MidWeek Trackday @ WSIR

[RSupdate]

That's great news chuck, so ya decided to attend the "safe" Xmas office party,eh??

[Chris Tallon]

Excellent news Chuck.

Looking forward to seeing the line you cut around that track. Yehaaaaa

CT

[Gburner]

Just spent 3 days and 400+ miles at Big Willow.
Friday thru Sunday, the weather was nicer than San Diego.
No wind and T shirts all day!
I'll be back Wednesday (day after tomorrow) , see ya there!

[Chuck Miller]

Well, the old Kumhos didn't last the day...

But still it was a GREAT day at the track..........

... more to come

[RSupdate]

Yes indeed...picture perfect weather....lotsa early 911's....and some late ones too... fast lap times and good on track safety were the norm.....real glad I went.

[Chris Tallon]

In a word....INCREDIBLE.

The driving, the learning, hanging with the bud's and of course the bench racing over #42 later all conspired to make yesterday a perfect day.

Thanks go out to all of you that make this possible. Very well run event. The day went off safely, the weather could not have been better horsepower makin weather, and of course all the great cars....including a 997 GT3 Cup Car. WOW!!!!

Chuck the seat time with you in both passenger amd driver side was priceless. I now understand what Porsche was thinking about when they designed this perfect "sports purpose" automobile. Always willing to test and to please. Simply awesome!!!!!

Johnny, Chuck, Mike, Jay, Tony, Marco, Greg, Lars, Will, Julian, Jack, and of course the Bette's...Thanks for a perfect day!!!!!!!!

[Mr9146]

To all who attended ... THANK YOU for making the day one to remember. Great people, great cars, no problems, all fun.

An aside to Chuck Miller - thanks for the ride. It's amazing what you can learn from the passenger seat.

Chuck (talking to me through his helmet as we're footin' it through the Omega pushing a C-5 vette) - "I'm his worst nightmare!!"

My sides still hurt from laughing so hard.

[RSupdate]

Marco.....I gotta remember to give ya a ride...... I think you'd enjoy it
My bad......

[Gburner]

Hey guys good times. What is R Gruppe all about...a great drive a good meal and fine cigar?
Before meal insert 150 miles on Big Willow!

Dinner was great, everyone had amusing car stories that made the evening fly by.

Hats off to Mr T for busting his Big Willow cherry in fine style!

Marco was high fashiion in the hot rod 356!

Next time I'll have a passenger seat and helmet to hemet comm, please jump in and join me.

We stayed too busy testing and tuning my 911 beast, here's what we were doing...

BTW Johnny Riz and I hope to repeat a weekeday R Gruppe track day 3 times or so in 2006, we'll keep you posted.

Wednesday test and tune day.
4 track days in 6 days.
We had a fun opportunity to test and tune mid week at Big Willow so Jae Lee from Mirage and I went for it.
Our objective was to first optimize mechanical grip then work on the aero grip.
So starts the 24 hour car thrashing common to 20 year old racers, 25 years younger than me.
Jae wrenched on the car Tuesday from noon till 9pm. We then we loaded up the rig and set sail for a hotel in Lancaster. 70mph through the center of Los Angeles (you save hours missing the peak LA parking lot commute) and 3 and half hours later we arrived in Lancaster at 1:30 am.
Last track day I had stayed at the Inn of Lancaster during the weekend, when the place was empty. At the front desk we find the place is sold out, on a Tuesday night! Note Lancaster not a weekend vacation destination, but can be a beehive mid week with D.O.D. and Military. So our buddy Johhny Riz has a room so I call him from the front desk hotel phone to see if we can use the couch/floor for 4 hours.
Since I was gonna screw up his REM sleep I had to have a little fun.
John answers the room phone and I inquire,,,¨Sir this is the front desk could you please confirm that you will not require a morning wake up call?¨ He said no and after a short pause and then something like, f/u Mike. So John let us crash his room and even gave us his last two sets of ear plugs. Jae and I slept great, my snoring didn't even keep me a wake. Not bad sleep for couch pillows on the floor.
Thanks for the room John, next time I'll bring you some ear plugs.

Back on topic.

Jae and I were going to methodically and deliberately tune the 911 RSR+ suspension.
A little background since the car pushed last weekend. The front tire wear pattern indicated it needed more camber so Jae set the camber at -4.5 in the front, the rear was fine closer to -3. Last weekend we had done a spring scan from medium to firm with little success. This time Jae installed the softest springs he had.

Jack Olsen scored me a wrist band that allowed us to go out at anytime, making the testing process go much much faster. Thank you Jack!

We started with 450 front and 500 rear.
We disconnected the sway bars and proceeded to do a spring scan.
Did 5 laps got the air pressures right and did another couple laps.
Car pushed, installed 600lbs rear springs, test it pushed again so went to 700lb rears, tested it and it was getting better but not there yet so went to 850lb rear springs. Car was neutral but skatey. (Later after lunch consensus was my used slicks were dead)

Next we did a shock scan with rebound, compression and can N2O pressure adjustments. After several laps and an hour or so we felt in the ball park with the shocks.

Then we reconnected the front and rear sway bars adjusted to the full soft position. Car pushed a bit and we tighten the rear bar a little.

It was time for lunch. We had gone through the testing process and the car basically still was not hooked up. On the pyrometer the front tires never got much over 100 degrees. These were used slicks, we wondered if the tires were bad or did we have too much front tire? We decided it would be best to try another set of tires, although all we had were more used slicks with us.

After lunch I asked Jim Copp if he had any scrubs mounted that I could try for couple of test laps? He gave us some Hoosiers he had run a 29 recently, he ran a 27.4 that day on a newer set of
Hoosiers! So we tried his Hoosiers and the car felt much better.
Jae and I wanted to test more on the used Hoosiers so we asked Jim if he would mind selling them to us.

Jim was amenable to selling the used Hoosiers, 4 for only $50. But I had to agree to take all 8 used Hoosiers for $50, this included the use of his BBS rims for the afternoon. Then he threw in 2 Macanudos to sweeten the deal. NICE! Thanks Jim!

At about the same time Cary the owner of ERP arrived. Cary is a bit of a genius with JRZs and car set up. Besides his business of producing 935 style 911 suspension components he spends his free weekends as a race team engineer for Grand Am and Speed Channel sports car teams.

With the used Hoosiers and Jae and Cary calling the shots I just drove and gave feedback to the brains on the team. Every time Jae and Cary adjusted the shocks that is the rebound, compression and can pressures performance improved till the end of day where it felt like it was on rails.

We had learned a lot about the car and we were far from optimized. The front still had 4.5 camber where the Hoosiers needed a degree or so less. We had sprung the car for the dead slicks and not the used Hoosiers. The used Hoosiers were actually almost 3 inches narrower all the way around than the slicks the car is designed for. We never got a chance to improve the aero, the car was loose through T9 killing our T8 momentum and costing us a second or so. Maybe a 1/2 inch wickerbill on the wing would be nice. Like any decent race team we have several decent reasons/excuses.

As Gump might say used slicks are like a box of chocolates.
From now on I"d rather not suffer the inconsistencies of used slicks.

So basically the car shows potential, the engine and gearing were very well suited for Big Willow. Now we need to decide what new tires (710s or slicks$$) we'll run and then repeat all the steps above.

ARCA the event sponsors and the other racers were great, we were surrounded by 911 drivers and just had a blast!
2nd to last red run session I think we had 6 911s in pre grid! Many more in the other run groups too.

Time to take a week or so and figure the plan of attack for next year....

[Chuck Miller]

WOW Mike, didn't relize you went through THAT much of'a thrash...
No wonder you and Jae were ready for and big dinner and cocktales last night ...


Got to Willow about 7:15 and most of the guys were there already...