TracQuest HPDE, Thunderhill Raceway Park

OK, I'm a little behind on writing this so I don't remember a whole lot of details of the day.

There were several Boxsters, some having traveled quite a distance. Ethan Dahlkamp, David Trounce, Patricia Overell, Kevin Christiansen, Chris Brown, Michael Saal, Behram Soonawala, and Mike Machado. and of course quite a few of Todd's regular TracQuest drivers and instructors were up from the L.A. area as well.

What I remember the most is my spin in turn 6. The exit curbing of turn 6 had been modified since the last time I was at Thunderhill. The top is now ground down and is rougher. I don't know if that really had any effect on me, but as I exited the turn and drifted towards the exit curbing, I knew that I was going to touch it. No big deal, I thought, because I've touched it many times before with no problem at all. But this time I was really going to ride up on the curbing, and in fact on the video tape I hear some pebbles being kicked up from the rear wheels, so I may have even gotten part of my right wheels over the curb and on some dirt. And unfortunately, as I rode up onto the curbing, my steering wheel was still turned. When I got on the curbing at around 70 MPH, the car took a jolt and the rear end came out. I countersteered, but it was already too late. The rear end continued around and I crossed back to the inside of the track, tires screeching, and hit the dirt going sideways, the spin having done 90°. Immediately the dust cloud entered the car and rained dust and pebbles into the interior. By now I had both feet in -- on the brake and on the clutch -- and had straightened the wheel. The car continued its spin until it was going backwards 180°, at which point it went over a little drop in the dirt (I'd guess 6"), causing the video camera mount to get jarred sideways -- this makes the video look worse than it really was! The car continued on to about the 270° where it crossed the paved access road, with another brief moment of tire screetch. Finally, as the car went back into the dirt, it finished the end of its 360°, with the dust cloud chasing the front of the car.

The yellow arrow shows the complete path of the car. Note that the access road it crossed was unused as always, and of course had no vechicles on it.

Now I've learned my lesson and I know that I should have either made sure I stayed off that curbing (I probably could have just turned a little tighter and rolled on a little more throttle), or just driven straight off the outside of the track. At Thunderhill, on most corners you can safely drive straight off the track if you're not going to make a turn, and that's much safer than spinning. This is not possible at all tracks or on every corner, so you have to know where to do it. But at Thunderhill and Buttonwillow, nearly every corner has lots of safe run-off space.

It was my first day on the new Kumho V700 competition tires. They seemed pretty similar in feel to the BFG g-Force T/A R1's, but a more discerning track driver could probably tell the difference in favor of one or the other. I didn't feel very successful in improving my Thunderhill time because my previous best on the 3.0 mile course was 2:24.37 on street tires, and my best lap this day was 2:23.09. But although there are parts of the track that I know pretty well, I am still not comfortable with the highest speed turns -- 1 and 8 -- because I haven't done them much, and not in a while, and it takes some gradual building to gain confidence of higher speeds there. Turn 1 is approached at over 100 MPH and the question is how much to slow down and when to turn in and start accelerating. Turn 8 is approached at 90 MPH or more and the question there is the same, but there's the additional problem of a little dip at the apex that, while not really doing much, gives you the impression that it's upsetting the car, and so you don't feel real good about going too fast there. The immediate uphill climb afterwards really penalizes you for every MPH you decide to scrub off as you enter the turn. In both corners, if you slow down enough you need to downshift to 3rd gear to get into the power band, and at my current comfort level in these corners, I'm slowing down that much. I think the problem is best illustrated by the fact that I'm looking at my speedometer as I brake in these two corners, in order to feel confident that my corner entry speed isn't too high. What I need to do is get these two corners down to pure feel, like the rest of the corners are.