Leonard

Loren,

Before you decide you can't run this course with novices, you REALLY need to come to an SCCA event in Gainesville. You would be surprised how much you can slow stuff down with a few properly placed gates.

Loren

I don't doubt that at all. But if there are enough experienced drivers to support it, I think we'd all like to run the track WITHOUT those restrictions. Such is my goal. And maybe we could allot a certain number of our entries to novices and pair them up with an instructor? Nothing is set in stone yet.

For what we're going to have to pay for this site, I want to get the most we can get out of it. Seems to me that everyone is always wanting to go "faster". This site will allow that... but the risks are greater if we do.

Which brings up another sub-topic that I was avoiding for now, but I'll bring it up, anyway. Our insurance will cover an "event" for up to 3 days. We could get more value out of what we're paying for insurance by renting the track for two days instead of one. I think we could pretty easily do a 2-day event for under $100/driver.

Compare this to $250ish for a 2-day Sebring event. Of course there is potential for a lot more seat time at Sebring... but you'd get close to 40 minutes over two days at Primus. The big difference would be that it would be one lap at a time, autocross style.

I'm not gonna try anything that ambitious for a while, probably not until 2005... unless there's a lot of interest. Y'all lemme know.

Leonard

There is a venue for this this already. It's called Solo1.


I went to the solo trials last year. You run multiple laps at a time (warmup lap, 2-5 hot laps, cooldown lap). Speeds are higher. EMS is onsite. Safety reqs are far more stringent. Competition licenses are required (i had a novice solo1 license).

The mindset required to safely do highspeed events is VASTLY different from that of Solo2. To be competative in Solo2, you have to attack the course and drive very agressively. Speeds are slow enough that mistakes don't have dire consequences (ok, you can flat spot a tire... ). For higher speed events you have to have a much calmer demeanor or you will get hurt.

My experience at the trials was this: Going into the bustop (120* hairpin) @ FSF going 90+mph. Pressing the brakes and having almost NOTHING left. Thankfully, the course layout was such that I could run over some cones and coast around a nice long turn only to be waved around for another lap by the starter.

I guess the real lesson I learned that day is that in Solo2, you can take every ounce of braking, cornering and acceleration your car has to go faster, but when the speeds increase, if you don't leave something on the table you can really get into trouble quickly.

Just something for everyone to think about.

Loren

Yes, this would be similar to a Solo I style of event. You talk as if this "venue" is one that is all too common in this area. If it is, I haven't seen it. (what I have seen is people complain about slow autox courses and applaud really fast ones) I think there is a "market" for it, the problem is that there aren't too many sites that can support it. (it's hard enough to just find a decent low-speed autox site)

I do appreciate your insight into the differences between this type of event and a typical autocross. You verbalized what I was feeling and thinking while driving the track this weekend. For instance, when running CCW down the back straight watching the speedo reach 80... the thought of "pushing it" and waiting until the last second to brake was the last thing I wanted to do! Quite the contrary, I "tested" the brakes well ahead of that hairpin and hauled the car down to first-gear speeds in a controlled fashion.

Reflecting on it... were it not for my paranoia about blowing that hairpin (there's a nice little berm off the end of it that we theorized one could use to launch themselves out onto US41 with enough speed ), it's possible that it could be a 2nd gear turn.

It's going to take more than 6 laps to fully understand this track!

FYI, we've already talked about making our first event out there strictly a "practice session". No times, no pressure to "compete", just go out and have some fun SAFELY. Sort of what we were doing out there Sunday, only with structure.

w0rd

Having done both Solo I and II at Gainesville, I say forget the Solo I. Just do a Solo II on the track.

To me, solo II is way more fun, and our cars are better prepared for it.

For example, my brake fluid couldn't handle 3 laps at Gainesville (93 sec).
I had to crawl around the track on the warmup lap, barely touching the brakes if I wanted them to last for the 2 timed laps.

I think he means GIR. And that is exactly what happend to me also. On my third lap heading toward the entrance to the first skidpad (120*), I hit the brake pedal and it went straight to the floor. I pumped my brakes and prepared for impact with the cone wall they had setup. Luckily they came back after pumping.

Hmmm. Even if you do a Solo I or Solo II style course. People are still going to be boiling brake fluid, unless their system is top-notch.

PseudoRealityX

At Gainesville, my MR2, on street tires, which is SLOWER than your miata, can easily hit 80, depending on how you set the course up. FWIW, at a SOLO2, I've been in 4th gear, at GIR.

(props to me for having the most commas in two sentences)

Saturday's course for GIR is already drawn up. Leonard and a few others have seen it. There *might* be one first gear corner, and it's not the usual "really tight corner". There is also a section where 3rd gear will probably be used by the lower geared cars, NOT leonard

Loren, come out to the GIR event, either day. As of late, the West Coast events have been running well, and we're hoping GIR can maintain that. Hopefully we can do 4+ laps. On the other hand, it would also be great to have 90 people instead of the 40 we had at FSF last time.

Loren

You guys are going straight from black (Solo II) to white (Solo I) without considering the grey in-between.

I'm still talking about doing SINGLE LAPS of the course. Yes, parts of the course may be faster than the typical Solo II course, but with only one lap and plenty of cool-down time, overheating brakes (and tires and engines, etc) shouldn't be a big issue.

I ran most of my Primus test laps in two-lap sets, and I did indeed get my brakes hot enough to smell them on my 4th lap. (not a common occurence on my Miata) So, I'm sure that doing multiple laps could be a heat management problem for a lot of cars.

But, again, I'm not planning to do multi-laps for SunRiders events.

One big reason for NOT doing that is that I can get more people more seat time by doing single laps. If we tried to do multi-laps, we could maybe run two cars at once... but in 3 or more laps, the chances of driver B catching up with driver A increase greatly. I wouldn't want to try it. Running one lap, I can start a car every 30-45 seconds all day long, this is how I came up with the idea that it was possible to do a dozen runs with as many as 48 drivers in an 8-hour day.

Multiple laps kills efficiency as well as brakes.

PseudoRealityX

brakes should NEVER be an issue in a one lap event, which is what, at least I, am talking about...


doing 7 consecutive hotlaps at GIR's open course running Victoracers on the other hand... that'll kill some brakes in a hurry.

Leonard

This is exactly where I had my issue. I, however didn't have enough brakes to avoid the cone wall. I had full synthetic fluid, so that wasn't as much of an issues as the OEM pads not being up to the task. I suspected that would be the case and had brought a spare set of rotors and a set of hawk HP+ pads. I'm a little more imbalanced when it comes to competative motorsports than most around here, so I changed them and bled the brakes between heats. The HP+ pads only showed a touch of fade after three laps and with a little compression braking, that was negligeble.

flmcoupe

You can count me in! $60 sounds reasonable for 12 runs. I've done a few track events at Sebring (it's only 80 miles from Brandon, 1.5 hour for me), and you DO get more track time (not to mention higher speeds! ), 2-3 hours a day (~2:45 a lap), depending on the club, but it doesn't necessarily cost more to go to an event there, $200-300/day or weekend. If you average 3min. a lap that's 20 laps an hour, about 40-60 laps a day, maybe even more, depends on how long you want to stay out on the track. 300/60= ~$5/lap, 60/12=$5/lap, you get the idea...

Solo2 and Track are totally different, I think events at Primus would be a mixture of both, a real test of autox/track talent. I will let some of the other BMW track freaks know about this events, they'll probably be very interested. Is there a web site for Primus?

Jamal