Paul's Thunderhill Track Notes

Located about an hour north of Sacramento, one of Thunderhill Raceway Park’s claims to fame is that Ford shot their famous GT-40 Super bowl commercial there. It really is a track that has a bit of everything about it. Single apex fast swooping corners, off camber high slip angle back ‘n forth’s, long straights and short esses, blind turns, elevation changes, bumps and smooth surfaces and a really nifty double apex at the end of the long second (or third depending on how you count) back straight, that you need to get right for the even longer and faster front straight. It’s a bit like Sears Point but longer, faster and with more far more run-off and far less history to it.

Technical is word some people use to describe tracks like Thunderhill or Sears, but I would prefer a word like ‘nuanced’ or at least ‘challenging’ since technical always seems to me to mean specialized or scientific rather than the way it’s meant in racing, which would be “exhibiting or deriving from the technique or use of technique.” Thunderhill is a challenging track with many nuances that requires a driver to exhibit a high level of technique. That’s a longer and clumsier way of saying it, but one I like a lot better than just saying “technical.”

One item of particular nuance is on the front straight. The starters stand and start line are not in the same place as the finish line. This is one of those little things that, perhaps deliberately, the local track elves put in place and can use to steal a position at the last second. It’s all too common for a driver to hit the start line, lift and start celebrating, while a crafty local driver on his tail stays on the throttle for another two hundred yards and beats him to the finish line. Well after you pass the start line, if you look to your left right around the end of the pit wall, you’ll see this little sign that says, “Finish.” It’s easy to miss.

One reason it’s easy to miss is that drivers are looking for their marks for turn one, on the right hand side of the track. Turn one is a fast wide uphill less than ninety degree left hander that gains increasing amounts of grip from track-in, thru the apex and all the way to a blind track-out. There are brake markers, on the right side of the track, just past pit out, and a nice bit of curbing on the inside that makes a good reference for your apex point. At the right entry speed, which is hard to judge, if you hit the apex you’ll wind up just shy of, or just onto, the curb at track-out. Miss the apex and at least there is a lot of run-off. Be warned though, after turn-in is a very bad place to lift completely, at speed, since it will give you some throttle lift over-steer. Don’t be afraid to go fast, however, since even if you mess up by lifting from fear and getting some over-steer, putting any throttle back on at all will plant the rear end and pop you right out of the corner like a cork from a Champagne bottle. You’re gaining grip the whole way around, so while in other cars over cooking turn one probably means it’s too late to check your life insurance policy, in a Mazda GT just give it a whisper of throttle to avoid a spin and remember, if it makes the highlight reel on movie night, you planned on doing that.

In qualifying trim it’s useful to actually use the pit out on the way into turn one, by moving over after the end of the pit wall, to get a bigger arc. The problem with doing so in the race itself is that it is a high speed passing corner, and if someone gets inside of you and brakes just a smidgen later than you, at that speed, they’ll have your lunch, breakfast and dinner served up to them by their favorite swimsuit model. You’re at the end of the front straight at this point and are just flying…

The exit of turn one leads to a short straight that runs over a modest rise just before you need to brake for turn two. You don’t need a whole lot of braking here, since if need be you can scrub speed on entry, but if you “have one on your tail” you need to get all the way down to the inside since it’s a good passing move to slip inside the car ahead and try for an earlier throttle. Turn two is a long constant radius sweeper, again to the left, that starts to gain grip on track out and which leads to a very short sucker straight.

Now most everybody is familiar with a sucker turn, a corner that seems to require more entry speed than it really does and either suckers you off the track or keeps you off the throttle; that is, in fact, an excellent description of turn three. However it tends to start suckering you in during the short straight between two and three since the entry for three is very deceptive as well as nearly blind and the temptation is to get some speed on the straight on the way to it. The way the track is configured, from the exit of turn two all the way around turn three you are driving around the side of a hill. Turn three actually goes around the hill, but they didn’t actually cut into the side of it much, so it is, if you can imagine it, a right hand turn glued to the side of a hill leaning to the left. What is worse is that you can’t really tell from the driver’s seat that the camber gets worse, far worse the farther away you are from the inside. Imagine standing on the side of a hill, with your right shoulder pointing to the top. Now pave it without digging. That’s turn three. Just to add a bit of spice, since a lot of drivers stay up against the inside of the turn, where the camber falls off is also where their klag winds up. Joy.

So if you take a classic entry line, too fast, into turn three you’ll have no help recovering. You could have Batman’s suction cup tires on your car, but you’re still going to lose the tail end. And since it’s mostly on the other side of the hill, you have to remember, rather than see, that it leads to a slow series of tight, high slip angle bends whose camber and elevation both change pretty radically. In short, you can afford to throw away the entry to turn three, along with some of the speed on the very short straight, without losing all that much on a race lap. I tend to stay inside all the way around the corner, especially since it helps get back onto a bit of throttle at the exit of turn three, which is a back ‘n forth section leading into turns four and five. An alternative, good for qualifying, is to start outside, but with the right entry speed and angle to get and hold the inside of the turn from the apex on. Either way you want to be on or near the inside curb at turn three’s track-out.

As soon as you get around the side of the hill in turn three, you’ll be in turn four. A flat left hander whose main purpose in life is to set up turn five. Turn four is sort of like the third Manning brother. It exists, but only because they wanted something between Payton and Eli.

If you are all the way to the right hand curb at the exit of turn three you’ll be perfectly set up to get on the throttle, apex turn four, and use all the track out before five. And here is the one variable in track configuration. Turn five can either be turn five, an enormous elevation change to a very sharp, blind left hander whose apex is at the top of a very steep hill. Or it can be ‘the bypass’ which peaks to the left of turn five, needs far less braking, but will try it’s best to pitch you sideways while you are off balance going over a very nasty bump while the car is light.

Turn five is easier. You get huge braking with it going uphill in a straight line, get the right turn in speed for the apex at the top of the hill and just try to carry what speed you can on the other side. The other side of the hill is, again, off balance and way off camber since, like turn three it’s going around the side of the hill, but this time downhill as well, without them having dug into the side, so again, farther out means less grip (although this time only at the beginning). Downhill and off-camber, you still need to, once you are going down the other side of the hill fight your way back to the right to get set up for turn six.

If you are using the bypass, like we were in the ‘Best of Thunderhill’ video, then your biggest goal is to get over the crest of the hill without the car getting pitched completely sideways, and throwing you off the side of the track, while carrying as much speed as you can, but without messing up turn six. To start, after the exit of four instead of drifting right and staying right, which would send you to the brake zone for five, you need to continue the arc and pull back over to the left. When you are going over the crest of the hill on the bypass, you need to start far enough left to get an angle even with the bump that is just past the crest of the bypass. If the car is turning at, or just past the crest, it’s going to hit that big bump at an angle while light. This is a bad thing.

The end of either turn five, or the bypass, still involves going around the backside of the hill, which is still sharply downhill and off camber. To carry the best speed you need to use track out, but not so much track out that you blow the entrance to one of the most important corners, turn six.

Now I am a devotee of the type I, II, & III corner schema. Where a type I is a corner leading onto a straight and is the most important, a type II is a corner leading off of a straight and less important, and a type III is a corner leading to another corner and so is the least important of all. The whole complex of back ‘n forth from turn three to turn six is pretty much all type III’s, while turn six is not only a type I, but the third or fourth most important type I on the track. A speed advantage carried out of six can be held up to and almost through turn eight in theory. In practice I’ve found that a better exit holds an advantage all the way to the brake zone of turn nine.

Turn six itself is a basic, flat, ninety degree left, with good curbing on the outside if you need to use it, but don’t over use it or you’ll drop a tire. A classic apex, it leads to turn seven which is just a kink, with no lift unless traffic forces it, and into turn eight. Turn eight is an uphill left that again gains grip on the track out while going sharply uphill. Eight is less than ninety degrees and doesn’t usually require much, if any, braking. Instead consider a nice throttle lift before turning in, get the car turning a little earlier than you might think, and go through it full tilt boogey. Just don’t miss the apex. The one thing to try to avoid, if you can, is going side by side through eight. I tried that with Dave exactly once when he got a run on me off six, had the inside to eight but wasn’t ahead. Turned out there was only enough room for one car at a time, and it wasn’t mine, although on a positive note the run off there is terrific, just make sure you’ve taken your hay fever med’s.

Which brings us to nine. Nine is a high speed blind staggered S, left then right, at the crest of the hill you just started going up with the right hand part being on the blind, back side of the hill. A decent passing zone if you can get inside while braking to the crest, one thing to watch out for is the angle at which you’ll be leaving the corner relative to the curb at the top right hand side of the hill. The corner starts left, goes right, but you need to continue drifting left since if you hit the top of the hill in a straight line you’ll be rather startled when the track suddenly moves out from under you at a high rate of speed.

It’s a reasonably fast corner that allows you to gain more speed quickly since it’s sharply downhill, in a straight line to turn ten. The braking zone for ten is a bit deceptive. You exit nine going sharply downhill, bottom out, and then start a gentle climb just before ten. Of course the track design elves decided that an uphill braking zone off the second (or third depending on how you count) longest back straight would be too simple, so ten, from turn in to track out, is flat. That means the car gets just a bit light in deepest part of the braking zone. This is a trick the track design elves will repeat, only much more so, in turn fourteen. They put more brake markers here, at ten, but to avoid getting them run over every weekend they are on the left hand side and hard to reference.

Between ten and the eleven to thirteen esses is a very short straight, where you can gain some speed, but give it up in time for the turn in for eleven because that complex is another type I, probably the second most important on the track since it leads to the 2nd (or third depending on how you count) long back straight. Turn in to eleven is classic, fairly tight and a bit downhill. They replaced the gravel traps, between the apex’s, with a better run off back in 2006 to stop people from kicking gravel all over the track each weekend. Because of that you can, not that you should of course, cheat by cutting the apex of the esses by nearly a car width. Not that I would do such a dastardly thing.

Eleven to thirteen rewards an nice exit, and you should be able to carry full throttle from the apex of eleven all the way down the second (or perhaps third depending on how you count) back straight; which brings us to the braking zone of turn fourteen.

Fourteen and fifteen should really be seen as the same corner, in terms of the arc of your line, but are distinct since the entry of fourteen is the second most important type II (end of a long straight) while the exit of fifteen is the most important type I (beginning of the longest straight). If you were going make a corner into a VIP at the Oscars, everybody in the know would be waiting on the red carpet to see who fourteen and fifteen were wearing. For myself, I’m always rooting for as skanky as possible…

The brake zone for fourteen has some markers, just past the bridge on your left hand side. Problem is the design elves really went to town here. The straight starts with a bit of downhill out of eleven thru thirteen, flattens, then has a nice sharp rise with a lovely amount of grip just before you could actually use it. Of course the rise, and the grip, ends right where you normally reach threshold braking. I can hear the elves giggling from here.

Just to make it more interesting fourteen is an excellent passing zone under braking with just one exception. The exit of fifteen is the one corner you most need to nail to get speed down the longest straight. And if you don’t complete the pass in time to use the single car line into and out of fifteen, then you and the driver you are trying to pass will lose many…many places before you reach turn one. You’ll be a Dead Duck if you don’t play nice and get single file before the track-out of fourteen. Trust me I’ve been there.

On a qualifying line you hit the hill, brake a smidgen early knowing you’ll have to back off at the crest and from a left side track-in position hit the apex of fourteen at the curb with enough speed to carry you back out to a fourteen track-out position on the far left side, which is also the track-in for fifthteen. Balance the car by getting off the brake (if you trailed) and on the throttle before fifteen, while the line is continuing the turn through a double apex, hit the inside right side and drift all the way out onto the curbing at the left, outside, track-out, of fifteen and find yourself on the main straight with a hint of a wiggle over the outside curb. In 2006 they put more of that run off between fourteen and fifteen, along with some padded barrel like doohickey’s to discourage using all the run off to widen the arc. Not that yours truly would ever go wider there and just miss the barrel in order to get a huge run on somebody all the way down the front straight. Nope, that would be cheating… and great shame comes to those who get caught cheating…

Pit in is at the apex of fifteen, so sometimes you may come up on pitting traffic that forces you off the second apex by a car width, but it is extremely important to get a good launch here, so don’t give up more than you have to. Need be, better to give it up early, and get on the throttle early, than to catch a pitting car in the wrong spot.

Like I said at the beginning, Thunderhill has a lot of every kind of thing going for it, which makes it really fun track that can also keep the racing close. High speed, slow speed, with just plain wicked elevation changes, it’s a bit difficult to get fully up to speed on, but once you do it’ll probably be your favorite track. You can also, sometimes, bide your time a bit, put on some pressure, and wait for your opponent drop a few wheels off the track somewhere. It’s worked for me.

I can’t wait to get back and do it again…

Update: I corrected a numbering mistake, I had labeled the last two corners 13 & 14, when they are actually 14 & 15. Also turn one is less than ninety degrees.

I Remember

The very first time I saw a Mazda GT. I had taken my Miata for yet another track day, this time to Buttonwillow, in December 2003. After all the daily drivers, like mine, had pulled off the track for lunch, out came this car in Coors Light, Silver Bullet regalia for an installation lap. It was Tom Dragoun, who was getting the car ready for the twenty-five hours of Thunderhill (yes, NASA has a 25 hour enduro, their slogan should be “We do Daytona one better”, but nobody asked me)

So, after all those dainty daily drivers, where you hear more tire squeal than throttle, it was one hell of a contrast for this full throated race car to come roaring around sunset and I remember what is now an indelible first thought, “Man, what I wouldn’t give to drive a car like that.”

I’d been wanting to race since I was a teenager; frankly Nixon was President back then and UOP was sponsoring an F5000 car driven by Jody Scheckter at Riverside, so you can understand I’d been waiting a really long time. But there was always some reason or other that I just couldn’t do it. The logistics, having a place to put a trailer between weekends and having something to haul the trailer with, those were just for starters. While working on the car on weekends sounds like fun, I’d spent too many track days watching guys waste their entire weekend neck deep in oil and grease, often never even getting their car out on track. I was leery, to say the least, about supporting the car myself. And while I understand theory very well, except for transmissions (since I learned on airplanes) I also became aware a long time ago that I have a singular talent for cross threading a nut. Sometime I swear I can make a screw strip itself with just a casual glance. It’s kind of like a reverse superpower. This explains why, thankfully, in the end I ended up working on computers rather than airplanes. So as much as I was looking forward to fussing with a race car in the garage between weekends, what I really wanted to do was drive it, and without support and some solution for the logistics and hauling and stuff I couldn’t see how to make that happen.

I remember the following summer, 2004, after taking yet another longing look at many different race cars, deciding to check out that really cool Mazda I saw the previous December. More important than the fact that the price of the car was a lot lower than I thought it was going to be was the realization that I had the opportunity to avoid all of the logistics and support issues if I wanted. Tom and Bette have an ‘arrive n drive’ program for the car that is perfect for guys like me. They store it, maintain it, transport it, and fuel it, support it track side, the whole nine yards. Of course I knew you could get the same type of thing while renting a race car, but who in his right mind wants to spend that much money to spend a weekend in a car driven the prior weekend by a sixteen year old with delusions of being drafted by Ferrari? Square tires and a tweaked engine, gasping for the finish line, no thanks.

With Seven’s Only you have the advantage of your own car while you can, and I recommend, having them do all the hard work. Which lets me just enjoy the weekend. As I talked with Tom that late summer day I realized that every single obstacle that was keeping me from racing was just solved. I wrote the check on the spot, and took delivery the following October and have been racing ever since. Frankly, if it wasn’t for Tom and Bette and what they do I’m sure I’d still be doing track days in my Miata and dreaming of the day when I could drive a real race car in a real race.

Now all that is great, but you’ll notice that it is all self-centered on just my experience. It’s all about I and me. There is more to the Mazda GT series than that. As much as I remembered, Josh’s first post reminded me of what I was forgetting, what I was taking for granted, which is the community centered on this car. Beyond the fact that the other drivers are fun to race with, there is group of people who are much more than spectators, who help make the weekend that much more fun.

On my desk at work I have a coffee mug with a photo Helen took at Willow Springs which is the envy of all people with good taste in cars. Little stuff like that, and big stuff as well, like Chuck and Kevin pitching in when I smashed the car up at the California Speedway, helping get me out to compete against their own brother. Memories of Mary helping me strap in at Willow Springs or Bob BBQ’ing a terrific steak on a Saturday night may be less prominent than drifting side by side in turns three and four with Scott, or a five car knock down drag out for third place at Thunderhill, but those are the quiet things that make the difference between just showing up to race against strangers and having a really… really good time with friends.

That was all too easy to forget, and I’m glad Josh’s post reminded me of it.

Thunderhill movie night

Ok, so part of what I’m doing this year, along with writing posts for this blog, is writing with pictures. I’m now responsible for movie night.

Mazda GT has a party on Saturday nights, and when the sun goes down and our bellies are full, we’re breaking out the projector and watching the previous race shown against the side of Tom’s great big white transporter.

I don’t mind saying by the end of the first Willow Springs Saturday I was worried about laying an egg for next month at Thunderhill. A great big rotten stink bomb of an egg like an Easter egg you didn't find until July.

The reason is that we were still working the bugs out of the cameras, and haven’t got very many cameras in place yet, since to be fair the bugs need to be worked out before the guys plunk cash down for them. Mea culpa again, I just need to make the recommendations in time and be ready to support everybody once they get to the track. Toward that end I now have some excellent video of my driving my Miata to Von's, and yes, I will spare you the drama. I made it all the way to the store and back.

But going over what we’ve got for the first race weekend, it looks like I’ve got a lot more material to work with than I thought I’d have. Toward that end I updated the video parts, to your right, by breaking them in two. The pending section up top will be all from our new season video, while I moved the old junk down a bit and out of the way. Josh and I will be posting some more non-2008 season video down there as well, to go along with track notes and other sundry goodies. But all the 2008 season goodness will be up at the top, sooner or later.

For the 2008 season video, Josh’s Sunday qualifying race will be first up, hopefully with some outside footage to go along with it. The tentative title is, “Josh versus the venal viper!” cause he was in a fight with somebody or another from green to checkered flag. And he humiliated that viper by the end, and I love a happy ending. I think I finally understand why women like those flicks where a bunch of people sit around and talk until somebody's aunt dies.... Excuse me, while I grab a hanky...

Point's mea culpa

Whoops, turns out I didn't know our points system for this year. The end of first weekend standings have been changed to reflect the correct system which is twenty eight points for a win, and drops by two points per place after that. Thanks to Jim for setting me straight and for Barbara for keeping proper track of the official results.

The Rookie’s First Impression

Excited, intimidated, nervous, uncertain; all feelings that overwhelmed as my first season of racing approached. The season opener for the Mazda GT Championship Series was February 9th and 10th at Willow Spring International Raceway, a track that I had visited for the first time two weeks prior to the opening race. I typically suffer from fantasies of grandeur but, in this case, my goals were to finish both races and not make a complete fool of myself. As it turns out, I didn’t have as much to worry about as I thought.

I took delivery of my new GT car the day before the first race. It was an open test day, with little pressure to do anything other than get the car ready for Saturday. Items on my list were to set the steering column length, seat position, and pedal depth. I’m very particular about suspension balance so I was expecting to spend most of the day adjusting the dampers but Tom hit the nail on the head by referencing Thorpe’s #3 car. All I had to do was request neutral handling. Nice! I spent a bit more time bedding the brakes and working with the crew to clear up some tire rubbing and the car was ready to go. The day was mine to practice reading the gauges, work on my line, and bench race with the other drivers.

Coming into Saturday with a well dialed car was a big load off. Warm up was much like a HPDE but qualifying was an entirely different animal. I understood the fundamental goal around qualifying, which is to run your quickest lap before the tires get too hot. Theoretically, that’s likely to happen in laps 3, 4, or 5, or so the books say. Making theory a reality seemed much more difficult on the track than I expected. I went out with the intention of taking two easy laps to get some room ahead and knock out the third lap with authority. As it turned out, other people had the same goal and I spent the entire session chasing a clean lap. Note to self – work on strategies for qualifying.

Through some miracle of racing, or just dumb luck, I managed to qualify second, which put me right next to last year’s series champ for the points race. My plan was to drop behind Jim to see if I could keep up and learn a thing or two. To my surprise, Jim joined the ST1 group for the start. This should not have been a problem, since the Viper in front of me should have pulled away handily, leaving plenty of room at turn one. In reality, the Viper did not pull away and I got passed on both sides in the first turn. Note to self – work on race starts.

The field thinned out after the first lap and I was back in very comfortable HPDE-like driving. Focused on taking it easy and finishing the race, I fell into a consistent 1:32 pace and worked my way back into second place. “Go slow to go fast” was on my side. In the last laps of the race, the first place car was a good distance ahead and the third place car a good distance behind. “Take it easy and don’t #$%^ this up” played through my mind over and over. I dropped a couple seconds from my pace and locked in a second place finish. Let the fantasies of grandeur begin.

The post race natural high carried me into a BBQ with some of the coolest folks out there. I’m not sure if it’s the racing or the camaraderie that I like better; but with this group you get the best of both worlds. Tasty steaks, good discussion, and video of past races projected on the side of a trailer. No buyer’s remorse here. I made a good decision.

Looking under the cushion…

… of my couch may lead to some extra spare change. Looking at my cushion, the amount and type of room I leave myself for those small mistakes and corrections I need to make in a corner may lead to a change in my lap times.

Now the term, “Go slow to go fast” is the most overused, hackneyed cliché in racing. But it got that way by having a lot of truth to it. My problem with it is that the people who use it most often have rarely thought through why it works. To me the “why it’s true” is more important for a beginning driver since it’s the reason why too many drivers just reach a certain point, not all that high on the food chain, plateau and ultimately give up the sport in disgust. While others get unnaturally fast with far less seat time. All too often drivers will look to friends who will just tell them they are over-driving the car, which may work but again, is only the half of it. And while getting that half often leads them to fix the other half naturally, without having to think about it, I prefer to think things all the way through.

No matter how good and consistent a driver you are, you need to leave yourself a cushion in each and every corner. No one is absolutely perfect, using one hundred percent of grip and one hundred percent of the track, no more and no less, each and every time, is beyond anyone. Part of getting faster is being able to consistently use more grip and more track than the other guy, without ever exceeding a hundred percent of either. It’s about needing less of a cushion, in total. But that’s the long term solution, a small, bit by bit improvement that getting more seat time leads to in the long run.

The initial, beginners mistake that the “go slow to go fast” cliché is implicitly, but not explicitly, designed to address is to change the kind of cushion not the amount, which is more important to initially getting fast. No amount of seat time, while constantly over-driving the car, will lead to much improvement because while trying to get fast, too many drivers will push the car harder, which means using up more of the tire’s available grip. Since the driver still needs a cushion, the only place to get it once he’s used up all the grip is to leave more space on the track. This is the mistaken mindset that the cliché will implicitly address. It’s enormously clear that a car using one hundred percent of grip and ninety percent of the track is going to be much slower, and much harder to control, than a car that is using one hundred percent of the track and ninety percent of the grip.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up on somebody trying to wrestle his car into submission, and using every last ounce of grip his tires have, but who I could just casually drive around the outside of, since he’s left two or three car widths of track-out for me. When doing track days they would often be convinced I had some special engine or trick suspension and when I tried to explain why I could pass their Corvette in my little 98 horsepower Miata they would either get it and get faster right away or they wouldn’t. But most of us had to at least be told the cliché once or twice, even if we never thought about why it works.

The reason I like the full explanation is that the first instinct for a driver told he’s driving the car too hard is to look to his apex, and that won’t necessarily help either. You can over-drive the car while hitting the apex every time. The driver needs to look at the whole arc. Track in, apex and track out. Friends and coaches might tell the driver he’s over driving the car, and that he’s not on the line, but the response is usually “I’m hitting the apex every time, so it must be something wrong with the car.”

Many drivers have an issue with ego, or like me, with memory or perception. To beat either, the best exercise is to take some video (with the sound off) and pause it at turn-in, apex and track-out of each corner. With a piece of paper (many of us are tactile learners) in my hand I write down how far I am from the edge of the track. If it’s just a few inches, ok, but I’ve spotted myself both crabbing in from the edge of the track while anticipating the turn-in, and using up all of the tire while leaving five feet of track-out as my cushion. Everybody watches their apex, and remembers when they get it right or wrong, but you don’t start getting really fast until you start paying just as much attention to your track in and track out; the whole arc.

Willow Springs: Week One

My oh my, after more than four months out of the car what a wonder to be back in it. If my posts weren’t so long winded I’d run out of words.

To start with, an eleven car field is at least twice as much fun as seven or eight car field. We had two brand new cars, Josh in the Endsight racing #35 and Aaron in #5. Both the drivers did very well and are great additions to the series. Clean and smooth, with good situational awareness and fun to compete against. Our series has always been blessed with an abnormally large number of drivers who are just plain fun to race with, and it’s outstanding to see that trend continue. Josh in particular did very well capturing two podiums his first weekend. He’s also joining the blog as our second poster. Aaron got at least one podium in his #5 as well. With a large field that’s some good driving right off the bat.

For myself, I had a near perfect practice day. The track was open, without sessions, all day, so there was no hurry to do anything in particular. After a few installation laps to get the temperatures in line, I was happily putting in as much seat time as I could handle.

Race day practice and qualifying went well for me. I was just a few tenths off of Thorpe in the #3 car, which made me pretty happy since he’s been quick for a long time. Jim continued his domination from last year setting a jaw dropping 1:30.3. That’s only a second off of the track record for our car, which was set with slicks, not the RA-1’s, in perfect conditions (I was there.) Bob continued to be really quick as well (maybe these guys have found some kind of racing Viagra or something…)

NASA continues to organize a great weekend, and like they do every once in a while they replaced the qualifying session on Sunday with a qualifying race. That is always a real treat from a drivers perspective since it means a three race weekend instead of just two. It’s not another point’s race; it just determines the starting order for the Sunday point’s race later in the afternoon. But it’s just as much fun without a three dollar trophy at stake as with one, and this race was a blast.

The pace car went too slow, leaving us crawling below four thousand. Our cars are purpose built race cars so first gear is closer to where third is in your daily driver than a typical first. So as soon as the pace car pulled I brought us up to seven in first and held there. Scott was on the outside in the #77 car and caught on to what I was doing; but when the leader accelerates like that it’s generally the clue for the guys in the back that the flag has dropped since they have a harder time seeing the stand. Mark in the #50 took off, pulled nearly up to the front row, realized what went wrong and got off the throttle. The starter saw what was happening, and to avoid a black flag, but make it fair, he held the flag long enough for Mark to drop back. That, of course, killed his momentum and most of his race.

Scott took the #77 car around the outside of me into turn one, side by side, and I discovered that the outside might just be better than the inside at Willow Springs at the start. To give him a car width of racing room I lost so much track out, compared to normal, that it wasn’t even a question of who was going into turn two in the lead. Scott managed to hold onto that lead for the whole qualifying race and put the #77 on the pole. Either the #77 is faster, or Scott is much faster (ok, Scott's certainly faster, but it should have taken another corner or two) or, and I think this is likely, the outside is actually the better line into turn one during the start. Usually if I try to pass someone there it’s an early apex, I get there far enough ahead that I can still use the entire track out. Side by side I think you get skunked on the inside.

I managed to hold onto fourth. Josh went in deep into nine, and I rarely pass there since it costs so much speed to contest, but he pulled it off well enough. I saw it, and so planned an outside-in to take him back, and exited with a lot more speed than he had, but as the straight went on I just slowly stopped pulling on him. By the time we reached turn one, I was on his left rear quarter panel with a smidgen more momentum and the inside line so it would have been worth a try to repay the favor by out-braking him into one on the inside, but I decided against it since he was at least a second a lap faster than I was even when I went full tilt boogey, if not two, so it just would have delayed the inevitable. Anyway, it was a very good race with a lot of fights all over the field. Exactly why I do this…

Jim got me as well, so I think the qualifying race order ended up being Scott (#77), Josh (#35), Jim (#98) and I (#76). Scott is Tom Dragoun’s son, and it turned out after putting it on the pole Tom decided to race his own car Sunday afternoon and put Scott in Phillip’s car (#78) at the back of the pack.

Of course, while sitting in grid it was decided to invert, again, which didn’t hurt me much (fourth to seventh, I think) but put Tom right on the tail end, wasting all of Scott’s effort. This start went a lot cleaner, but was very exciting since I think we were four wide for a bit in one. I was afraid I pushed somebody two wheels off, but it happened behind me so quick I don’t know who it was. I just saw a flash and used the last of my grip to hold in, a half a car width from the edge, which was all I could by then. No accident’s, no touching, everybody made it thru the gaggle.

Now we were told, before the start, about some oil in turn two and some oil dry. We also got the debris flag at the starters stand and going into two. But I wasn’t at all prepared for the amount of oil dry they used. The formation lap was bad, but the first race lap was indescribable. I literally held a higher speed than I’d planned, since all I could see was the tail of the car five feet in front and I was afraid if I fell more than those few inches behind it I’d lose my only visual clue as to where I was. At the same time I was simply amazed that the car didn’t just slide off the track at the speed we were going on that stuff. I literally couldn’t see the ground in front of the car and whoever’s rear spoiler I could just barely see was really just a dim hazy kind of outline, despite the fact that I could almost reach out and touch the damn thing. I was very thankful once we got out of two, although I never was able to see again out of the right third of my windshield. Of course it took more laps to clear up, but it wasn’t quite as bad the second time around.

Josh did the turn nine inside trick again.

I got a launch on him again, and this time I wasn’t going to be quite as nice a guy because we had a lot of other traffic and if I could get him back it might just stick. Besides he mucked up Tom’s plan and so I got a run on the both of them (getting them both would've been sweet), but in the end couldn’t do it because of the huge gaggle it created going back into turn one. Mainly Mark in the #50 and T.W. in the #17 who were getting slammed by Tom & Josh in the same corner I wanted to pass them back at all while Jim, Scott, Aaron and everybody else was trying to get to the same apex at the same time.

I had to be especially careful because, after taking him into turn three the first time around, Scott had moved his car right up behind me and was showing me his nose on lap two. I don’t know who went into one in what order (I’ll have to wait for the video) but it was almost as much of a gaggle as the start.

Scott was slowly closing on me for most of each lap but I would generally pull all the time he gained back in turn eight since the #78 car seemed to have a lot of trouble keeping up to speed there (I think maybe a flat spotted tire). Overall, with no other factors I could stay ahead with him in that car, that day, which even with me in a better car at the time is something to be proud of.

Nevertheless, experience tells (Scott’s been racing a long time and is a really…really hot shoe) and he wound up knifing through traffic far better than I could and took me going through the three-four complex a few laps in. Note to self, the inside into four may look like a good defensive move, but only if you can close the door by the top of the hill. Scott was inside and nearly even with me by the apex of three, and as we went side by side to the top of the hill it became obvious I was going to have to give it up before the second apex or cause an accident that would be my fault. Better to go deeper into three with an early apex and contest it there. Anyway, from then on I’d get a run on him going into eight, but it was never near to close enough, and besides, Scott is just a magician with traffic. I ended the race about sixty yards behind him.

That still left T.W. in my sights. I was slowly pulling on him, but so little it was going to take a very long while to get in range, when he overcooked just a bit into one. That caught me right up, along with Scott who was still on my tail at the time, but eventually I got an inside line into turn one and made it stick.

Now last year, when T.W. started out, I would’ve expected him to drop back and I’d lose sight of him a couple of laps after passing him. Not this year. He’s getting better and it’s just a matter of seat time before he hands me my head on a stick. It’s what I remember (aside from the oil dry) the most about this race; being just short of making a race with Scott while I had to keep pushing the car really hard to stay out of T.W.’s range. That just seemed to last forever and I’m not sure which idea motivated me more. Falling behind T.W. or catching Scott. I haven’t lost to T.W. straight up, yet, but it’s obvious that it’s just a matter of time (and not much) before I do. I need to put some kind of 'stop getting faster' hex on him or something…

Turn two got better and better, even if my window didn’t, but there was no real chance to relax the whole way. I always had T.W. behind to worry about and Scott ahead to try to catch while traffic, faster and slower, kept making things even more interesting. Which is why I like these bigger fields; sure, the new trophies (very nice with a photo from the race by Helen, just for our series) are much better than NASA's same old, same old, although it might be awhile before I get my hands on one. But it’s much better to have a race where you have to struggle that hard for the whole distance than to just get another trophy.

After all, it’s what I came for.

Rev Limits

A new guy who was testing at Willow (he rented Phillip’s car) was asking about Rev Limits for our Mazda GT. In a nutshell they aren’t any. A rotary motion, as opposed to the up and downs of piston’s and valves, can take a lot more RPM since the stress is always angular. It’s the same reason turbine engines can routinely spin at twenty thousand RPM. Now this doesn’t mean we’ve beaten back the laws of physics or anything, it’s just that the concept of ‘this far and no farther’ doesn’t quite work for us like it does with pistons and valves.

In physics the stress on our rotating parts will increase at the square of the RPM’s. So the stress, and increases in heat, will start to spike dramatically in our motors between nine and ten thousand RPM. But it’s not going to fly apart as soon as you hit, or even exceed, ten thousand either.

Prior to the Jerico this lead to some interesting trade-offs. Because the gaps between the gear ratios varied from gear to gear in a regular transmission, you could stretch the motor a bit in certain gears, to insure that after the shift you would remain in the power-band, which trades some longevity for performance. If you look at the old ‘Best Thunderhill’ video, for example, you’ll notice my stretching the rev’s well past the shift light for a lot of that race. One of the many things I like about the Jerico is that there is less of a premium on stretching out the RPM, meaning you can be competitive without having to spend two to four grand on the motor each year. The reason is that the gears are evenly separated and close. If you are above 8.5 you’ll at least stay in the power-band (best thought of as seven to nine) after an upshift. An advantage to going higher is still there, and you can and should use a few more RPM’s, judicially, when you are in a tight fight, it is just a lot less rewarding than it was before. So if you want your motor to last, recognize that the trade is between longevity and spinning really fast (above nine), which leads to the obvious question, “why waste that mojo in practice.”

Myself, I routinely shift a little shy of nine thousand during practice and most of qualifying, (I’ll try a bit harder in qualifying during laps two-four when the tires are at their best) and will push to between 9.2 and 9.5 (my shift light is currently set to 9.2) routinely during the race. I am willing to stretch all the way to ten to get by somebody where I know I can stay ahead after the pass. After having motor problems early on, once I learned this along with some other engine goodies, I’ve found either a magic engine or my paying attention to all the details you need to increase longevity are finally paying off. My motor was put in the car at the beginning of 2006, when dyno’ed midway through 2007 it was stronger than any of the other motors (at 220 to the wheels) and it still feels good at the start of the 2008 season. All with nothing more than routine maintenance.

Now you can, and I do, adjust those numbers a bit for conditions. For example, at Willow Springs this weekend (Feb '08) everyone was running a little higher EGT's than normal. This can be caused by any of a number of differences in conditions or just the quality of the fuel. A lot of the time we can just change the jetting to make the carb run richer, but when I tried it the car went way too rich. After changing it back I decided that during most of practice and qualifying I'd shift a little lower just to keep the EGT's at the top end of third gear below 1,700.

One other huge difference between our Mazda GT’s and your daily driver is that, realistically speaking, we have a minimum RPM as well. In fact, it is easier in some cases to damage a motor by spinning it too slow than by spinning it too fast. The reason is that a peripheral port, like we have, isn’t happy at all at low RPM. Casually stomp on the throttle at four thousand and you’ll regret it. You’ll neither move, nor will the engine be very happy with all the coughing and sputtering.

Bottom line is, once you get the engine between seven and nine thousand RPM; try to keep it there and it’ll be happy as a clam. If you are in a fight and don’t mind a little extra wear if it means winning, push it to ten K. If you’re starting out of the pits, be gentle with the throttle until it stops sputtering and pay attention to what RPM it’s sputtering at. If you get caught out on track and lose RPM, you’ll need to know where to nurse the throttle since it’s likely to be the same range.

Above all, when you get out of the car, be able to tell the mechanics what the gauges were saying when. I know it's hard to do with so much to pay attention to, especially at first, but the engine you save will, not might, be your own.

Luck...

The season starts this weekend, with an eleven car field at Willow Springs. I'll be leaving Friday morning to do a test day, so no more posts until the first two races are done.

I feel like a ten year old on Christmas eve.

Starts; avoid being the prostrate duck.

There is nothing as exciting on earth as a race start, and few things more intimidating. It is a form of absolute chaos, the one time in the race where all the cars are together in one great big clump and everybody has to judge, plan and execute against everybody else at the same time. If the rest of a road race is a dance, the first corner is a mosh-pit where everybody seems to have been born with extra elbows. Just to add a bit of sweetness to it, Mazda GT’s will often reverse the grid (it’s up to the drivers), so if you are brand new to the series and struggling to figure out the car, welcome to the pole.

With a rolling start, that pole position is not as much of an advantage as you might think, either.

First off, being on the pole you have the responsibility to set the groups speed. Usually we’ll be at six thousand RPM in second gear. The pole sitter takes the position to the same side as the first turn (left be on left, right be on the right) and yes I did screw that one up once, trying to start Thunderhill on the “Pole” on the right hand side.

The major disadvantage is that while you are holding six thousand and waiting for the green flag, some of those awfully good drivers behind you might just try to time the start. Even with half the straight gone, a seemingly small advantage, like a couple hundred RPM just before the green flag, translates into a monster of an advantage by the first corner. I actually got swallowed up by the fourth row, from pole, once. That same race, Jon, who was fastest and started at the very end, got everybody by the third corner of the first lap.

Now strictly speaking this is almost cheating. And if done too obviously it will bring down unpleasant consequences on the offender, but the reality is that our starter is starting two or three separate races at roughly the same time; he has little opportunity to wave off any but the most blatant jumped start. A more common punishment is for the offender to get a black flag. As a rule of thumb, however, the officials won’t interfere as long as you don’t get such a jump that you pass before the start finish line. I’ve also known starters to deliberately hold off the green, in an effort to screw up the timing, if he sees someone lollygagging around to get a jump. And of course you can’t start to fan out before the flag since that will really give the officials heartburn and guarantee you your very own black flag.

As the pole sitter, you also have the responsibly to set the distance between ourselves and any groups that get a separate green. Too close and it’ll become a real mess in turn one as we swallow them up, too far back and if they are a lot quicker, their leaders will get into us as traffic right near the end of the race. No one will thank you for either of those results. If you find yourself on the pole the stuff to ask is first, “what RPM and gear?” Second, “Are we getting our own green?” And third, “How far back?” Get those three things right and your contribution to the start can’t be questioned.

Finally, let’s take a moment to think about the fun part. What tactics can work or fail from the get-go.

Starts are the most outstanding version on earth of what, in game theory, is referred to as the prisoner’s dilemma. Drivers have the opportunity to “cooperate” (which gives the best chance to improve both their positions), or to gain more advantage using the “defect” option (taking advantage of the racing room the “cooperating” driver leaves.) A driver who takes advantage of the “defect” option gains over the other driver, but only if the other driver chooses “cooperate.” If you and the other guy try the “defect” option at the same time you’ll both wind up hung out to dry. All this happens really fast, in a way you can’t think about at the time, any more than you can think about catching a baseball. It just sort of happens, but your mind is plotting while your senses are reeling. It is one brief moment of pure, ecstatic madness.

This level of madness only exists for a turn or two. Somewhere between the apex of the first turn and the exit of, at the very latest, the second turn, everybody will have fallen into single file. When they go single file is somewhat predictable, since it depends a lot on the corner combination. One reason it’s important to think about this before hand is the sad fact that you can hook yourself up to the wrong train doing a lead/follow while two wide. You need to think about the latest place to get in line, and which side of the track you’ll be on, to avoid being shuffled to oblivion.

At Willow Springs you’ll see everybody get in line around the entrance to turn two, while a #13 CW at Buttonwillow it might not be decided until as late as the end of the I-5 straight. Tighter and closer together tends to extract a lesser price, so the cars will stay side by side a bit longer the narrower the starting combination. A fast wide turn one, like at Thunderhill, tends to force everyone into line early while a sharp, but wide, combination corner like the off-ramp leaves us two wide the longest.

While we are two wide, my favorite starting tactic is one I think of as the ‘bumper strategy’. If you’ve got somebody good in front of you, glue your front bumper to his rear. After the cars fan out and everybody starts dicing, well… two cars leave less room than one for anyone on the other side to fall in line, and if you’re following somebody fast, after he shuffles them out you’ll probably pick off the same people he does. It’s simple, clean, easy and effective, and will rarely get you in trouble. But it only works when you’ve got somebody good to follow.

A related tactic I think of as ‘Moses parting the waters’. Sometimes one of the guys gets such a jump that he tends to scatter some of the cars in front of you. Or even become the third car contesting a corner. Rather than a futile gesture trying to stop him, if conditions are right you can take advantage of it. Once the fast car gets by you, and starts contesting the corner ahead, you might have a chance to use the whole track and catch them right back up (assuming you don’t have anybody contesting your entry) and then some. Even if you are side by side, sometimes if you back down just a bit, and make it clear you are going to follow someone with an equal start rather than contest the corner, the both of you will slaughter the guys in front as they go two or even three wide. Remember the prisoner’s dilemma; if you can get in line while the guys ahead are fighting each other you and the guy you gave room to will both gain a huge advantage over cars that are still slugging it out.

A tactic I like less and don’t use, but will often see (it’s perfectly legitimate, I just don’t enjoy it), I think of as ‘parking on the apex’. An early turn-in from the inside will allow later braking and pretty much sew up being first to the apex, but it comes at a price. You just can’t carry the speed or get on the throttle like that. Worse, you have to decide early if you are going to use all the available real estate on track out or leave racing room for two wide. Leave room, and your opponent might just switch to a late apex and leave you very lonely as a trail of cars passes you on the inside (after the apex). Don’t leave room and you might find yourself forced to stay off the throttle too long (or worse, run into someone) since a car is sitting on your outside, where you need to go.

All in all the biggest difference between passing in the first corner and passing later in the race is that you affect more cars at once. It’s not only possible, but common, for a driver up front to make a decision that suddenly closes a gap seen by a car all the way in the back. So you have to think about how much track you have available to you as well as how much you are going to leave for everybody else. Slow at the wrong time and the concertina effect will leave a huge pile of cars behind. Use too much track and you’ll just cause the kind of accident that, all too often, ends a bunch of races before they begin. Mazda GT drivers take a bit of pride in that we rarely hit each other during the mad scramble at the start, and you’ll not make any friends by changing that fact.

Finally there is what I think of as the ‘outside in’ attempt. If the first two corners are in opposite directions then you can plan the apex for your first corner one car width out. You have a very good chance at staying comfortably side by side through the first turn, while getting on the throttle a bit sooner since you have the outside. The extra speed along with the inside position for the next turn gives you a good shot at taking turn two far enough ahead that you don’t have to leave room for the other guy. The ‘outside in’ also works really well if the driver ahead uses the ‘park on the apex’ since it allows you to get on the throttle before the other guy.

Bottom line, for me the first goal is to get in trail, as far forward as I can, so I can get on my regular line and start using more track. Be patient, but be certain that if you stay side by side for very long, the front runners will get away and you’ll be a prostrate duck almost before you get started.

Testing the steering?

Now I’m not one to complain… much… but when a generic sports guy is hired to do racing commentary my hide gets a bit chapped. Most famous case in point was when Jim McKay did the Indy 500, years back, and started prattling on about how the drivers were “testing their steering” by weaving back and forth. Uh… no Jim, not really, go back to ski jumping please...

As readers of this blog know what’s really happening is they are just trying to get, or keep, some heat in their tires. Their soft compounds work best hot. But that still leaves the question for a driver new to the Mazda GT, warm the tires, or not.

The answer is emphatically, no. The Toyo RA-1 is a hard compound tire with excellent character that is nearly as sticky cold as it is warm. But when racing on a dry surface you do tend to overheat it. Usually, starting out cold, your best lap will be on lap two or three. They will stay pretty grippy for a while, and then depending on how hard you’ve used them, you will start to get a bit of a spongy feel about twenty minutes in. My very first race I didn’t pay attention to the spongy feel and did a half loop in the cotton corners. Anyway, if you slide around trying to warm up the tires, all you are accomplishing is using up grip before the race starts.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have stuff to get warm. Namely the brakes. First time out I didn’t touch the brakes until I went for some deep braking in the first corner. Trust me when I say this is not a pleasant experience. After that I tried, during the formation lap, to zip ahead a bit and brake. Speeding up and slowing down got enough temperature into the brake pads to make the car happy without putting much heat in the tires. So you can imagine that I felt like a bit of a moron when, after suggesting to someone that ‘all you need to do is brake a couple times to get the brakes a bit warm’ another driver pointed out that he just dragged the brakes for bit and accomplished the same thing.

Paul's Willow Springs track notes

Nine is huge.

If you’re either going too fast on entry or worse, apex too early; yet manage to correct, the resulting late throttle is going to be felt for a very… very… long time. If you apex too early or enter too fast and don’t manage to correct in time, you’re going for a nasty ride though some very dusty weeds at a very high rate of speed. If you use more than tiny corrections you will spin and God help you if someone right behind is committed to the same real estate. If you apex late and easily make it, then you aren’t carrying enough speed and will just have to sit there while it seems a moped could blow your doors off (if we had doors) all the way down the main straight.

Turn nine itself is a very… very… fast ninety degree swooping right hander, wide, with good track out despite tightening a bit after the apex. The pit in is on the left (outside) of the corner so one element to beware of is new drivers slowing for ‘pit in’ staying on line and then turning suddenly out to make the pits. Be very careful during practice if you decide to pass a slower car on the outside. Better part of valor is to push your own turn in a bit later, with a bit less speed, so you can swoop down to the apex on their inside while getting on the throttle even earlier.

To get a good lap time you need to be in danger of drifting off the left hand side, without actually doing so and without turning in sharper or lifting after the apex. That’s when you know you got it right. If you have to turn in more and/or lift after the apex then the turn-in is probably too early, or the entry is too fast, or both (more likely the former than the latter). Nine is a finesse corner, where the line is obvious but it’s extremely difficult to get it just right; and it will make or break lap times. It’s too fast and plain for a good sight picture, so there is a premium on finding a very good mark on the way in to judge your position. If it still has all the bumps on the way into eight, I like finding a skid mark from some poor soul who has gone before. Tom, I happen to know, looks farther out and uses a water tower. What mark you use doesn’t matter so much, as long as you have one. A sight picture will never work.

Next is the longish straight. A lot of guys will try to make sure you don’t get a draft by moving to the opposite (pit) side of the track. Coming up on one; a fast ninety degree left hander with a bit of help from an uphill elevation change, good width and fair bit of camber help. The need is to find a brake-point somewhere toward track right that is not going to move. If they bother to set up cones, don’t use them because they probably won’t be there next time by. Don’t crab in, get to the right edge, just shy of dropping a tire is good. It’s a passing corner, but beware. If you get in a fight in turn one you and your opponent are likely to both lose out to a third party. Using anything less than all the real estate costs a lot of time.

The curbing at Willow Springs, by the way, is very sharp, tall and narrow. Do not touch. The braking for turn one is very quick, sharp but smooth (squeeze don’t stomp), and not all that much. Turn one is fast, so the car has to carry speed. As soon as you’re back at track out; fight back to the left to get set up for turn two.

Two is long, constant radius sweeper, but starts heading uphill toward the end. You get more grip coming out than going in. You can scrub a fair bit of speed during the initial turn in a Mazda GT even without braking, although with my new rear springs perhaps less than before. Right after the turn in you need to have throttle to set the car and carry speed through the turn. If you carry too much speed into the turn you’ll be in danger since a throttle lift might just put the car into a high speed tank slapper. If you’re too fast, do nothing rash; let the front end scrub off as much excess speed as it can as the guys pull by you on the inside (if you’re one of them please remember to wave as you motor on by.) A lot of times the inside gets fairly sticky and rewards your staying right down against the inside, but keep your head up since it’s not a perfect radius and you can drop a tire on the inside pretty easy. Otherwise you can try two-thirds of the way out with an apex two-thirds of the way around. You spend a lot of time here, so it rewards keeping up a nice quick pace. As soon as you see daylight, get on the throttle and make sure you use the entire exit. Then start fighting to get back to the right in time for the beginning of the Omega; turns three, four and five.

Three is a very good passing zone under braking turning up the hill, toward the left, but if you are going to pass there make sure you can get all the way by. It works well with a late turn in, so somebody on the line will likely move their car back across your nose, right to left, to get to their apex. If dive bombing to steal their apex is a bit rude, dive bombing, smacking their left rear quarter panel, and knocking both of you out of the race is downright embarrassing. Besides if you keep the pressure up they will either overcook a corner by themselves or ultimately leave the door open either there or somewhere else that will let you by. If you’re still stuck, try leaving just the right amount of room to get a really good launch on them coming out of nine. A good exit from nine might be worth six car lengths. Be patient and remember it only hurts if somebody else is getting away and even then it hurts a lot less than not having a car for the next race.

The Omega (its nick name is based on the Greek letter, because of its shape) starts at turn three, which as stated is a sharp, dramatically uphill left. Hit the apex and you’ve got a huge amount of grip. Fight for balance because the surface, if it’s the same as it was, gets really rough at the top of the hill, right about the same time as the car starts to get light and stays that way all the way past the second apex. Late turn in while remembering that no throttle gets tons of understeer while any throttle risks missing the exit apex.

After the uphill left is the right hander, turn four, 200+ degrees, that flattens at the top of the Omega shape and then drops off (loosing grip) toward the end with a b%$-buster of a rough surface. The double apex is, come in, clip the first apex going uphill, use a sight picture of the top of the hill as a turn in point, get to the very top of the hill, then a very sharp turn in to a second, late apex to enable you to get a little throttle on the downhill but watch out. It’s short and at the bottom of the hill is a left (turn five) that has poor grip from entry to apex (still sharply downhill) and then gains a bunch of grip going to track out (turn’s sharply uphill) while bending back to the right at the top of the hill which is turn six. The curbing on the right side is a good mark. Or you can forget all that and just follow someone around the top of the hill. Really you can only gain or lose a couple car lengths at worst from the top of the hill to the bottom. The important part is at the bottom of the Omega, this is turn five, and it’s the second most important turn for a good lap.

In a Mazda GT you are at full throttle from the entry of turn five all the way through six, seven and eight. So the sooner you can get on the throttle the better. Throw away the poor downhill braking zone and the top of the hill and such and just concentrate on early throttle coming into five.

The car will get very light at the top of turn six, but not enough to have any real trouble keeping the foot down. The car is going to go light over the elevation change and buck like mad on the clunky surface of seven and eight, so it might not feel like you can keep your foot down. But you can and must. The road stays really rough for a long time (unless they’ve repaved since…) and the car is really moving, I mean scary fast, and the road is busy knocking your fillings out but again keep the throttle glued to the floor since seven is just a kink and eight is really more like a brake zone for nine than a corner of its own. The temptation is to lift, because the first time through at speed you’re thinking ‘no way the car stays on track’, but not only will it, frankly it’s really not even all that close. It just feels like it is.

So at some point during eight, pick up a really good mark for a brake-point adjustment before turning in to nine. I recall trying a bit of a diamond, braking from the right edge inside of the ‘apex’ of eight to the left edge before turning into nine, where the road straightens for a split second. But that may not be either right or necessary. What is necessary is to get the entry speed and apex of nine just right, with very few good marks to orient yourself with… So start to find the right spot by throwing away anything about eight that could get in the way of getting the entry speed right for nine first. Once you have the entry speed and apex for nine right; then look to go to more braking as late as you can (between eight and nine), as long and as late and as hard as you can so long as you don’t upset the entry to nine and keep hitting nine at the right entry speed. If you upset the car at all before turning into nine, back off because…

Nine is huge.

Comments from T.W.
As for the Willow Springs track notes, there's a couple things I could add. If you do use the whole track (and maybe a little more) coming out of turn nine, where the track meets the pit entrance the edge is off camber and can suck you off the track. During one of the SCCA races I ran there last year a bunch of guys were having problems with their rear ends stepping out right at the pit entrance because of that. I had a couple wiggles there but managed to keep it on track. If you over correct, it can shoot you straight across the track into the wall on the other side, as happened to one of the open wheel guys that day.

Update from Paul:
It's a bit different with the Jerico Transmission. I found myself using a lot more first gear as the weekend went on, including first all the way up the hill from the entry to turn three all the way past the second apex of turn four. Also, the car was getting a much better jump off of turn five, I had to slow the car more and use less track out or I'd hit turn six at an angle that would cause the back end to step out and cost a lot of time.

Miata with a retractable hardtop

From the truth about cars:

Combine the Miata’s legendary handling with the relative convenience and
security (and coolness) of a hardtop drop top, and it’s clear that little Mazda has succeeded where no other automaker has bothered to go. Yet. The introduction of the first generation Miata back in 1989 was an automotive high water mark.
The MX-5 Hardtop is déjà vu all over again.

Missing a chicken or two?

heh.

Friday lunchtime links...

F1 testing in Spain, from f1blog

If you've got a thing for cars that swim, from 4 drivers only.

And what week would be complete without some supercar stuff. Viper's ACR, video and commentary, from autoblog.