I'm sure many of you have already read my writeup on my first HPDE. In it and the ensuing discussion, we talk about the problems I had during that HPDE.
Now it's time for me to write up the second one. As before, there's good news and there's bad news. First, the good news...
The Good News
This event was MUCH better than before. I went into it determined to overcome whatever issues were holding me back the last time around. I went into this assuming that the problem was simply situational overload.
My preparation this time around included finding a PC game (SimRaceway, in this case) which had the track in it, and "driving" the car around the track. Interestingly enough, the game has multiple configurations of the track, so I had to determine which one was the "correct" one by driving each one and comparing it to my memory. The one I found to be correct was the "Sonoma Classic" track. I don't have my steering wheel and pedals hooked up to my PC, so they weren't of use for this. Instead, I used my mouse and keyboard to control the "car". Needless to say, that didn't work very well for things like driving the line accurately, but it wasn't uncontrollable either, and it was good enough that you could figure out which corners were likely to be more of an issue than the rest. But most importantly, it worked really well for ingraining the corner sequence of the track into my memory.
Armed with that, I headed off to the track.
The first day
The first session of the day was, as usual, driving around the track at 45 MPH to get (re)acquainted with it. This time around, though, rather than concentrate on the line, I directed my awareness out to the corner workers and tried to pay special attention to them. It wasn't as important to me to drive the line at that point as long as I could get around the track reasonably safely. Awareness of my surroundings was what I was aiming for here.
This paid off in spades. Between that, my existing familiarity with the track itself, and the determination to succeed, the next three sessions were massively improved over the last event. We wound up covering some of the finer points of the line while I simultaneously paid lots of attention to my surroundings (the corner workers, the traffic). I also tried to integrate my peripheral vision into the mix, particularly with respect to the upcoming apexes, and that worked better than I expected.
At lunchtime, we did "parade laps", where we were able to drive around the track at a leisurely 25 MPH. I took my wife with me on that and she enjoyed it much more than she expected, as well as gaining some understanding of what I was going up against. But the main benefit was, of course, gaining even greater familiarity with the track. I again paid special attention to the location of the corner workers on the track, acknowledging each of them every lap.
That helped with my afternoon sessions. With the greater familiarity with the line and the track, I was able to divert even more attention to the corner workers and the traffic. Most importantly with respect to the corner workers, I was able to start instantly checking their status as they came into view rather than hunting for them as I had been previously. That, of course, freed up a lot of bandwidth for looking at traffic and maintaining general situational awareness.
I think much of the success that day came from the sheer inner calmness I had during the experience. Rather than worry about how I might be doing, I simply decided to do what I could with determination and let the chips fall as they may. It worked brilliantly.
So brilliantly, in fact, that at the end of the day, my instructor signed me off for HPDE2!
The second day
The first day was magnificent. The second day, on the other hand, was near-perfection!
The first HPDE2 session was grouped with HPDE3. This proved to be one of the most enjoyable sessions of the day. It seems I'm not all that bad on the track after all. I started off near the front of the HPDE2 pack. HPDE3 went onto the track first, followed by HPDE2. It wasn't long before I passed one or two of the HPDE2 cars and kept up with the HPDE3 group. It was immensely enjoyable because I was able to attack the track at my own pace rather than be held up by traffic.
The remaining sessions were with HPDE1. The second and third of these were payback time for all the slow laps I did during the last event.
I got caught up behind traffic multiple times. This wasn't the sort of traffic you could really safely pass when you're inexperienced, because we're talking strings of 15 cars or so. There's no way you're getting by all of them in one attempt, which means you would have to insert yourself into the middle of the line when everyone is braking and is going to head for the apex. I'm simply not going to do that when the people in question are probably in their first day on the track and probably don't have the awareness to make such a pass attempt successful. Attempts to escape via pitting briefly didn't work, in part because of all the exercises for the emergency crews they were performing (and, thus, the various cautions, emergency vehicle on track, etc., flags that were being thrown). We even had a full course stop (red flag) followed by full-course black flag (everyone into the pits!) during the third session. Did I let all that action upset me? Hell no! I used it as a good excuse to further familiarize myself with my surroundings, to further expand my awareness. I used the opportunity of driving in slower traffic to nail the line while increasing my awareness of the traffic (checking mirrors and such). All of this came in handy for the fourth and final session.
The last session was absolutely brilliant. I feel I did my best driving thus far in that session. I was able to pass up most of the cars that were slower than I was and otherwise comfortably drive the line and see my surroundings. Even though I don't feel like I was pushing the car quite as hard this time around, it feels like I was faster and more consistent around the track.
While I don't generally track my lap times, my wife did take some photos of me when I was going around the track, and a few of those were at the same location on successive laps. For that session (I can't remember which one, but it wasn't the last), my lap time around Sonoma was 2:16. There's certainly a lot left on the table, but I suspect that's not half bad. Not that I really care all that much -- I had a great time blasting around the track!
So in the end, this event was a resounding success. Brilliant. I can't say enough good things about it.
The car
The car performed admirably, even better than before. Whereas before I was maxing out at about 1.05G (according to the Track Apps accelerometer), this time around I maxed out at an astounding 1.20G. That to me is absolutely astonishing. I'm certain it's just the transient maximum, and that the continuous maximum is probably somewhere around 1.1G, but on Bridgestone S-04 Pole Position street tires?? I suppose the accelerometer might be lying, but I'd like to see some evidence of it if it is. Certainly, by the seat of my pants, it feels like I'm getting that kind of traction.
The car does indeed understeer some by default, but bringing the rear out is easy. It doesn't take a lot of additional throttle to do that, as I discovered upon exit from turn 11. Reining it back in was straightforward: just lift the throttle slightly, back to neutral, and the car will come right back into line. All of that tells me that while the car may not be neutral in its default handling, it's still reasonably well-balanced because you can easily control which regime of traction loss you want to be in.
The tires still still appear to be wearing evenly, and it certainly isn't for lack of use! I intend to modify this message to include a few pictures, a couple of which will show the tires so you can judge for yourself how much I was working them. Even after a couple of hundred miles since the event, there are still large ribbons of melted tire at the edges of the longitudinal tread. Pressures after coming back into the paddock from a cool down lap were around 40 PSI, with cold pressures at about 35 PSI. I doubt I'd be getting the kind of grip I'm obviously getting out of these if the contact patches were significantly compromised due to incorrect tire pressures or even incorrect camber up front.
There is some body lean in the corners, but it continues to feel well-controlled and not excessive. The suspension has never unbalanced the car when hitting the rumble strips or anything else thus far. The car has never felt unresponsive. If this is what a "poor" suspension is like, then I'll take it!
There is also, of course, some dive in braking. But at maximum braking (which I did once or twice just to see what it was like -- most of my braking was less than that because it's easier to precisely control more gradual braking), your face feels like it's going to come off of your head and for me, at least, my concentration is so much on where my braking targets are that I simply don't notice the brake dive. Maybe that'll change over time, but for now, it's not an issue.
All of this has me wondering if Ford did something to the 2014 Track Package cars to improve them. The overall experience with the stock suspension so far is that it remains very, very good. Enough so that my only complaint about it so far has nothing to do with driving on the track at all, and rather involves driving on the street: it feels harsher than it needs to on pavement that has mid-range surface height variability. Those of you who live in the SF Bay Area will probably be familiar with the section of 280 (particularly southbound) between 85 and De Anza. There aren't many suspensions that seem to cope truly nicely with that section. My suspicion is that Ford increased low speed compression damping to give the car sharper "reflexes", and that's why it feels as it does over that kind of pavement.
The Bad News
So after reading all of the above, you're wondering what the bad news could possibly be.
Psych! There is no bad news!
Well, okay, there is some bad news. The bad news is that I didn't get enough track time!
Needless to say, the hook is deep in my mouth, and I can't dislodge it!
July is going to be a truly busy month for me. Not only do I have the Evolution driving school in Marina, I've also signed up for the Simraceway high performance driving school at Sonoma. The first day will get us some autocross and track time, the second day even more (2 hours of track time) and the third day even more than that (2.5 hours of track time). At $500 each, the expense isn't that much higher per hour of track time than I get at NASA events, and it's all with lots of instruction. I feel it's going to be money well spent.
And on top of that, I've signed up for a driving event at Laguna Seca! This is going to be perhaps the most interesting event of them all, because I get to see just how useful all those virtual laps around the track are. I've got many hundreds of laps around Laguna Seca in Gran Turismo, so it's really going to be a question of learning where the corner workers are and how the real car behaves in that environment. I'm stoked!
So, bottom line: it was indeed situational overload and maybe a bit of being overly-self-critical that was responsible for the problems I felt I had during the first event.
Thunderhill comes up in August. That's going to be a bit more interesting because there doesn't seem to be a game out there that has it in its list of tracks. But I've got an idea on how to familiarize myself with it: watch videos from inside a car while "driving" with my steering wheel setup, to sort of get a visceral sense of the track. Should be interesting to see how well that works. I'm going into HPDE1 for that track simply because I don't have any real-world familiarity with it, but have no reason to believe I won't be in HPDE2 by the second day.
Thanks, everyone, for being such a great help to me! It worked!
Now it's time for me to write up the second one. As before, there's good news and there's bad news. First, the good news...
The Good News
This event was MUCH better than before. I went into it determined to overcome whatever issues were holding me back the last time around. I went into this assuming that the problem was simply situational overload.
My preparation this time around included finding a PC game (SimRaceway, in this case) which had the track in it, and "driving" the car around the track. Interestingly enough, the game has multiple configurations of the track, so I had to determine which one was the "correct" one by driving each one and comparing it to my memory. The one I found to be correct was the "Sonoma Classic" track. I don't have my steering wheel and pedals hooked up to my PC, so they weren't of use for this. Instead, I used my mouse and keyboard to control the "car". Needless to say, that didn't work very well for things like driving the line accurately, but it wasn't uncontrollable either, and it was good enough that you could figure out which corners were likely to be more of an issue than the rest. But most importantly, it worked really well for ingraining the corner sequence of the track into my memory.
Armed with that, I headed off to the track.
The first day
The first session of the day was, as usual, driving around the track at 45 MPH to get (re)acquainted with it. This time around, though, rather than concentrate on the line, I directed my awareness out to the corner workers and tried to pay special attention to them. It wasn't as important to me to drive the line at that point as long as I could get around the track reasonably safely. Awareness of my surroundings was what I was aiming for here.
This paid off in spades. Between that, my existing familiarity with the track itself, and the determination to succeed, the next three sessions were massively improved over the last event. We wound up covering some of the finer points of the line while I simultaneously paid lots of attention to my surroundings (the corner workers, the traffic). I also tried to integrate my peripheral vision into the mix, particularly with respect to the upcoming apexes, and that worked better than I expected.
At lunchtime, we did "parade laps", where we were able to drive around the track at a leisurely 25 MPH. I took my wife with me on that and she enjoyed it much more than she expected, as well as gaining some understanding of what I was going up against. But the main benefit was, of course, gaining even greater familiarity with the track. I again paid special attention to the location of the corner workers on the track, acknowledging each of them every lap.
That helped with my afternoon sessions. With the greater familiarity with the line and the track, I was able to divert even more attention to the corner workers and the traffic. Most importantly with respect to the corner workers, I was able to start instantly checking their status as they came into view rather than hunting for them as I had been previously. That, of course, freed up a lot of bandwidth for looking at traffic and maintaining general situational awareness.
I think much of the success that day came from the sheer inner calmness I had during the experience. Rather than worry about how I might be doing, I simply decided to do what I could with determination and let the chips fall as they may. It worked brilliantly.
So brilliantly, in fact, that at the end of the day, my instructor signed me off for HPDE2!
The second day
The first day was magnificent. The second day, on the other hand, was near-perfection!
The first HPDE2 session was grouped with HPDE3. This proved to be one of the most enjoyable sessions of the day. It seems I'm not all that bad on the track after all. I started off near the front of the HPDE2 pack. HPDE3 went onto the track first, followed by HPDE2. It wasn't long before I passed one or two of the HPDE2 cars and kept up with the HPDE3 group. It was immensely enjoyable because I was able to attack the track at my own pace rather than be held up by traffic.
The remaining sessions were with HPDE1. The second and third of these were payback time for all the slow laps I did during the last event.
The last session was absolutely brilliant. I feel I did my best driving thus far in that session. I was able to pass up most of the cars that were slower than I was and otherwise comfortably drive the line and see my surroundings. Even though I don't feel like I was pushing the car quite as hard this time around, it feels like I was faster and more consistent around the track.
While I don't generally track my lap times, my wife did take some photos of me when I was going around the track, and a few of those were at the same location on successive laps. For that session (I can't remember which one, but it wasn't the last), my lap time around Sonoma was 2:16. There's certainly a lot left on the table, but I suspect that's not half bad. Not that I really care all that much -- I had a great time blasting around the track!
So in the end, this event was a resounding success. Brilliant. I can't say enough good things about it.
The car
The car performed admirably, even better than before. Whereas before I was maxing out at about 1.05G (according to the Track Apps accelerometer), this time around I maxed out at an astounding 1.20G. That to me is absolutely astonishing. I'm certain it's just the transient maximum, and that the continuous maximum is probably somewhere around 1.1G, but on Bridgestone S-04 Pole Position street tires?? I suppose the accelerometer might be lying, but I'd like to see some evidence of it if it is. Certainly, by the seat of my pants, it feels like I'm getting that kind of traction.
The car does indeed understeer some by default, but bringing the rear out is easy. It doesn't take a lot of additional throttle to do that, as I discovered upon exit from turn 11. Reining it back in was straightforward: just lift the throttle slightly, back to neutral, and the car will come right back into line. All of that tells me that while the car may not be neutral in its default handling, it's still reasonably well-balanced because you can easily control which regime of traction loss you want to be in.
The tires still still appear to be wearing evenly, and it certainly isn't for lack of use! I intend to modify this message to include a few pictures, a couple of which will show the tires so you can judge for yourself how much I was working them. Even after a couple of hundred miles since the event, there are still large ribbons of melted tire at the edges of the longitudinal tread. Pressures after coming back into the paddock from a cool down lap were around 40 PSI, with cold pressures at about 35 PSI. I doubt I'd be getting the kind of grip I'm obviously getting out of these if the contact patches were significantly compromised due to incorrect tire pressures or even incorrect camber up front.
There is some body lean in the corners, but it continues to feel well-controlled and not excessive. The suspension has never unbalanced the car when hitting the rumble strips or anything else thus far. The car has never felt unresponsive. If this is what a "poor" suspension is like, then I'll take it!
There is also, of course, some dive in braking. But at maximum braking (which I did once or twice just to see what it was like -- most of my braking was less than that because it's easier to precisely control more gradual braking), your face feels like it's going to come off of your head and for me, at least, my concentration is so much on where my braking targets are that I simply don't notice the brake dive. Maybe that'll change over time, but for now, it's not an issue.
All of this has me wondering if Ford did something to the 2014 Track Package cars to improve them. The overall experience with the stock suspension so far is that it remains very, very good. Enough so that my only complaint about it so far has nothing to do with driving on the track at all, and rather involves driving on the street: it feels harsher than it needs to on pavement that has mid-range surface height variability. Those of you who live in the SF Bay Area will probably be familiar with the section of 280 (particularly southbound) between 85 and De Anza. There aren't many suspensions that seem to cope truly nicely with that section. My suspicion is that Ford increased low speed compression damping to give the car sharper "reflexes", and that's why it feels as it does over that kind of pavement.
The Bad News
So after reading all of the above, you're wondering what the bad news could possibly be.
Psych! There is no bad news!
Well, okay, there is some bad news. The bad news is that I didn't get enough track time!
Needless to say, the hook is deep in my mouth, and I can't dislodge it!
July is going to be a truly busy month for me. Not only do I have the Evolution driving school in Marina, I've also signed up for the Simraceway high performance driving school at Sonoma. The first day will get us some autocross and track time, the second day even more (2 hours of track time) and the third day even more than that (2.5 hours of track time). At $500 each, the expense isn't that much higher per hour of track time than I get at NASA events, and it's all with lots of instruction. I feel it's going to be money well spent.
And on top of that, I've signed up for a driving event at Laguna Seca! This is going to be perhaps the most interesting event of them all, because I get to see just how useful all those virtual laps around the track are. I've got many hundreds of laps around Laguna Seca in Gran Turismo, so it's really going to be a question of learning where the corner workers are and how the real car behaves in that environment. I'm stoked!
So, bottom line: it was indeed situational overload and maybe a bit of being overly-self-critical that was responsible for the problems I felt I had during the first event.
Thunderhill comes up in August. That's going to be a bit more interesting because there doesn't seem to be a game out there that has it in its list of tracks. But I've got an idea on how to familiarize myself with it: watch videos from inside a car while "driving" with my steering wheel setup, to sort of get a visceral sense of the track. Should be interesting to see how well that works. I'm going into HPDE1 for that track simply because I don't have any real-world familiarity with it, but have no reason to believe I won't be in HPDE2 by the second day.
Thanks, everyone, for being such a great help to me! It worked!
