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.
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