SCCA Advanced Driving School - Thunderhill Raceway

Today's school was open to those with previous track experience, including the regular Street School. We ran the full 3.0 mile course, just as we did with the Miata club a few months ago. The only difference was that today they put chicanes up before turns 1 and 8. This was simply for school safety purposes: to slow us down before entering the two highest speed turns, where students have the greatest risk of a high-speed mistake.

Michael Saal (Docta Boxsta) showed up early with his twin trailer to mine. Kevin C. was back for a second day. This time I noticed three Ferraris, one black, the others different beautiful shades of blue. A red Honda S2000 arrived and I wondered if it was Gary Barnhill, frequent poster to the Boxster Racing Board and ex-Boxster owner, since Gary had said he was going to try to make it to the school; but it was not him (he decided not to make the 1000-mile round trip for just one day on the track). Around noon Doug DeVetter arrived in his truck. Doug had planned to bring his Boxster and drive in the class, but a week or so ago was rear-ended and so, sadly, his Boxster is in the body shop. He took a lot of pictures, though! All photos on this page were taken by Doug. As usual, click for the full size image.

Kevin	Michael	Trygve
trying to nail 14-15 and thus exit fast onto the main straight

We shared the track with a Shelby Club event. The sessions alternated between our school and the Shelby Club, which had practice sessions, a qualifying race, and a final race. Some of those cars were incredibly loud. In the qualifying session I timed some of the cars and concluded that the times Michael and I ran on the full 3.0 mile course in Boxsters with the Miata club a while ago were definitely up in the Shelby pack.

Kevin	Michael	Trygve
screaming down the main straight

It was a blast. The chicane at turn 8 was quickly subdued as sloppy or overeager drivers took it too fast and knocked cones over. The chicane became wide enough that it could be taken nearly straight on. However, the cones left standing still created an extra off-line jog from the normal fast line into turn 8, so it was much slower even with the wide chicane. The Boxster felt really good and I was getting both a lot of nice traffic-free track, and also doing a lot of passing. (They opened up a couple of extra passing areas: besides the main straight and the back straight, we could pass between turns 6 and 7, and between turns 9 and 10.) I remember passing the black Ferrari a lot :)

Michael prepares to pass the Ferrari out of 13	Trygve prepares to pass the 911 out of 13	Trygve accelerates out of 13

Toward the end of the day Michael told me about an alternate line for turn 2, using a double-apex. An instructor described it as well, but it was almost the end of the day so I only had one session to try it out. Basically, instead of starting the turn-in at the right edge, and slowly pulling towards the inside until the late apex about 120 of the 180 degrees through the turn (it's a long 180 degree turn), you start more at the middle, dive in earlier for a first apex at around 60 degrees of arc, let the card drift back out a bit by 90 degrees, and then pull it back in under heavier acceleration to hit the normal late apex. Maybe next time I can try it more aggressively.

Late in the day they told us that there would be a couple of "race cars" on the track with us, and that the drivers were aware that they were running with our rules regarding passing zones, etc. I never saw these cars (or maybe they didn't look special), but I did notice that they left some of their racing slicks on the track. The closer to the inside that I took turn 2, the more gravel junk sound I would hear bouncing up into my wheel wells. Then, also on the inside of turn 2, I started to hear a strange slapping sound, almost like a piece of rubber was coming off one of my tires. I pitted and discovered that I had picked up what I am calling "tire bacon": melted chunks of rubber left the "race cars'" slick tires, grabbed by my sticky track tires, and then crushed flat into strips that look like pieces of bacon. By this time, our session was over and we were done for the day.

"tire bacon"

As the light faded, we tackled the wheel swapping tasks. I found that my back was getting tired from all that driving plus lifting and manhandling the wheels. Michael found an assistant in a newfound fellow "S Waiter", since his back was in worse shape than mine. We hung around and talked with instructor Dennis Hale and others until it started to get dark, and then we headed out, Michael and I in the twin Boxster/trailer combos, looking for any trailer problems (at least for mine, on its first trip). None found, once I re-seated the funky ground wire on the trailer's wiring harness.

Except...it started to rain when we got south of Vacaville, and then the traffic got extremely heavy, and the Michael pulled alongside me and yelled across that my trailer lights had suddenly stopped working. We pulled off at the next exit and sure enough, no lights, and one of my Boxster tail lights was also out. The ground wire had wiggled loose again, so I re-seated it and taped it in place, but that didn't help. I limped home, knowing that my center brake light was brightly visible, and since the trailer is narrower than the car, the car's brake lights and turn signals were still useful. Later I discovered two problems that were the cause. First, because of how I had packed stuff in the trailer toolbox, I had caused one of the trailer light's connector to become unplugged. Also, the fuse for the car's left rear tail light had burned out. After fixing these two things, everything works fine, although I am concerned about why the fuse blew. So I have plenty of spare fuses, and I will fix the ground wire connection for good before I head down to Laguna Seca on the 26th.