Wednesday, September 12, 2007

TC1000 - 2007/09/11

The day promised light rain. While I don't mind rain so much as you learn a lot, I'd been hoping for some dry runs to see if I could get my inner hairpin technique down. The threat of rain also meant that it was cooler which should be good for pulling out a fast lap or two. 43 seconds looked doable today I told myself.

Session 1, I was having my usual over-steer entry problems on the fast first corner. Managed a 44'043 so things were looking up :-) One of the sensei's drove my car and commented (after a small spin) that I have too much over-steer setup on my car and that slightly less over-steer would be a good thing. I'd started out with my suspension set to 7F/9R so I dialed it to 7F/6R. Next session the car was different. It was a little understeery on entrance and very understeery on exit. So for session 3 I tried 7F/7R which seemed to bring it back to oversteer again but more controllable on entrance I thought. Must play with the settings more next time again. I completed the remaining sessions on 7F/7R.

Finally in Session 4, I managed a best time of 44.016. So close to 43 seconds and yet so far! I still haven't got the inside hairpin right so I'm losing time there I think. I also can't seem to get the last turn just right so probably lose time there too.

I actually spun quite a lot on TC1000 again. Some notes for myself would be:
- try carrying in a tiny bit of brakes all the way until the car turns on the inner hairpin. Try using more steering early on mid bend. Don't come off the brakes fast.
- turn earlier on the first corner. I'm still turning too late.

Weather wise, we ended up with light misty rain the first session which quickly dried out mid session. Petrol at Ishige was 142 yen where as petrol at the circuit was 178 per litre! Damn what a difference.

Oh yeah and John is back on my tail with his new suspension/alignment combo. He had quite an exciting time :-)

2 comments:

Touchn said...

Oh, nearly 43 second!
Your are learning many things.

I think D-tech Kato-san's saying is almost same as Kuragon-san.
What do you thnink?

After I come back, I'll try have track days as much as possible I can :-)

Tom said...

Nearly! I feel with cooler weather I'll get there but I'd like to be able to get into the 43 seconds in summer and 42 in the winter :-) I feel the car can definitely do it. The time is there!

Regarding D-Tech vs Kuragon-san. I find both are good drivers but I think their style is very different (driving and teaching). D-Tech is very detail oriented which is good. But I find they don't give you enough feedback in general on the day as they are too busy. They answer questions etc, give direction but you get very little feedback unless you ask for it.

Kuragon-san gives feedback every time you go in the car which is good and it helped me each time he said something to try harder or correct what I was doing early on. Amazing the things he noticed from outside the car. While face feedback is better than radio feedback, I found that the radio to be very helpful. Speaking English also helped me.

I think a mix of both schools is ultimately helpful in deciding how you want to drive your car, but what I have learned so far is every driver is different. What works for someone else might not work for you.

I need to plan my schedule for October still. Perhaps I will attend Kuragon course. I am not sure yet.

As many track days as possible sounds like a lot of fun!