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.

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.

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.

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.

Adding an RPM input to TraqMate

The TraqMate unit provides a wire whose sole purpose in life is to hook into a tachometer feed and tell you how many RPMs you are doing. By hooking in RPMs, tire sizes, gear ratios etc you also get some other info like what gear you are in, what HP/Torque your car is producing. It also makes for more entertaining videos as the rpm needle should finally move!

After asking around and gathering the required info on how to connect that wire to the car, I finally got together with my good friend The FeatherKing and hooked it in.


Traqmate Display Unit showing the live RPM feed.

It all turned out to be quite easy after we had TraqMate hooked up to the cars power/ground. The key is the following diagram which shows where to connect the TraqMate wire to. The target wire is marked TA and is color coded Yellow/Black.


The PCM is on the roadster is located under the airbox and once you get the airbox off (and disconnect the battery etc), you see something like the following. The red arrow shows the 2nd wire from the left on the top row where we hooked into.


Once we'd tapped the wire and tested it to the TraqMate unit by setting the car as a 1 cylinder car in the TraqMate car setup, it all worked and we needed to find a way through the firewall from the engine bay into the cabin where the TraqMate unit is kept. This also turned out to be quite easy and we found a nice path using the same access hole which my gauges were using. The arrow below shows the place.


Finding where this hole came out in the cabin was another thing... I forgot to take a photo of this part but its basically deep in the passenger footwell and higher up than you expect.

The following photo shows where I have both the TraqMate Sensor Unit and ChaseCam stored under the passengers seat. It works out quite well with some heavy duty velcro sticking them both down.


I'm getting really fond of the ChaseCam unit even though I am officially still testing it. The camera mounts nice and low and the units mic is out of the wind unlike when I had my conventional handy-cam up there on the rollbar.


All I have to do now is hit the track and get some proper footage! Next track day is May 2nd and of course the Party Race is coming up on May 5th. Wish me luck!

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!