Today, I attended a
Kuragonbeya course at Motegi's Active Safety Training Park
ASTP. It was my first time at ASTP.
The day didn't start too well as I woke up at 7:40 having somehow switched off the alarm. I was due in Motegi by 10am latest so I just grapped the few things I needed and hoped in the car without breakfast. Luckily, the roads were not so bad so I was able to make good progress and arrived at 9:50. Whew! My navi initially had me arriving at 11:10 when I first got in the car at 8am!
The first task was skid control. They have this very slippery surface covered in water which you have to drive towards at 40kmph and then once you go over a little piece of metal with the rear tires, it jerks the car sideways and you basically have to try recover the skid or stop safely without hitting the water fountain. 35 kmph was easy, 40kmph was still doable but I didn't get 45kmph and spun. When I started spinning I was trying to do a 360 but the Honda guy gave out to me for not doing full brakes and stopping even though I was pretty aware of everything around me. So strict! I guess he was thinking more of safety than car control and having fun which is what I was looking for.
Next task was to drive onto the slippery surface, brake in a straight line and then turn right to avoid some fountains. Again, 35 was easy as was 40 but 45kmph eluded me. Kuragon-san also tried my car at 45 but said that 40 was probably the limit due to car/tire combination so I didn't feel so bad when he spun out the same way. I tried 45 again one more time but same thing happened again. Reverting to 40 was easy. Amazing the difference 5kmph makes!
Next was a timed course of 4 different surfaces of varying slipperiness. I quite enjoyed this until I noticed that my time was quite slow. Damn! How could that be? I was modulating the accelerator to navigate around the first part which was great fun, but then I noticed in some places I had zero traction. I finally got the point of speed and instead of modulating the throttle to steer, I tried to keep it constant which worked much better and my time improved from there. I was still not as fast as I should have been though and ended with 42 seconds. I was too careful on the other surfaces it seems and not carrying enough speed.
So interesting day. I think I learned a lot but mostly, I got to play a little and re-affirm which I had already picked up. Ok, time to watch some F1!
The Party Race Report is finally out. Wish I could read more Japanese! Anyway, some nice photos there along with what looks like a nice write up.
