Getting the Idea - Theory Becomes Practice

I won't bother with recounting the on-track events day by day. I'll just give you an overview of the driving and the process in becoming quicker.

Firstly, here are some images of the track for orientation...

Turn-by-turn view, with names.







Elevation map








The Neon is very stable. It carves corners very capably. The tires I had put on just a few months prior were doing a terrific job. Way better than stock or stock-fit replacements. I'm sure I never got all the way up to the grip limit since I was holding back to protect the equipment (and let's face it, I didn't have the nerve to find what 10/10ths really was just yet). I did discover after both morning sessions that I was pushing the tires more and more. At the end of the second session on Day 2, I could easily see the telltale melted finish one sees on race car tires.

Mine were not chunking or building up gobs like this race slick shows (an extreme example), but the surface was beginning to resemble this slightly. They were noticeably warm, and even a bit sticky to the touch. Sure signs that I was pushing the car harder in the corners and getting more out of the tires.



During my second run of Day 2, I was actually pushing the car to the point where I could feel the tires squirming under me. I had already felt the telltale 'push' of understeer before... the Neon is, after all, a front engine, front wheel drive car, so its very design induces understeer. But as I got faster, I could start to feel the rear beginning to rotate just the slightest bit. Not sliding, mind you, but they were definitely doing more in the corners than just playing follow-the-leader. The visceral, seat-of-the-pants feel I'd only ever been slightly aware of was coming into sharper focus. My senses were extending out beyond my earlier limits and I was feeling the car more and more. Sight and sound were becoming secondary to the vestibular world I was more deeply entering.

Be the car? Nah.

More like becoming a human-automobile chimera.

Anyway. Enough meandering into philosophical tangents.

Where my poor little Neon suffered was in the power department. In the mid-90's, it's SOHC 2-liter four-banger was pretty potent. Rated at 132 hp and 129 lb-ft of torque, it was very capable for its class. Sadly, the grunt reaching the wheels, 100 hp if I'm lucky, is fairly outdated now. While I worked my way up to keeping pace with several BMW's in the corners, they, and everyone else, for that matter, ate me alive on the straights. It didn't help that I was ignoring almost 2,000 rpms to protect the motor. But even if I'd wrung out every last drop all the way up to redline, I just didn't have what it took to keep pace. Oh well. We're not racing. But I sure did have to give a lot of point-bys to let faster cars go around.

Braking became my real concern. During my first session on Day 1, I was quickly introduced to brake-fade. It's a disconcerting feeling when you're braking hard from high speed and the pedal starts sinking lower and lower, and you're not slowing any more. Despite the high performance pads/rotors, and higher temp fluid, I had to learn how to brake all over again. I had been braking too lightly, but for too long, and this built up heat to the point where my braking force diminished. Blake told me to stand on the brake pedal much harder, but for a shorter time to minimize the opportunity for heating. It took me a while to develop the feel for this, but within a session this became natural. I still actively thought about the braking more than I should have, so I'd sometimes screw up my timing. But by day 2, I was comfortably braking hard and keeping the system at a reliable performance level. Of course, as my speeds increased, I had to adapt my braking even further, so I still encountered fade sporadically, but never like I did the first time out.

Ok. So how fast did you go, Pete?

Average speed? Looking at my in-car video footage during my fastest session, I was lapping pretty consistently at almost exactly 3 minutes a lap (+/-1 second for off the cuff timing). At 3.44 miles per lap, that works out to an average speed of about 68.8 mph.

Top speed? At the end of the back straight I was doing around 97 mph in 5th gear. On the front straight it was around 90 mph in 4th.

Cornering speed? Well, I didn't look at the speedometer much (focusing on the tach more often), but I did manage to snag a look in certain spots. Uphill through the Esses I managed 85mph in 4th gear. Turn 6, the downhill left into The Boot, I was exiting at 70-75, depending on my entry speed and the accuracy of my turn. This was probably among the fastest corner speeds I achieved.

Sharper corners, like Turn 1, The 90, were probably around 50-ish (judging by when I shifted from 3rd gear at 5,000rpms, into 4th). In fact, most corners were taken in 3rd, so I was within the rev range for that gear, usually 50-75mph. Actually, 75mph in 3rd gear was above my chosen rev limit. I was turning 5,500 rpm's at that speed, which I did occasionally. Usually this was dictated by my speed while still in a corner. Since you don't want to shift in a turn, as this can destabilize the car, I just left it in gear and wound it out til it was safe to shift. The 2 places this happened were coming out of turn 5, the sweeping Outer Loop, and as mentioned before, Turn 6 going into the Boot. This happened if I got my braking/entry speed, turn-in, and apex all in sync, and therefore carried more speed into the corner. The more speed I could carry through the corner (while still having the right line to hold it), the more speed I carried out at the exit. Hence, hitting my limit before I could shift. This is ordinarily the most desirable outcome, because it's faster, plain and simple. But because I wanted to protect the motor, I was effectively cutting myself off early most of the time. A shame, too, as a low powered car is so dependent on momentum in order to maintain speed.

Any hairy moments out there, Pete?

During my very first session on Day 1, I did have a big 4-wheel off at turn 1, The 90. I simply misjudged my entry, as many novices do, and overshot the exit. I went wide of the exit rumble strip and out into the runoff. I kept it straight and merged back onto the track. Again, I'm glad to have seen race cars do this same thing, and so knew to just keep the car stable and rejoin smoothly. A non-event when measured against what often happens there, but it did crystallize some of my instruction in a single moment, and I came away with a better understanding of the limit there. I didn't repeat that mistake.

I also got to experience what happens to the limits when the track gets wet. On Day 2, we developed a light but pretty steady rain during lunch which persisted through the afternoon. My third session of the day was in the wet, and it was yet another re-education. Blake had me deliberately lock up under braking so we could both see what my car's new limit was reduced to. This was a controlled event, so it was no big deal. However, later on, when braking for the last corner, turn 11, I locked the car up in a wide-eyed moment. The car just wiggled and skated on ahead to the surprise of both of us. It was easy to recover, and nothing happened other than having to correct my line and lose more speed in the process. But it certainly illustrated the variable nature of wet conditions. The big plus in all this, however, was that despite my continued lack of power when compared to everyone else, I actually had one of the best handling cars in the corners. No longer was I merely keeping pace with BMW's through the turns... I was actually catching them and closing the distance between us. But rain doesn't hinder straight line speed, so they'd all take off again. But I found myself passed only once or twice during the whole wet session.

I did manage to utterly hold off one car during this whole session. A late model Ford Crown Victoria (think police cars of recent years). A freakin boat! It had twice the motor I did, but it weighed about a million pounds and possessed the handling of boulder. He fell behind me rapidly in the braking zones and corners, losing a lot of ground. In the straights he'd pour on all the extra grunt he had and catch back up to me. Wash, rinse repeat. We spent most of the whole session in this rubber band formation.