Long time no update..
I attended my 4th day at WP & yet again had an awesome time.. great weather (a little on the warm side) & definitely a therapeutic experience. I had 6 sessions in total before I called it a day. In this case, the first couple of sessions were spent getting into the groove as usual.. also wanted to get a general feel of the new tyres + suspension set up, everything performed great & there were no signs/sounds of issues or hesitations so I proceeded to start fanging it from there on.
Suspension; driving there I thought, damn these are too stiff - then again, I considered the awesome goat track like roads along the way, so feeling that way was reasonable. Not too long ago, I ran through the royal nasho & found them too bumpy to cope with that sort of road surface, came to the conclusion of not knowing if one could find that ‘in-between’ set up of ideal road & track to be honest, the stock suspension is spot on perfect for the national park in terms of absorption, being you can push it without it feeling scary at speed over the bumps, but on track they have way too much sway/roll where it really unsettles the car, conversely with the coils, they are too bumpy on harsh roads, yet provide a good level of stiffness on track, mind you the coils are on a soft setting, so winding them up would be worse on the road. The coils on track were pretty good.. limited body roll – the car felt planted, turns 3,7 & 9 (sweepers) was where I felt noticeable roll at speed, otherwise they are stiff enough & absorb well on track, I may leave these settings as is & potentially invest in an aftermarket front & rear sway bar?
Tyres; wow. What a difference.. the level that you can push without breaking traction amazed me at first. My tyre pressures when I left home were 36 psi.. measured them as soon as I got there at 40psi, the fluctuation was something I wasn’t used to, I left them at that on the first run.. & noticed over/under, so in the following sessions went down in increments of 2 PSI.. the final & ideal pressure was 32psi when warm. I had full confidence entering turn 3 quicker.. & turns 7 & 9 at WOT. A couple of times I pushed too hard in corner entry, I had decent oversteer & even held a couple of power slides.. felt great until I lost it twice, the car really does snap - I wish I had filmed it, that will happen next time. had some good battles with a GTI golf running proper race tyres & massive brakes.. he was running 1:15’s.. surprisingly a quick bast4rd..made friends with the guy who turned out to be an ex motorbike rider (most of them just know the line/how to drive).
My overall goals for the day were smoothness & consistency, proved this in the 5th session by running 5 laps between 1:18:21 & 1:18:78, i was pretty much stuck on the 1:18 mark the whole day until the last session, with a best time & new PB of 1:16.74. I recall driving much more agressively for this lap + using 2nd gear in turn 10 giving me a higher top speed on the straight, so something to remember for next time. The car is just too slow out of corners & straights (revs have to constantly stay high).. It really is constant learning/adjusting, which i like.
Here is what I plan on doing prior to my next track day:
1. Racing beat headers ceramic coated
2. full stainless steel exhaust @ 2.5 inch
3. Go pro & mounting hardware
4. Paint the front lip + install
Latest acquisitions:
- OEM SE headlights
- Blue point trolley jack to assist with maintenance/annoying jobs now that the car is low
I need to get the damned front lip on, so that is the first thing that will happen hopefully soon. So it’s all fun & games for now, enjoying it & I think it’s only going to get better.
this is the lowest & longest on the market.
improved speeds in most corners & straights
cleaned the car today, so hope to take some nice pics whilst the rims are still on.
until next time,
Jas.