Lack of updates => lack of racing!

Well, it's been forever since my last update. I still intend to getting around to uploading the race video of the last race. Not sure why I just can't get around to it. Footage is downstairs on another machine so perhaps its just laziness.

In the mean time though, you must be wondering why there is no updates. Well. I missed the next race as I was out of the country and then the last race of the year, they changed the regulations to the new ENDLESS brake pads. As the pads change the behaviour of the car quite a lot, I missed the next race as I had no time to go out and practice. A new year brought new hope, but 2011 was a hard year in Japan and thus another year slipped by it seems. I haven't been to a circuit this year in my car yet.

The last typhoon that hit Tokyo also saw disaster hit as my roadster let in some water which pooled behind my passenger seat. Unfortunately, my TraqMate unit and Chasecam unit got fried as they were connected into the car battery and sitting in that little pool. Not pretty. So my camera functionality is gone now in the car. I guess I need to invest again :-(

I did one race in the Prelude this year though in August. It was the 12 hour endurance race with TGR. This ended badly too though as we suffered a failed drive shaft 2 hours into the race and I never got my time behind the wheel. What a year - huh!

And now for some good news... After many years of wanting one, I finally decided to break down and buy myself a new racing suit. My old AlpineStars suit was becoming too old and it tends to cook me alive in the summer. To replace it, I bought a Stand21 suit which I had built to custom measurements. This is fantastic as it fits like a glove now. Along with the suit, I got some new nomex underwear and gloves so I'll be a new man next time out.

Next time out is actually this weekend but not in Tweety. We're back at Ebisu circuit again but this time for a 6 hour race. Really looking forward to that. I am planning to get a circuit license for Sodegaura Circuit in November. I still have my Fuji license but I didn't get to run Fuji at all this year.

That's all for now. Hopefully more good news follows after our next race.

Back at Fuji!

Delighted to return to the track and a glorious day at Fuji with some good mates. What better way to celebrate such a day! It had been ages since I'd been around Fuji so I was very rusty in the first session and under-steered off the track on a few of the harder corners like Corner 13, Netz and the last corner. I soon got back into my rhythm though and got some decent 2'13 times.

My previous best time around Fuji was a 2'13.0 so I'd been dying to beat that. I got a few 2'12s during the day the lowest being a 2'12.776 which was enough to satisfy me for the moment but I want more... I mean - why can't I get a 2'10?

The car felt excellent on its new tires. Alignment was perfect and the car handled very nicely. A couple of places in particular though, I can't seem to get right. Before I discuss, here is my fastest lap so far.



There are 3 corners I have trouble with (ignore the others for the moment):

The hairpin - I take this corner in second. I've tried many a time to take it in 3rd but nearly always I go sailing off the track on the exit with under-steer. The lower gear seems to afford me so much more car rotation prior to the corner that I can nail the exit but feel I'm wasting time with gears as a result. Hmmmm.

Corner 13 - This is another one like the hairpin where I just seem to fly off the track with understeer if I take it in third. I want to go faster here and can feel its possible but I don't know how to make the car turn in yet with more speed in 3rd.

Netz - This is an important one as in a low power car like mine you can lose quite a lot of time by over-slowing up the hill. I hate when I over cook this corner as the rumble strip is soo damn rough it feels it cool tear me apart. I've only got this corner right a few times and it feels magical when you do. Haven't done that lately!

The other corners I feel I'm not doing too badly though or rather I know I have to improve, but it seems like just a little extra effort would do it and it wouldn't be something new like the other corners seem they would be. Swallow a brave pill and concentrating hard should do the trick.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the video!

Creating a video with TraqMate

I've been wanting to upload a TraqMate video of March 10th at Fuji for sometime now but I thought it would be fun to show a little demo of how easy it is using the TraqMate/Chasecam combination to pull out a video of your best lap of a certain session. So here it is...



Two things wrong with this video of course... One is that the video capture program that I used to capture the video from my desktop doesn't actually show the video that the TraqMate software actually shows for some reason. It does show the other videos though which is a bit wierd. But anyway... The second thing is that I was too lazy to do sound :-)

So - once you do all that, you basically end up with your video file... It's so easy. No more editing or not much anyway depending on what you want to do. The video I made in that video is this one... Its not actually my fastest lap but it's not so slow either :-) I'm quite the happy camper with my purchase!



Enjoy!

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.

Fuji Speedway video from 08/05/30

Finally got some footage online from last Fridays session at Fuji. The video shows 4 laps altogether. The first two laps are from the 1st session. Although I managed to get a few 1'15s in the first session, I was under-steering quite a lot mostly because of turning in too late. The next 2 laps although on a damper track, show the same lap times but with improved turn in leading
to less under-steer. These laps are from the beginning of the 4th session before my video cut out. The tires are probably making a little too much noise so I probably have to work on silencing them a little perhaps. Hmmm. Can I find 3 more seconds? How many more seconds are in there I wonder. Going to be fun finding them! Enjoy the video!

Fuji Speedway 08/05/30

I love Fuji speedway. There is so much on offer. Every corner is a battle to get right not to mention all in the same lap. I'm not approaching the limit of the car yet but I am banging off my limit right now without thinking about things a little more. Every second from here is going to be pure joy.

So, its no surprise that I should desire to take Friday off even though it was a rather damp morning and head to the mountain. I had high hopes for a great day, rain or shine.

My R-34 GT-R buddy was already there when I arrived at Fuji's car park. He was easy to spot because of the bright blue color and the fact that the car park was nearly empty. The day was looking good. There were 6 x 30 minute sessions at available at Fuji on this particular day. I decided to do 3 or them.

First session was 9:45 and it was pretty dry. I managed a bunch of 2'15 times which I was pretty happy with as my best in the RX-8 was 2'14.81. Second session it started to rain a little but I still managed to keep most of my times
around 2'16 or so. The RE-11 tires were very inspiring.

Third session and my S2000 mate joined in the fun. The surface was pretty dry again, but it had been about 2 hours since I'd been on the track so the tires were cold. I gave it a little too much welly on the exit of the last corner and spun out on the first lap! Opps... It was totally savable too but I guess I hadn't got in the swing of things yet after that large curry I had for lunch... A good spin always wakes you up though and gets you in the mood so I got my best time of the day shortly after that with a 2'14.75 beating my RX-8 best time! Kewl!

Unfortunately, I also ran out of fuel about 4 laps later and had to head in for gas. What a waste as I had about 10 minutes left in the session. I thought I'd do a forth session to make up for this since the S2000 had only just arrived anyway.

It started raining lightly again in the 4th session and unfortunately my video cut out on me as the battery died. I did another 2'14 time again on the last lap in the rain. I think the rain helped because it was easier to turn the car on corner entry as the back was looser. The RE-11s were very progressive and confidence inspiring again. I'd really love to have had that extra footage though as I was obviously driving a lot better as my speed were down slightly in the 100R because of the rain.

Some lap times for the record:

1. 2'14.75
2. 2'14.91
3. 2'15.08
4. 2'15.27
5. 2'15.32

Wish I could have sector times for Fuji. I must check whether my lap timer can do this next time or I'll need to invest in a GPS data logger of some sort to figure things out.

Anyway, I'll try upload some footage at some stage. Stay tuned!