PCA-GGR Time Trial #3, Laguna Seca Raceway

Since the timed runs have been rained out at the first two time trials of the season, this event would be the first actual points awarded to the competitors.

Saturday

Since this was my second GGR time trial, I needed to have an instructor ride with me in the two morning sessions. (You also have to do this if you've never driven the track before.) My instructor was Chuck Kolstad, and he had some good suggestions for me. The two main things had to do with my turn-in towards the apex. First, he noticed that I have a tendency to turn in twice: at the turn-in point, I was turning in too gently, and then as I approached the apex (but missing the apex) I was turning tighter. He suggested that I concentrate on turning in once, more decisively, at the turn-in point, so that I could unwind the wheel as I progressed through the corner, rather than having to wind the wheel further. Second (probably as a result of the first problem), he noticed that I was missing too many apexes! Often I was a foot or more from the apex. I had noticed this, and commented that I'd seen the distance at the apex. But of course one really shouldn't be looking at the apex as one crosses it -- one should be looking far ahead down the track. So his assignment for me was that I needed to hear each apex. In other words, I needed to really nail the apex, putting at least an inch of tire directly on the curbing. All of the Laguna Seca apex curbs are apparently now FIA standard, and this means that if you put a little bit of tire on the curb, you will hear "bdbdbdbdbdbd" from the nubs of the curbing. So my goal was to use this sound -- rather than looking -- as my pass/fail signal on each apex.

Doug and Michael were there, too. Doug had never driven Laguna Seca before, so he was at a disadvantage. Naturally I hoped this might give me the edge against him in the "Ti" class. Michael was running the S in "Tp" with all his mods. I was just hoping to break the 2:00 barrier so that the Boxster wouldn't be appearing in the GGR lap records in the 2:00+ crowd. I figured this was doable since I'd done about a 2:00.xx before on sticky tires, and I should be improving.

The good news was that I was already down to 1:58.xx by the end of Saturday. When we turned in our time trial estimated time slips, I guessed I do a 1:56.30, figuring I could improve further. Doug estimated 2:04, which kind of surprised me because I figured he'd be much closer to 2:00 already. But before the timed runs on Sunday he had improved more and revised his estimate downward and would be gridded much farther up.

Sunday

The morning sessions on Sunday were a lot of fun. I gridded ahead of Doug, and behind a silver 911 and a black 914 that had previously been running very close lap times to me (we'd been running in a close pack), and after we got by the 911, we ran closely for a lap or two, until the pressure got to the 914 and he spun gently in turn 2. I passed him carefully, and noticed that Doug was there behind me. He stayed right on me for a lap, so I waved him by on the front straight. Unfortunately, the checkered flag was out, so I didn't get to follow him. And it turned out that he really just wanted to follow me to learn my line! Oops! There was a brief scary moment in one of the sessions when I and another car passed a yellow 911 on the main straight. As I began my part of the pass, the 911 moved over in front of me. He obviously didn't know that there were two cars passing him, and wasn't watching his mirrors carefully enough. I had to brake to avoid him, and it was a little hairy for a moment.

My best lap Sunday morning was a 1:55.53

So we each waited for our timed runs. Each car is assigned to either group A or B. You stay in your group the rest of the season. At each event A and B swap who goes first. That way, at every other event, your group is done for the day earlier than the other group. Within each group, the run order is fastest-to-slowest, using the time estimates turned in the day before. Cars are sent out in groups of four or five, with each car in the group staggered by 15 seconds or so, so that there is no chance of catching the car in front of you, unless it spins. The way it's configured at Laguna Seca, you enter the main straight just after the start/finish line, do 90% of a warmup lap, and then trigger the timing beam just before the official start/finish line. Then you do the two timed laps and brake immediately to do a U-turn back into pit lane. So no cooldown lap at all (that's OK since you're only doing two hot laps). This avoids taking the time of letting 100+ cars do cooldown laps and lets everyone go home earlier.

My first run was 1:56.040 and my second was 1:56.003. However, Doug pipped me with a 1:55:78! He da man. Now I must fight back at Thunderhill!