I learned about driving from that...

[wastintime]

Lol, anyone read the "I learned about flying from that" section in 'Flying' ?

I never would have figured the same thing could happen twice in one day, but....

So, we have a student at Seat-Time, Bob, who I've coached before and have driven his car. Well this weekend He requests me as an instructor for his son at the Seat-Time at Roebling Road. It's his son's first time on track ever in Bob's C4S. My partner in crime Jon Krolewicz is busy with administrative stuff, so I end up coaching Bob in the GT3RS and instructing his son in the C4S.

Matt's making some mistakes where the power of the car and his lack of trust in what the car will actually do is getting him into trouble, so I take him out for a ride in the car. BTW, prior to this I'd never driven a C4S without a factory aerokit... OMG what a difference. Well, we go out right after Mat drove the car and the tires are hot the car's warm, so I don't really do a warm up lap. By turn 2 Matt's got this huge smile on his face and he's laughing... we get aroudn two, redline it in 3rd, up to 4th, back on the gas.... turn in for 3... and the back end starts coming around. No biggie, small correction, then it does it again, and again and again, and I'm not nervous, but... we're going 105mph maybe, and I'm running out of space to drive off, finally it's straight, NAIL the brakes, into 4, feels perfect going around 4, into 5, lol, that back end came around and we're drifting like the whole way around 5.... 7's fine, 9 is fun.... dancing it just like around 3... finally get it straight with 1/2 the loaded tires in the dirt and the rumble strip about to drop away. Lol, did one more lap like that and came in.... like 55lbs of pressure in the rear tires. So we dialed down the pressure and it was fine after that

I come in and Jon just smiles, looks at me, and goes "handling a little funny there?" Thank god there was no in-car video... if that got out I'd never be able to live it down, it was about as bad as watching video of Leh Keen going for lap times. Now I love Leh and he's a close personal friend, but I personally don't think there's any reason to be that sideways in a 911... ever.

It was neat though, I got to drive the GT3RS a couple of times, didn't turn any stellar lap times, but I hate MPSCs especially with the pressures Bob was comfortable with in the car. Plus I had driven from DC to Savannah the night before and hadn't slept so... Still, I got him to drop 1.4 seconds off his fastest lap, he turned a 1:22:50 in the car which is about 2.8 seconds off what Jon, Corey Friedman, and I could do in it, so... he's about 2.8 seconds off all it's got with a stock alignment. Not bad for a guy who's been doing it less than a year.

The other neat thing was Peter Lier and Ian Stewart showed up in two of their One-Lap cars including the #4 finishing GT3, so we all ended up taking out the GT3 which was having some braking issues, but Peter spun it and went over a birm in it.

After which Ian and I take the car out, and it is scary! We're doing 1:20:8xs in the car and stepping out around every turn. Every lap around 9 we're dancing the car trying to save it and leaning in talking to each other trying to decide what's wrong with the car and if we should drive off, when we finally get black flagged by Kristin who was working start finish that day after like 4 or 5 laps.

Now the ironic part of this is that I've taken kristin for a ride in my RSA, and we went .7 seconds faster, so she should have known we were okay, but she said and I quote: "I have never seen anyone come out of 8/9 as crazy as you guys did 4 laps in a row. If I didn't yell at you and you hit the wall, I'd get fired" Which is not true because she's seen me come out of 9 completely sideways in a 650hp 350Z and a Cayman S, so that was kind of unfair, but Ian and I really were hanging it out.

We come in and measure the toe in the rear of the car... apparently when peter went over the birm it went from toe in to some serious toe out, and contrary to the morons who preach car setup on Dorkiphus.... that's not a good thing in a 911. Apparently here in DC there's a magical pocket of the universe where 911s are famous for understeering.

I'll try to post some more pics of the event, probably in a different thread once we get them sorted out from the weekend, but here's my newfound love affair: braking from 163 is fun! Of course I found if I broke at about 158 I could take turn 1 to 2 faster

[wastintime]

Finally went through all the pics and found a few cool ones.