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 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.
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.
