PCA Time Trial #2 @ Buttonwillow

Finally, after missing the first time trial (which got rained out anyway so it was OK), everything fell into place so I could make the second time trial of the season. Since this was my first time trial with GGR, I had to attend the "ground school" classroom session two weeks prior, led by famous expert Hank Watts, which mainly covered stuff I already knew, but did include a handout of the Buttonwillow track describing each corner, and we also watched a couple of minutes of Buttonwillow action on videotape. For people who haven't had track or driver ed experience, learning the rules of the road is very necessary, but it didn't really do much for me.

Buttonwillow can be configured in a variety of different ways. We ran it in a 2.8 mile configuration called "Race #13" that dodges into the infield for turns 5 and 6 ("Bus Stop") rather than going in a straight line from 4 to 7, and using the sweeping turn 11 rather than the "Star Mazda" corner beyond it.

Saturday

The only three Boxsters present at Buttonwillow were me, Michael Saal, and Doug DeVetter. I was in class Ti (i for improved because of my R compound tires). Doug was in class T on street tires, although GGR scores the stock and improved classes together, so he was at a disadvantage by the tire difference. Michael was up in class Tp (production) in his Boxster S because of all the crap on the car! ;) Namely the S-Car-Go Flow and the roll cage. (The Boxster S as a class is still in class T along with the 2.5 and 2.7 liter Boxsters.) Initially Michael was in the Yellow run group with me, and Doug was in White. These are the two slowest groups. This made sense for me in that it was my first GGR time trial, but Michael and Doug should have been in faster run groups. Michael moved up to the Green run group later in the day and said it was no problem.

Because I never measured the original tread depth and there was a lot of junk stuck to them, I wasn't sure how much life was left in my BFG g-Force TA R1's, but I was pretty sure they'd last two days. The schedule was four 20-minute sessions on Saturday, two 20-minute sessions Sunday morning, and official timed laps Sunday afternoon, in the form of a warmup lap plus two timed laps for each driver.

---

I've since gotten my brand new R1's, and I actually think my old ones (which I'm keeping) have plenty of depth in the middle and most of the wear on the outside due to the limited negative camber I can get. I think when my new ones wear out I can have the old ones remounted in reverse orientation so that the deep inner tread and worn outer tread are swapped. All in all, I now think that my R1's are only about 50% worn after 6 or 7 track days, assuming I do the inside/outside swap to get the second half of their lifespan. With the new ones I use in the interim, I'm going to keep much closer track of the actual tread depth, track minutes, and track mileage.

---

Each student was pre-assigned instructors, and I think there was some method to the assignments. My instructor for Saturday morning was Sandy Swallow, who was there with his fully track-ready 914-6. I suspect that his car's mid-engine layout was the reason he was assigned to instruct me. Before the real sessions we went out in my car for the "drive-around" session with instructors driving the students' cars. Sandy drove my car around and showed me the line. The line at Buttonwillow is not that hard to pick up because the corners are so non-stop that most of them are pretty obvious and often unavoidable. However, there are a few places where you have time and space to choose where you go, or have to figure out what speed is possible and how much to brake.

The rules for passing were: open passing in the main straight (no need to be waved by, though a wave-by was considered courteous); no passing in corners; passing elsewhere only with a wave-by.

When we went out for the morning sessions, I mainly concentrated on learning the line and paying attention to what Sandy was teaching me. The first turn he had me work on was 3. Too often I would either come in too fast or turn in too softly (rather than nailing the apex) and this would put me too far from the edge of the pavement where I wanted to be for the immediate opposite turn-in. When this happened I had the tendency to try to hop back over to the edge of the track, and Sandy coached me to turn in tighter so that I would be properly set up for the turn up the hill to 3a.

The next tidbit of information was to be a little careful exiting turn 4, because the exit curb has a pretty nasty drop-off onto the dirt, and going wide on this turn could be interesting. Turn 5 is only a dog-leg, but as Hank Watts explained in the ground school, your mind thinks every corner is 90 degrees, so you'll slow down too much. In fact, after I safely exited turn 4, I had to work on going full throttle through turn 5. It would take a little while to work up the confidence to do this. Quite a few people in my "beginner" run group were actually braking for turn 5; in fact you should be wide-open-throttle once you've cleared turn 4, all the way to braking for turn 6.

Turn 7, the so-called "Nascar" turn, was another high-speed turn, a long, wide, slightly banked sweeper. Sandy told me to take it about mid-track, and I slowly began to increase my speed. Essentially, once you get comfortable you get closer and closer to going full throttle starting at turn 6 exit all the way to braking at turn 9. Of course, I never actually went full throttle through turn 7 but tried to get a little faster each time.

Turn 11 is a 180 degree turn leading into a series of esses. Hank had said this could be taken either as a double apex or a very late single apex. Sandy had me do it single apex, and it felt pretty good. I entered close to mid track and slowly drifted outward until the turn-in point about 120 degrees into the turn practically at the edge of the track, then pointed into the apex curbing.

There was quite a bit of traffic in Yellow group, and after I spent the first session getting comfortable with the track, in the second session I was ready to start going faster in the fast sweepers, but didn't get much opportunity because of being held up. Most of the group, but not everyone, was good about waving faster drivers by. Still, I felt like I was learning, and Sandy's instruction was great.

My instructor for the afternoon was British expatriate John Cole, a 911 driver. John gave me a different set of tips from Sandy, and it was useful to get both perspectives. There were a couple of turns where he used a slightly different turn-in point from Sandy, or a different track position in a sweeper, and I just had to try it both ways and see what felt best in my car and at my skill. As I started to go faster, one of John's main tips was places where he wanted me to really drive over the apex curbs. This was mainly on turns 1, 3a, 4, 5, and 9. What he showed me was that by "bouncing" off, or as he called it "mounting" the curb with the inside tires, the outside suspension was sort of pre-compressed and would grip tighter. It's like taking up the slack in the suspension ahead of time. The result was that at the same speed I would find myself suddenly with two feet of extra track width between me and the exit curbing. Meaning that I could go faster on the next lap, using the newly found extra track. John would tell me to think of the apex cone (located a good foot or so away from the curb and on the dirt) and sort of visualize knocking it over, running over the cone. Of course I wouldn't really want to do that, but thinking about it got me to really "mount" the curbing rather than just touch it.

Still, there was too much traffic bunching up behind certain cars. I would later find that turn 5, plus turns 7/8, really could take a tremendous amount of speed, and because I never got a chance to take them at speed (being stuck behind a slower driver instead), I thus never got a chance to work up confidence of an appropriate speed. So when, late in the day, I finally did get a clean lap, I was way, way too slow in these sections, and left miles of track out there. But I was quite comfortable and felt ready to drive solo.

In our last session on Saturday, the hot lap timer system finally started working. In a 20-minute session at this track length, you get about 6 complete laps, with the first and last being slower if you warm up and cool down. My times in the last Saturday session were:

2:45.59
2:38.41
2:30.33
2.36.52
2.28.71
2:45.37

Doug asked me to time him with my watch in his last session Saturday. (I think his hot lap timer wasn't working at all.) I recorded Doug at 2:26. Since Doug was on street tires and I was on sticky tires, in otherwise identical 2.5 liter Boxsters, this instantly made Doug my hero.

Michael had attended the Friday test day in his Boxster S on street tires and recorded a 2:22 or 2:24, I think. He said his goal was to break 2:20 on his sticky tires. And he did, with a 2:19-something in the last session on Saturday. However, he also had an off-track excursion exiting turn 11. And because he was running top down, the cloud of dust he kicked up rained down into his car, making a nice messy layer dust over everything. He borrowed a little vaccuum cleaner and did his best to get the worst of it out.

Before leaving the track Saturday we were supposed to turn a "timing slip" with our car info and a Lap Time Guess. The guess is what you expect to do in the time trial session Sunday afternoon. They use your guess to place your car in running order. The running order is intended to keep cars of similar speed together (but spaced out) so that you get clean unimpeded laps in the time trial. Since my only clean lap was a 2:28, and I figured I'd improve a little Sunday morning, I guessed 2:26. I think Doug said he guessed 2:24.

The catered barbeque was great. Chicken and ribs and salad and chili. Door prizes were drawn. We all sat around and chowed down and talked until people headed back to their hotels. Some people had mobile homes and just stayed overnight in the paddock.

Sunday

The weather report for Sunday predicted some rain late in the day. We hoped it would happen after the afternoon time trial runs. I found my Saturday afternoon instructor John on grid in the first run group and asked him what the deal was with instructors for the day. He said that I was fine to go out solo.

My Yellow run group was second out, and I really wanted to get some clear track, so after the first run group went on track, I gridded right away, about third in line. With a couple of minutes left to go, the grid chief leaned over to me and asked where my instructor was. I told him that he was on track and had said I was OK to drive solo. He responded that the instructor was supposed to notify him directly before I could drive solo. Well, crap, so much for gridding early. I got out and ran over to Sandy's paddock space, and he scribbled "Isaacson - OK - 4/16/2000" with his signature on a piece of paper. I sprinted back to grid, handed it to the grid chief, got his thumbs up, and got buckled in as cars were already exiting pit line onto the track.

I reminded myself to take it easy on the first lap, to let the tires get warm and to get my mind refocused on the correct line, and remembering on each corner what points Sandy and John had taught me yesterday. Then I began to take it back to yesterday's speed where I could, though there was still plenty of traffic. But I got a couple of good runs through partial sections of the track, and even got a chance or two to run unimpeded through turns 7 and 8 where yesterday I hadn't really gotten a chance to learn how fast to go. Finally, on my last lap before the checkered flag, I got a full unimpeded lap! At first I thought the hot lap timer might have malfunctioned.

2:45.49
2:35.20
2:33.31
2:33.00
2:22.22
2:27.79

That 2:22 seemed too dramatic an improvement. But I remembered that I'd never before gotten up to speed in the fast turns, nor gotten a really clean lap, so it made some sense. Suddenly I didn't feel like Doug's 2:26 time on street tires was a complete kicking of my ass. I'm not sure what times Doug turned on Sunday, but I presume they improved. Michael was able to get a 2:17 in the S on Sunday with sticky tires. He claimed the roll cage makes him faster. :)

The weather was still looking iffy, and in the hope of getting the remaining sessions and the timed runs in, they decided to cut the rest of the morning sessions to 15 minutes each. I knew this was my last chance to practice, and with the shortened session I decided to reduce my warmup and cooldown laps down to half laps. I wanted to try to get in a clear lap somewhere to see if that 2:22 was real or not. The session ended up being just four laps long:

2:27.45
2:22:01
2:20.46
2:29.28

So it was no mistake after all! I felt pretty good about my improvement, although it was probably just a matter of getting more comfortable with the higher speed turns, and being smooth and consistent elsewhere. And there is definitely room for improvement.

Unfortunately, as I sat in the paddock waiting for the last run group to finish, a few rain drops appeared, and after a few minutes I noticed that my windshield was fairly well covered with them. It was barely raining, but it was enough to wet the track. I'd been intending to take my camcorder up on one of the bleachers and try to catch Doug or Michael on track, but had forgotten to do it. This was a big mistake, because as the session was winding down, in came Michael to the paddock with his Speed Yellow covered in something filthy. It was a light spray of wet dust. The reason: another off-track excursion at turn 6. Apparently he'd touched one of the painted curbs at turn 6, and with the fresh dusting of rain, that's a hazardous thing, so he spun into the infield and took on the new layer of junk. It didn't look like it got inside, unlike yesterday's dust. He had also corded one of his Kumhos in the process.

The organizers decided to halt the event at this point, since the last practice session had several spins, and it was not a good environment to do competitive timed laps. I thought this was probably a smart idea, although it would have been fun to battle with Doug to see who could get the first class Ti track record at Buttonwillow! So we packed up (fortunately the rain stopped while we did this) and drove home (in quite a bit of rain part of the time).

Next time trial: June 10/11 at Laguna Seca! My first time there, on sticky tires, I just pipped 2:00 flat according to my watch and videotape, and my second time there, on street tires, got a 2:01.57 on the hot lap timer. So the question will be to what degree I can knock time off the 2:00 mark.