alleycat58
08-06-2006, 10:01 PM
God I love the smell of race fuel in the morning...
Had track day #2 today. Went totally by myself and had an absolute blast. I also have some helpful information for my fellow Cobalt owners.
First run I focused more on re-learning the line, so speeds weren't too high, plus I had some track virgins in my group. Got the line back down. My instructor is a former ARCA driver who works with all sorts of race teams, he's been up at the track for Graham Rahal's testing sessions.
Went back to the classroom, part of which I got to talk about learning a vehicle and getting a feel for it as well as shift points for F/I cars as well as finding the proper line through turns 2, 3, and 4. It was cool.
Second run was experimentation, finding where to add speed, finding more efficient lines. Got the speeds WAY up. Found a better way through 7 by short shifting. Ran out of gear in 4th on the back stretch and through 9.
Got signed off and moved from the beginner group to the expert group. I'm now certified to run solo!!!!!!!!
There weren't many cars there, so they let an Integra and I have at it with each other, they pulled us off grid first so we could run w/each other. Took him 5 laps to catch me, 2 to finally get past, then I backed off a little bit because I was running him down easily through the straights, so I decided to let him go and hang back. In the meantime I lapped a C6 Corvette...yay!
Last run was me vs Integra part 2. Again, I was walking away on the straights and he was catching me through turns, which he should have, he had mucho dinero in his suspension set up. This time though he told me not to drop back, stay on him and push him through the turns. So we did, it was a lot of fun.
Very good day, the chief of instructors, track director, and track pro have decided I'm worthy of being groomed as an instructor so that's my new endeavor.
The interesting part of the day though was they had a setup where you can get your car weighed and they'd let you know the corner weights, so I decided to take the Cobalt over. I don't have the paper at the computer with me, so here's the gist of it:
Weight w/driver: 3049
Weight front to rear was almost 60/40
MOST IMPORTANTLY:
Cross weight was 49.9% RF to LR and 50.1% LF to RR...that was with 1/8 tank gas. With a full tank, we'd have almost perfect 50/50 crossweights.
Had track day #2 today. Went totally by myself and had an absolute blast. I also have some helpful information for my fellow Cobalt owners.
First run I focused more on re-learning the line, so speeds weren't too high, plus I had some track virgins in my group. Got the line back down. My instructor is a former ARCA driver who works with all sorts of race teams, he's been up at the track for Graham Rahal's testing sessions.
Went back to the classroom, part of which I got to talk about learning a vehicle and getting a feel for it as well as shift points for F/I cars as well as finding the proper line through turns 2, 3, and 4. It was cool.
Second run was experimentation, finding where to add speed, finding more efficient lines. Got the speeds WAY up. Found a better way through 7 by short shifting. Ran out of gear in 4th on the back stretch and through 9.
Got signed off and moved from the beginner group to the expert group. I'm now certified to run solo!!!!!!!!
There weren't many cars there, so they let an Integra and I have at it with each other, they pulled us off grid first so we could run w/each other. Took him 5 laps to catch me, 2 to finally get past, then I backed off a little bit because I was running him down easily through the straights, so I decided to let him go and hang back. In the meantime I lapped a C6 Corvette...yay!
Last run was me vs Integra part 2. Again, I was walking away on the straights and he was catching me through turns, which he should have, he had mucho dinero in his suspension set up. This time though he told me not to drop back, stay on him and push him through the turns. So we did, it was a lot of fun.
Very good day, the chief of instructors, track director, and track pro have decided I'm worthy of being groomed as an instructor so that's my new endeavor.
The interesting part of the day though was they had a setup where you can get your car weighed and they'd let you know the corner weights, so I decided to take the Cobalt over. I don't have the paper at the computer with me, so here's the gist of it:
Weight w/driver: 3049
Weight front to rear was almost 60/40
MOST IMPORTANTLY:
Cross weight was 49.9% RF to LR and 50.1% LF to RR...that was with 1/8 tank gas. With a full tank, we'd have almost perfect 50/50 crossweights.