Texas, 20 miles from the track... grab lunch, get checked in, race brakes are in...
That night, the Mustang develops a weird rattle in the back end that I couldn't place but it scared me. Was it the differential rattling under light acceleration? Was it suspension related since it occured under certain loads? The noise never replicated itself... but I think I installed the engine and moved the mufflers in such a way as the arm securing the muffler to the car was now somehow rattling against the trailer hitch. While I am riding around my airbnb neighborhood trying to find it, I hit the brakes and the right front locked up and made a loud clunk! I limp back to the air bnb and jack it up and expect to find something like a loose caliper or a pin fell out.... but it's all good.... so I put the tire back on and rock the wheel and while there's no clunking, the wheel moves a LOT. I realize the rear a-arm bushing (not the one I replaced, but the one I had to slide back on) has worked its way out of the A arm and is just hanging in the bracket on good looks. To ensure in doesn't fall out, I rip it out with my hand, and check the opposite side... it's almost out, too! I snatch it out and limp back to COTA where more tools and help are, but it's dark... and rain is coming...
I can't thank @honeybadger enough for his help all weekend. This is only the beginning. He had tools ready when I arrived, and the lights from his mobile garage were great.
These a-arm bushings have been backwards the whole time I owned them... but now I clearly saw the lip goes forward, not backward.... and it takes like 10-15 minutes to fix it.
Now I do'nt know what mystic power may exist in the universe and what it may have been trying to reveal to me.... but that noise never returned after fixing the A arms despite being on the opposite end of the car....
However, the event is now feeling like the Road America war story from 2 years ago where EVERYTHING that could go wrong seemed to go wrong. I am on a bad luck streak.... and I get maybe 3 hours of sleep all night and worry.... I pray, I fret, I worry more....
The event
The next morning, it's wet... my favorite track conditions, and I take my student out in my car and on lap 2... mis fires..... HOW?!?!?!?
I thought the misfire was under g forces... as in the story that comes below, I start limping through corners and make 3 passes down all the straightaways and the car performs flawlessly. But it's misfiring in the corners.
I take the car in and have an hour 20 minutes before my student goes out. @honeybadger and I dig in, swapping the coils to different cylinders and moving the spark plugs.... and the problem persists.
A student session is in.
Honey Badger uses some sections of hte wiring harness I brought just for this occasion and notes these two cylinders don't clip on well... well they've always been that way, but lets swap it.... he checks the fuel injectors and even swaps them from cylinder to cylinder to see if we can move the code... one of my electrical connectors has oil (probbaly from a former oil change getting messy) and he cleans it right up.
And all the while, the same two cylinders misfire...
So he takes a lot of the wiring out and starts running continuity tests, which was a problem on his GT350 rattling wiring apart. But my harness is passing with flying colors. There is this one plug that moves around in cornering, and we secure it...
But the problem persists.
So HoneyBadger determines the issue cannot be electrical from all of this. So he looks into how a car knows which cylinder is misfiring... so under partial throttle where a little unburned fuel may slip through, the o2 sensors detect this and based on where the crankshaft is, determine if it's a misfire or not.
He has me run a crank re-learn procedure.... and I go out on track just mentally exhausted, BUT THE HERTZ SPECIAL IS RIDING AGAIN AND DOING ITS THING!!!!
But, I have to come in and attend to my student.. what a bummer. This is the first time in a LONG time I wish I could just get rid of a student and make up for lost time on such a long trip and enjoy this track... but I saved $1000 this way so here we are...
That first session I drove okay... I'll link that session here. But my mind is only partially on the track. I'm nervous I am going to have misfires. I am just enjoying that the car is apparently fixed and working.
So once again that evening, Honey Badger is my hero. He watches my video, gives pointers, and I have an attack plan for tomorrow. He even cooks me a double burger!
We hang around that night and I'm tired but... tomorrow awaits. I head back to my AirBnB that's only 5 miles out of the gate, fighting music festival traffic to escape.. I shower, and get the 2nd best night of sleep I've had this whole trip (the best being in Atlanta, but only just barely better like 3 nights ago.)
But that's only like... 5 hours.
Sunday
My student is late and doesn't want to do the recon session, so I get that to myself... I look at the track, finalize my plan to improve, and get a 40 minute session to dial it in. I'm 2 seconds faster already, but a black flag all disrupts the session so it's not quite a true 40 minute. I snuck in a few minutes of the next group (as an instructor, I can run when I wnat), and then off to my student.
I get another great session in, but my lap timer was on trail mode so it didn't give lap times... alas, we got all afternoon.
My students next session has him blow his engine approaching checkers at T11. I had to walk him through handling this. Basically, he had two great morning sessions and life is going great... he has improved 100% since yesterday, he's loving the track and life... and I had him back off on the front straight since I knew his brakes could use a break.... and had him work on nailing T10 since I had identified this as a strong area of improvement coming to checkers. But right as he makes his best run through T10 and is nailing the corner and top of 3rd gear, his Corvette's LT1 lets loose..... $1700 in oil dry later, his car is parked at the gravel....
This led to the scariest moment in recent memory in my instructing career. I can hear tires screeching and minor impacts behind us. A Revolution open cock pit car slides up into the run off with us (it would turn out, the oil cooler plate from our car wedged under his splitter and took a tire off the ground.) The Porsche apparently spun in our oil and had some soft impacts with the guardrails and blew a tire. Since there was impact, those two now have to do 30 minutes in the medical center.
I also realize my lunch is getting cold.. to avoid the line I bought lunch at 11:00, giving time to prep it, but I can't finish it before my session, so it's in the paddock getting cold.... really, the least of my worries.
But in the worst way, I felt guilty wishing I could just be me and drive without a student.... but as a guy who journeyman's his car to the track, I was able to offer parting advise to my student. I had always made a plan for a worst case get home scenario, and knew U-Haul was available almost any time you need ti with a car trailer, so I help my student find a box truck and a car trailer 20 miles away. I selfishly didn't drive him there with my sessions falling as they did, but he did call an Uber, and I actually saw him leaving on a paddock access road as I finished up a session on track. I felt so terrible for him... especially as I was just there a month earlier.
I sneak in an extra session or so in the afternoon, even though I offered my services to Chin and checked in at registration a couple of times to ensure I wasn't needed (I do want to stay on good terms with them... I haven't run with them often and have trash talked them before soooooo)
They didn't need me.
I gas up the car and did a full happy hour. Full tank to empty. The tank was out as checkers fell. What a session. If you need some V6 ASMR at COTA, here is that session. I ran the crazy local boy @honeybadger line the first half, but at the 35-37 minute mark, I decided to quit chasing lap times and just enjoy the F1 line...
Marathon training was very helpful to this whole weekend. Last year, I'm note sure I'd have the stamina to drive 3 hours on the track in a day, but that's what I did to make up for lost time. I was also kind of pushy with Chin (another reason to be gracious about offering services) asking if I could physically run a lap afterwords. I've had a little goal to actually run a lap of every track I drive this season. After 3 hours of driving, and just 15 minutes after finishing a 1 hour session, I have swapped to running gear and actually ran a lap of COTA. I'll add the photos I paused and took as well in a further post to this thread.
The night before, with a presumably working car, the plan for the trip home began to come together. I had initially planned to probably pack up sometime Sunday afternoon and get a few hours down the road and get a motel. But, with me missing most of my track time Saturday, I decide to do what Chin said I'd have to if I wanted to run.. stay til the end of the day Sunday. I booked my airbnb for a 3rd night since it was available Sunday night, and knew I'd likely be pushing the 7:00 pm exit deadline.
This quote from John Lennon perfectly summed up the said weekend.
So after all that, how did I like Circuit of the America's?
Well... that first session Sunday anticipating a working car... I haven't had a high on track like that in awhile. I even texted @Apex3V that this might be a new favorite track! But I admitted it might just be gratitude that the car is rolling again.
I used almost every piece of run off I could in the Saturday night session and Sunday making minor errors and just opening up the wheel to use the run off in its intended ways....
Turn 1 and Turn 11 were surprisingly the easiest turns.
The esses... very different than any other esses. Once you exit Turn 1, you need to accept that you're at a fast autocross. The rhtyhm is much the same. If you're straight, you're probably wrong.. unless you're braking.
There's a few ways you can attack the esses.... I'm not sure any of them are right.
There's sections you better hustle. There's sections you need to be patient. Mentally making that switch go from attack to patience takes a few moments.
Turn 3-7 is all about fast and hustle. Except that one spot around 5-6 where you have to brake.
Turn 8.... patience, patience, patience....
I you get out of rhythm, you need to know how to and when to get back in rhtyhm and recover it.
The Porsches with slicks and wings are coming. When to let them by and if to let them by is quite a game to play. Red group.... they'll take you into T7 no problem. Blue group... probably makes both of you slower to let them by.
The stadium section is slow and technical. It's basically a brake bed procedure. There's really one fast way.... and it's not fast.... so be patient.
Carousel and Turn 2 drive very similarly. How soon can you go WOT and stay there? How much gas can you hold?
Turn 19 and 20 are the two single hardest turns on the track. T19 falls away from you and you need quite a bit of wheel to make it... but a lot of wheel gets the car loose and makes it slide out from under you. How much do you dare turn?
Turn 20 looks like it should be easy.... i'ts uphill in, uphill out, uphill at the apex.... it should just be speed and power?
It's not.... it's uphill, yes, but the camber screws you over. This corner gave me fits the whole weekend.
Overall... the hardest track I've ever driven. Rivals VIR, but I think tracks like Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta offer a better flow.
I was amazed how much I actually enjoyed this track. I thought it would drive better in video games in open wheel cars... but the same principles I use in simulators since this tracks inception work in reality.... and the same corners that screw you in the sim will screw you in the real life version of this track, too.....
So while it isn't as historic yet as those other fun places I mentioned a couple lines above, it is the toughest track I've ever driven. It's a long lap. It wants to screw you at almost every turn. The track rarely if ever works in your favor. You have to think of each end of the track as two separate rhythms.
It's almost like they designed this place to challenge the best drivers and cars in the world....
Sunday night and the drive home.
But it wasn't a great night to stay in Austin. For one, I don't feel like going anywhere far. I had a dinner recommendation, and went to take a shower... then I realized it was an Asian place and I don't go much for Asian. Most of the other recommendations are like 15 minutes away... and I'm just not up for that. A 3.5 mile run and a long day has me wanting something close. I settle on a taco truck 3.5 miles away and take it back to my room.
But I'm just wound up from this emotional roller coaster. I can't really wind down. I'm too tired to sleep. The quesadilla was amazing. The bed is comfy... and I fall asleep for maybe 4 hours or so. @honeybadger , that setup you have is amazing and I proved why..... I wake up around 3:30 or so local, 4:30 home time... and I go pee like the old man I somehow am at 35 (I pee a couple times a night, I am not looking forward to being 65), and realize that if I get back to sleep, it likely won't last long anyway... and home is like 1400 miles away... well ,not quite....
So with most of my stuff packed, I change clothes, grab my last bag, and am hitting the road at around 3:45 local time.
This let me beat Houston traffic and be in Beaumont for a 7:00 a.m. or so first gas stop and Chik fil a breakfast....
Between Austin and Atlanta, I was out of the car 3 times for maybe a total of 20 minutes. The first was a tire stop and breakfast. The second was a gas stop at the Mississippi border and a bathroom break. It had rained going over one bayou in Louisiana, and the rain would stay with me from Mississippi all the way to Atlanta. The 3rd time I get out of the car is another bathroom break south of Montgomery. Both stops have me doing a walk around the car, checking tires and lights on the trailer and looking for any obvious issue, then walking in while the pump does its thing and I use a bathroom. I return to the car, hang up the nozzle, and away I go...
I meet with a former track student from my time at VIR who now lives in McDonough, GA, then stay with the same group. I even at the aforementioned breakfast in the car while driving... and I never eat in my car but... I gotta go.
So the dinner stop.... I'm exhausted 930 miles in a day, 14 hours or so of driving to do it... but I pushed on to be on the correct for me side of Atlanta in morning traffic and wound down with my friends in Dunwoody.
I couldn't believe I slept til daybreak there. I usually wake up at about 5:30... my high school teaching job gets me up early. The kids morning tardy bell rings at 7:25 a.m.... early mornings are just in my conditioning. It was truly great to spend a night with my Dunwoody friends, an intriguing offer actually came my way that I won't elaborate on....
The last 380 miles in was uneventful. I got home at 2:00 p.m. ,nad took about an hour nap. I went to my parents to grab my cat.... and then back home again. Back to work for 3 days was tiring after all that, and I think I slept about 13 hours between my 11 hour sleep and 2 hour nap Saturday.... and another 10 hours of sleep into Sunday.... and I'm still a bit tired.
A few days later, I bought some pictures... the photographer was cool and I hope his carting career to Formula Ford/Vee goes well. He was very likeable.
The Leadup
I want to back up a few weeks and tell this story starting with VIR in March. I had an engine fail in spectacular fashion in the 1st session of the day at VIR on Sunday. My mind immediately went to COTA....
COTA fell on the end of my spring break, and with a teacher work day I could miss on Monday to follow, the opportunity to run COTA without missing work and in more suitable spring weather made a swing to COTA work... Chin, uncharacteristic of Chin but maybe characteristic of the type of event you usually see at COTA, actually are the most economical option these days of what I can find. While the engine will be a costly and stressful thing, my mind is basically wondering if I can get the car to COTA and complete this event in just one month.
Well we get an engine in 3 days, and the car is rolling on down the road 14 days later. In 10 days, we will leave for COTA, and in 12 days, it will be on track.... no problem, things are working out well. I have a friend of mine align it for the trip, some A-arm bushings are replaced (the front ones, not the ones that will come loose in this story later) and off we go....
The trip out
I leave on a sunny, cool Wednesday for Atlanta. I ran an errand for @Apex3V and spent the night with the people who actually introduced me to HPDE, fittingly, in Dunwoody, GA.
I leave Dunwoody with a goal to make it to about Shreveport, LA that night. I detoured slightly. As a historian, the voting rights marches in Selma are something I am intrigued by and it's actually an illustrative example of the social movements leading to government change in AP Government that I teach. (Fun fact - the light fixture in Kings house in that Selma movie is actually in my friends from Dunwoody's dining room now....)
On the way out, the street tires are getting into the 4/32nd's area in some places. Alas, I want to wait until summer to replace them. Well decisions are made for me in Jackson, Mississippi, when something punctures the tire and immediately exits in a noisy fashion. It only takes me a quarter mile to get from the left lane to the exit ramp to put a race tire on as a temporary fix.. but already, I know I don't want to go 500 miles or so to the track on a race tire... so I find a used tire for $40 to get to the track. No one in town had a new Continental Extreme Contact Sport 02 in my size... but a call to the Discount Tire closest to COTA has a set arriving for me Friday afternoon.. so we will have a fresh set of wet tires for what is promising to be a wet start to a track day. No worries, but $1700 is an expense I had planned for later down the road than this.....
That Thursday night, I stay in Shreveport, Louisiana. I know I'm in trouble when my prebooked hotel warns me to park my car with tires on a trailer under their security camera in view of the lobby all night or I may not have tires in the morning.... the town is sketchy as can be. That rattled me and everytime I wake up that night, I go downstairs and make sure it's all still there anyway..... it survives....
Friday -
We get the new tires in Texas, 20 miles from the track... grab lunch, get checked in, race brakes are in...
That night, the Mustang develops a weird rattle in the back end that I couldn't place but it scared me. Was it the differential rattling under light acceleration? Was it suspension related since it occured under certain loads? The noise never replicated itself... but I think I installed the engine and moved the mufflers in such a way as the arm securing the muffler to the car was now somehow rattling against the trailer hitch. While I am riding around my airbnb neighborhood trying to find it, I hit the brakes and the right front locked up and made a loud clunk! I limp back to the air bnb and jack it up and expect to find something like a loose caliper or a pin fell out.... but it's all good.... so I put the tire back on and rock the wheel and while there's no clunking, the wheel moves a LOT. I realize the rear a-arm bushing (not the one I replaced, but the one I had to slide back on) has worked its way out of the A arm and is just hanging in the bracket on good looks. To ensure in doesn't fall out, I rip it out with my hand, and check the opposite side... it's almost out, too! I snatch it out and limp back to COTA where more tools and help are, but it's dark... and rain is coming...
I can't thank @honeybadger enough for his help all weekend. This is only the beginning. He had tools ready when I arrived, and the lights from his mobile garage were great.
These a-arm bushings have been backwards the whole time I owned them... but now I clearly saw the lip goes forward, not backward.... and it takes like 10-15 minutes to fix it.
Now I do'nt know what mystic power may exist in the universe and what it may have been trying to reveal to me.... but that noise never returned after fixing the A arms despite being on the opposite end of the car....
However, the event is now feeling like the Road America war story from 2 years ago where EVERYTHING that could go wrong seemed to go wrong. I am on a bad luck streak.... and I get maybe 3 hours of sleep all night and worry.... I pray, I fret, I worry more....
The event
The next morning, it's wet... my favorite track conditions, and I take my student out in my car and on lap 2... mis fires..... HOW?!?!?!?
I thought the misfire was under g forces... as in the story that comes below, I start limping through corners and make 3 passes down all the straightaways and the car performs flawlessly. But it's misfiring in the corners.
I take the car in and have an hour 20 minutes before my student goes out. @honeybadger and I dig in, swapping the coils to different cylinders and moving the spark plugs.... and the problem persists.
A student session is in.
Honey Badger uses some sections of hte wiring harness I brought just for this occasion and notes these two cylinders don't clip on well... well they've always been that way, but lets swap it.... he checks the fuel injectors and even swaps them from cylinder to cylinder to see if we can move the code... one of my electrical connectors has oil (probbaly from a former oil change getting messy) and he cleans it right up.
And all the while, the same two cylinders misfire...
So he takes a lot of the wiring out and starts running continuity tests, which was a problem on his GT350 rattling wiring apart. But my harness is passing with flying colors. There is this one plug that moves around in cornering, and we secure it...
But the problem persists.
So HoneyBadger determines the issue cannot be electrical from all of this. So he looks into how a car knows which cylinder is misfiring... so under partial throttle where a little unburned fuel may slip through, the o2 sensors detect this and based on where the crankshaft is, determine if it's a misfire or not.
He has me run a crank re-learn procedure.... and I go out on track just mentally exhausted, BUT THE HERTZ SPECIAL IS RIDING AGAIN AND DOING ITS THING!!!!
But, I have to come in and attend to my student.. what a bummer. This is the first time in a LONG time I wish I could just get rid of a student and make up for lost time on such a long trip and enjoy this track... but I saved $1000 this way so here we are...
That first session I drove okay... I'll link that session here. But my mind is only partially on the track. I'm nervous I am going to have misfires. I am just enjoying that the car is apparently fixed and working.
So once again that evening, Honey Badger is my hero. He watches my video, gives pointers, and I have an attack plan for tomorrow. He even cooks me a double burger!
We hang around that night and I'm tired but... tomorrow awaits. I head back to my AirBnB that's only 5 miles out of the gate, fighting music festival traffic to escape.. I shower, and get the 2nd best night of sleep I've had this whole trip (the best being in Atlanta, but only just barely better like 3 nights ago.)
But that's only like... 5 hours.
Sunday
My student is late and doesn't want to do the recon session, so I get that to myself... I look at the track, finalize my plan to improve, and get a 40 minute session to dial it in. I'm 2 seconds faster already, but a black flag all disrupts the session so it's not quite a true 40 minute. I snuck in a few minutes of the next group (as an instructor, I can run when I wnat), and then off to my student.
I get another great session in, but my lap timer was on trail mode so it didn't give lap times... alas, we got all afternoon.
My students next session has him blow his engine approaching checkers at T11. I had to walk him through handling this. Basically, he had two great morning sessions and life is going great... he has improved 100% since yesterday, he's loving the track and life... and I had him back off on the front straight since I knew his brakes could use a break.... and had him work on nailing T10 since I had identified this as a strong area of improvement coming to checkers. But right as he makes his best run through T10 and is nailing the corner and top of 3rd gear, his Corvette's LT1 lets loose..... $1700 in oil dry later, his car is parked at the gravel....
This led to the scariest moment in recent memory in my instructing career. I can hear tires screeching and minor impacts behind us. A Revolution open cock pit car slides up into the run off with us (it would turn out, the oil cooler plate from our car wedged under his splitter and took a tire off the ground.) The Porsche apparently spun in our oil and had some soft impacts with the guardrails and blew a tire. Since there was impact, those two now have to do 30 minutes in the medical center.
I also realize my lunch is getting cold.. to avoid the line I bought lunch at 11:00, giving time to prep it, but I can't finish it before my session, so it's in the paddock getting cold.... really, the least of my worries.
But in the worst way, I felt guilty wishing I could just be me and drive without a student.... but as a guy who journeyman's his car to the track, I was able to offer parting advise to my student. I had always made a plan for a worst case get home scenario, and knew U-Haul was available almost any time you need ti with a car trailer, so I help my student find a box truck and a car trailer 20 miles away. I selfishly didn't drive him there with my sessions falling as they did, but he did call an Uber, and I actually saw him leaving on a paddock access road as I finished up a session on track. I felt so terrible for him... especially as I was just there a month earlier.
I sneak in an extra session or so in the afternoon, even though I offered my services to Chin and checked in at registration a couple of times to ensure I wasn't needed (I do want to stay on good terms with them... I haven't run with them often and have trash talked them before soooooo)
They didn't need me.
I gas up the car and did a full happy hour. Full tank to empty. The tank was out as checkers fell. What a session. If you need some V6 ASMR at COTA, here is that session. I ran the crazy local boy @honeybadger line the first half, but at the 35-37 minute mark, I decided to quit chasing lap times and just enjoy the F1 line...
Marathon training was very helpful to this whole weekend. Last year, I'm note sure I'd have the stamina to drive 3 hours on the track in a day, but that's what I did to make up for lost time. I was also kind of pushy with Chin (another reason to be gracious about offering services) asking if I could physically run a lap afterwords. I've had a little goal to actually run a lap of every track I drive this season. After 3 hours of driving, and just 15 minutes after finishing a 1 hour session, I have swapped to running gear and actually ran a lap of COTA. I'll add the photos I paused and took as well in a further post to this thread.
The night before, with a presumably working car, the plan for the trip home began to come together. I had initially planned to probably pack up sometime Sunday afternoon and get a few hours down the road and get a motel. But, with me missing most of my track time Saturday, I decide to do what Chin said I'd have to if I wanted to run.. stay til the end of the day Sunday. I booked my airbnb for a 3rd night since it was available Sunday night, and knew I'd likely be pushing the 7:00 pm exit deadline.
This quote from John Lennon perfectly summed up the said weekend.
So after all that, how did I like Circuit of the America's?
Well... that first session Sunday anticipating a working car... I haven't had a high on track like that in awhile. I even texted @Apex3V that this might be a new favorite track! But I admitted it might just be gratitude that the car is rolling again.
I used almost every piece of run off I could in the Saturday night session and Sunday making minor errors and just opening up the wheel to use the run off in its intended ways....
Turn 1 and Turn 11 were surprisingly the easiest turns.
The esses... very different than any other esses. Once you exit Turn 1, you need to accept that you're at a fast autocross. The rhtyhm is much the same. If you're straight, you're probably wrong.. unless you're braking.
There's a few ways you can attack the esses.... I'm not sure any of them are right.
There's sections you better hustle. There's sections you need to be patient. Mentally making that switch go from attack to patience takes a few moments.
Turn 3-7 is all about fast and hustle. Except that one spot around 5-6 where you have to brake.
Turn 8.... patience, patience, patience....
I you get out of rhythm, you need to know how to and when to get back in rhtyhm and recover it.
The Porsches with slicks and wings are coming. When to let them by and if to let them by is quite a game to play. Red group.... they'll take you into T7 no problem. Blue group... probably makes both of you slower to let them by.
The stadium section is slow and technical. It's basically a brake bed procedure. There's really one fast way.... and it's not fast.... so be patient.
Carousel and Turn 2 drive very similarly. How soon can you go WOT and stay there? How much gas can you hold?
Turn 19 and 20 are the two single hardest turns on the track. T19 falls away from you and you need quite a bit of wheel to make it... but a lot of wheel gets the car loose and makes it slide out from under you. How much do you dare turn?
Turn 20 looks like it should be easy.... i'ts uphill in, uphill out, uphill at the apex.... it should just be speed and power?
It's not.... it's uphill, yes, but the camber screws you over. This corner gave me fits the whole weekend.
Overall... the hardest track I've ever driven. Rivals VIR, but I think tracks like Watkins Glen and Road Atlanta offer a better flow.
I was amazed how much I actually enjoyed this track. I thought it would drive better in video games in open wheel cars... but the same principles I use in simulators since this tracks inception work in reality.... and the same corners that screw you in the sim will screw you in the real life version of this track, too.....
So while it isn't as historic yet as those other fun places I mentioned a couple lines above, it is the toughest track I've ever driven. It's a long lap. It wants to screw you at almost every turn. The track rarely if ever works in your favor. You have to think of each end of the track as two separate rhythms.
It's almost like they designed this place to challenge the best drivers and cars in the world....
Sunday night and the drive home.
But it wasn't a great night to stay in Austin. For one, I don't feel like going anywhere far. I had a dinner recommendation, and went to take a shower... then I realized it was an Asian place and I don't go much for Asian. Most of the other recommendations are like 15 minutes away... and I'm just not up for that. A 3.5 mile run and a long day has me wanting something close. I settle on a taco truck 3.5 miles away and take it back to my room.
But I'm just wound up from this emotional roller coaster. I can't really wind down. I'm too tired to sleep. The quesadilla was amazing. The bed is comfy... and I fall asleep for maybe 4 hours or so. @honeybadger , that setup you have is amazing and I proved why..... I wake up around 3:30 or so local, 4:30 home time... and I go pee like the old man I somehow am at 35 (I pee a couple times a night, I am not looking forward to being 65), and realize that if I get back to sleep, it likely won't last long anyway... and home is like 1400 miles away... well ,not quite....
So with most of my stuff packed, I change clothes, grab my last bag, and am hitting the road at around 3:45 local time.
This let me beat Houston traffic and be in Beaumont for a 7:00 a.m. or so first gas stop and Chik fil a breakfast....
Between Austin and Atlanta, I was out of the car 3 times for maybe a total of 20 minutes. The first was a tire stop and breakfast. The second was a gas stop at the Mississippi border and a bathroom break. It had rained going over one bayou in Louisiana, and the rain would stay with me from Mississippi all the way to Atlanta. The 3rd time I get out of the car is another bathroom break south of Montgomery. Both stops have me doing a walk around the car, checking tires and lights on the trailer and looking for any obvious issue, then walking in while the pump does its thing and I use a bathroom. I return to the car, hang up the nozzle, and away I go...
I meet with a former track student from my time at VIR who now lives in McDonough, GA, then stay with the same group. I even at the aforementioned breakfast in the car while driving... and I never eat in my car but... I gotta go.
So the dinner stop.... I'm exhausted 930 miles in a day, 14 hours or so of driving to do it... but I pushed on to be on the correct for me side of Atlanta in morning traffic and wound down with my friends in Dunwoody.
I couldn't believe I slept til daybreak there. I usually wake up at about 5:30... my high school teaching job gets me up early. The kids morning tardy bell rings at 7:25 a.m.... early mornings are just in my conditioning. It was truly great to spend a night with my Dunwoody friends, an intriguing offer actually came my way that I won't elaborate on....
The last 380 miles in was uneventful. I got home at 2:00 p.m. ,nad took about an hour nap. I went to my parents to grab my cat.... and then back home again. Back to work for 3 days was tiring after all that, and I think I slept about 13 hours between my 11 hour sleep and 2 hour nap Saturday.... and another 10 hours of sleep into Sunday.... and I'm still a bit tired.
A few days later, I bought some pictures... the photographer was cool and I hope his carting career to Formula Ford/Vee goes well. He was very likeable.
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