Driving

On occasion, you get asked about the number of track days when going out with a new group. This is a log of driving events from 2020 when I started doing more HPDE track days and the car used.

2020 Days
1011-1220 NASA Sonoma 2 day
0905-0620 GGR DE Laguna Seca 2 day
071920 Hooked On Driving Laguna Seca 1 day *

* Hooked on Driving 071920 - cleared to drive Solo at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
* Drove Solo with GGR per recommendation to CDI

I went with Hooked on Driving to Sonoma Raceway April 12th. Very windy and cold. Lots of downtime and black flagged sessions due to fluid leaks and a Corevette that hit the wall going out for a session. Got Covid at this event... even though I was vaxxed.

Session 1
I got out in front of the group and had lots of space in front of me. Session was black flagged due to fluid leak around the whole circuit.

Best lap: 2:04:73

Lynda bought me a set of new wheels for my 60th birthday.

After an exhaustive search (pandemic supply chain shortages), I ended up deciding to move the car to a 19" wheel from its default 20". This allows for more variety in options for tires. 

Here you can see them brand new with a set of Pirelli P Zero's on them. I hadn’t run any Pirelli’s before but they’ve seemed fine for daily driving and winter road conditions here in central California.

I attended the GGR DE #1 this past weekend 3/5-6/2022 up at Thunderhill. I had run the West configuration 2 years ago, but never had done the East.

I used a combination of Assetto Corso, Ross Bently course walks and some onboard video from Andy Lee to prep and memorize the turns.

On Saturday I ran 2:25, 2:24, 2:19, 2:17 best session times. On Sunday, I ran 2:16, 2:15.9, 2:15.1.

For the third time in two months, my 2013 Porsche Carerra S threw error messages at me. 

This time it was "Sport Mode Not Available" and "PASM Not Available". 

The previous error messages were a check engine light and when I ran the ODBII code there was also a Mass Air Flow error (P0068). After a little panic and a call to Bruce @ BR Performance, I settled down. I let the car sit for a while and then went for a drive. The errors cleared.

I participated in the Diablo Valley PCA DE event this past week at Laguna Seca. A well run event with about 70 participants. I was in an intermediate group with about a dozen cars. Had some traffic in a couple of sessions. Clear and dry weather that got up to 80 during the day.

I had been working with Andy Lee's coaching comments at both the 10-18-21 and 11-22-21 dates. The plan I created for the day looked like this:

Prior to a track day with the Central Caliornia Region PCA at Laguna Seca on October 18, I had been through a coaching session via OpenTrack's Andy Lee. During that session, we worked on some opportunities at both Laguna Seca and Sonoma.

I got to drive the first session on a wet track. It hadn't rained around here for nearly a year and things were a little slick till mid-morning when it cleared.

For Laguna Seca, Andy's suggestions turned into my plan for the day that looked like this.

Turn 3

Coaching Consult with Andy Lee

As part of buying track day insurance for a year via OpenTrack, I've been offered a consulting session with Andy Lee. 

I was getting my gear ready for our next AutoX and was having some problems with connections between the Kiwi ODBII Bluetooth, GoPro 7 Bluetooth/Wifi and TrackAddict Pro on my iPhone 7.

I started by resetting the wifi connectivity on the GoPro 7 (Preferences > Connections > Reset). The result was that the GoPro then creates a camera name and SSID/password credential. Because I had done this a few times, I had multiple entries for the SSID and Bluetooth connections on my iPhone. I deleted all these to get a clean slate.