CMP

So it was very nice to see my Uncle Al show up at CMP this morning. The first time I've seen a friendly face other than that of the competitors I get to see everyday. I spent as much time as I could explaining the event and talking through the different cars that were there with him; and got to hear how his part of the family is getting along.

I also need to say thanks again to our Canadian friends Reg, Bill, Sean & John. They gave us access to their bay & use of their jack so that we could rotate our tires. Plus the bought us lunch if we could bring along lawn chairs. Their driver Bill had a pretty spectacular slide going into the kink this am; but he kept it on the track but had trouble restarting the car. Most likely MotorTrend is going to post the in-car video of it online (thanks to Greer & John).

My first session was a bit tentative. I was getting up to speed on how fast things were here in comparison to what I saw in the wet. I never quite got turn 8 as fast as I knew the car could do which put me slow getting into the kink.. although I was lifting there anyhow to be safe. Plus, I was turning in too early for 11, and not tracking out enough exiting 14. So, I'm not too surprised about my times.

During lunch Greer took the car out for some charity parade laps, with John in the passenger seat. John talked him through the corners and worked him out from apexing early and tracking out more. They were able to do this even though they were staying well below 'normal' track speeds. Greer came back with a pretty big grin on his face; I think the track day hook has been firmly lodged in his cheek (sorry sherry).

This afternoon I focused on adding more speed into turn 8, and a couple of the other corners, and on tracking out turn 14. I ended up 12.5sec faster in the second session; although we were running the new course in the afternoon and the old course in morning... which has a 5sec difference. Which means I improved my time about 7.5sec... which I'm quite pleased about.

We packed up as quick as we could, said goodbye to Uncle Al, and started our haul out to BMW for this evening's event.