Well, I'm back from my very first HPDE in 15 years. This one was put on by NASA at Sonoma Raceway.
My goals in HPDE are, firstly, to have enormous amounts of fun; secondly, to learn how to safely and reliably drive the car at its limits; thirdly, to learn how to reliably recover the car when its limits are exceeded; and fourthly, to do all of the above without putting so much as a scratch on the car (save, of course, for the usual track-based wear and tear).
It was tremendous fun. But it was also frustrating. I'll get to the bit about frustration in a minute.
The instructors were excellent, but the sorts of problems I was having demanded a bit more attention to my specific needs. I think some progress was made on that front, and I'm hoping it continues. More on that, too, in a moment.
First, the fun stuff. I started off slow (quite slow, actually), and took my time ramping up. The first session of each day is a "slow lap" session in which everyone drives the line at about 45 MPH behind a pace car under a full course yellow condition without helmets. The other three sessions in each day were standard full-speed sessions. Group 1 (my group) had instructors in every car. Group 2 didn't except upon request (or, I suppose, when some remedial instruction was deemed necessary). It didn't take me long to learn the line as such. But despite that, it wasn't until the very last session of the weekend that I was going even moderately fast. That last session was the only one during which I passed anyone (and even then, I only passed one car).
The car performed admirably. Despite the fact that I was going slow (as evidenced by the fact that I got passed by literally everyone in the first 3 fast sessions), I was definitely working the car through the corners, as evidenced by the fact that the tread block edges have a melted look, and further confirmed by the track apps G meter, which shows a maximum of 0.9G to the right and 1.02G to the left (the latter probably due to the left hand sweeper which is turn 6). It was mainly in the straights that I was slower, because I wanted to approach the limits of the car very slowly, and my braking was very conservative and early, enough so that I never tripped the ABS.
My car has 285/35-19 Bridgestone S-04 Pole Position tires that are brand new, on Forgestar F14 wheels that I got from Vorshlag (who were awesome in their support! The spacers I needed for the front are excellent, and required no re-torquing anytime during or after the event). These tires have a treadwear rating of 280, but apparently there's only a loose relationship between treadwear rating and grip limit. 1.02G is probably somewhat close to the limits of these tires, but I won't be surprised if there's more for them to give, particularly at that size. Treadwear in the front appears to be even, which surprised me since I'm on the stock suspension and the stock alignment. It'll be interesting to see if that remains the case as I get faster.
This car is really easy to put where you want it. That kind of precision surprised me greatly, especially considering the size and weight of the car. I got that impression when I drove it on one of the somewhat twisty highways around here almost immediately after I bought it, but the track is where such things are made completely apparent. There was what seemed to be a decent amount of body roll at high lateral loads, enough that I'd prefer less, but it wasn't excessive. The car was completely controllable while under load like that. It was a pure joy to drive through the corners. The Recaro seats were absolutely fantastic and held me in really well. I also made use of a CG Lock for my seatbelt, and I suspect that helped the seat do its job better than it might have otherwise.
On the last session of the weekend, I decided to push it a bit, at least on the straights. Despite the fact that I've (naturally) done a lot of full throttle runs on the street, the speed you can build up with this thing on the track took me somewhat by surprise. You can really get yourself in trouble fast with this thing if you don't know what you're doing, enough that the speed I built up was even a little too much for turn 2 -- I had to slow it down for that. I took that as confirmation that my overall approach to driving the track is exactly the right one for the goals I have.
And so, the end result is that it was incredibly awesome fun. Based on my highly limited experience, it seems to me that people who belittle the stock suspension are giving it too little credit. It's good. Very, very good indeed. About the only thing I noticed is that the body does seem to roll a bit in the corners, but frankly, a lot of that might be me leaning in the seat to counteract the G forces.
But sadly, all is not bliss, and it has nothing to do with the car. It has to do with me. The problem is that I literally can concentrate on only one thing at a time, and when I do so, it is to the exclusion of all else. This means that when I'm concentrating on driving the line, as I was, I am unable to see the corner workers, even when they're waving flags. The only things I'm able to see are the apexes that I'm trying to hit. The faster I went, the further ahead I had to look, but the less precise I got, too. Going more slowly meant I could hit the apexes within a couple of feet or so of the target. Going more quickly caused me to be unable to hit the apexes quite as precisely.
This is exactly as I feared it would be in my discussion with Dave and others. It wasn't as bad as my experiences with Gran Turismo indicated it should be, but I'm not going as fast in real life as I am in the game, either. I should try going slowly in the game to see what sort of consistency I can achieve there. I will admit that the additional inputs (G loading, much greater visual resolution, 3D vision) seem to make a big difference here, but the effect is still the same. We'll see what happens as I ramp up. It may be that it's a question of finding the rhythm, as it were. I was doing some of that towards the end, so my consistency was still reasonably good. I dunno. Maybe my standards for myself are too high here.
The fact that it takes such intense concentration on my part to drive the line properly is a real problem, because it means that I can't be aware of anything else. If I start looking around at other things as well, then I lose my ability to drive the line precisely. This is probably something that is unique to me, hence the necessity of an instructor who could work with me. On my second day, they switched out my instructor after the first session precisely because of my frustration with this. That helped, and I'm hopeful that continued work on this will improve things, but I'm not terribly hopeful in that respect.
Why? Well, let me give you an example. While you're walking, do you look up at your destination and at the environment around you, or down at the ground about 20 feet or so ahead? I do the latter. The reason I do the latter is that, like everything else, walking requires conscious effort on my part, and I have to look at what I'm doing in order to be able to do it. Walking happens slowly enough that I do spend some cycles looking up and at my destination but a lot of the time is spent looking closer in. But it also depends on the environment. If I can look up and, due to changes in parallax, determine whether or not I'm walking in a straight line from that, then I don't spend as much time looking at the ground (but still must look at the ground at least a significant fraction of the time in order to avoid bumps, obstacles, breaks in the pavement, etc). But if I don't have that feedback from the environment, then I must look down at the ground. If I don't, then I wander. I also trip on seams in the pavement and such. What others joke about, I actually do when I'm not actually concentrating on what I'm doing. It makes it somewhat difficult for me to hold a reasonably intelligent conversation with someone even when I'm just walking.
And so it is with driving and everything else. I have to look at what I'm doing, and in order to do anything else, I have to divert my concentration. Now, on the roads, I'm able to do that reasonably easily because most of the motion is in a straight line, so I simply need to keep my hands still and the car does the rest. That gives me the opportunity to look around and see what's going on in the environment. This is not the case when I'm driving the track.
Another example is that I'm an instrument rated private pilot. Flying on instruments requires that you track lots of things at once and do lots of things at once. I don't do that. What I do instead is very quickly shift my focus from one thing to another. I shift my focus from the instruments to the approach I'm briefing, for instance, and after about a second, back to the instruments, which I have to scan sequentially. And I repeat that process until the approach is fully briefed. It is purely sequential, with each thing I'm doing taking a slice of time.
Those of you who are familiar with computers will immediately recognize what's going on here. I'm like a single CPU that has to time slice between different tasks in order to give the illusion of multitasking.
The end result is that I am very concerned about my ability to be safe on the track and to adhere to the rules. I can't see the corner workers unless I'm looking at them or for them, and I can't look at them or for them unless I'm diverting my attention from driving the line. If I'm diverting my attention in that way, then I will not be driving the line anymore, because driving the line requires continuously changing inputs. The only exception is the straights. The end result is that even on the 45 mph slow laps, I was unable to acknowledge the corner workers.
My instructor on the 2nd day was awesome. I think he really gets what's going on and what I'm going to need in order to improve. The bottom line is that driving the line is going to have to become so familiar that it (somehow) no longer takes as many cycles as it does, so that I can divert my attention from it periodically in order to spot the corner workers and spot traffic. The sheer amount of bandwidth required, however, is enough that I don't expect to ever get any good at this compared to other people. But only time will tell.
And so, it was an exhilarating exercise in frustration!
But it's one that I want to repeat again and again. I'll stick with HPDE group 1 for as long as it takes to get this figured out. It may be that I never figure it out. That wouldn't surprise me. But as long as I'm having fun blasting around the track, I'm going to keep at it.
Oh, another thing: I love my car!! This thing is just awesome. I'm highly impressed with the stock suspension, but there are things I want to improve. I expect I'll be going with Ground Control coilovers, with 250 lbs/in in the front and 350 lbs/in in the rear (to keep the "flat ride" characteristics, and to keep the relative front to rear wheel rate characteristics), and otherwise keep the car the same (same sway bars, control arms, etc.), and lowering it by a mere 1/2 inch in both the front and the rear to keep the rear geometry essentially the same (no need to worry about pinion angle then) as well as meet my needs for ride quality and ground clearance (it is, after all, very much a daily driver). At most, I'll need an adjustable panhard bar on top of that. That should take care of the body roll as well as much of whatever brake dive I happen to notice. My braking style is such that I may never really notice the kind of brake dive that these cars are known for -- it takes me about a second to go from initial application of the brakes to whatever my maximum braking happens to be at the time. I'm that slow.
But I'm not doing squat until I've got several more sessions under my belt and I've finally gotten to the point where I can really test the limits of the car. Speaking of which...
As I mentioned, one of my goals is to learn how to reliably recover the car in the event I go past its limits. I've discussed that with a number of instructors, and the conclusion is that there's no good way to do that. Going past the limits means, in the context of driving on the track, going off the track in the event you don't recover properly. How in the world can you learn how to properly recover the car in those conditions if you can't afford to screw up the recovery? The answer is that you can't. And so, I'm frustrated about this as well. How can I possibly learn how to recover the car when I inevitably go past its limits unless I can somehow take it past those limits in a safe fashion? It's obviously not possible in an HPDE.
And if I can't learn how to reliably recover the car when going past its limits, it follows that I can't exceed its limits without incurring a lot of danger. And if I can't do that, then it follows that I can't learn to drive it at its limits, because doing so incurs the real danger of going past its limits. Therefore, it logically follows that I cannot accomplish any of my goals by driving in HPDEs except one: having fun! Fortunately, that's the most important goal I have (save for safety), so I don't view this as a showstopper. But it does have me looking for options, and if you guys have any suggestions, I'd like to hear them.
I can't wait for the next event! I'm definitely signing up for the Sonoma Raceway event in June.
My goals in HPDE are, firstly, to have enormous amounts of fun; secondly, to learn how to safely and reliably drive the car at its limits; thirdly, to learn how to reliably recover the car when its limits are exceeded; and fourthly, to do all of the above without putting so much as a scratch on the car (save, of course, for the usual track-based wear and tear).
It was tremendous fun. But it was also frustrating. I'll get to the bit about frustration in a minute.
The instructors were excellent, but the sorts of problems I was having demanded a bit more attention to my specific needs. I think some progress was made on that front, and I'm hoping it continues. More on that, too, in a moment.
First, the fun stuff. I started off slow (quite slow, actually), and took my time ramping up. The first session of each day is a "slow lap" session in which everyone drives the line at about 45 MPH behind a pace car under a full course yellow condition without helmets. The other three sessions in each day were standard full-speed sessions. Group 1 (my group) had instructors in every car. Group 2 didn't except upon request (or, I suppose, when some remedial instruction was deemed necessary). It didn't take me long to learn the line as such. But despite that, it wasn't until the very last session of the weekend that I was going even moderately fast. That last session was the only one during which I passed anyone (and even then, I only passed one car).
The car performed admirably. Despite the fact that I was going slow (as evidenced by the fact that I got passed by literally everyone in the first 3 fast sessions), I was definitely working the car through the corners, as evidenced by the fact that the tread block edges have a melted look, and further confirmed by the track apps G meter, which shows a maximum of 0.9G to the right and 1.02G to the left (the latter probably due to the left hand sweeper which is turn 6). It was mainly in the straights that I was slower, because I wanted to approach the limits of the car very slowly, and my braking was very conservative and early, enough so that I never tripped the ABS.
My car has 285/35-19 Bridgestone S-04 Pole Position tires that are brand new, on Forgestar F14 wheels that I got from Vorshlag (who were awesome in their support! The spacers I needed for the front are excellent, and required no re-torquing anytime during or after the event). These tires have a treadwear rating of 280, but apparently there's only a loose relationship between treadwear rating and grip limit. 1.02G is probably somewhat close to the limits of these tires, but I won't be surprised if there's more for them to give, particularly at that size. Treadwear in the front appears to be even, which surprised me since I'm on the stock suspension and the stock alignment. It'll be interesting to see if that remains the case as I get faster.
This car is really easy to put where you want it. That kind of precision surprised me greatly, especially considering the size and weight of the car. I got that impression when I drove it on one of the somewhat twisty highways around here almost immediately after I bought it, but the track is where such things are made completely apparent. There was what seemed to be a decent amount of body roll at high lateral loads, enough that I'd prefer less, but it wasn't excessive. The car was completely controllable while under load like that. It was a pure joy to drive through the corners. The Recaro seats were absolutely fantastic and held me in really well. I also made use of a CG Lock for my seatbelt, and I suspect that helped the seat do its job better than it might have otherwise.
On the last session of the weekend, I decided to push it a bit, at least on the straights. Despite the fact that I've (naturally) done a lot of full throttle runs on the street, the speed you can build up with this thing on the track took me somewhat by surprise. You can really get yourself in trouble fast with this thing if you don't know what you're doing, enough that the speed I built up was even a little too much for turn 2 -- I had to slow it down for that. I took that as confirmation that my overall approach to driving the track is exactly the right one for the goals I have.
And so, the end result is that it was incredibly awesome fun. Based on my highly limited experience, it seems to me that people who belittle the stock suspension are giving it too little credit. It's good. Very, very good indeed. About the only thing I noticed is that the body does seem to roll a bit in the corners, but frankly, a lot of that might be me leaning in the seat to counteract the G forces.
But sadly, all is not bliss, and it has nothing to do with the car. It has to do with me. The problem is that I literally can concentrate on only one thing at a time, and when I do so, it is to the exclusion of all else. This means that when I'm concentrating on driving the line, as I was, I am unable to see the corner workers, even when they're waving flags. The only things I'm able to see are the apexes that I'm trying to hit. The faster I went, the further ahead I had to look, but the less precise I got, too. Going more slowly meant I could hit the apexes within a couple of feet or so of the target. Going more quickly caused me to be unable to hit the apexes quite as precisely.
This is exactly as I feared it would be in my discussion with Dave and others. It wasn't as bad as my experiences with Gran Turismo indicated it should be, but I'm not going as fast in real life as I am in the game, either. I should try going slowly in the game to see what sort of consistency I can achieve there. I will admit that the additional inputs (G loading, much greater visual resolution, 3D vision) seem to make a big difference here, but the effect is still the same. We'll see what happens as I ramp up. It may be that it's a question of finding the rhythm, as it were. I was doing some of that towards the end, so my consistency was still reasonably good. I dunno. Maybe my standards for myself are too high here.
The fact that it takes such intense concentration on my part to drive the line properly is a real problem, because it means that I can't be aware of anything else. If I start looking around at other things as well, then I lose my ability to drive the line precisely. This is probably something that is unique to me, hence the necessity of an instructor who could work with me. On my second day, they switched out my instructor after the first session precisely because of my frustration with this. That helped, and I'm hopeful that continued work on this will improve things, but I'm not terribly hopeful in that respect.
Why? Well, let me give you an example. While you're walking, do you look up at your destination and at the environment around you, or down at the ground about 20 feet or so ahead? I do the latter. The reason I do the latter is that, like everything else, walking requires conscious effort on my part, and I have to look at what I'm doing in order to be able to do it. Walking happens slowly enough that I do spend some cycles looking up and at my destination but a lot of the time is spent looking closer in. But it also depends on the environment. If I can look up and, due to changes in parallax, determine whether or not I'm walking in a straight line from that, then I don't spend as much time looking at the ground (but still must look at the ground at least a significant fraction of the time in order to avoid bumps, obstacles, breaks in the pavement, etc). But if I don't have that feedback from the environment, then I must look down at the ground. If I don't, then I wander. I also trip on seams in the pavement and such. What others joke about, I actually do when I'm not actually concentrating on what I'm doing. It makes it somewhat difficult for me to hold a reasonably intelligent conversation with someone even when I'm just walking.
And so it is with driving and everything else. I have to look at what I'm doing, and in order to do anything else, I have to divert my concentration. Now, on the roads, I'm able to do that reasonably easily because most of the motion is in a straight line, so I simply need to keep my hands still and the car does the rest. That gives me the opportunity to look around and see what's going on in the environment. This is not the case when I'm driving the track.
Another example is that I'm an instrument rated private pilot. Flying on instruments requires that you track lots of things at once and do lots of things at once. I don't do that. What I do instead is very quickly shift my focus from one thing to another. I shift my focus from the instruments to the approach I'm briefing, for instance, and after about a second, back to the instruments, which I have to scan sequentially. And I repeat that process until the approach is fully briefed. It is purely sequential, with each thing I'm doing taking a slice of time.
Those of you who are familiar with computers will immediately recognize what's going on here. I'm like a single CPU that has to time slice between different tasks in order to give the illusion of multitasking.
The end result is that I am very concerned about my ability to be safe on the track and to adhere to the rules. I can't see the corner workers unless I'm looking at them or for them, and I can't look at them or for them unless I'm diverting my attention from driving the line. If I'm diverting my attention in that way, then I will not be driving the line anymore, because driving the line requires continuously changing inputs. The only exception is the straights. The end result is that even on the 45 mph slow laps, I was unable to acknowledge the corner workers.
My instructor on the 2nd day was awesome. I think he really gets what's going on and what I'm going to need in order to improve. The bottom line is that driving the line is going to have to become so familiar that it (somehow) no longer takes as many cycles as it does, so that I can divert my attention from it periodically in order to spot the corner workers and spot traffic. The sheer amount of bandwidth required, however, is enough that I don't expect to ever get any good at this compared to other people. But only time will tell.
And so, it was an exhilarating exercise in frustration!
But it's one that I want to repeat again and again. I'll stick with HPDE group 1 for as long as it takes to get this figured out. It may be that I never figure it out. That wouldn't surprise me. But as long as I'm having fun blasting around the track, I'm going to keep at it.
Oh, another thing: I love my car!! This thing is just awesome. I'm highly impressed with the stock suspension, but there are things I want to improve. I expect I'll be going with Ground Control coilovers, with 250 lbs/in in the front and 350 lbs/in in the rear (to keep the "flat ride" characteristics, and to keep the relative front to rear wheel rate characteristics), and otherwise keep the car the same (same sway bars, control arms, etc.), and lowering it by a mere 1/2 inch in both the front and the rear to keep the rear geometry essentially the same (no need to worry about pinion angle then) as well as meet my needs for ride quality and ground clearance (it is, after all, very much a daily driver). At most, I'll need an adjustable panhard bar on top of that. That should take care of the body roll as well as much of whatever brake dive I happen to notice. My braking style is such that I may never really notice the kind of brake dive that these cars are known for -- it takes me about a second to go from initial application of the brakes to whatever my maximum braking happens to be at the time. I'm that slow.
But I'm not doing squat until I've got several more sessions under my belt and I've finally gotten to the point where I can really test the limits of the car. Speaking of which...
As I mentioned, one of my goals is to learn how to reliably recover the car in the event I go past its limits. I've discussed that with a number of instructors, and the conclusion is that there's no good way to do that. Going past the limits means, in the context of driving on the track, going off the track in the event you don't recover properly. How in the world can you learn how to properly recover the car in those conditions if you can't afford to screw up the recovery? The answer is that you can't. And so, I'm frustrated about this as well. How can I possibly learn how to recover the car when I inevitably go past its limits unless I can somehow take it past those limits in a safe fashion? It's obviously not possible in an HPDE.
And if I can't learn how to reliably recover the car when going past its limits, it follows that I can't exceed its limits without incurring a lot of danger. And if I can't do that, then it follows that I can't learn to drive it at its limits, because doing so incurs the real danger of going past its limits. Therefore, it logically follows that I cannot accomplish any of my goals by driving in HPDEs except one: having fun! Fortunately, that's the most important goal I have (save for safety), so I don't view this as a showstopper. But it does have me looking for options, and if you guys have any suggestions, I'd like to hear them.
I can't wait for the next event! I'm definitely signing up for the Sonoma Raceway event in June.
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The more time you spend loaded up in a corner and/or the higher the load, the more you'll start punishing the outside edges of the tires, at least with stock suspension and angles. Once you start tearing up the tires, it'll be time to add spring rate and/or negative camber.
Yep, that Coyote powerplant is about as much fun as a barrel of monkeys. The power is addicting & it sure is fun to be able to walk away from almost everyone down the straights.
) and are not horribly expensive (I've seen the S-04 Pole Position tires I have go for as low as $180 each. The current Tire Rack price is $214 each). They are plenty of tire to have all sorts of fun on, cheap to run because the treadwear rating is relatively high (280), and should work well in the wet as well. It's more convenient as well, because I can just drive around on these tires for my daily drive, then drive to the track and drive on these tires while on the track, then drive home on them. Lather, rinse, repeat, until it's time to replace the tires. I only have to carry two wheels/tires as spares to the track, which is the duty to which I'm putting my OEM wheels/tires.
