Lime Rock Park DE w/ Schattenbaum PCA (long)

[TM]

I was up at LRP this past Friday w/ Schattenbaum PCA and had a blast!

Miles better than the crappy event that SCCA NER put on.

I was rather cautious the first session, but after that,
was able to get moving and had some fun "hunting down"
some Porsches. :-)

The left-hander into the esses gave me the most trouble of
any of the corners- I early apex'ed a couple times, killing
my momentum as I scrubbed speed, found that late apex'ing and
not turning in enough basically did the same thing, but was
able to keep it pretty close to the ideal line most of the time.

We had passing on the front straight, no-name straight and just
before west bend, so plenty of passing opportunities. One exciting
pass of a 930 going into west bend- my car just doesn't have enough
grunt to fly by a 930 going up the hill, nearly had to trail-brake
into the turn, lots of fun and the brakes really gave me the confidence
to accomplish passes like this w/o it getting too dicey.

Nothing like trying to pass a 996tt on the front straight, seeing
twin puffs of black smoke and having the Porsche slingshot away from
me like I was standing still. At least he let me pass the next lap
around, while I was on his bumper all the way around.

I never thought a Boxster could be so damn fast- I let one by the first
session, could not catch him the rest of the time. Two other sessions,
I was behind him but he was always faster- got on his bumper going onto
the front straight and could not pull up to him, the 900+ lb. difference
more than makes up for the 60-80hp that I had on him. The '99 996 in my
group was seriously fast- one moment I'm with him, the next, all I see
is
this burgundy 996 whizzing through the corners and disappearing from
sight.

Our group was very good, had a really fun time trying to keep up with
that
996. My instructor was very pleased w/ my driving, and having been
signed
off for solo, I was psyched.

Now I need to get my tire pressures setup correctly for track use- I was
running 44/40 cold, which everyone thought was way too high. Any idea
what
kind of guidelines I should use for tire pressure? W/o a pyrometer, I
don't
see how I could really figure it out, although I think I could
definitely
run lower pressure, as I didn't really put any wear on the tire
shoulders
at all. Maybe drop it down to 38 all around? I was running my Sumitomo
HTR-ZII 255/40R17s on the track. Didn't do badly, I could not complain
about
the grip, although I'd need to drive the same track on the same day with
a different set of tires to really see if there could be an improvement.

Now I need to get that aluminum jack and cordless impact driver (or at
least bring my drill along), makes changing wheels so much easier, as
does wheel studs, whenever I can get ball seat lug nuts for the H&R stud
kit.

Bruce M. was there as well, very impressive seeing an UrS flying up the
hill at similar velocity to the 996tts and worked 911s, Bruce is fast as
hell in that big boat. :-)

The very premature death of one Kumho Ecsta V700 was troublesome-
hopefully,
we'll find out why it died like it did. Three sessions and the tire's
outside
shoulder basically started to delaminate.

Another Philly area guy, Vik, driving an A4 1.8t, completed our very
small
Audi contingent.

The highlight of the day was seeing one member's Jagermeister-liveried
Porsche 962 out there in the red run group- absolutely awesome how much
faster that car was compared to everything else out there. The 996tts
looked
like slugs compared to that beast (well, of course, but it was cool
anyway).


Taka