Japanese A Licence

I attended the A licence exam at Fuji Speedway this Sunday. Its a full day process. To get the A licence you have to first hold a B licence and must have competed in (and completed) one speed event (Rally, Gymkhana or circuit trial). My attendance in the Mazda Speed Cup Circuit Trial qualified for this. Next step is a racing license - the A licence.

Its a full day course at Fuji run at certain times of the year. You can also do your licence elsewhere but I thought it best to combine this also with getting a FISCO (Fuji) licence on the same day.

To get the A licence you must sit and pass a 30 question test. Passing means getting more than 80%. They were true/false questions, 10 each on 3 different sections which I'll mention in a bit. You then also had a pass a driving test. The driving test consists of driving around Fuji, doing a standing start, flying start and finally obeying all of the different flags you come across. You get 100 points to start with and must complete a minimum of 20 minutes track time with 70 points or more. Break a yellow flag and you lose 20 points for example. One thing of note is that the flag posts are quite far from the edge of the circuit at Fuji so you really have to look around. It's a good lesson though. Makes me wonder how the F1 drivers did it in the rain, but then again they had the help of radio I guess.

As well as these two exams, you must attend different lectures aimed at helping you to understand and pass the exam. Various pages are called out and points are read out so it would be hard not to pass if you speak/read fluent Japanese (which I don't), I speak - "get-by Japanese". The three sections covered by the exam are: General regulations and rules, track rules such as flags, safety car etc and car/driver technical requirements such as clothing, modifications, types of windshields allowed etc. Other lectures covered basic knowledge like driver position, under/over steer etc as well as what they look for when they examine your car before/after a race. Basically, basic stuff you should know before heading out there.

Unbelievably I passed. Actually, I had lots of help for the Japanese exam as I couldn't read the Japanese. They were kind enough to let me sit the exam in a separate room where an examiner read the questions out to me, and read out the section in the book where the answers were. Then I answered true or false. The basic thing they are looking for is that you understand what is being asked and or course the answer. There is no real tricky questions in there if you could speak Japanese. The exam is an hour long and if you could actually understand and read everything it would probably take about 30 mins or less to complete it.

Apparently, I jumped the start on the standing start. I'm pretty sure I didn't but perhaps my handbrake didn't hold up quite as much as I thought it would. Once the lights went out I popped the remaining part of the clutch to let fly but the car infront hadn't started moving. As it was all practice, I stuck the clutch back in. I don't know if that is what they thought was me jumping the start but I'm 100% positive I didn't move until the lights went out. I think I was probably the first to react though so maybe me backing off was what caused the issue. I'm sure on video replay it would be fine.

The flying start was also quite tricky, the guy in front of me braked before the green light line so I had to brake too to avoid passing him. I decided to take it easy for the 30 minutes and not miss any flags due to trying to hard to get a lap time. After about 3 laps though, I got a bit bored and stuck the foot down thinking that in a race you ain't going slow so get some faster laps in while keeping a watchful eye on the posts. I passed nearly everyone at least once as most of them were keeping to my original plan. Had one near incident, where there was a yellow flag just before the hairpin and I was coming up fast on this mini. When he saw me he took over major speed to let me pass cleanly before the hairpin. Only problem was that was before the green flag so I had to hit the brakes again in a hurry to avoid passing him and then proceed to wave at him to move on with lots of arm swinging motions as he was going about 5kmph. A good lesson though and I kept my 100 points.

So now I have an A licence, I have to figure out how to utilize it :-)

Fuji SpeedwayVideo

Some random footage from Fuji Speedway. My 1'14 lap is in there if you can find it :) Can't wait to get back on this circuit. Oh wait. - I'm taking my A licence there this weekend but I'm not sure what kind of driving is involved in that. Wish me luck!

Fuji Speedway 07/12/09

Finally returned to Fuji Speedway. I hadn't had any time to re-learn the track on the playstation since I was last there but its a pretty memorable track so shouldn't be a problem. Out on the track for the first couple of laps, it really surprised me how tight some of its corners where. The first corner for example, it would be all to easy to misjudge your speed and head off on that one.

There were 90 cars split over 2 groups each with 2 x 30 minute sessions. A fair amount of cars but then again Fuji is fairly big so 45 cars shouldn't really be that big a deal. That is until you bring in fast/slow cars/drivers. A red flag distroyed 10 good minutes of the final session but you can't feel too bad about that as some guy lost his car.

Last time I was at Fuji I strung off quite a few empty laps to myself. This time, it was too hard to find space unfortunately. I did manage to get one decent enough lap though and got a 2'14.81. That was nice as its a new lap record for me. Most of the other laps were 2'17s and 2'19s depending on the traffic.

Lap times aside, it was great fun out there. I got to pass lots of cars which is good experience and also got passed by much faster cars. The GT3's were amazing to watch as they took off like I was stopped. Fuji is a completely differennt course to Tsukuba. Tsukuba is small and easy to get many laps in practicing the same thing. Speeds are also lower so there are less variables. Tsukuba is also fairly flat where as Fuji throws hills into the equation which affects the balance of the car in the corners. Fuji also has some amazing corners. I think I'll have to do Fuji more next year to continue to push my skills higher. I feel there is so much to learn there.

I'm also tempted to get a speed limit cutter so that I can go above 180 and finally get out of 4th. I hit the limiter pretty way before the finish line and also on the back before the chicane as it is so there are seconds to be gained there. Still as is, I think there are at least 5 seconds still hiding on this track, perhaps more if I could drive it as aggressively as I do Tsukuba these days and get a clear run.

Anyway, I'll see if I can upload some video later.

Saurus winter TC2000 run.

Back at Tsukuba TC2000. I spun out twice again today trying my new cornering technique. Both spins were similar to the ones I had during the Mazda Speed Circuit Trial. The good thing is that I kept at it and I believe I know why I get that particular spin now. It happens due to over trail braking and then letting off the remaining brakes too quickly. Normally happens only when I'm carrying a fair amount of speed in the corner. Anyway, I think I should be able to avoid this in the future and it seems that re-applying a touch of brake helps recovery if you get it early enough.

Today it was difficult to find space to get a couple of clean runs together as most of the cars were pretty fast on the straights but slow on the corners. The opposite of me. Its hard to get away from such people and get your own space as I keep catching them on the bends. Still it was fun to fight with some of them and it slowed me down on some laps which let me examine my driving a little. I got 4th best time in B group.

Anyway, here comes a new personal best :-)

Including all sessions, top 5 times for the record were:
1. 1'09.349 - 28.276 28.520 12.553 - 154.817 km/h
2. 1'09.377 - 28.894 28.142 12.341 - 155.709 km/h
2. 1'09.377 - 28.474 28.427 12.476 - 156.069 km/h
4. 1'09.512 - 28.894 28.142 12.341 - 153.934 km/h
5. 1'09.523 - 28.297 28.671 12.555 - 154.750 km/h

I also had a ballistic first sector of 28.084 on my last lap but I had a slow 2nd sector. Still, that gives me a virtual lap of 1'08.512. That's almost a second waiting if I can tie my sectors together! That's my first virtual 1'08 lap time. So I know I'll get there!

More on gear oil

I'm currently using this gear oil "Motul Gear Competition MT Oil 75W-140". Was out in the car tonight meeting Richard in Autobacs in Odaiba and for the first part of the drive I had to really work at slotting the car slowly into gear. The first shift was surprisingly hard to do. I don't usually rev the engine until the oil comes up to temp so it also takes quite some time before the gear oil heats up too. But when it did, the shifts were back to silky smooth. I guess this winter I can expect more of the same thing regarding this particular oil. It definitely works differently to the other oil where even when you first hop into the car, the shifts were pretty good. Still, I'd much rather smooth shifts when its heated up on the race track.

Got front/rear brake pads on the ready also. I was looking at my remaining pads tonight and I think after my next run on Tsukuba they will be spent. I'm going to install the new pads myself and will have to do so before Fuji. Should be fun. I think I have all the tools I need now. Going to go with Project Mu HC+ pads again as they are serving me well.

Also a mate gave me a lend of his "Driftbox" so I'm looking forward to getting some data out of that from my run on Tsukuba. I'm quite curious about my corner entry speeds and how consistent I am.

More Mazda Speed Cup Trial Footage

I finally pulled my lap times out of my lap timer. No segment times unfortunately. Pretty happy with the times though. I got 5 x 1'09 times and 5 x 1'10 times with a mix of other laps in between. I'm pretty sure I should have got a 1'08 on the second lap in this video as I had to slow down going through Dunlop and just after it as another car was in my line. Oh well. that happens :-) Next time I'll try leave a little more space to play with. The lap times shown in this video are 1'09.425, 1'09.96 and 1'10.46.

Lucky Number 13!

This is footage from the 2nd session of the Mazda Speed Cup Circuit Trial at TC2000. I made a mistake by coming on the power too heavy too early into the first corner and ended up heading for the barrier. Lucky I stopped just in time and headed right back out into the action. If you don't spin - you're not trying!