With the weather and track settings held constant, I was excited to get out and drive with more confidence that whatever improvements (or not) that happened, were of my own doing.
One thing that I still don’t love, is that I am still wrecking the car, regularly early on a session. It feels like it just takes me a few laps (and a wreck) to get into things. Today was no exception; an out-lap, a decent opening lap and boom. I am in the wall. I need to figure out how to cut that out, whether that means starting slower the first few laps, knowing that my mind and body just aren’t up to speed yet. This might also be because it is usually between 5:15AM and 5:45AM when I heading out and have only been awake for 15 – 30 minutes. Regardless, it needs to stop.
New Personal Record! Wait, huh?
With very little warning or expectation, on the very next outing, second flying lap – there it is, a new personal best. Barely but still – a 1:19.606. Looking back at the data, we can see why this happened but at the time, I was very confused. So much so that as I tried to repeat the feat, I kept dropping a wheel, resulting in dirty laps.
Eventually, I got too sloppy and hit the wall again. A little frustrated, I decided to back off – not fixate on the fastest lap time and just get in good, quality laps in the mid to low 1:20’s and if 1:19’s happened – awesome! And you know what, that’s exactly what happened (well, after one more wreck).
Over the next 16 laps (I had to cut the session as my kiddo was up), all but three laps were nice and tidy. I was on such a roll, that I decided to pull over to the side and intentionally end the session versus being forced to end the session because I had crashed and my time was up.
I can’t say that I truly made progress in terms of a going faster, as in qualifying lap faster, because while I did improve my personal best, it wasn’t by much and I am not exactly sure how I did it. However, I feel I can confidently click off low to mid 1:20 lap times, of which even yesterday, was a tall order.
Not only can do I ‘feel’ this way – but I can quantify it. Check out this really cool way of comparing laps that Virtual Racing School has; you can compare the ‘Average Fast Lap’ and your ‘Average Lap’, of which in both measures, I improved by about .3 seconds. This is great because most people (including me) in the real world, if they’re looking at data, fixate on the fastest lap of the session, which usually happens once and no other lap is close, where we should be focusing on how to improve what ‘typically’ happens.
I love this analysis and VRS even creates a speed trace and accompanying channels for those averages – beautiful! You can pretty clearly see that the reason I am on ‘average’ faster today versus yesterday is two fold:
- Getting on throttle sooner and staying on throttle
- Staying flat through the last turn (gut check time! Even in the virtual world)
I’m still exhausted from the last race weekend but jacked about the progress that is being made, little by little.