Fuji Speedway 08/06/07

Ran two sessions at Fuji yesterday. The main idea was not to attack the course and get a new best lap but to actually not worry about lap times and just try a few things out. The track was also very crowded particularly in the second session so it would have been hard to get a clean lap anyway.

Yesterday I tried out left foot braking for the first time. I found the most difficult part of left foot braking is getting your left foot to actually come over to the brake peddle. It's so far away and not something you usually do so it took major effort to get it over. Once over, I found pressing the peddle also too major commitment and had to fight off imagines of spinning out and wondering how to stop the car with left or right foot etc.

Once I did brake though, I found it was easy enough to modulate the brake. People say the first time you try it you tend to slap on it like a clutch but I found it ok. I guess this is because I usually left foot brake in GT. The hardest thing was when to brake. I kept braking too early and defeating the purpose of the exercise of carrying more speed. As I would brake earlier, I'd slow earlier, then visually, I'd see I was going slower than my image of the corner so I wouldn't brake at the proper place an under-steer off as the car wouldn't rotate as it does when you get the braking just right. My main problems were at the hairpin.

Left foot braking seems to work well at Corner 13 though so will work on it more there in the future I think. I had about 5 different off track experiences while trying all this stuff out but Fuji is definitely a good place to practice this as the track runoff is so big.

Anyway, my next run seems to be in Tsukuba in 2 weeks. I'm a bit worried about the amount of thread on my left front shoulder though. Its pretty worn at this stage. Hmmm.

Also no video of these two sessions unfortunately as I switched the damn thing off by pressing the remote twice to turn it on/off :-( Oh well.