This is delayed by a week, but I've finally written up last week's PCA-GGR Time Trial at Sears Point / Infineon Raceway.

Saturday Practice

photo by David Leong
Chasing a 911 through Turn 11.

Saturday was only slightly damp in the morning and dried out quickly. The weather was fine all day. I was able to manage a 2:02.50, about a second slower than my best. Ed "Ed from Belmont" as you know him on the board, a Boxster class Tp driver, followed me for a couple of laps and noticed a couple of places on the track where I was doing things differently or just plain sucking.

In T1 I was not braking, just lifting and then heading up the hill to T2 scrubbing speed, and then downshifting to 3rd under light braking for turn-in. He suggested braking for T1 and downshifting to 3rd, then accelerating up to T2 already in 3rd.

In T7 I was not nailing the second apex and was swinging out very wide on exit. He suggested more throttle steering to get into the apex and straightening out the line on exit for a straighter shot leading into the approach to the esses.

I was also lifting on approach to the esses, while Ed suggested staying on the throttle longer and then lightly braking before turning in to T8. I figured I'd try his suggestions Sunday morning to see how they felt.

I'd taken tire temperatures a couple of times in the afternoon, trying to figure out what the right pressures should be. My older Griot's analog bleeder/inflater/gauge that I used to go by has drifted out of accuracy over time, so I've started using one of those cheap but accurate $10 digital gauges (its granularity of measurement is 0.5 pounds psi), but that means I'm having to recalibrate my tire pressure thinking because I'd been using inaccurate pressure readings for so long. I finally settled on accurate hot pressures of 35.5psi front, 38.0psi rear. My analog gauge was reading 3 to 4 psi higher than the digital gauge by now, so my old technique of staying under 40psi hot rear, with 2 to 3 psi less in front, would result in pressures a good couple of pounds psi lower than they should be.

Sunday Practice

photo by Ron Leppke
First timed lap, Turn 11.

It didn't rain overnight as had been expected, so the track conditions were great on Sunday morning. I tried out Ed's suggestions.

The change to T1 didn't work out exactly, because even with what felt like a reasonable amount of braking at T1, I was still well over 90MPH--perhaps 100MPH--in the braking zone, so I was over the 3rd gear rev limit at the time I'd normally want to downshift. What I ended up doing was a combination of light braking in the T1 braking zone, letting the hill scrub off some speed as before, and downshifting to 3rd early in the uphill section once the speed had dropped into the 80's. Getting the downshift done between T1 and T2 felt pretty good to me even though it's a downshift in the middle a turn, because it allowed accelerating into the braking zone and not having to get it all done on entry to T2. In a race situation it might be better to do it the old way because it would prevent someone from passing in T1, but for pure lap time this is probably better because it probably helps T2 exit speed.

The change to T7 seemed to work well. I throttle steered to make sure I hit the second apex better, and this straightened out the line on exit, rather than swinging way wide and having to keep turning to get back on the straight line towards the esses. It seemed like things slowed down this way, but I suspect it's just as fast and probably gets to the esses sooner.

I also tried carrying my acceleration all the way to the turn-in point for the first ess (T8), braking lightly to bring the speed down to the right level, whereas I had previously just eased off from full throttle much earlier to avoid braking there at all. After doing this a few times, it became comfortable. I think I was avoiding it before because the esses have kind of scared me, having seen more than one car upside down in the first ess when the embankment used to be right next to the track there, and knowing of acquaintances' cars that have suffered significant damage there when losing it in the esses. But as long as the braking is smooth and consistent, the esses feel fine carrying the speed deeper leading into them. And since the track renovations of last year, there's no longer an embankment staring you in the face as you go through there.

This got me down to a 2:01.74 and a bunch of consistent 2:02's and 2:01's during the first morning practice session, so I was already within a couple tenths of my personal best, and within a second of my "optimistic" timed run guess of 2:00.986.

Then in the second session I started to do consistent 2:01's, and on one lap I really nailed all of the high-speed corners. In T6 I got on the throttle nice and early and ran out of 3rd gear before the end of the rumble strip on exit. In T8a (the second ess) I got on the throttle early and flew down the hill. I glanced at the speedometer before braking for T10 and saw an indicated speed of nearly 110MPH, the fastest so far. Yet I stayed calm in T10 and did the right amount of braking, got back on full throttle early, and really powered out, hitting 100MPH by the end of the exit rumble strip. This was my personal best lap of 2:00.71. There was only one more lap and it had traffic, and then practice was over. That 1:59.99 is out there somewhere to be had!

Timed Runs

photo by Ron Leppke
Second timed lap, Turn 11.

I was in the first half of cars gridded for timed runs. The weather still looked OK. I was waved out on track and did a moderately hard lap to warm up the tires and brakes, and then went for my two laps on the clock. The first lap started out poorly as I went through T1 a little too hot and felt like I lost some time gathering it up as I took the curve going up the hill. As I crossed start/finish to start my second lap, I glanced down at the Hot Lap timer display on my dash and saw that my first lap had been a 2:04.53. I couldn't believe the lap had been that bad! Had I really lost 2 or 3 seconds on my T1 mistake? It seemed unlikely. I knew I had to do a lot better on my second lap. The second lap was good. Not perfect, perhaps not exiting the high speed corners as well as on my best lap, but pretty darn good.

I crossed the finish line, got waved back into the paddock, and looked at the Hot Lap display: 2:04.53! Again?! Aha. The Hot Lap transmitter had obviously been removed before the timed runs, so I was looking at my last practice lap under traffic, not my timed laps. Ed told me he clocked one of my laps at 2:01 something. Alan picked up the timing slips a little while later and I found that I had turned a pair of 2:01's after all.

As we switched over to the second half of cars to grid for their timed runs, it started to mist, and then very, very lightly drizzle while the first couple of sets of cars went out. While Ed was waiting on grid, Alan and I covered up Ed's gear with his tarp and packed our cars since we were done. At some point the drizzle got a little too heavy and they decided to take the 10-minute worker break early and hope the drizzle would stop. In the mean time, as many of us as possible who were already done, and various other cars and trucks, took a couple of slow laps in our cars to try to dry out the track. By the time we came back in, the drizzle had stopped and the track had completely dried out. But it was still unclear if there would be time to finish all of the timed runs.

The next batch of cars went out, and after a couple of minutes I saw a red flag come out at the starter stand. We saw a white 911 parked in the esses with a cloud of white smoke surrounding it. The announcer said something about an engine fire. The safety crew arrived quickly and put the fire out, which turned out not to be too serious. Unfortunately, the car had dumped oil through the first half of the esses. This was going to be a long clean-up, delaying the rest of the timed runs enough that they couldn't possibly finish them on time.

So unfortunately, since not all of the cars were able to post official times, none of the timed runs counted for points or even for track records. That means that GGR does not have *any* track records for Infineon Raceway yet, since this was GGR's first trip to Sears Point in six years, and I guess there are no records from before. So although I still have the class Ti records at Thunderhill, Thunderhill in reverse, Buttonwillow, and Laguna Seca, I was unable to make it a clean sweep!