Rate this post by selecting a number. 1 is the worst and 5 is the best.
Author
Message
Ben Lipman Goo Roo SA Soarer TT manual, plus TT track car, plus a spare shell
Posts: 3793 Reg: 04-2006
Rating: N/A Votes: 0
Saturday, August 09, 2014 - 08:01 pm, by: Ben Lipman(Ben12a)
Had a good day at Wakefield Park today. Aaron came out and gave me a hand to look the car over and turn it around in between races, with the odd emergency repair that seem to come with laps at Wakey.
I got there nice and early and did the track walk with Jeff and Catherine Denmeade and picked their brains on lines, gears, strategies etc. It turns out this was a great investment, as during the warm up session I concentrated on being accurate with apexes, using correct lines and getting the corner entry right. I looked down and the lap on the dash said 1:08.6. This was 4/10ths faster than my fastest lap from the last track day. The next lap was a 1:08.0. I was pretty stoked at this stage. After 5 laps I was almost a whole second faster than the previous track day. And I did it on older tyres.
The next session out I ran into heaps of traffic. I managed to get a clean lap on lap 8, and ran a 1:07.57. This turned out to be the best lap of the day. It seems that my times always get slower from about mid-morning onwards at Wakefield. Might be the track, might be the car, might be me but I can never match the early morning times at Wakey.
The Racepak has a new ‘ideal lap’ of 1:06.1. So, a new lap time to chase. I’ll be checking the in car video and syncing it with the racepak data later to see where those good sectors are and what I was doing different.
The Intima pads are on their last legs, and the rear tyres are down to the wear indicators, and have done about 35 or more heat cycles. Seeing as the Winmax pads never turned up (Racing Ready Online ripped me off essentially stealing my money and not sending my pads – long story) and I can’t afford to buy both pads and tyres I will probably be taking a break for a while. I need to save a bit of cash to get pads, tyres, and maybe some softer rear springs.
Any way - pretty happy with the day today. The front bar took another hit, damn you turn 2. It is at the stage where it has more repairs than original fibreglass. I am seriously considering getting the moulds back from Andrew and making a new front bar. Might even save some weight in the mean time.
