Psyched, another track day, Wednesday, Willow big track Options

[campbellcj]

http://www.opentrackracing.com

Never driven with these guys before, but I've heard good things. $125 for 2.5 hours of track time is hard to beat. You "have to" miss work though (weekday events). I usually work at home Wednesdays anyway, so this time my...phone, yeah that's it...terrible phone problems. I was there working all day, honest. Oh, you tried to call? Hmmm.... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Anyways, I got the fuel tank venting and seat moving issues fixed, and a few other trivialities from the last event.

Haven't gotten my new "Design by Ya-Roon" numbers made up yet, but not really necessary for this event. Next time.

This is really just a test/tuning day for fun, but I'm anxious to see how the car does on the faster track. At Streets of Willow I only see a few seconds of 4th gear in this car and nowhere near top speed, probably 90-ish. Wednesday we will see top speed or very close to it, in the turn 7-8 section and the end of the front straight. Should be interesting. I most likely will be by-far the lowest powered, and maybe oldest, car out there with this group. Race prepped 996's, Vipers, Vettes, NSX's etc will probably be there.

[campbellcj]

Damn, I love this car.

Had a great day playing with (mostly) high-powered American Iron out at Willow. I ran in the "blue" run group, the middle one. (The red group was mostly 400+HP cars, and they didn't invite my little VW to play.)

There were quite a few "offs" and several cars suffered damage. No car-to-car impacts, but certain areas at Willow do not have friendly runoff. One Z06 Vette got its front lower bodywork chewed up, enough to need a flatbed home. One Viper bent up his suspension. A Mitsubishitti BROKE a front brake rotor into pieces. (NO idea how he did that.) And the really classic one, a guy in a RENTAL Mustang un-beaded 2 tires. Peeled 'em clear off the rim. I dunno if he was 20PSI down on pressure, or what.

I am really, really happy so far with how my car is coming together. Tony C was right - I was able to hang about in the middle of the middle run group. I passed quite a few people including 4.6L Mustang GT's and 1.8T Audi TT Quattros. I hung pretty well with the ITS RX-7 (with an incredibly obnoxious rotory exhaust sound). And I had the absolutely lowest HP car at the event. The only thing close power-wise was probably the MINI Cooper S, and a couple of the rice cars, but most of them were in yellow group.

Only problem, so to speak, is that we haven't gotten around to the front oil cooler on my car yet...so it wanted to cook itself. They ran 30 minute sessions, and I typically came off between the 15 and 25 minute mark. The cooler will get done within the next couple weeks. More suspension tuning (bump steer, play with rear springs etc) and Hoosiers will come soon too.

The other bummer is that I haven't had the time/money to get a HotLap timer yet, so I have no clue about lap times. It "felt" pretty decent though. From turn 1 thru 5 or 6, I suspect I was quicker than a whole lot of people. Of course from 7 thru 9 and up the front straight, I'm barely pulling 120-125mph pedal-to-the-metal, so definitely no threat to the big V8 cars.

PICS -- oh yeah, can't forget that. They are still uploading, which will take a while, but will be here:

http://www.nosubstitute.org/events/OTR15Jan03