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My friend and I hit up Gingerman Raceway in Michigan for a HPDE yesterday. I ran in Novice, he ran in Intermediate, and we both had a blast. Here's a cut and paste of a recap I wrote up.
i hope the multiple picture posts work.
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Dan and I did a HPDE at Gingerman yesterday and had a blast. Everyone got seven 20 min. sessions, three classes, A, B, C. The C's had an instructor with them, the B's could get one if they asked. I took more pictures in my flim camera, hopefully I'll get them into electronic form.
Dan's non-tested brake pads were fading after the first session, so he had to change his driving style for the rest of the event. He still ended up passing all the cars in his class at least once: Z06, C5, S2000's, and a race prepped Neon. They only got him back by out braking him. He also got red flagged several times for hanging his rear end out a couple times, the best one I saw being in Turn 2 where he was sideways from the apex to the exit, with a wiggly correction to boot. That was my first time seeing his Fiero and it's nicely done. He dropped the supercharged 3.8L GTP into it, custom headers and exhaust. Got a lot of compliments from the other guys too.
I was in the C class / novice, running with a WRX, Probe, Audi TT, C5. I started off pretty conservative, getting a feel for my car, the track, and the line, but increased my speed and aggressiveness through all 7 sessions. All except the TT passed me during the sessions, mainly from power out of turns and on the straights but my speed through the turns wasn't too shabby. I was closer to my car's limit than that C5 driver was to his, and I even put time between us on some of the more difficult turns.
Experienced brake fade for the first time, so that was cool, and a little exciting. Backed it off afterwards to conserve my pads. I finally got my tires squealing by the 5th session and got my rear end out a tiny bit on trailbraking from Turn 5 to 6 and trailing throttle in other turns. I noticed my exhaust note change during the 6th session and thought, oh sheet, my exhaust leak (corroded pipe) got a little worse. I got red flagged, and when I pulled in found out Dan told the course marshall to flag me because he saw something hanging off my car. I was very surprised to see the pipe break at a joint. see pic 9. We pryed the rear half off the rubber mounts and I was good to go for the last session! ha I sound like a race car now.
The A group had NSX's, Mustang Cobras, Lola kit car, Beemers, 911 turbo, and a 350 shelby cobra replica.
If an 84 volvo wagon's hitting the track I don't want to hear your excuses about wearing out your tires and brake pads, blah blah blah. Just wait till I get a 5.0 in that thing. hehe oh yeah, I stayed in 3rd gear most of the time since that's what the instructors were recommending. In the later track sessions when I went without an instructor, I experimented with 2nd gear in some of the turns, but it reved a little too high with my wide ratio trans and my heel-toeing needs work. Got third to about 4200 rpm on the straights, about 62-65 mph.
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