"Mr. Toad" at Thunderhill West (26 June 2020)"Mr. Toad" at Thunderhill West (26 June 2020)
 Packed and loaded |
 The Super 8 lot probably sees a lot of interesting machinery |
 Unloading |
 Hanging out with friends |
 Tire wear |
 Odd scowl |
 Mazda fried eggs |
The second strike was heat. The start of the day had been advanced one hour earlier due to a forecast high of 110°F but even by 9:40 am, the end of the second session, it was becoming quite hot. Wearing long pants and long sleeves for fire safety didn't help the situation.
The third strike was test results from a COVID-19 test three days earlier: positive. I was quite surprised as I had no symptoms nor had I had any known exposure, but at that point I reluctantly bailed out and drove home. (A follow-up test and an antibody test 2.5 weeks later were both negative, so I may have had an exceedingly mild case or perhaps the test result was just a rare false positive.)
 Best lap of the day |
 Shift points |
The run from Turn 5W to Turn 6W fell into an ambiguous zone where it seemed too early to shift to 4th gear, yet 3rd gear was falling short as the stock engine doesn't like to pull to the redline.
Even worse was Turn 7W, which ended up requiring a clumsy double downshift from 4th to 2nd, which I fumbled at least once. Yuck. With the engine tweaks I might try to take this in 3rd gear, eliminating the double downshift.
How subsequent engine upgrades will change all this will be interesting. The engine will pull up to redline, so it might be feasible to stay in 3rd through Turn 6W, but more power could mean 4th gear will be necessary. A broader power band could also mean that the downshift to 3rd gear at Turn 4W can be avoided, carrying 4th gear all the way from the front straight to Turn 7W.
What happens at Turn 7W will also be interesting.
In the unlikely event of being able to stay in 3rd gear through
Turn 6W I'll be able to avoid the ugly, U-turn
4-to-2 downshift. Alternately, if I still need 4th gear, maybe the broader
powerband will allow using 3rd gear through Turn 7W,
though without the gravity assist of The Corkscrew
at Laguna Seca it's hard to imagine using 3rd gear for a 28-mph turn.
| Driver: | Karl | Greg | Josh | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marque: | Mazda | MINI | Ford | |
| Model: | Mazdaspeed 3 | Cooper S (F56) | Shelby Mustang GT350 | |
| Year: | 2013 | 2014 | 2017 | |
| Weight: | 3,281 | 2,723 | 3,760 | |
| HP: | 263 | 253 (est.) | 526 | |
| Lbs/HP: | 12.5 | 10.8 | 7.1 | |
| Best Lap: | 1:42.248 | 1:36.597 | 1:31.769 | |
| Start: | 75.7 | 78.3 | 97.1 | |
| Turn 1W: | 42.9 | 47.5 | 47.8 | |
| 2W-3W: | 83.5 | 87.9 | 92.7 | |
| 4W-5W: | 66.5 | 56.7 | 70.8 | |
| Turn 6W: | 57.8 | 64.9 | 63.4 | |
| Turn 7W: | 28.0 | 27.6 | 25.1 | |
| Turn 8W: | 72.2 | 73.9 | 84.7 | |
| Finish: | 77.8 | 75.2 | 94.5 |
It's not at all surprising that lap times were roughly a function of weight/horsepower, and in most parts of the track our speeds compared pretty much as one might expect: the raw horsepower of Josh's Mustang, coupled with decent handling, made it far faster except in the tightest turns, where the nimble MINI beat the Mustang.
The one notable exception was Turn 7W, where my speed bested the others. That was little surprise against Josh's heavier Mustang but Greg's MINI should have been faster in a tight turn. Perhaps it was just an off moment for him or maybe he got caught by traffic. By the time we got to Turn 8W horsepower/weight again won the day, with Mustang being fastest, followed by MINI, and eventually Mazdaspeed.
I've only driven a MINI Cooper on a track once,
last November at Harris Hill.
That was a tweaked 2011 MINI Cooper S Clubman (R55) which proved itself to
be an impressive machine—like Greg's MINI, a pretty good match for my
Mazdaspeed.
The blue ellipse highlights an area where the outside (to the left in the
photograph) portion of the central tread block had severely eroded, down
to the wear bars.
Since the start of my county's pandemic shelter-at-home order, I've been making a different meal each day and sharing it with friends and several cooking groups. With a track day and a nearly three-hour drive home, fun in the kitchen and a hopefully-beautiful meal seemed unlikely.
As the day drew nearer, the forecast showed a high of up to 113F (45 C), matching the June record for Willows. My car is black (schwarz in German!) so even on normal sunny days it gets hot. I hatched a plan (pun very much intended) and borrowed a pyrometer to measure temperatures on my car. Eggs need a temperature of up to 158F (70 C) to fry. I measured temperatures close to that on the hood (bonnet) of the car just when sitting in the sun on a normal day in Silicon Valley. Turn up the ambient temperature and add in the extra heat of flogging the car on a race track and I figured it would be no problem at all to fry eggs on the car.
(Lower parts get even hotter. Based on increase in tire pressure, I calculated that even from a normal 70°F day the first 20-minute track session increases tire temperature to around 220°F, or from 21 C to 105 C. Today I measured 432°F or 222 C on my brake calipers; the brake pads likely exceed 1400°F or 760 C. Alas, it's hard to cook on the tires and brakes.)
I packed a non-stick French skillet (the dark non-stick would add some solar heating to the engine heat), olive oil, a couple of eggs sealed in ziplock bags, carefully cradled in bubble wrap and placed in a cooler, and of course some hot sauce. A hot pad, too, and of course I have a car-themed one with 1940s and 1950s woodies.
As described above, after three strikes I bailed out before noon and headed home. Upon arriving at home, I checked temperatures and tried to find enough heat for my cooking project, but the mild weather of the San Francisco Bay Area thwarted me. I finally resorted to frying the eggs in my kitchen, but staged them as I had planned for my racetrack lunch. It was a fun idea, and perhaps I'll have a chance to do it for real in the future.
No video this time because I use the morning sessions to warm up, then shoot video in the afternoon. By afternoon this day I was on my way home.
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Copyright © 2020-2021 Karl L. Swartz. All rights reserved. |
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