Here are a few laps of the G35 Coupe at Buttonwillow Raceway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oym23Z7e3ng

 

Nice

 

i love the hood on your g35

 

Thank you. That is a VIS carbon fiber hood, painted OEM opalescent pearl.
They make one for the 350Z as well.

 

Great video, Ed, thanks for sharing! Were you on your NT01s during this clip? If so, I'm surprised at how much chirping I heard from the R-Compound rubber. That may be completely normal, though...

Also, what type of camera do you use to capture your vids? It appears to be externally mounted, no?

Thanks again for sharing, I could watch these all day

 

Out of curiosity....where is your camera mounted? Is it on the cage/harness bar. The angle leads me to believe it is closer to the windshield. My company recently bought a nice one and I might borrow it on occasion.

Thanks!
Marc

 

what kind of times did you run on that config. from my crude video stop watch it seemed like a 2min 14 sec lap. can you please confirm cause that seems really slow for an FI car with your prowess on buttonwillow.

Hammad

 

Thanks, guys.
The tires were the NT-01, a DOT-R compound tire.

The camera is a Panasonic minicam, 3 CCD, mounted on the inside of the windshield with a chase cam three suction cup mount with 3" extension piece.

The practice times were in the 2:13-2:15 time. On the competition runs, no camera, the AMB transponder recorded times were 2:05-2:06. I had my last one going about 3 seconds faster still, but spun out on the last turn....too greedy!

 

i see thats more like it. i would assume with your setup you should be somewhere in the low 2min5 sec range. have you tried a better tire like the Hoosier R6's they should knock a few more secs off your time.

Hammad

 

Once again you are "bullseye" on target. Yes, the Hoosier is good for about one to two more seconds. The problem is they just don't last very long. They are best new and degrade over time. The NT-01 actually gets better with a few sessions, and lasts a very respectable amount of time, like its famous brother the Toyo RA-1.

Driving skill at this level is more important to outcome than the tires (we are just a bunch of weekend or even once a month kind of guys). Redline Time Attack divides cars into different groups and wisely uses tires as a means of doing so; thus if you are using street tires there is a street class (adhesion rating 140 or greater), DOT-R with adhesion ratings over 50 a modified class, and then under 50, which is Hoosiers and some Yokos, etc. So for the competition aspect you could not engineer an "unfair advantage" as Mark Donohue would quip, based on tires.

After going to an advanced driving program at Bondurant late last month (two drivers, two instructors, two cars, two days......more than five hours of seat time each day with the entire Firebird course to ourselves the entire time) I am pretty sure that I have at least three seconds of improvement. (lap times in traffic with a passenger doing 6/10s effort were 1:48 at laguna and it felt like we were poking along and being held back, whereas before the school to do a 1:46 without a passenger felt on the edge. Like anything, just about the time you think you are getting good at something, you have an experience that illustrates rather definitively that you know nothing about the next level(s) and it is back to elementary school.

There is nothing like having an Indy Lights driver show you what you are doing wrong (great guy and exceedingly polite and nice about it!), what is the right way to do it, and to strap in next to him and really learn what the potential in any given car can be and how to learn it. Very educational, and humbling too. Heel and toe down shifting foot work is critical, at least a second a lap is in there and maybe two, but learning the precise point on the run to initiate and how hard to blip, you just gotta be there with him, it cannot be explained or talked through in the same way that sitting next to him will. How being three inches farther to one side makes such a difference on turn in to the next corner, about how much to trail off the brake and precisely where to get the rear end to come around the way you want it to, how to put just a tiny flick of steering into the process if steering with the feet is not quite getting it done, and how to catch it if there is a tad too much.

And that really is what it was all about. Bringing it back under control. There is a space or margin that we all get comfortable with in driving, an understanding even if not precise, of how far we can go with the car before we lose, or start to lose, control of the car. The closer one can keep the car to that margin all of the time, the faster we go and the lower the lap times.

Car control becomes a key factor, not staying inside the margin, to really going fast. I think it was Parnelli Jones who said, "If you are not out of control, you are not going fast enough." that is absolutely right on, and not bravado in the slightest (when I first heard the quote, I thought it was an insane comment by an arrogant jerk.......now it seems to make total sense and is just a rather matter of fact understatement of a complete truism. Hmmm, wonder if there is a gradual enlightenment, or degradation in mental perception?). Where we need to get to at a minimum to be fast drivers, is the skill set to be over the edge, and to bring it back. Stepping over the edge, and knowing where to do it and how to do it and how far to take it, and then bringing it back. Do it in the wrong spot and you pay a serious consequence if you fail or falter; do it where the punishment is nominal and you get an advantage. You cannot be safe in a dangerous place unless you learn how to go there and come back, and that is where the oft referred to "seat time" becomes essential. Ultimately, one of the primary differences about the real pro driving and ours...is that they are comfortable living in a place that most of us would have nightmares about even visiting. it becomes as much art as it does engineering. And once we understand that, it becomes obvious how so much is dependent on the driver and why the great ones are so revered, just as a great painter or sculptor or poet or craftsman should be revered. (Though it is unlikely that a potter or woodworker will make as much money given the lack of entertainment value in their work....)

the Laguna Seca vid is after the course, and all the others were before. You can hear the heel-toe shifting much more crisply and effectively in the laguna vid, and the rotation of the car is smooth and audible in the tire singing, especially in the Andretti hairpin turn 2. The Buttonwillow vid was taken December 3rd, before the program of instruction. I can't wait to get out there again.

My parting quip to the instructor at Bondurant was that I really appreciated him teaching me to drive like him, and that I felt I was now someone that could drive just like him......pause for effect.....except that my anus puckered at 150mph going into a turn and his stayed relaxed until 200mph. Pretty much the cold, hard truth.

Thanks for the great comments Hammad. You are an astute and precise observer.

 

so tell me something. how comparable are the NT01's to the RA'1. i have raced on Ra'1 and was thinking of picking up a pair of NT01's. the RA1's i had wore like steel. me personnaly i ran 2min 11 secs around that same config in my stock Z with stock touring brakes. only mod was hoosiers. here is an intresting video of me which aparently turned up on the internet. it shows me running out of brakes but not running out of grip.

http://sakred.nauticaltech.com/race_...e_spinning.wmv

anyways good write up. by the way i always enjoy your vids. hope to see you out at some events. il definately stop by and say hi.

Hammad