Tsukuba TC1000 - 09/03/01

I'm rather late about posting an update on TC1000. Needless to say I had a great time and it was great to be back in the car again and to put it through its paces. Before going though, my tires were in bad condition from the last endurance race last year. The front tires were pretty badly worn so I decided to try using 2 rear tires from my spare set on the front and to see how that went. The rear tires don't wear so much on the roadster compared to the front so it seemed like a good idea to save some money.

So as well as needing to wear in new front tires, it was also my first time with the Chasecam and TrackMate setup. I was looking forward to trying that out. Tires proved to be quite a challenge for the first 2 sessions with lots of under-steer followed by some over-steer. TC1000 is not a bad place to enjoy a little over-steer though as its quite safe and I was soon having a lot of fun.

I managed to post my best time at TC1000 which is 0'43.847 some 700ms faster than my previous best. The weather had a lot to do with that I think as the temperatures were still quite on the cool side of things.

Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a rush to setup the camera and the footage is all sideways as I didn't check it before recording. Shame on me! However, TraqMate worked flawlessly and gave me some interesting data to look at. The most interesting thing was comparing 3 other drivers of my car against each other and seeing the differences in lines, braking etc. I've prepared a little video which I captured from TraqMate to show off this cool feature.



A note about the video. The car is my car. I was the only person in the car when I was driving where as I was in the passenger seat for the other 3 drivers. I'd estimate the car was therefore about 60kg lighter when I was driving it hence acceleration is a little better. Tyre conditions and fuel loads were also getting better with the green driver having the worst of it and the red driver having the lightest fuel load and probably the best grip as I'd wore the front tires down nicely.

You can really see where my strengths and weaknesses are. I need to work on my braking mostly. I think I'm engaging ABS too much as I take too long to slow down on the first hairpin. I also lose time under braking into the first section of the last corner. The GPS really shows how the lines differ too. So lots of ideas for what to try out next time I visit TC1000.