We had amazing late October weather today at Laguna Seca Raceway...or if you prefer, Mazda Raceway at Laguna Seca. After lunch it was 92 degrees, which was a little too hot for comfort, but it cooled down to the 70's by 4PM when I went out for my last session.

For the first time, I decided to do a day at Laguna Seca without driving down the night before. I put the track tires on and got all packed last night, and got up at 5 AM, hitting the freeway in Oakland at 5:30. Traffic was moderate, and only made worse by the surprising fact that all the way down I-880, the carpool lane is in effect starting at 5 AM! There's no one using the carpool lane at that time, and traffic is fairly light, but the loss of that lane causes just enough congestion to keep things from flowing well. But heading south out of San Jose, it was clear sailing and I could see fairly heavy commute traffic coming north all the way from San Jose to Gilroy, even at such an early hour. I had time to stop for gas and a cup of coffee where 152 departs 101 for Monterey. The Exxon station there had 92 octane gas -- I'm guessing that 92 is available in the central coast area because of air quality, while we are stuck with 91. My car is labeled to prefer 93, but allows going down to 90, and will allow 87 in an emergency. I arrived at Laguna Seca at 7:35, found Kevin C. as I was looking for a paddock spot, and got signed in. Kevin and I joked about the day being a Cheating Bastard Practice Session, being the week before our CFRA event at Laguna. Today's event was run by Hunpin's outfit Unlimited Laps.

I went out with two students for track orientation laps at 8:45, and then rode with students in the first two 30-minute sessions, so it was a busy start to the morning. One student was a guy in a '95-ish M3 who was doing his first ever track event. I had him concentrate on learning the racing line and why it is what it is. The other was a very young guy in a slammed new M3 who'd had a couple of days at tracks in So Cal. He also needed to focus on learning the line at Laguna because it didn't seem like he was naturally picking it up. On a couple of occasions under moderate cornering loads, I felt a vibration in the car almost like warped rotors or ABS, and since he wasn't braking it was likely tire rubbing. Checking the car afterwards, there was no visible sign of rubbing, but his car was so radically lowered that there was almost no clearance between tire and fender, and not much way to see anything but the visible tire tread! I guess it takes a while for some people to grok that slamming a car down to the ground is not a performance enhancement if it means you can't even bear any cornering load!

In the first instructor session I just went out and concentrated on getting comfortable and confident at speed in the corners. To me, doing well at Laguna Seca is all about confidence. The corners can be moderately high speed, and many don't have a lot of visibility around them; and the cement walls are everywhere. Most of the corners are not technically difficult, but if you not are confident that you have your speed and position dialed in correctly as you approach a corner, you will be too cautious and enter it with too much braking and lost speed, and fail to get on the gas early enough to carry speed out of it. This is true of any track, but more so at a place like Laguna where you can see more cement around you than track ahead of you.

I had to guess vaguely about tire pressures after driving down and not wanting to drive on the freeway on cold underinflated track tires. It was unclear how much the tires had heated up from cold. I ran the first session and checked the pressures and found them a little high. I bled 4 or more pounds out, knowing that they would rise as the ambient temperature increased and I drove them harder.

In the second round of run sessions, the student load was quite light as the instructor-to-student ratio was more than sufficient. Our instructor group did not have a second session in the morning, so we had to wait until the afternoon to drive again.

It was 92 degrees outside when I did my second session in the middle of the afternoon. I took the student driving the slammed M3 out in my car so that he could get the racing line imprinted in his mind, and he said it was a hell of a lot of fun. I checked the lap times and they weren't that good, as I ticked my way down to a 1:56. Afterwards I checked the tire pressures and they had definitely gotten too high in the unexpectedly high ambient temperature. They were up in the 39-41 range, which is a good 3 pounds p.s.i. higher than ideal for the Kumhos, and makes them get slippery so you can't get through the corners quickly. I bled them down to about 35-38, figuring that in my last session I'd probably be driving even a little bit harder.

Next, I went out with JC in his Ferrari F355 F1 GTS. I think this was my first Ferrari ride ever. The sound of the car was great. It revs nice and high and the growl from the exhaust is unique and pretty/brutal. JC drove it in a nice and tidy and smooth fashion. The first few times he pulled out of turn 11 in 2nd gear and the F1 gearbox shifted into 3rd, my head snapped back into the seat! It has quite a kick. But as the session went on, he worked on the throttle technique to smooth out the 2-3 upshift.

The last session of the day at 4 PM was for our instructor group. The ambient temperature was down to a much more pleasant 72, and the tires had cooled a lot since the last session, so I put an extra pound or two in them, which turned out to be just about right, since when I checked them at the end of the session they were right there in the 36-40 range. I went out and soon encountered Kevin's car on course. I started out following him and we were doing about 1:55. He waved me by and we kept going in tandem, in reverse order. There were very few cars on track. We were now doing 1:54's. It was clear that Kevin was a little faster on certain parts of the track, and that I was faster on others. He said it was probably the extra 40 S horsepower helping him catch me up the hills. I was worried that I was holding him up, so I backed off and let him by before the corkscrew, and then let him get a couple of seconds gap on me so I could then try to catch back up.

We were now doing 1:53's, and I managed to close back up after a couple of laps. At that point, Kevin had had enough driving for the day, slowed up, and let me by on the main straight. I kept driving for another 10 minutes solid, without ever seeing another car on the track. It was beautiful, like a private test session. There was a lot of glare from the low sun when approaching turn 10, but the rest of course looked picturesque in the glow of the setting sun. There's something about Laguna Seca -- maybe it's the terrain with massive elevation changes, maybe it's the concrete walls and oak trees, maybe it's just the fact that I was all alone at a flying pace on this historic race track -- that made me smile at the fact I actually get the chance to do this stuff. I was turning consistent 1:53's at that point, and in fact my very last lap to the checkered flag was my fastest lap of the day at 1:53.42. That's exactly 3 seconds away from my personal best, which I set at my last visit a year and a half ago, but I guess that's not too bad for having not seen this track in such a long time.

As we packed up, I saw a couple of people gathering around a new Porsche GT2 that had a heck of a lot of brake dust on its front wheels. The owner was inspecting the PCCB (ceramic composite) brakes, and found that they had massively overheated and the pads practically crumbled in chunks when he removed them. Although the PCCB brakes are supposed to be the ultimate, Laguna Seca is punishing on brakes, and it's not inconceivable that at GT2 speeds you could tax them a little too much. What is shocking is that if you need to replace the ceramic rotors, it is $8000 per axle, according to the owner. Oh my. I noted that you can just about buy a Spec Miata race car for that much. It makes me wonder whether the PCCB brakes are quite ready for prime time in race track conditions at the kind of speeds the GT2 can pound into them.

Kevin, Mike M., and I wrapped up another fine day at the track with some food at a local place called Jose's in Seaside. There's no way I am going to be faster than these cheaters ;) nice fellows now that they have PSS-9 suspensions. The Go-Fast Crack Pipe™ beckons, even though up to this point I have resisted the urge to modify my car. It's always a good fallback if I start getting beat, to remember that my car is stock! :) And fortunately, I am letting them do all the suspension "R&D" work and iron out the kinks in the hardware and fitment, so if I do eventually decide to improve the suspension, it should go more smoothly than theirs did.