Category: Drive Faster

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Day 11 – Warmer = Slower

Today was interesting.  I woke up pretty jacked about making a big jump in a personal best lap time and my goal was just to continue being able to get low 1:20 and high 1:19 lap times, with this new found level of performance. At first, everything started as normal, with pretty easily being able to get into the 1:21’s but then something strange happened.  I could not get under 1:20.368.  In fact, once I got that lap time, I could barely even get close to that lap time.

Frustrated but not deterred, I came off the track and checked the setup.  All looked good and I went back out to run a stint until I ran out of gas.  18 laps later and mostly 1:21 lap times, I had an off and decided to call it a day.

What the crap is going on?

I immediately went into the Virtual Racing School console to see what was going on?  What was I doing that caused me to completely lose the progress I had been making the past several days?  Was it a learning too much, too fast, hangover?  Was I feeling under the weather?

The weather! It took me several minutes but I eventually noticed this below.  I had been using iRacing with the default ‘dynamic weather’ setting, in the ‘on’ position.  I don’t know exactly how they decided to set the weather and track state but this session ended up being a warmer session, with the track temperature being 8 degrees warmer.

How did it get warmer in the virtual world?!?!

The impact of weather conditions on performance

For most cars and tire compounds, especially high performance or racing tires, we know it can be too cold.  Too cold not only does not let the tires come up to temperature and become that nice, somewhat sticky and tar-like look and feel but it can also make the tire rubber compound brittle.  e.g. negative traction.

But it apparently can also be too hot or maybe not too hot yet, but at least there is an inverse relationship at some point, between heat and grip.  Similar to like when you accidentally light up the tires or lock them up, the tires get over-heated and need some time to cool down before the expected grip returns, apparently, higher ambient air temps and track temps, have an impact on tire grip and I imagine, engine performance and thus, power output.  Engines want cool, dense air.

So, what happened specifically?

Truth be told, I am not sure exactly yet.  I don’t know how to quantify grip potential (yet) or power output (yet) in general or based on changes in track temp or ambient temp but, it appears the following happened:

The impact of a ~10 degree temperature increase.
  1. I lost time across the whole track, except 1 section (section 3).
  2. I lost .3 seconds in section 3, which is primarily the end of the esses and turn 6.  I braked earlier, softer but wasn’t able to get back on throttle sooner. In fact, I was only able to get back on throttle later.

And this was on my best lap of the session.  When I looked at a more typical lap of the session, a 1:20.652, the losses were even more pronounced.

My hypothesis is that even a 10 degree change in weather, at some point near the high end of the operating temperature of tires and engines, has an impact.  I imagine that going from 50 degrees and dry to 60 degrees and dry has an impact but maybe not as big as going from 70 degrees to 80 degrees and dry.

Moving forward: Hold variables constant

Since I am focused on improving my driving as best as possible, I’m going to do something that is complete crap in the real world – I am going to establish and hold the same weather and track conditions from now on.  Right now, I am trying to improve as best as I can as a driver, make changes in myself or the setup and be able to trace a connection between those changes and my performance.  I’ve already tried to hold as many other variables constant by driving the same track, the same car and now, essentially the same setup.  This will not be any different – I don’t want to go faster by accident because the air temp is cooler.

After this 30 days is over and possibly before hand, I’m going to turn that random selection back on so it forces me to adapt to changing conditions but for now, its time to play superhero and control the weather.

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Day 10 – Powering through!

Yesterday and this past weekend, was a real-life race weekend and while it was all in all, a very successful weekend, it was exhausting!  So exhausting that last night (Sunday), I was sound asleep by 9pm and it when the alarm went off at 5am this morning, I just couldn’t do it.

So my racing for the day didn’t happen until this evening, after a full day of work, being a dad and before dinner.  Being so tired and having to jump immediately back into my day job, I didn’t even have time to think about what my goal should be today.  So I just decided to start driving and see if and what would translate from my weekend of real world diving.

Holy crap – new personal best!

It was kind of weird, I just started driving and almost automatically, everything felt “normal”.  It is not like I feel overwhelmed with the speed of the Mercedes AMG GT3 car, even though I’ve never driven anything like that type of car in real life but with how hard we drive the PRo3 cars and how physically demanding Pacific Raceways is, driving the AMG GT3 felt not as stressful.

The first few laps felt good and I was immediately able to get into the mid-1:20.xxx lap times but then, boom – 1:19.908!  I was so startled that I was able to find this pace so quickly that I dropped a tire on the exit of turn 12, so it technically didn’t count.  On the following lap, I was able to brake lighter and carry so much more speed into turn 1, that I found myself .25x seconds faster than my personal lap and… I crapped my pants and proceeded to spin out as I carried too much speed into Turn 3.

New personal best and no clue why or how this happened!

Calm down, breathe and carry on

As I mentioned yesterday, my main focus of the weekend was to brake earlier, lighter and have reduce my brake to throttle transition times to as short as possible.  Trail brake and… throttle!  No wasted time!  So, that’s what I think carried forward and I think, just having more seat time with a high volume of information coming at my at a fast rate.

So I had crashed, exited the car, took a few steps to calm down and said “ok, just relax – I can clearly do a sub 1:20.000 lap time but just focus on the basics.”

It took me a few false starts where I was too excited and got in trouble but finally, I was able to put together a stint of 7, mostly clean laps where the low 1:20’s and then… two, clean, 1:19.xxx laps came through.  YES!!!!!!  1:19.758 – new personal best!!!!!!

New Personal Best Lap Time!

How did this happen?  The shoes?

I have to admit – before this session, during and after, I did not look at data at all.  Whatever caused this to happen was some cumulative effect of my training over the past 10 days and the intense and positive, real-world experience in racing I had the last few days.  My best guess is the cumulative effect of repetition and “chunking” learning experiences – I’ve not only had racing on my mind each day for the past 10 days in terms of actually doing, but I’ve  been thinking about it regularly throughout the day, the things I am working on and learning but I’ve also forced myself to think about my experiences and learning differently because of these articles and the videos I’ve recorded.

Maybe it was because I went all full immersion by wearing racing shoes?

Someone smart once said that a way to truly ensure you understand something is to not just practice that thing but to teach it to other people.  That process of explaining it to others, with a variety of analogies or other techniques, forces a deeper level of understanding and I think that has been helping.

I’m planning to write a blog post just on the skill of learning, based on these experiences and some books I’ve been reading about learning but if that isn’t what caused the improvement, maybe it was the shoes?

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Day 9 – Going for the win!

It’s race day!  Although I had races yesterday, today was the big race – the race that counts towards the PRO3 Championship, one of the most contested and desired club racing crowns in the pacific northwest and if this series was national, I think it would be up there with a Spec E30 or Spec Miata national championship.  Big fields, hard racing and really needing to drive these cars to the limit, without losing momentum to go fast.

Taking the green flag on race day at Pacific Raceways

The plan of attack

Yesterday, I improved some of my personal best lap times by over a second and in worsening conditions.  I turned a 1:37.2xx in the afternoon, which was nearly 10 degrees warmer than during qualifying in the AM and repeated that almost exactly, in the second half of the 1-hour endurance race… with tires going on their 11th and 12th heat cycle!

So today my goal was to keep improving and try as best as I could to crack the 1:36.xxx range of lap times, of which in my going back through official race records on the ICSCC.com website, there are less than ten people who have ever gone under 1:37.000 in a PRO3 car, at Pacific Raceways on official record.

Part of this is that up until a few years ago, the track surface turns 8 and 9 were absolutely horrendous.  They were the original concrete or whatever the surface type was, full of bumps, pot holes and smoothened over years and years of beatings.

Pacific Raceways – it’s a beast!

It got so bad that a few track day organizations essentially boycotted holding events there because they had customers, with really nice cars, suffer bent wheels and damaged tires.  The reality was that it wasn’t great, not the worst ever but because it was deterring people from coming to the track, it needed to be fixed.   Here is a video of Cody Smith, of Code Red Racing, who also won the PRO3 Championship in 2013, flying through Pacific Raceways.  Cody is fast and smooth!

YouTube player

How’d it go?  1:37.104!

This time, we decided to start towards the back of the field and use the first few laps to warm up the tires, build tire pressures, get a solid lap in and then adjust track position.  We did just that and towards the middle of the session, I fell back to latch on a to pack of PRO3 cars running together.  Though I didn’t know for sure, I felt like I was faster than the whole group, so I fell back, created some space so that ideally, I’d be catching them the hardest at the end of the lap and getting the tow from them on the main straight away.

So close!!!

And it worked!  I actually had a 1:36.9xx going for most of the lap but on the turn 8, I got just the tiniest bit of sideways and I think that caused the lap to not be better.  Regardless, I was happy to get it and in the end, it would have been a stretch, in that session to go faster.  The consolation for me was that in that session specifically, I made an improvement but the competition ahead and behind did not.

So how did I make the improvement?

Data and video.  I recorded the video below to go into more detail but essentially, I focused on three things (see below the video):

YouTube player
  1. Comparing with a faster driver: I had the benefit of getting a hold of data and video from another driver, who was faster than me (and won the PRO3 championship last year) and leveraged an alpha tool we’ve been working on with Track Attack.  Essentially, with Track Attack, we’ve figured out how to make data from different systems, comparable with each other.  Olivier uses RaceLogic’s Video VBOX and I use AIM or Track Attack on iOS.  In the video below, you can see how I used this tool to compare the data and see where Olivier was gaining the advantage.  Conclusion? Corner entry and mid-corner.  Oliver was consistently able to roll more speed into a corner, maintain it mid-corner and then carry that advantage on the straights.  He was and still is, much better under braking and controlling the slide of the car.
  2. Understand the line and what the differences looked like: Similar to Olivier, I am also a very visual learner.  Though I understand data, graphs and tables, I have an athletic background, where muscle memory and training are critical.  So being able to see what a faster lap time and specific segments look like from outside the car and from the driver inputs, was incredibly valuable.  I was able to see in the track map comparisons, the differences in the lines taken.  He would usually brake earlier and turn in later for most corners, trying to carry as much speed as possible.  You could visibly see how he had to dance with the car in mid-corner and be more precise getting on throttle, to not light up the tires.
  3. Theoretical fastest lap: Lastly, one awesome feature we have in the Track Attack alpha product, is the ability to generate segment times AND the video associated with each of those segments.  Further, we stitched together all of those segments, to show what the theoretical fastest lap time actually looks like.  I generated this video and watched it over, and over, and over and over again, trying to program the muscle memory of that lap into my eyes, mind, hands, feet and core.  I wanted that low 1:36.xxx lap time infused into every fiber of my being.

When will this be available?!?!?!

Soon! Racer on Rails is intended to be un-biased about products, so I won’t talk about it much here but know that we’re working on this with the Track Attack team and that this summer, this type of analysis and capabilities will be available to everyone and support all major data acqusition system file types (AIM, MoTec, Bosch, RaceLogic, TraqMate, Alfano and Unipro).

Race Result: Qualified P3 and Finished P3

This was an awesome race, see the video below.  The high points are that I got a decent start, positioned myself exactly where I wanted to be and was able to make a really fun overtake on lap 2, turn 2 to get into 2nd position.  I knew that if I got behind Brian Bercovitz, I would have to stay with him and pressure him into making mistakes because he is a good driver and has a rocket ship car (not that mine is a slouch).

YouTube player

I found myself in just that position a couple laps in and determined that I had an advantage on him under heavy braking (for turns 2, 3a, 3b and to a lesser extent, 8) but he did a great job through 5a, 5b, 6 and 7.  So at the end of each lap, we’d end up about the same distance and with me being close enough to tuck under his draft.  Trying to go for an overtake going into turn 2, I decided to try to get an incredible run out of turn 8 and while doing so, carried too much speed into the corner, got sideways, saved it but let two cars by.

That was just under halfway through the race and while I had a better pace than those to cars, with the rear tires getting lit up during that drift, I had to baby the tires and by then, the gap was too big to overcome.  I technically finished 4th but due to the 2nd place finisher being disqualified for being under-weight, I inherited 3rd place.

Taking the green flag on race day!

Although I was disappointed a little with my mistake, overall, the weekend and day was a great success.  We made improvements on the car, the driver and lap times.  We established that we can compete for wins and just need to be more consistent.  Thanks to the whole crew for all the work before, during and after the weekend.  This hardware is for you all!

 

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Day 8 – First Real World Race Day

As I mentioned yesterday, today was the first official day of the race weekend, with four sessions on the schedule:

  • Group 1 Qualifying
  • Group 8 Qualifying
  • Group 1 Non-Points Sprint Race: ~20 minute race with results not counting towards the PRO 3 championship but your fastest lap counting towards the final qualifying grid)
  • Group 8 Race: 1 Hour mini-endurance race that counts towards the 2017 Mini-Endurance championship (I’ve won the championship the last two years in a row!)

Yesterday, I felt like I had established a new level of performance with the car and my driving, by improving my personal best lap time at Pacific Raceways by nearly .5 seconds and being able to repeat it, though in just one lap, with a set of brand new tires on a ‘heat cycle’ run.

Today, my goal was to take those new tires, and do a qualifying run in them for Group 1, improve on my personal best lap time and then put them away until Sunday.  Then swap back on the older set of tires, which would be going on their 10 – 12th heat cycles and while still good from a tread standpoint, I fully expected the performance to start wearing off towards the end of the 1 hour endurance race.

How’d it go?

Group 1 AM Qualifying 

Time of Day: 9:26 AM

Conditions: Mostly sunny, 61 degrees Fahrenheit

Result: 1:37.617 (new personal best by ~.2 seconds)

Similar issue as I had during qualifying for Group 1 in Portland but I didn’t position myself best in the pack during pre-grid.  I got out early in the line up and while I was at the front, I didn’t have the benefit of a draft like when running in a pack.  I did about 4 laps but not cracking the 1:38 barrier.  So I decided to back off a bit and get behind a pack of PRO3 cars to catch their draft.  After a couple laps, I was able to get a 1:37.766 but then was too close to them and basically started ‘racing’, so I tried to back off a little before the start of a lap and then make a run but I’d get too close about halfway through the lap and the lap would get ruined.  Either way, minor improvement and felt like I at least collected enough data of several low 1:38’s, which used to be my personal best and figure out what to do.

Group 8 (Mini Enduro) AM Qualifying 

Time of Day: 11:30 AM

Conditions: Mostly sunny, 68 degrees Fahrenheit

Result: 1:37.533 (new personal best by ~.1 seconds)

With the field being lighter for Group 8, track position wasn’t as important, so I just went out and tried to put down fast laps immediately after doing more of a warm up lap on my out-lap.  Since these were the old tires, we were trying to make sure we’d get them up to temperature and pressures for the race in the afternoon.  I did two fast laps of 1:37.855 and then 1:37.533. BOOM! Another personal best.  What was I doing?  Just focusing on having next to no transition period from ending trail-braking to throttle application, especially on the longer corners like turn 2 and turn 8.  I came in to the hot-pits for a pressure and tire temp check and was out but was only able to put down a 1:37.792.  The good news?  1:37’s were starting to feel like the new normal!

Group 1 – 20 Minute Non-Points Race 

Time of Day: 1:50 PM

Conditions: Mostly sunny, 75 degrees Fahrenheit

Result: 2nd place finish and 1:37.258 (new personal best by ~.3 seconds)

These races are interesting.  It’s racing but it doesn’t count towards point, so this year they changed it so that the laps count towards qualifying.  So, you should never try to win at all costs but the goal is more to get into a flow and go for some fast laps.  I qualified 4th but started third in class, because the pole setting car decided to start from the back OR they were late to grid.  Either way, my goal was the same – get a good start and stick my front bumper to the rear-bumper of the fastest PRO3 this year, Brian B in the Blaupunkt liveried car.

And that’s what happened!  Man, I am so happy about how this race went (video link below soon).  I knew at least at the time that I would have to work really hard to get the start I wanted and then work even harder/smarter to stick with Brian.  I pushed myself even more to be on maintenance, plus a little more, sometimes mid-corner and I found myself using throttle to get that final phase of rotation going in the slower corners of 3a and 3b.

2nd Place and a new personal best lap time!

The best thing?  Mid 1:37’s became the new normal, even in greasier but not horrible conditions.

Group 8 – 1 Hour Endurance Race 

Time of Day: 4:30 PM

Conditions: Sunny, 78 degrees Fahrenheit

Result: 1st Place finish and 1:37.364 (only .1 seconds off of personal best)

The fields aren’t typically super-stacked for the endurance races, usually only about 10-15 cars per class and with the SCCA Majors Tour happening in Portland this weekend, the overall field was much lower, with only about 19 or so total cars on the grid.  There would only be one strong competitor battling me, Jeff M in the newly painted green and black #24.  Jeff and I have shared many battles the last couple of years and he and his car are a rocket.  With tires nearing the end of their top end performance life, my goal was to just drive clean, consistent laps and hopefully win but not do anything stupid.

Enduro’s are an opportunity for more seat time for me, in a racing environment and over a long period of time to try different things.  I also like that one mistake won’t kill you and there is a strategy aspect to the race.

In the end, Jeff and I traded spots a couple times.  I was able to get him in the beginning and get in front but a mistake in turn 8 gave him the position back and I had to work to get it back.  After the mandatory pit-stop, I was able to get him back but due to traffic, worsening track conditions and his driving, I wasn’t able to pull away.  Aside from winning, what I am incredibly happy about is being able to put down a 1:37.364 in the second half of the race!  Man, I am so happy about that.

1st Place and almost matching my personal best!

Takeaways? A new normal and 1:36’s – here I come!

Today was an absolutely awesome day and from a driving standpoint, I believe the reason is that I have fresh in my body and mind, what it feels like to drive, look at data, see what to do differently, visualize what that looks like and make it happen.  I will create a separate post that looks only at the data analysis I did over the whole weekend and what I did to prepare myself to do things differently.

The last thing here, especially from the lap times from the endurance race, if I am getting near my personal best lap times on a nearly 80 degree day, in the second half of a 1-hour race and on 11 heat cycle tires, that means this car is capable of so much more.  If the driver can get it together or with a pro-level driver behind the wheel, today, this car could have probably turned a low 1:36.xxx.  Lots of progress but so much more to go!

 

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Day 7 – Driving in the real world!

Today is the first day I have driven in the real world since I started this 30 day challenge. As I mentioned in the race reports for the April 6 Hour Endurance race at the Ridge Motorsports Park and the sprint season opener at Portland International Raceways, I primarily compete with ICSCC in the PRO3 racing series.  It’s like Spec E30 but with more room for modifications to the car, which translates to them being slightly faster.  Today was Test and Tune Friday, a regular part of a race weekend where can test things out on the car, get the setup all dialed in and practice ourselves.

The goal: Running solid, get a baseline set and scrub in new tires

It’s been since last July 2016 that I’ve driven at Pacific Raceways, a track that is a throwback to the old days of race tracks.  Walls, trees, earth and not much run off are the characteristics of the track.  We’ve made some significant changes to the setup and balance of the car from last year, where we saw big improvements at The Ridge Motorsports Park and PIR after the changes.  So the expectation was that those changes would also benefit Pacific Raceways and coupled with driver development, we’d make some big gains in lap times and overall pace.

Here is the video last year’s August race, where I finished 4th in class

YouTube player

Setting a baseline

During the test and tune, we had four sessions for the day and unfortunately, I would have to miss the 3rd session because of a work conflict (jumping on an important conference call).  That left three sessions to make sure the car was running well, I was back up to speed with the track, make some progress and scrub in some sticker tires.

  • Session 1: After the first few laps of feeling confident the car was running well, I started to pick up the pace but a driver that was taking out his new (to him) PRO3 car out for the first time, had a mechanical issue, which caused a black flag all.  On top of cutting the session short, I did not see two of the black flags and was later given a talking to and I promised to be more watchful.  🙁
  • Session 2: Go time!  I was able to get make my way through traffic and on the second lap, back in the 1:38’s!  My personal fastest had been a 1:38.2xx during the race above.  More 1:38’s and finally – BAM!  1:37.766 – now we’re talking!  I only got one lap in the 1:37’s but I knew I had figured something out and the rest were in the low 1:38’s.  A new normal! 
  • Session 3 (the last session of the day): As much as I wanted to keep the other tires on, I had to be disciplined and put on some sticker tires, knowing that the only goal was to get a healthy heat cycle on them and dial in the tire pressures so that they could be used during qualifying tomorrow.  So I put them on and despite them being new, still easy 1:38’s and a 1:38.064.  KABOOM!  Insert super excited emoji here!
Sticker tires!

So how did I shave .5 seconds off of my personal best lap time?

There are likely more than this but here’s my take:

  1. The weather: Today was mostly sunny, light breeze with a high of 71 degrees Fahrenheit.  It was 81 degrees Fahrenheit on July 24, 2017.  Warmer weather usually results in less power and a slippery track.
  2. Car balance: Last year, we noticed that I was struggling with rear wheel spin getting out of almost all corners, so we made a late-season change by lowering the ride height of the rear and artificially putting more weight back there, to get more traction.  That made a huge difference immediately.  Over the off-season, the folks at Advanced Auto Fabrication installed an absolute work-of-art fuel cell, in conjunction with the OEM fuel tank.  This had two benefits:
    1. Endurance ready – We now had a fuel system with enough fuel to run 3 hours straight!
    2. Weight balance/distribution – due to the new hardware, we could remove the nearly 100lbs of ballast in the passenger seat area and moved all that weight back, where we need it for more traction.  We also can add fuel to the fuel cell, along with ice and water to the cool suit which was moved back there too, to make sure we’re at minimum weight.  More weight backwards is a good thing!
  3. The driver and the driving: My goal was to carry over the learnings from iRacing and Virtual Racing School analysis to the real world.  Brake earlier, softer and longer to carry more speed into the corners, mid-corner and get on the throttle sooner.  And I think it worked!

Specifically, here is a comparison of my speed trace from last year’s fastest lap and today.  Note, this is an alpha product of Track Attack that won’t be released but something similar is coming out soon and super excited to share more about that.  Note, Racer on Rails is a completely separate entity from Track Attack, but I am also on the Track Attack team as a co-founder.

Comparing a 1:37.761 from today to a 1:38.215 from July 2016

Notice how in segment one, in the red line, I braked earlier, softer and carried more speed into the corner and it also translated to a higher top speed at the end of that zone.

In segments 2 and 3, I also braked earlier and got on the throttle sooner. In segment 4, I carried more speed into the scariest part of the track (turns 5a and 5b) but I lost a little bit in the exit. Lastly, in segment 5, I braked earlier, got the car turned and back on throttle sooner.

This is what lunch looks like for me. Burritos + data + video. All FTW!

So what change corresponded with how much of the improved times? I have no idea but I think all three helped and since I’m not doing any more major updates to the car, I’m going to believe in the driver changes and continue grinding on the data and video.

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Day 6 – Two more steps forward!

Yesterday, I had made progress on the ultimate lap fastest lap time but it wasn’t very satisfied with how I went about it.  Very little consistency and that was the goal of the whole morning!  So today, I came in with a calm and relaxed approach – focus on consistency.  It’s okay to give up some speed and time in the areas I was struggling on the most (turns 2, 3 and 5), as long as I can consistently be in the high 1:20 to low 1:21 range.

Keys to success: visualize your goal, see it, feel it and it will happen

What do you know, it happened!  It wasn’t automatic as in the first stint, I did go off and just barely touched a wall (for real, I promise!) so I reset the session.  Turns 2 and 3 were absolutely killing me.

That is not exactly what consistency looks like. 🙁

That second session though ended up being 19 laps of clean laps, several with one wheel dropping, usually on the exit of 5 and even saving some super sideways action but, the great thing is that I didn’t make any contact and I felt like these were laps that would have been deemed clean in the real world.

Next best thing: A new personal best – 1:20.110!

So what happened? I’m not exactly sure but the way I am thinking about it is that by trying to establish a new normal, the things that happen at mid and high 1:20 lap times weren’t as startling and thus, I had the mental capacity to see opportunities for gains.  Here are a couple:

  • Turn 1: Towards the end of the stint, I knew I was going to run low on fuel which would end the session but the last 4 – 5 laps, I found significant amounts of time entering turn 1 with just the lightest of brake application, getting the car turned to the apex and getting back on throttle.  At it’s best, this was giving me a .3xx second advantage over my personal best.
  • Turn 10a and 10b – the chicane: I also found, though not able to consistently do this, just the right amount of braking needed to not over-slow and still hit the rumble strips on the apex of 10a and the right timing of lifting and turning to get to the rumble strips (often referred to as FIA curbing) for 10b.  This would allow me to be on throttle right before or on the apex and full throttle the rest of the way.

In the end, those last few laps I had several predicted lap times in the 1:19.xxx range but just couldn’t put it together.

Now we’re talking! Well, except for the still getting sideways into turn 2!

I’m incredibly happy about this because again, I want my virtual racing driving to translate well into my real world driving.  So if I can’t put down more than 10 laps without crashing, that doesn’t bode well for the real world.  The next few days I will be at Pacific Raceways, in Kent, WA – just outside of Seattle.  With a Test and Tune on Friday, practice, qualifying and a 1 hour endurance race on Saturday and final qualifying and the main race for the PRO3 championship on Sunday.

The weather looks awesome and looking forward to seeing how the training so far translates to the real world.

Loading up Thursday night for a weekend of racing at Pacific Raceways!

 

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Day 5 – 30 Days of Racing

Two One Step forward

So yesterday, I made some massive improvements but after taking a break to calm down and try to establish a ‘new normal’ of high 1:20.xxx and low 1:21.xxx lap times, I failed miserably.  I wasn’t able to keep the car balanced through a couple key corners, as I found more speed.  So my goal today was to not care about going faster but just be able to easily produce lap times in that range.

The first stint, I just loaded up the car and went on my way and in the third lap, was able to hit a 1:21.040 and then a 1:21.077 and then a 1:20.877… SWEET!  I’m doing this!  I forget exactly what threw me off but I got a little sideways and touched a wall so I decided to get out, take a deep breath, visualize and go at it again.  When I exited, I checked the data quickly on Virtual Racing School and I realized I hadn’t loaded the same setup as the rabbit I’m chasing, which is a good amount different AND I was running on 30 gallons of fuel to start.

Lap times for the first stint – not bad!

I loaded the right setup and went off… no, literally.  I went off on the out-laps.  Twice and had to restart.  It didn’t bother me much at the time or at least I didn’t let it get to me but I really don’t like doing that.  The goal is to simulate the real world conditions as much as possible and if this were the real world, there’d be a lot of repairs to do and I’d be drowning in debt to pay for them.

Final stint – let’s put get a good run in!

With my hour winding down, I went for one last stint.  Breath, look ahead, visualize balance and go for it!  I strapped in and on lap 1: 1:20.310 – new personal best!  

Stay calm, remember – the goal is not to go faster but rather be able to knock out 1:20.xxx lap times like it’s nothing.

  • Lap 1: 1:20.310
  • Lap 2: 1:20.964 – dirty lap but barely
  • Lap 3: 1:20.680 – another dirty lap but barely again
  • Lap 4: 1:20.170 – dang it!  Barely dropped a tire somewhere but would be fine in the real world.
  • Lap 5: Crash… hard.
That will not buff out.

I had to call it quits here because the hour was up and my wife and son were running around asking me to be a dad, of which I love!  🙂

Lesson learned: I know what it feels like to do these lap times, just need to hard-code them into my mind and body

We’re starting to get into some pretty decent and competitive lap times and at the traction limit more and more.  This is near the territory of what separates the Pro’s versus the Joe’s who play a Pro on the weekends. I need to realize that it will take time and backing off a little to be more consistent.  Yes, I improved my personal best but it doesn’t mean as much if I can’t consistently get near that or drive more than 5 laps without crashing.  That’s not even good enough for a 20 minute sprint race.

The goal remains the same for tomorrow, don’t worry about going faster, just be able to drive consistently and stay out of the walls.

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Day 4 – 30 Days of Racing in a Row

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Fooling my mind even more

One thing that I noticed over the first few days, even on Day 3, when clicked off a session of nearly 20 laps in a row, was that I wasn’t sweating as much as I usually do when I drive in real-life.  One reason might be that usually before I get into a real race car, I get all suited up and then do light plyometric exercises, stretches and even a planned jog to and from the bathroom.  9 times out 10, before I get into the race car, I already have a healthy sweat going.

Right now we live in an apartment, with people above and below us.  I am doing my simulator driving between 5:30 and 6am, of which most people are still sleeping, so I haven’t been doing my warm up exercises but what I started were two things:

  1. Meditating: This is something I’ve taken up over the past 8-10 months, using an app called Headspace.  This is for a different post but I can’t be a bigger proponent of meditation and how it’s improved my overall quality of life.
  2. Wearing a racing suit: I got a new racing suit last year and that meant I had my original racing suit just lying around, so I decided to bring it back into service by wearing a full layer of clothes underneath (to mimic the fire retardant underwear I wear in real life), the suite itself, a pair of karting gloves I got for Christmas and ideally, my original racing shoes (of which I keep forgetting to get out of my RV).

Did it work? Yes, I think but definitely did not hurt.

I think so on a couple levels, first – I was definitely warmer and built up an actual sweat.  Not like the sweats I’ve built up in actual iRacing races but enough to know my body is working to stay cool.  I can’t say that I felt more or less in the zone but it sure as heck didn’t hurt.

I also decided to strap on the Next Level Racing 4-point harness that came with cockpit and while I don’t love it, the other day I was moving my car on our new property with no seat belt on, and that felt weird.  So I can definitely tell when I don’t have a harness on and by putting it on, that is one less variable that might crawl into my brain as I’m driving.

This year the harnesses in my BMW PRO3 car expired, and a new set of Schroth harnesses were installed, so there is a used set that I will eventually install on the rig, along with some metal mounting bars and plates so that it feels the same as in the car and I actually have an old Sparco seat, that I used before getting this cockpit.  I am not a huge guy, so it feels like I am not as secure as I am in my racing seat.

Two steps forward: Another .5 second drop!

So how did the actual driving go?  My goal was to keep doing the same things I learned in Day 3 and be able to hammer out regular 1:21.xxx lap times, versus the regular 1:22.xxx times I had on Day 2.

Success! Literally, on the first flying lap, I was able to get back near my personal best and then I improved it again, dropping to a 1:20.628, another almost .6 second improvement.  HOLY CRAP!!

Another big improvement and only the last lap was a ‘dirty’ lap, where I crashed. 🙁

I didn’t do anything really different, I just decided to apply that technique of braking sooner, lighter and rolling more speed into the corners to all the corners.  Here’s where the gains were made:

See the highlighted areas to understand the story.
  1. Look – no brakes! The first thing is that the s-curves, I found a way to get the car pointed on the downhill section of ‘The Esses’.  Huge gain there.
  2. Less brake, the line? I am actually not sure what happened in the chicane there but I think it might be a combination of just ever so slightly less brakes, more steering input to get the car turned and going.  Thoughts?

One step backward: Consistency at the limit

That’s awesome but I took a break after that stint from the excitement, recollected my thoughts and went again to try and just replicate this new 1:20.xxx lap times but it didn’t happen.  I was making mistakes all over the place and the worst section was Turn 3.  As I was carrying more speed out of turn 1, through 2, I wasn’t getting the car straightened before braking and that caused it to either get sideways at the top of the hill or even worse, to cut the corner too hard on turn 3, which would upset the car horribly.

Ugh… 6 of 7 laps were dirty and a crash. That’s not good or cheap.  Glad I’m in the virtual world.

I tried multiple times and just felt myself getting frustrated, so I decided to call it a day as my hour was up.  Tomorrow’s goal?  Come in with a cool head, focused and not looking for more time, just a solid run of high 1:20.xxx and low 1:21.xxx lap times.

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Day 3 – 30 Days of Racing in a Row Challenge

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Progress!

What a day!  So yesterday, I had found, thanks to the Virtual Racing School service, that the biggest place for me to make up ground was sector 6, which includes turns 6 and 7, leading to the longest straight away on the track.  As was once covered in Speed Secrets weekly (also, highly suggest signing up for this – incredibly cheap), there are generally two ways to prioritize which corners or sectors to attack first:

  1. The corner that leads to the longest straight away.  Why?  Because any speed lost coming out of that corner, is magnified by the length and amount of time you spend accelerating or at top speed.
  2. The scariest corner or section of the track.  Why? It’s scary.  🙂 If it is scary, than there is a higher probability that most sane people will want to check up and give themselves some room and time to correct for mistakes (and not crash).  If you can be less scared or ignore your bodies natural urges to be physically safe and/or alive, you can have an edge!  Easy, right?

Sector 6 is not particularly scary and has plenty of run-off AND we’re in the virtual world, so there is less of a fear for life.  This is a plain, #1 scenario – it is a long straight away, so don’t screw it up or you’ll pay.

A track map of Road Atlanta, in Braselton, GA

The approach I took

Most of my preparations for this change were mental as I didn’t drive much on Sunday.  In fact, we lost track of time in the AM and missed church.  🙁  So I just realized that in my braking for Turn 6, according to the Virtual Racing School data trace, I was using near 100% of the braking force, when I actually needed to brake more like 50% and trail the braking in longer and a similar situation on Turn 7.

Look at the differences in the brake pressure used. I am the red dotted line. Good-ness!

So I visualized applying the brake more gently, and holding it longer, anticipating the rear end to come around and being able to get on the throttle.  I visualized the same for Turn 7 and long behold – literally, on the very first flying lap, made it work!  ON THE VERY FIRST LAP!  Unfortunately it was a dirty lap because I dropped a tire elsewhere.  iRacing is pretty strict in terms of clean versus dirty laps.  Even dropping one tire can have a lap not count or worse, count against you in a race.  I’m glad that officials in real world racing aren’t as strict.

A little too excited.  Change the setup and carry on.

I’ll admit – I got a little excited and screwed some laps because of how I excited I was at the progress and then realized I hadn’t even changed the setup on the car to the same setup from the reference lap on VRS.  So I took a break to collect myself and load the setup.  In doing this, I realized I didn’t know how to do this.  I was able to easily download the setup file (.sto) but I had no idea how to load it.

Here is a great and simple video I found on how to create, save and load setup files on iRacing.  Old but it still works!

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Back to progress!

After taking a few breaths to chill out, I got back out on track and proceeded to hammer out a string of 1:21.xxx laps and one point even having a 1:20.8xx lap going. I screwed it up by over-slowing for the chicane but I felt like ‘I got it’ and there’s still room for improvement.  My new fastest lap time is 1:21.382, almost one whole second faster than the day prior.

New fastest lap time! 1:21.382 and room to grow!

Tomorrow – more of the same.

My goal tomorrow and possibly the next day is to be able to make this new way of driving the norm.  I am going to try to do 30 minutes or more of 1:21.xxx lap times.  If I can be within .5 seconds of that fastest lap time, consistently – I will feel confident that I’ve adopted these learnings and then can transition to another segment of the track.  I love data (and video)!

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Day 2 – 30 Days of Racing in a Row

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My goal today?

Well a pre-goal, was to actually drive.  The changes I made (stopping OneDrive from syncing, installing the latest updates so they weren’t downloading in the background and not having a video uploading on another device) all resulted in no performance issues at all.  Yay!

The real goal: Drive like I do in real life – putting down a string of consecutive and consistent laps.  I’ve found in the past in iRacing that I go off A LOT more than I do in real-life, usually having multiple incidents with walls in a given practice session.  That’s not what happens in real life and while I am not driving anywhere near the same car, I believe I should be able to drive in the virtual world as I do in the real world; safe, consistent and somewhat fast.  🙂

After a day more focused on setup and updates on the machine, my goal was just to put down a true initial baseline of what I can do in the Mercedes AMG GT3 and Road Atlanta.  Ideally, I wanted to drive the entire 60 minutes without an issue but I was only able to make it just past 30 minutes with no crashes. The good news was that I improved my personal best AND I put down several laps within .5 of my personal best, clicking off a consistent string of 1:22.xxx lap times and while trying different things.

I wanted to use this baseline of data to be confident in what I could do when analyzing the data with Virtual Racing School data packs.

22 laps without crashing! Not bad for not driving as much as I wanted to the past 6 months.

Lessons Learned

    • Pareto lives!  I am down 2.197 seconds from my reference lap and one segment alone accounts 0.809 seconds, almost half of the lap time.  Two segments (4 and 7) account for almost half of the delta.

  • By default, in testing, a car starts with a full fuel load – in the Mercedes AMG GT3, it was 30 gallons.  The car in the reference lap was running with about 10 gallons and 9 gallons in the lap I am using for reference.  That is a ~15 gallon and 90 lbs. difference.  THAT IS HUGE – though, I still have much more work to do aside from losing car weight.
  • The data exposes all – the major theme of comparing the two laps is clear.  I am braking too hard for the most of the significant turns where I am losing time and then getting on throttle sooner and harder than my rabbit.
    • I need brake slightly sooner, lighter and carry more speed through the corner and this will require coming on throttle softer.
    • This is consistent with what I’ve seen in real-life, comparing my data with a super fast driver like Olivier.

One thing I am going to work until I can get it

Segment 6, which includes turns 6 and 7.  Brake sooner, lighter, carry more speed in, know that mid-corner will be not as planted and I will have to be more gentle with throttle application on corner exit, because I’ll be carrying more speed.  The goal is still to get to throttle as fast as I can but I’ll be more at the limit.