"Mr. Toad" at Thunderhill (16 November 2020)"Mr. Toad" at Thunderhill (16 November 2020)
 Turn 10C |
 Back straight |
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R U Ready to Rock? Zoom-Zoom! / Let's Motor! |
 Cooling off after the morning's last session |
 Ready to load up for the trip home |
 Having a ball |
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| This Porsche-Chevrolet (Porschelet?) 944-307 (a 944 with a Chevy 307 V-8s from an old Nova) was hacked together for one of the 24 Hours of Lemons races. The Scottsdale front clip improves aerodynamics—negatively—which is probably true of the wood-plank spoiler as well, though splinters may function as strakes. |
The long track also meant longer sessions and more time on-track. Normally, GGLC has three run groups, rotating through seven 20-minute sessions for each group, but with over four minutes per lap, that would allow just 2-3 full laps other than the start and finish laps. To allow more reasonable runs there were only two groups, alternating 30-minute sessions. This meant 3.5 hours of total track time for each group and fuel issues.
A workout like that (exacerbated by pandemic inaccess to a gym for the
past few months) also led to some sore muscles the next day!
 Best morning lap (4:06.542) |
 Best lap of the day (4:06.298) |
The morning sessions were good, with steady improvement as I learned the course, though comparisons weren't easy since I had never before run the 5-mile course. My afternoon runs were only marginally better over the morning's best, and that only in the second of four afternoon sessions. The last sessions were marred by brake fade and driver fatigue. Brake fade was bad enough that in the day's last session, normally my best, I almost bailed after the starting lap.
The east side of the track (the 3-mile course) was familiar but comparing to the morning of the September track day my times on most segments were slightly worse. Notable exceptions were Turn 2, a carousel which is a type of turn which has always challenged me, and then the stretch between Turns 7 and 8. The two east-side straights were marginally slower, a surprise when I look back as they felt good. Turn 8 is a mental challenge as I want to brake just a bit even though I know it should be taken at near full throttle. Lack of discipline there slowed me a bit.
The connectors from east to west and back were challenging yet ended up being fun. The first run through Turn 9C was scary, with a sharp, blind left turn followed by a right turn leading to a downhill dash. It's simlar to The Corkscrew at Laguna Seca, without being able to see the entry turn and with the drop coming later. We quickly made peace other than some scrabbling for adhesion with my front tires (the bane of front-wheel-drive cars) in the last kink.
The other connector, nominally Turn 10C, was one I had studied with Greg Epstein. The entry was a constant-apex, triple-radius turn from Turn 1W. After that, stay left over the crest to set up for a hard right turn onto the east course and then fight over to the right for Turn 10. That hard right looked difficult during prep but ended up being easier than expected.
The run from Turn 5W through Turn 6W (with several intervening kinks) leading to Turn 7W was a stretch which I had expected to be chalenging. In June, choosing between 3rd and 4th gears was difficult. After some modest engine upgrades I thought that staying in 3rd gear and using the expanded power curve might be the right approach. I quickly determined that it was better to go to 4th gear, shifting in the left kink after Turn 5W.
Doing that led to the awful
4-to-2 downshfit leading into
Turn 7W. Mid-afternoon, a surprise pass by a faster
car (most cars in the advanced group were faster) led to a botched shift at
this point, leaving me in third gear for Turn 7W.
It worked far better than I would have guessed! I took the turn at about
30 mph which meant the engine was below the
power curve, but not by much. Full power would not have been useful due to
the front tires scrabbling for adhesion after a tight turn (and the car
tending to understeer) but in third gear power was sufficient and the time
that the turbocharger took to spool up nicely matched when the power was useful.
Some scuffing partway down the sidewall is likely due to rollover during
the first post-lunch session. In just the first session of the day, heating
caused the tire pressure of the front tires to incrase by
8 PSI, making the car feel like it was on ice skates.
I bled off most of the excess pressure, but with a 90-minute break after the
last morning session the tires cooled enough to drop the pressure below the
target pressure. The first few afternoon laps are again warmup laps and it's
easy to roll the tires a bit until their pressure comes back up.
Coming soon ...
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Copyright © 2020-2021 Karl L. Swartz. All rights reserved. |
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