BeaveRun

Yes, we made it in to PA fine. And now we're back in IN. ;)

BeaveRun went pretty well for me. I ended up running out as the second car in our session (something of a first), because I'd seen the course. The first session I placed 49th, with a 4.04.7 cumulative time. I wasn't pressing too hard, but having fun, and feeling good about the car. I was flat through the kink in 5th, and hanging it out in 6 in 3rd gear; two places I was having trouble with in the OneLap school ~2months ago(?). My average time for the 3 laps works out to a 1.21-ish, which is 3sec faster that my fastest ish lap from the school.

I got back from that session and got some kudos from the other drivers. My only major mistake for the session is that I let the bumps through 7 make me miss the shift in to 4th, losing a little time. Then we found out that I was only 0.5sec off the time of the Fazli(?) M3 (which is an '08 M3, with the V8)... who is a 'friend' of the guys in the Boxster and Lotus. The M3 driver has a bit of an ego on him, and he's got more car than he can handle. So, the friends (who run in the back with me) we quite amused about the fact that I ran so close to him... and wanted an opportunity to 'shut him up'; and offered to by me a new set of tires if I beat him in the afternoon session.

So, the pressure was on, and I think the M3 heard about it. He ran a 3.53, shaving 11-odd seconds from his morning time. Which was going to be hard to beat. So, going into 1 on the first hot lap I tried to carry more speed than I had before, and realized it was more than the car could handle... so I grabbed some brake mid-corner because I knew not grabbing it would be worse. The car rotated because of that, so I got off the brake, and dialed in correction. The smartened up, I added gas, and powered out of 2 and into 3 'like normal'... with just some minor pucker. Up the hill, I toss it into 5, and swing it into 6... bouncing it off the curb. This upsets the car a bit, and it feels like I've only got two wheels on the ground (unconfirmed). The car stays stable, and I gather it up and press on. The other two laps I dial things back a tad, but still press the car to the limits of my comfort. The end result? A 4.01.3! So, not enough to get new tires (not that I would have excepted... I just really wanted to pwn that M3), but that brings my 'average' lap time down to a 1.20sec time... which is 4-6sec (depending on first lap acceleration time) faster than my fastest time at the school. This is a heck of an improvement!

So, in all the excitement, I ended up forgetting to power on/start/install the video camera. So, no video from this session. :( Sorry.

Oh, and our Econo class competition went off, twice... so we 'won' our class (for the second time). They've still got the class win wrapped up, but we're closer to first than we originally thought possible. And we're still in 55th place overall, and seem to be locked in to winning the 'last place who completed all the events "all the rest" award' which is nothing to sneeze at.