Sodegaura Forest Visit 2.

Visited Sodegaura Forest raceway against this Sunday. Fantastic weather. Am really loving this track. In particular corners 3 and 4 are wonderful. Forth lap of the day I actually took 2 seconds off my previous time and ended up with a 1'21.72. After that I had some trouble with air in my brakes and I never could improve on the time as I lost some of the control over the braking - particularly on the inside of the course. Later when I bled the brakes I found some air in the front right. I guess I didn't do a proper job bleeding them the last time or something. Hopefully, I'll have no further brake issues next time out.
I'm still lost as a little puppy on corners 5 through 8 but am starting to get a rhythm elsewhere. It definitely felt a lot more familiar on my second visit though. I can only look forward to my 3rd.
Sodegaura is quite kind to the brake pads I've noticed. It's also quite kind to tires as there is a good mix of left and right handers. Hmmm. Perhaps that is why I'm so lost on the inside of the circuit. I probably do left hand corners a lot more naturally than right handers. They are hard/long corners though
No camera yet. Still have to sort that out. Perhaps santa will come?
My Fuji Speedway license expires on the 15th of this month. I'm thinking I'll let it run out at this stage and skip it for a year or so. I didn't go there at all last year so it was a bit of a waste.
Anyway - looking forward to my next day out again. No plans just yet.

Sodegaura Forest Raceway.

I took the circuit license at Sodegaura Forest Raceway with some of my mates about 2 weeks ago. Fantastic day. I did two sessions. First session I drove well within the car as I drove around and tried to learn the lines etc. I think I got a 1'26.9 or something. 2nd session I drove faster each lap and ended up with a 1'23.7 but there is still loads more time there. The circuit is very interesting and has some fantastic corners.

Corner 1 is a rather brave corner. You come at it quite fast after a decent straight in 4th, brake and I think take it in 3rd. It's blind and always seems faster than you think but you don't really want to run out of space on the exit either. A good exit is very important though as the next part is uphill and its quite a while before you get on the brakes again.

Corner 2 is flat out. It's always a rush keeping full power down, nailing the apex and floating out towards the edge of the track on exit... Easy to turn it too early and muck it up as its blindish on the way up to it.

Corner 3 I'm unsure. It's super wide on the exit of corner 3 but corner 4 follows soon after and that's the next important one. I downshifted to 3rd but kept reapplied power on the way into and out of it. It seems fast enough and stabilizes the car for braking into 4.

Corner 4 is fantastic. At first it seems like a slow right hand hairpin and its easy to take it like one, but infact the exit is as wide as the entrance and its important not to slow too much and maintain momentum. I brake early way out, rotate the car early and I'm way on the power before the apex. It was really fun to feel the car rotate all the way through that corner as you balance braking, turning and power.

Corners 5, 6 & 7. My word. It's downhill into these. You can't see the apex at all as its way below you. Plus the corner itself is a combo all in one direction. It goes on forever! I found it impossible to take it anywhere near right. I noticed cars not really braking too much for it but my brakes started to go off mid my last session and I'd no precision left in them. This corner will be one of the challenges for the next time. Love it.

Corner 8 was another tough one. Very wide with a million lines around it. I noticed a lot of cars going in very early into this one and understeering all the way around it almost. I opted for going in deep, braking hard but short, early rotation and power down all the way, way before the apex. I think a mid line might be better though - going in and not braking as hard, rotating on throttle and then powering out.

Corner 9 was pretty easy. Just a hairpin which I can pretty much do easily enough since I've done so many laps of Tsukuba :-)

Corner 10 is quite crazy. The entrance is blind, there is a concrete pit wall on the right and not much run off on the left. It's right before a long straight so its vital to be quick through here for a good lap time also. I'm slowly working my way up on that one also. There is also a highish rumble strip on the inside of it which I haven't quite figured out if mounting is a good thing or not. Not a good place to have any kind of action in the car except a nice clean fast exit. Thrilling though :-)

I must figure out what to do about my video equipment as it's ruined :-( I think I might get a helmet mounted HD cam or something next and see how that works out. Going to go one more time in December.

I've another race this weekend at Ebisu circuit in the Prelude. Looking forward to that although it snowed there today so hopefully we will be able to race. We were 3rd in class the last race but we couldn't drive the last 1.5 hours as it was fogged out.

2010/07/25 Party Race Review

It's nearly been a week now. Sorry for the delay but I've been rather busy. I'm still seriously lacking photos of the event. Hopefully, some will come in.



About 10 minutes before hoping into the car for qualification, I had to run down to the toilet. Something I ate for breakfast wasn't sitting well and I was feeling rather like throwing up. After some deep breaths in the cubicle, I finally calmed down the urge and felt fine again. Weird that. Probably nerves I guess. I had to run back to the car though to get my helmet etc on as cars were already on their way out.

A good qualifying lap is vital at Tsukuba. Ideally you want nothing less than pole to make your race as simple as possible. The performance of the tires and the car go off after the first 2 laps on a hot day like it was on the 25th so you want to pull out off stops on your first lap and if you don't nail that, you nail the 2nd one. That's all you can do. By around the 4th lap, your time will be about half a second off its 1st lap potential, so nailing your performance and the cars to that early lap is the trick. The other trick is a clear track. Ideally, you don't want anyone directly behind you so you can concentrate on what's ahead and ideally you should give yourself lots of room on that outlap, so you can go all out without following someone elses mistakes. I managed to get great space for my first lap and then after that I had traffic. My first lap was my best. A 1'10.191. Unfortunately, this was only good enough for 3rd spot. Still it was my best qualifying lap ever at Tsukuba so I was pretty happy. The other two cars broke the previous Clubman lap record of 1'09.9 with the top guy getting a 1'09.5. Wow!

The other thing about qualifying was my brakes. They felt terrible. Something was wrong. When I was trail braking into the corners the peddle would move under my foot as I slowly released it which made it really hard to corner at speed. Luckily I had great support from D-Technique who bled my brakes after qualifying and got them back in the their normal condition again. Thanks!

The race was held at 11am. It was scorching hot. Probably 34 degrees. Lining up 3rd on the grid, I thought, I'd have a good chance to grab 2nd by the first corner. The 2nd grid spot isn't the best as the rollcage blocks the start lights slightly and you end up craning a little to see it. As for the pole sitter, I thought if I could put a little pressure on him without using up my tires I could get him towards the end of the race if I was lucky. For some reason, I didn't even think about those behind me.

I was amazingly comfortable at the start. I revved the engine and eye'd the start lights with my peripheral vision which leads to better reaction times than looking directly at the lights. The lights went out and the rear wheels chirped, I had a perfect start. Before I knew it I was along side the 1st placed car and ahead into turn 1. Wow. 15 laps to go and I had no desire to give up my spot.

The race was pretty easy. I was quite relaxed and had mentally decided that it was impossible for anyone to pass me if I got every corner apex and nailed every exit so that is what I concentrated on doing. I was a bit distracted by my tire noise though particularly around the last corner as I was under-steering around it mostly. I guess that comes from lack of practice. I was pretty happy though as I'd built up a little gap of probably about 1 to 1.5 sec.

Then after about 10 laps or so, the brakes went funny on me again. It was the same as qualifying. Trail braking properly was next to impossible and it was hard to gauge braking again. I started braking earlier and taking off more speed to try to continue to nail my exits and as such the guy behind got closer and closer. My tires were also struggling as I'd used them quite well to make my initial gap. The next 5 laps or so would be interesting and were the longest of my life.

I remember going through Dunlop and just wishing it was all over. I looked at my lap timer and saw I'd a bunch of laps left. I recall telling myself that this was my favourite part of the track and the bit I owned in terms of speed as I'd gain here a little every lap. I guess its all about being positive when things go wrong like my brakes did and concentrate on what is going right. I was a head and every lap I did was a lap closer to the end of the race.

On the very last lap, the brakes got the better of me into the first hairpin and I let them off too quickly leading into a pretty big sideways moment mid corner. I was really lucky though in that a) I've done that a lot and b) the guy behind me was so close that he copied me. As I got the car in line, I had a little smile on my face knowning that I'd have a gap now which would take the pressure off the first of the final lap. I crossed the line 0.7s ahead and a very relieved winner. This was probably the toughest win I've had so far. I was elated.

Party Race Victory!

More to come on this but here is a little photo of the takings at the Party Race II event earlier today.

Party Race - May 5th 2010

Sunday May 5th was the first Party Race of the year. This year, Mazda is not sponsoring it so, its now known as Party Race II. Some differences in the regulations also exist like the use of ENDLESS brake pads over MazdaSpeed pads and braided brake lines are now allowed. We have the option of running the MS pads until after the 2nd race, so that is what I ran as I didn't want to learn a new brake pad. Other than that, regulations are the same.

Another difference in this years race is the classes. There is now a separate class for NC2 cars as they are quite different to the NC1 car which I race. The NC1 class is broken into two classes; Clubman and Series. The Series is a continuation of Emblem I guess so that is what I choose to run.

Anyway, May 5th was a hot day at Tsukuba. When its like this you only really get 3 or 4 laps to make a fast time before tires and engine performance trail off. Unfortunately, I got my best lap on 6 of 8 with a 1'10.5 but it was enough for 15th on the grid of 23. Reviewing my first 6 laps on my TraqMate, they were all within 100ms of each other so not a great qualifying performance on my behalf. My best virtual lap time was a 1'10.0 so I could have been up there if all had gone right. I think there were 3 guys with 1'09s and mostly everyone else got a 1'10 so it was a very tight grid.

I got a decent start and collected about 2 cars on the inside on my way to the first corner. Unfortunately, I missed 3rd (story of my life) and in the little bit of time it took to re-slot it in, I lost my line into the first corner as a bunch of cars re-took me and I got squeezed on the
inside. I could do nothing but just follow cars around really.

Down into the first hair pin, I was overly cautious for some reason braked way too early and easily and one of my mates went around my outside as I went around the outside of another car. Being in the middle of 3 wide in the first hairpin is the most comfortable place to be, so I gave up the spot. Thoughts of getting hit in my last two races were not helping I guess. I wanted to finish this race without getting hit for once!

Dunlop was two abreast as well and I had the inside but I kept up my dismal performance and lost that place too until finally we arrived at the 2nd hairpin. I think this is where car 50 tucked in behind me and just drove passed me as if I was stopped on the back straight... That driver must have a heavy foot or something because I was not backing off.

Coming into the last corner, a guy spun in front of me. I braked to make sure I had options and then I was back in 19th spot for the rest of the race. Its amazing what 1 lap can do to rip your race apart. They say that races are not won on the first corner but I think at Tsukuba some can be as from there on, its near impossible to pass.

Anyway, the guys behind me soon disappeared and I was hanging on the back of the train trying to regain what I'd so easily given up. I drove a pretty close race, got faster lap times then most of the guys directly in-front of me but couldn't get up close enough in the braking zones to even give it a try.

The two guys in front of me were fighting though and on the 2nd hairpin, they out-broke each other and both of them went wide, I took some throttle off, added some steering and got up the inside of both of them. Unfortunately though, I'd lost some speed in doing that and by the last
corner, the first guy was passed and the second guy was side by side and he broke later than I did into the last corner and took his place back. Drat. These guys are aggressive! Note to self - its a race!

It was a fun race none-the-less. I think I actually drove the 2nd hairpin perfectly twice. I have to have a look at the video to see what I did but I went around it faster and easier than I've ever done before and it felt great. If I can figure that one out, maybe that is where I can gain those final millis that will get me a 1'09 even in the summer.

Anyway - I made it home in one piece. I'm still learning a lot and still having a lot of fun! Next race is in July. I'll see if I can stick up some of the race footage for your amusement.

Finally Suzuka!

Suzuka, Suzuka, Suzuka - how have you evaded me for so long?

I really wanted to try Suzuka last year but never got around to it. It's quite far down the road at 390km door-to-door and its not a cheap circuit to run. Finally on Feb 25th I took 2 days off work especially and headed down for 2 x 1 hour sessions.

The weather was perfect and myself and a good friend drove down, enjoyed eel on the way and stayed over at the track hotel. We talked about the next day over dinner and what would await us. It was doki-doki on drugs by the time the sun rose again and drove onto the track for the first time.

The first thing that struck me was the narrowness of the track and the closeness of the barriers. Every corner was new to me and even driving slowly in the first laps after a pace car, the car was easily upset under the unusual braking, side-to-side loading and off camber curves that it threw at you every step of the way.

The first time I took the 130R without the pace car, I took it at 120kmph and grinned at how much space I still had left on the circuit. Towards the end of session 2, I'd got that up to around 160kmph but it still scared the crap out of me and made me giddy driving towards it approaching 180kmph knowing it was coming.

My favourite part of the circuit was the S curves and the gyaku curve. I guess that was because the speed was more manageable through there in terms of what I was used to. The first corner and spoon were really difficult for me and I didn't really get them yet. The corner entry is so difficult, I over slowed every time.

Anyway, here is some footage from the last 3 laps. I managed a fastest lap of a 2'45.6 but there is definitely a lot more time in there once I slept on it.

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!

Party Race - 2009/11/15

Party Race 1 hour endurance race was held yesterday. Deki-san qualified in my car and did a 1'09.6 to take 6th on the grid. Kato-san got pole with a 1'09.1.

Driver order for the race was Deki - 21 laps, Fujitomo - 9 laps and Tom the remaining 18 laps. Race start was delayed nearly an hour so my stint was going to be rather dark. Not dark again!!! I was excited to try Tsukuba in the dark though as I knew it was mostly decently lit.

For the race start, the cars were lined up against the pit wall. Starting driver was in the car
and I had to run from the opposite side and touch right hands before he could lower his right hand to start the car and go. while thinking about this, I forgot to start TraqMate!!! Damn.

Deki got a good enough start but not good enough to pass another car. I watched as he went into the first corner and saw another car try to go up his inside. It didn't seem possible from where I was standing and I heard a bang. Deki didn't come around with the leaders as he had been hit from behind and spun out on the first corner.

He finally appeared quite a bit back from the group but he rounded the last corner at full speed so I knew the car was mostly ok. Another car pitted. It was a fellow DTR team mates and the right front was bent in.

Meanwhile Deki drove like a man inspired and lapped mostly doing 1'10s and had a best of a 1'09. What a driver! When he pitted we were about 6th but he did a long stint so our real position was further back as other teams had likely already stopped for their required 1 minute pit stop.

Fujitomo was quick into the car as Deki got out. Both needed cushions as my seat is setup quite low. As Fujitomo was belted in I remembered TraqMate and reached over to press it on. Meanwhile the 1 minute pit stop had only seconds remaining. I pushed select 3 times instead of 2 and that's all I could do as I got out of the way as she wheel spun down the pit lane and out onto the course. Unfortunately, We'd get no data again as TraqMate was now asking if we wanted a "new start/finish line" instead of recording data.

Fujitomo did a great job and was very fast considering it was her first time driving the car. Deki was on the phone giving her support for the full number of laps. I had complete confidence in her as she has done a lot of formulae driving and has also won a Clubman 1 party race a year before I did in a Mazda Press car. Watching from the outside she was very smooth both out of the last corner and braking into the first corner. She scored a few 1'11s to put me to shame :-) Well done Fujitomo!!! Great driving!

As she pitted, it was my turn. I hopped in fixed the harness and seat. Got TraqMate started and was off on time. I came out of the pits right in front of car number 8 in 6th position. Wow! Great job team! I was confident that we could hold onto 6th and I wasn't going to let anyone past.

I drove steady the first lap to check the car while keeping the car behind me. Brakes felt better than I expected, but the overall balance of the car was a little weird compared to normal. I put it down to strange tire pressures. It was more than manageable though.

Braking into the 2nd hairpin, something hard came flying into the footwell. I tried to kick it out of the way with my foot but for the rest of the race it would come play with my peddles and me under braking. Quite dangerous but not much I could do except keep going. I found out at the end of the race that it was the official time sensor. The pin holding it to its base where it was taped on the door had somehow worked its way loose and it had fallen down.

On the 2nd lap before Dunlop, I noticed the clutch slipping for the first time. It was the first time, I'd ever felt a clutch slip and I had no idea how best to handle it. After Dunlop and into the second hairpin it went again and such was my puzzlement that I got the car a little sideways on the exit onto the back straight and two cars got past. The clutch made it very hard to pass the cars back again as I would just lose them on the back straight.

Another car came out of the pits in front of me and stayed there for the rest of the race. One more car would get by on the back straight as I fought the clutch for more speed. I tried to up my lap times with more speed around the last corner but I wasn't entirely happy with the cars handling to push more. I was lapped by a very fast car 50 who went around the outside on the last corner with some fantastic late braking. He was unbelievable fast and amazing to watch as he also easily past the two cars infront of me like they were standing still. Maybe a slightly lighter car than ours considering our fuel load where we went a little over board. I managed to score mostly 1'11s which is not bad I think on a bad clutch and handling I wasn't entirely happy with.

We would finish 10th in the dark. I'm quite proud of our team "T3" for getting up as far as 10th considering the clutch and the accident at the start of the race. "What if?" does spring to mind though and leaves me wanting more next year!

After the race when the car was being checked, the officials noticed some oil around the diff. Driving home also felt very weird as the rear end of the car seemed to float around behind me. I wonder if the diff is gone or going too? Perhaps the last accident when my wheel was hit in the last race may have weakened the diff a little? There is definitely a smell of oil if I accelerate around a corner also. I will get that checked.

So! What an exciting weekend I had. Car got another battle scar. I got to race with 2 wonderful team mates. Thank you Deki and Fujitomo! Kato was also in action for DTR in car 27 and they managed to get 4th place. Congratulations guys! Congrats too to all of the other DTR members who finished their races. As for car 100 - I can't believe you had the nerve to hit Deki in the back! I hope the car is not too bad and doesn't cost so much to repair.

I'll try to post some photos later when I check my camera etc. I still haven't taken any photos of the damage of the rear nor seen it in day light. Maybe I'll get up early tomorrow morning to have a look at it.

Party Race 09/09/05 - Video

After much thought, I decided to put up a short video of the incident from the last race.

Who ate my RAYS?

I guess a few photos are due of the damage.

Could have been a lot worse me thinks!

Still I guess a bang on the wheel like that will mean that I should check some other things like the wheel bearings perhaps? No noise as it is right now and the car drives perfectly, so will have to see what is under there.

Party Race 2009/7/26

Bringing up the rear... paddy last... Arguably my worst result in a race so far. Result yes, but I'd argue that it was one of my better performances. It's really hard to pass at Tsukuba so a race really comes down to the following formula for the most part... Do well in the Qualification, get a good start, stay clear of first corner trouble while being aggressive enough to keep or grab places, same again on the 1st hairpin and it will all be sorted out by the last corner on the first lap. If you made it that far, don't miss a gear on the back straight, don't yield the inside line on any corner and you are practically home and dry baring other errors around Tsukuba.

My day went wrong at qualification. I qualified 14th out of 15 with a time of 1'11.7 where as pole was won with a 1'10.4. Looking at the video, its easy enough to blame by driving. I lose most of my time currently on the 1st hairpin. After the first 2 laps, I un-stabilize somehow on entry into this corner each time, and waste time and corner controlling over-steer on entry, only then to suffer under-steer mid-late corner and hold on too much steering to the end result of exit over-steer. Its all quite subtle but its slow and I have to figure it out to go faster. If you don't exit the first hairpin at the right speed, it effects entry into Dunlop which effects the exit and the missed acceleration all the way to the top of third before the 2nd hairpin. I lose time elsewhere too but that is the biggest section right now that I need to work on and it all goes back to how I take the last part of the S curve before the first hairpin perhaps.

In the race, I got a decent start but made the classic mistake of braking too early (in the usual spot but not going at usual speed) and ended up on the outside of 2 other cars on the first corner. I tried my best to keep my position but the other cars were coming out wide and I had to back off to save my paint. Into the first hairpin in last place, I noticed it was looking pretty slow on the inside so I went out and around only to see a car spinning out along the grass on the outside a tad close to my line but I kept on the gas anyway and made up 1 place plus the car that spun out. 13th then.



The back straight saw more excitement as the car in 11th missed 3rd gear and the car ahead of me got through on the last corner but I wasn't up for it. I got along the outside of him then in the first corner again but it nearly cost me my 13th place as the car behind got up my inside where he stayed until the 1st hairpin again where I had the best line and back he went again.



I tried up the outside of the 2nd hairpin, drafting on the back straight but I couldn't make it passed. As the laps went on, the tires got less and less grip and more gaps started to show as the cars in front missed their braking points under pressure. The car two cars ahead was particularly slow around the first hairpin and I was thinking about how to capitalize on it for a few laps. Lap 8, saw the leader of the race spin out on the last corner and I'd improved to 12th place.

Finally on lap 10, I decided to take a peek up the outside of the first hairpin just to see what the grip was like but my car just went from under me. I guess it was something to do with riding half on the bank and half off and going a little too fast without the aid of the bank to aid cornering. Anyway, I lost the back, countered and then countered more before sticking both feet as a lost cause and then sticking it in reverse as fast as possible to get out of the way of the back markers who would all be on the inside (and I was stopped mid-to-outside).

Once safe, I set off in pursuit and to try and set a faster lap and see if I could find out what the hell I was doing wrong. At least I think I managed to remember what I was doing on Dunlop and curb some of the entry over-steer into the first hairpin.

Coming off the circuit after 15 full on laps always feels amazing though. Juergen - my good mate - took some photos of me and remarked that I looked like a man who had just won the race by my smile and not someone who had come in bringing up the rear.



Its the car I think. It's just too much fun to drive. It challenges you everywhere to wring the most from it and squeeze out every last bit of performance from both you and the car. You can't do that in many cars these days. It's a super car :-)



So thanks to Mazda for giving us this great car, Brains for the race, D-Technique for all their help and being such a great team, Yoshida-san for his help and support on the day and Juergen for his fantastic photos. Congrats to all the winners, I am very jealous and I'll be back to claim my part of the glory again soon!

Next party race is September 5th!

SSPark Video

Had a great time at SSPark. I've been rather busy recently so its taken me a while again to create some footage to sum up the 2 days.

The first day we worked on 3 separate areas of the gymkhana area. We had a big open area with cones where we could do anything we wanted to practice like handbrake turns, small circle drifting, figure of 8s etc. Another area, we concentrated on faster turns and speed control and the last area we concentrated on a tight timed part of the course. We also combined the 2 last parts together and did one big timed attack at the end. It was wet for my session which was a lot of fun.

My brake problem happened again on the first day where the peddle would get hard after a lot of hard braking. Kato-san repeated it also so I know I am not mad. He said it also happened in his car and speaking to some others, it happens in their cars sometimes also, mostly after ABS is enguaged under hard braking. Hmmmm, so I guess, I just cannot use ABS in the roadster as a result in order to be sure of stopping when required. Not so good.

To get back to things, the second day we did all the same things as the first day but the weather was very sunny and it made the day very hard indeed! This time we spent all afternoon attacking the bigger course in 4 groups. I managed to get a 1'03.9 in the video run below (although the TraqMate data shows it as slightly slower due to me setting my own start/stop position on which it basis its timings.

The footage is just a combination of 2 last runs of the day. One is Kato-san and one is me. Also shown is a TraqMate generated GPS map showing both of our lines and progress around the gymkhana run. Its rather cool to see where and how we differed and what effected the speed and what didn't. I think you could probably look at this and go out again and do an even faster run.

Braking brakes

Last weekend the 13th, I did 2 runs at Tsukuba. The first session, I had just rotated my front left/right tire so I was getting huge oversteer for most of the 1st hairpin until I'd shaped the fronts into their new positions. Likewise, I was under-steering around the right handers. The 2nd session, I felt more confident that the tires were working a bit better again so I set out to do a fast lap or two.

Needless to say all didn't go well but it wasn't the tires. I locked brakes into the 2nd hairpin for a brief period and after that braking was a bit of a gamble. When braking hard, I'd push down on the brake but instead of the peddle sinking down, it would sometimes remain hard under my foot and not sink to its usual depth. This was very disconcerting arriving at a hairpin at around 130kmph and wondering if your brakes would work or not. I peeled into the pits and had a look at my tire pressures and the brakes. Front pads seemed ok - a little slim but no problem. The rears as always were hard to see but with my helmet on, they seemed like they had meat. I decided to take it easy for the rest of the session and just work on tire shaping and bring the car home alive.

Asked a few people about the problem. They suggested fluid. But I'd recently had a fluid change and the peddle feeling was actually fine. I know what it feels like when I've got some air in the pipes. Somebody else suggested the brake booster which makes sense when you think about it, but I think it was more than just extra effort to brake. Something else perhaps. Someone else suggested piston problems but braking seems fine now as it did when it wasn't acting up on the track also.

Today I had some free time to play with the car a little even though it was pissing rain all day. I finally took a look at the rear pads and although they do have meat on them they are looking rather slim. I wonder what the inside pads look like??? So I decided to buy some new rear pads (MazdaSpeed) and will install them the next sunny day and take it from there. Hope this will resolve the issue!

Ebisu East 5/31 another video

Here is another 3 laps from Ebisu as the course was drying out and I was on my own in the car so I could go a little faster.

Ebisu Circuit (East) 09/05/31

Wet/Semi-wet day at Ebisu Circuit. It was my first time there in the roadster. We had 5 sessions altogether. Only the first one was dry really. My best time of the day was around 1'14.699. Semi-wet or mostly dry it didn't seem to make much difference.

Looking at the videos, I was pretty cautious through the chicane. The rear end seemed very light on turn in to the left part which was a little disconcerting although I probably could have tried more different approaches to see what worked and what didn't. I also slowed a little too much around the first corner but I did find the car quite prone to over-steer on accelerating out of that corner also. Looking back I would like to try more keeping speed there. I should also have tried a few different things on the last corner to see if I could keep more speed for that cruel uphill. There are chunks of time left in this circuit yet. I'll try post more videos later.

One of the cool things (apart from the track itself) was that we were allowed to bring passengers aboard our car during the sessions as long as they had helmets and gloves. This was my first time to give some friends a spin in the car beside me on a largish circuit such as this. It was as interesting for me as I'm sure it was for them.

In a way, the car actually felt a little more balanced with someone in the passenger seat. The lap times didn't vary that much although I took it a little easier when I had someone beside me to be responsible for - particularly as the track got that bit wetter. I actually did a 1'15.2 with James in the car beside me :-)

Here is a video of me taking my mate Derek around for a few semi-wet laps.

Party Race 2009/5/5 Video

While I am not sure if it is totally allowed to post footage from the Party Race, I guess 2 laps won't hurt anybody and I've been wanting to show off the new RPM input into my TraqMate video setup.

Anyway, here are two early laps from the rather wet race. These were not my best laps for sure but they are a little exciting none-the-less as on the first lap of the video, I just got away without spinning the car through Dunlop and unfortunately lost a place in the process, followed by a faster lap trying to catch people up :-)

Anyway, enjoy the footage and don't get splashed.

Party Race 2009/5/5

As is usual, I neglected to make full use of my camera as the day swallowed me. Try clicking on the photo to find the precious few that I did manage to snap though.

May 5th celebrates my 1st year anniversary since I competed in my debut race. This year I decided to compete again in the Emblem race rather than dropping down to Clubman 2. The competition is fierce in Emblem usually and this year was no different as shown by the qualification lap times. Having missed all of the winter sessions on TC2000, I hoped to beat my personal best of 1'10.578 around TC2000.

The previous day on a crowded circuit I'd managed to get a 1'10.8 so I was very hopeful of scoring a 1'10 flat or there abouts and I pushed hard to get it. I managed to get a 1'10.2 on my first lap and a 1'10.1 on my second lap and never bettered it. I was quite happy with this as it was my best time around Tsukuba and I felt sure it would get me a good medium grid position.

Unfortunately, it was only enough to get me to 16th on the grid out of 17 cars!!! This amazed me as it seems the level is even higher this year. Imagine 16 cars qualifying all within 1 second of each other around a 2km technical circuit? Wow. Seems I'm gonna have to up my game next time out and get some more practice in.

As a quick aside to qualifying with a time of 1'10.1, I remember reading a quote in Going Faster about how a particular driver used image training to gain extra time around a certain circuit. On qualification, he did exactly that time but he made a small mistake which if he had avoided would have seen him an even faster time. Its funny because, on my best lap, I lost about half a second on the exit of turn 1 due to bad oversteer which in turn limited me to my best of of around 1'10 flat... There must be something to putting limits on yourself like that. Think faster to go faster out there!

On with the story. As lunch came and went, it started to rain and by the time it came to race it really was quite wet out on the track. I quite enjoy rain as I find it a good teacher. At the back of the bunch I was also quite content that I no longer had any pressure to preform and could just go out and enjoy the weather.

The first lap was hectic with traffic jams on each corner until the final corner. I was nearly in the back of a car as he braked suddenly mid 1st hairpin but I managed to avoid him. I was in 15th place at the end of lap 1. After the due care lap of checking out the grip, I had some nice slippage through Dunlop which made me remember why its a corner to be respected in the wet. 1 lap later, I should have remembered that as I was carrying too much speed into Dunlop when the car in front was slower than I expected and I lifted slightly mid corner only to lose the rear... Luckily though I recovered the car with only a loss of speed... oh and my 15th place... Damn back to 16th!

Having upped my adrenalin somewhat, I began attacking over the next 10 laps to try and gain a place or two back. Probably about 3 or 4 laps to go, there was a yellow flag at Dunlop and I picked up a place courtesy of car 62. Car 36 was dead ahead but proving very difficult to pass. I'd spent a few laps up his outside on the 1st corner, the 1st hairpin and the 2nd hairpin only to loose out due to being too close to him to accelerate cleanly as early as I wanted to.

On the very last lap, I took an aggressive Dunlop and got up on his outside on the 2nd hairpin where I stayed and some how he gave me the space I needed to exit cleanly on his back left corner on the outside heading up to the finish. Having gotten on the throttle that little bit earlier, I gained inch by painful inch all the way up to the final corner for a side by side up the outside. I felt that this was the thing to do as I had checked out the outside for grip earlier on and felt confident it would work out as long as he didn't spin into me. I felt pretty confident about this too though luckily enough :-)

So, elated, I drove over the line in 14th place. I'd never driven a race quite like it before nor learned as much as I did during those 15 laps of pure rush.

I can't wait for the next Party Race! Thank you Mazda for such a great car and the chance to race it! Thank you Brains for the superb organization and thank you D-Technique for the great support and having me on your team. Thanks to everyone who helped out and supported me on the day including Y & A. Finally a big congrats to all the race winners! Heros all, but watch out as I want my place on the podium back this year!

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!

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.

Party Race 08/11/16

The last Party Race of the year took place on Sunday. I competed in the Emblem 1 hour endurance race with a fantastic co-driver who goes by the name Kanepee. Kanepee-san wrote up a nice race report in Japanese on his blog.

Kanepee-san's first taste of Tweety was about two weeks ago when I picked him up after work and let him drive home. The next time he sat in the car was on Saturday when he drove it around Tsukuba at speed for the first time. On a light fuel load, he managed to get a 1'10.2 which beats my best time so far around Tsukuba! You are awesome Kanepee! I drove the second session after putting some more fuel in but could only get a 1'10.6. Turns out we'd only about 1.5mm of pad left on the left side pads so the brakes were a little hard to use.

After swapping the pads and washing the car, we were ready for Sunday's battle.

Sunday morning was wet but the rain fall had actually stopped by the time it came to qualification. It was very slippery and I the car was moving around a lot even when I wasn't making too many mistakes or being overly harsh. 80R saw a couple of cars spin and I can understand that as I went sideways there more than once. It was hard to string a lap together and I was pretty satisfied when I got a best of 1'18.2 on my last lap. It was only enough to get me 14th on the grid out of 17 cars though. I'm not quite sure how anyone pulled a 1'15 in those conditions. I guess I need to work on my wet lines to find more traction or something.

The race start was Le Mons style except that the driver got to belt up and wait in the car while the second driver waited across the track for the sprint to the driver. Kanepee-san outperformed my wildest hopes as he dashed towards me, touched my raised right hand which I dropped to the key to start the car and I was off. A great start too as I passed 3 cars before the first corner and grabbed the inside line. I got a 4th car down into the 1st hairpin and did my best to maintain control of my still cold tires.

As the laps rolled by 2 cars were all over me, but I was determined to not let them pass down my inside, as anyone I could delay (without blocking) might mean a better position later on. If they got along side me on the straight I'd do my best to out brake them but I'd hold my lines. I was pretty relaxed but then on the exit of the 2nd hairpin, I missed 3rd and by the time I'd grabbed it, I'd lost 1 position as one guy easily passed me with the loss of speed. The other guy was right on my ass now too. I put up a pretty good fight for another two laps or so and then I found myself on the exit of the 1st corner in 3rd gear with no torque instead of 2nd. Flustered I grabbed 2nd as the guy went past on my outside. Drat. Momentary loss of concentration I guess due to the added confusion of talking to the pits on the phone at the same time. Well that was 2 quick and harsh lessons learned. When I looked at the video later, I basically seem to just drop from 4th to 3rd and didn't even go for 2nd.

Car was handling excellently though and I was quite happy with my driving. During the first stint I actually managed to nail a 1'10.9 line and that was with a full tank of gas. The car was slow on the straights though and I don't know but that might also be my chosen line through the 2nd hairpin or it could be just that some of the other cars are faster or have lighter fuel loads and drivers.

After 20 laps, the car was still great but it was time to come in and hand Tweety over to the very capable Kanepee-san. The pit stop involved an enforced speed limit in the pit lane of 40kmph and a completely stopped car for the duration of 1 minute. This kept things safe as it gave the drivers lots of time to change, belt up, do seat adjustments etc. We had fantastic team support in the pits with the guys from D-Technique helping out on stop watch and tire pressure duty. Kanepee-san took off a minute later to start his 20 lap stint.

It's funny but I didn't think about Tweety's well being for one second while in another drivers hands. I have complete faith in his skill so that was very relaxing. I only wanted to do our best and to get back out there myself for more laps. I took the time also to grab some fluids and relax before I'd head back out. 5 laps before Kanepee-san came in I focused myself again by kitting up and preparing for action. Kanepee-san pitted coming in from 5th place.

Getting back in the car again was easy. Kanepee-san reported back that the brake feeling was bad so I was wondering how bad exactly as the minute was up and I shot out of the pit lane in front of another car. Brakes were very squishy which made them hard to read and meant that I had to brake earlier than usual and hope for the best each time. The guy behind me got by 2 laps later on the entrance to the last corner. Drat. 1 lap later, a car spun on the exit of turn 1 as I exited but I was able to maintain speed and hop down the outside without much thought. I managed to keep the white car in my sights for the remainder of the race but he was always pulling away from me.

We finished the race in 10th position but 1 car was demoted because one of the drivers did too many laps and we were promoted to a very well deserved 9th place, 5 places up from our 14th place start. At the end I was hyper and would have loved to gone on for another hour or so. I learned a lot for having so many clear laps and so many faster cars around me. I can't wait for more :-)

The other D-Technique team - Kato-san and Izumi-san drove a great race in car #123 and finished a spectacular 3rd place. Well done guys! You did a great job. RTE Team Ranman also did a great job to finish in 6th place. Well done to you too. Major thanks to all the guys at D-Technique for their support and guidance and to my awesome co-driver Kanepee for being such a hero in Tweety.

The Race Results are finally up also so be sure to check them out also.