The video has been revised to include some text on driving the track which hopefully will be more helpful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw5oTpTvv3g



Speed Ventures put on a nice event yesterday at Big Willow. Here are a couple of laps that will be uploaded to the website for Nissan Sport Magazine with an article on driving the track. Hope you enjoy it.
Cheers,
Ed

 

your time around the track is approx 1'41". not bad.

 

Thank you. Most appreciated.

I was taking a first timer in the right seat as a passenger in that session, so laying off. (He is an architect and a good friend of 20+ years who has never been to the track. And he is supervising the renovation of my home and construction of a new garage-with one space that has a widened, heightened and extended bay and workshop to play with the cars - so if I did anything that injured him in the slightest such that it delayed the job, my wife would probably work damage on me equivalent to a roll over in Turn 9!). We warmed up the tires at about a 1.47, then you saw the next two laps at around 1.41. Traffic makes a difference of course, but apart from waiting on the Vette in Turn 8/9 (bad form to push somebody coming through 9 unless you are racing), we got a decent clean couple of laps. The next couple of laps we had to waggle past an M3 and a Carrera that held us up, so it was not as smooth. This vid is to try to get an impression of the driving line. Really, though, I was not satisfied with the negotiation of the exit of the Omega and entry to Turn 5 for the set up to 6. I think I should have been pushing more and earlier to move the car a touch more left, get a cleaner entry to 5 just about a foot farther to the right side, and then make a slightly later corner entry to 6.

Problems of the day included loosing a winglet going down the back straight at about 140mph...it just ripped off and flutterd up into the sky and landed off track surface fortunately...a clutch pedal sticking to the floor (disconcerting in the middle of a double heel/toe downshift under thresh hold braking before Turn 3...probably the BF has absorbed some water moisture and it heats up when the car is running hot with a lot of turbo boost time and it gets "spongy" like brakes can when they have heated up under lots of braking...so it needs to be purged and replaced. When the car cooled down it worked just fine again, so definitely a hydraulic as opposed to mechanical issue)....and loosening a turbo connection so there was some boost leak on the driver side ...little puff of smoke out of the bonnet vent, a slight drop in power and a change in the engine song under power and idle gave that one away. In other words, a pretty typical kind of session. Always something to be playing with.

The last few laps with him in the next session were in the 1.39.3 to 1.39.7 range. Without the extra 200lbs of weight and freedom to push a bit more it is typically 3-4 seconds faster than that. I am sure a REAL driver could take the same car around many many seconds faster. Per usual, the real limitation here is the driver, and not the car. At whatever rate of velocity one can manage in their car, it is a fun track to run in a high horsepower car. In a little Miata it is almost a complete circuit in WOT from the top of the Omega or Turn 4 all the way around to Turn 3!!!!!!!!