So as I mentioned elsewhere, I've signed up for a bunch of different events, including a driving school at Simraceway (previously Jim Russell). For me, this is pretty convenient (much more so than the Ford Racing school at Miller Motorsports Park) and quite a lot less expensive than most, as I was driving my own car instead of theirs.
This was phase 1, held on June 27th. It was scheduled to start at 10am, so I decided to drive there in the morning rather than book a hotel for the previous night. That didn't work out so well -- they rescheduled the event for 8am, and gave only one day advanced notice, something I didn't even notice until the morning of the event. Fortunately for me, that worked out well enough -- I wound up being about 45 minutes late, and didn't really miss anything I didn't already know (the first hour or so was class time).
This was a really interesting and fairly broad class, as it happens. We didn't just do laps around the track. We did a slalom and "autocross" course as well (I put the word in quotes because it was really more like a miniature track than anything else, and I drove it as such).
The first thing we did was the slalom. This was one in which the spacing of the cones increased as you went, so you had to increase your speed through the slalom in order to run it properly. As has been the case with my initial expectations of the car at the track, I was expecting the car to be all over the place, a sloppy mess, through the slalom. With soft springs and lots of available suspension movement, how good could it be?
It was wonderful. As with driving on the track, the key to doing the slalom seemed to be making smooth control inputs. The car always went where I told it to go when I told it. When it failed to end up where I wanted it, it was because I didn't time my inputs properly. Because my reaction time isn't the best in the world, I once missed the braking point and went past the cones that marked the end of the slalom. A little more anticipation of what was coming up took care of that problem.
Next up was the "autocross". This had one right-hand turn and five left-hand turns, with one quick left-right "slalom" thrown in for good meausure. We ran three cars on the course at a time, spaced out enough that there would (generally) not be anyone holding anyone else back. Once again, I expected the car to fall all over itself. It didn't. Not even close. It was quick enough that I caught up to the C6 Corvette in front of me (and this was perhaps the third 5-lap run around the course, so it's not like he wasn't familiar with it). I found that the trick here was to treat the car as more of a momentum car, and to concentrate on driving the "line" smoothly and precisely, because the amount of time I would be on the gas or brakes was simply too short for me to precisely control (I did use the gas and the brakes, but wasn't near the limit of either at any point -- I felt control was the key here).
But that's not what made the "autocross" so fun. The fun part was letting it all hang out! I decided for a few laps to (with the approval of the instructors), while rounding the left-hand corner that immediately preceded the first right-hander, play with kicking the tail out to see how the car would behave, what it would take to make it happen, and how easy it was to recover. Recovery wasn't bad at all, but I did manage to spin the car a couple of times while playing around like this, which also put a big grin on my face.
It was awesome! But it felt, too, like the car was fairly easy to recover if I managed to react to what it was doing quickly enough. It didn't take that much throttle to make the rear come around, and this was with the fronts nowhere near the limits of adhesion.
Next was the track. This involved two lead-follow sessions, with two student cars per instructor car.
The first session was somewhat slow and, obviously, well-controlled, but towards the end of that we were still doing pretty decent speeds. Because they kept an eye on you, they tried to gauge your ability to drive the track and adjust their own speed accordingly, and because I'd driven the track for a couple of weekends before, I was pretty familiar with it.
The second session was the fast one. In that session, for most of it, I felt like I was pushing the car about as much as I dared. Yes, the tires were squealing a lot throughout, but I had a lot of variation in my speed around the track despite my relative familiarity with it (familiarity with the track does not equate to consistency of control). Even so, I felt like I was going faster around the track towards the end than I had ever done previously. The other guy with me was the guy in the C6 Corvette, and he commented on how impressed he was with the speed of the Mustang around the track. My average braking was a bit harder this time around than before, but I still left quite a lot on the table, with my maximum braking registering at about 0.8G. Cornering maxed at 1.21G, so I wasn't holding back there.
So at the end, I learned a bit about how the car behaves in fast transitions and smaller corners when attacked at "speed".
Once again, the car was simply astonishing. My driving must suck or something for me to be so impressed with a car with a soft, wallowy suspension as these cars are equipped with. It simply has not disappointed me in any way. I'm really impressed.
And the tires? The tires are wearing evenly left to right. I have proof. The manufacturer left little "fingers" in the tread on each side at what looks like a set height above the bottom of the tread. Substantial wear on one side or the other would eliminate those "fingers" on one side while leaving them intact on the other. That's not the case for my tires: the "fingers" are intact on both sides and, more importantly, the distance from them to the top of the tread at those locations is about the same.
Here, I have pictures. Here's the outside edge of the front right tire after the event was done, before I drove home:
Outside edge front right by n2185x, on Flickr
Here's the inside edge of the front right tire:
Inside edge front right by n2185x, on Flickr
The outside might be wearing slightly more than the inside, but it certainly doesn't look like a whole lot of difference to my eyes.
Anyway, I must be easily impressed or something, because this car has been astonishingly good at handling everything I've thrown at it.
Conclusion: my driving skills must suck!
This was phase 1, held on June 27th. It was scheduled to start at 10am, so I decided to drive there in the morning rather than book a hotel for the previous night. That didn't work out so well -- they rescheduled the event for 8am, and gave only one day advanced notice, something I didn't even notice until the morning of the event. Fortunately for me, that worked out well enough -- I wound up being about 45 minutes late, and didn't really miss anything I didn't already know (the first hour or so was class time).
This was a really interesting and fairly broad class, as it happens. We didn't just do laps around the track. We did a slalom and "autocross" course as well (I put the word in quotes because it was really more like a miniature track than anything else, and I drove it as such).
The first thing we did was the slalom. This was one in which the spacing of the cones increased as you went, so you had to increase your speed through the slalom in order to run it properly. As has been the case with my initial expectations of the car at the track, I was expecting the car to be all over the place, a sloppy mess, through the slalom. With soft springs and lots of available suspension movement, how good could it be?
It was wonderful. As with driving on the track, the key to doing the slalom seemed to be making smooth control inputs. The car always went where I told it to go when I told it. When it failed to end up where I wanted it, it was because I didn't time my inputs properly. Because my reaction time isn't the best in the world, I once missed the braking point and went past the cones that marked the end of the slalom. A little more anticipation of what was coming up took care of that problem.
Next up was the "autocross". This had one right-hand turn and five left-hand turns, with one quick left-right "slalom" thrown in for good meausure. We ran three cars on the course at a time, spaced out enough that there would (generally) not be anyone holding anyone else back. Once again, I expected the car to fall all over itself. It didn't. Not even close. It was quick enough that I caught up to the C6 Corvette in front of me (and this was perhaps the third 5-lap run around the course, so it's not like he wasn't familiar with it). I found that the trick here was to treat the car as more of a momentum car, and to concentrate on driving the "line" smoothly and precisely, because the amount of time I would be on the gas or brakes was simply too short for me to precisely control (I did use the gas and the brakes, but wasn't near the limit of either at any point -- I felt control was the key here).
But that's not what made the "autocross" so fun. The fun part was letting it all hang out! I decided for a few laps to (with the approval of the instructors), while rounding the left-hand corner that immediately preceded the first right-hander, play with kicking the tail out to see how the car would behave, what it would take to make it happen, and how easy it was to recover. Recovery wasn't bad at all, but I did manage to spin the car a couple of times while playing around like this, which also put a big grin on my face.
Next was the track. This involved two lead-follow sessions, with two student cars per instructor car.
The first session was somewhat slow and, obviously, well-controlled, but towards the end of that we were still doing pretty decent speeds. Because they kept an eye on you, they tried to gauge your ability to drive the track and adjust their own speed accordingly, and because I'd driven the track for a couple of weekends before, I was pretty familiar with it.
The second session was the fast one. In that session, for most of it, I felt like I was pushing the car about as much as I dared. Yes, the tires were squealing a lot throughout, but I had a lot of variation in my speed around the track despite my relative familiarity with it (familiarity with the track does not equate to consistency of control). Even so, I felt like I was going faster around the track towards the end than I had ever done previously. The other guy with me was the guy in the C6 Corvette, and he commented on how impressed he was with the speed of the Mustang around the track. My average braking was a bit harder this time around than before, but I still left quite a lot on the table, with my maximum braking registering at about 0.8G. Cornering maxed at 1.21G, so I wasn't holding back there.
So at the end, I learned a bit about how the car behaves in fast transitions and smaller corners when attacked at "speed".
Once again, the car was simply astonishing. My driving must suck or something for me to be so impressed with a car with a soft, wallowy suspension as these cars are equipped with. It simply has not disappointed me in any way. I'm really impressed.
And the tires? The tires are wearing evenly left to right. I have proof. The manufacturer left little "fingers" in the tread on each side at what looks like a set height above the bottom of the tread. Substantial wear on one side or the other would eliminate those "fingers" on one side while leaving them intact on the other. That's not the case for my tires: the "fingers" are intact on both sides and, more importantly, the distance from them to the top of the tread at those locations is about the same.
Here, I have pictures. Here's the outside edge of the front right tire after the event was done, before I drove home:
Outside edge front right by n2185x, on Flickr
Here's the inside edge of the front right tire:
Inside edge front right by n2185x, on Flickr
The outside might be wearing slightly more than the inside, but it certainly doesn't look like a whole lot of difference to my eyes.
Anyway, I must be easily impressed or something, because this car has been astonishingly good at handling everything I've thrown at it.
Conclusion: my driving skills must suck!
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