S60R

Talk about the cats me-yow and tons of fun! Not to mention some high performance test and tuning for my recent mods. Also a good reminder that its nice to have friends in all the right places, lol.

It was also a half wet track which helped testing and developing my drifting skills. The greatest thing about having the track to myself was having the ability to mess around in a way I never would if there was any wheel to wheel action or other cars around or running the course.

To top it off, my best time around was about 1:52 with a top speed on the back stretch around 115 MPH. Not bad for a half wet track and hard street tires.

It was a bit of gas and time to get over there, but 8 minutes and 4 laps all by youself on Moroso is priceless, lol.

YouTube - Moroso Fun Run

Car54

That was hard to watch.

You should try to stop all those bad habits, especially on the track!

At least you had fun!

Loren

S60R

So many indeed. I even had a drink in the console that I think I took a couple of sips out of too, lol.

But before I'm crucified by the 9-n-3 croud, I will confess that my right hand was usually on the wheel when I wasn't shifting or pointing a few things out to my ride along.

Its down between 4 and 5 o-clock where you can't see it and the left is going down below 8 when its dropping out of view. Its not like I was driving around Moroso at some points with no hands or driving with my knees or anything like that, lol.

Car54

I'll bite!

Where was your right hand at the end of the longest/fastest braking zone?

S60R

Hmm, at that particular point I'm pretty sure I was busy downshifting. I've got three out of my six speeds I'm going through on that particular stretch so I didn't have to over utilize my brakes.

First couple times around the track I will still busy figuring out the right gears and shift points and how sticky things would be through all the wet spots as well as chatting it up with my friend.

The main reason for this little mission was that I've got some updated active suspension and AWD software I'm testing out in addition to the bigger adjustable sways and spacers, so part of the mission here was to test out the new limits, so I had a lot of things I needed to try in only several laps.

Mission accomplished except for the one software crash @ the 6:20 point.

Loren

Craig caught one of the same things I caught. My wife drives like that, drives me nuts. Hand inside the wheel has no place on a race track. Ever.

Could nitpick a lot more than just your hand position, but why?

Standard advice applies: Tune the driver first.

S60R

Criticise away, I'm sure there is much more that can be pointed out besides just my handy work.

My little fun run involves some sloppy driving in order to feel out a few different things, but constructive critism is always greatly appreciated.

Perhaps I was doing something else wrong that I don't even know about, so besides the obvious wheel handling issues what else did you not like?

I just got done watching Craigs vid and his right hand disappears a lot too, he's just better about putting it back exactly where it belongs than I was, lol.

Car54

Let me talk about my video first...if you see my hand disappear it's only to shift or adjust something really important, like my heater! I was overheating and trying to go as long as possible without turning on the heater.

Hands: try to keep them at 9-3 as much as possible. You could likely make it around most corners with the hands planted there. You should be able to turn the wheel 180° before having to modify your position. Try it some time. Those bumps at 10-2 on the wheel are for your thumbs to help bring the wheel back from 180. Some people believe them to be grab handles...no. If you need more than 180 from the wheel the hand on the side of the wheel your turn towards goes up to, say, 12:00 and grabs the wheel and pulls down, while the other hand lets the wheel slip through until your hands become 180° apart then it joins in. Try it on the street. Always pull the wheel down, never push up, your back muscles are stronger than your shoulder muscles. This is why two hands is important.

Shifting: get on the shifter and right back off. You never rest your hand there, why? See above.

Eyes: you are not looking far enough in front of you. Look at how many corrections you make mid corner to adjust your line. In a really long corner you should actually be turning your head ALOT to find the way out of the turn. Scan your track out points while approaching apex, after apex, start finding your next turn in point. Your steering inputs will be greatly slowed down if you try this. Try it on the street on exit ramps. You'll be amazed how you don't have to look at where you are to steer to where you want to go.

Corner exit: Maybe you were playing around but you were (over)loading your cars suspension on track out instead of early-mid turn. You were not testing anything suspension related....only stability control. Your "feel" of the suspension will only be noticeable when you can slow your hands down and take a turn near the mechanical limit of the tires/suspension. What you were doing was testing tire grip, that's really it.

Turning in: the area where there was a left and it went to around cones. That would be an awesome place to practice your handling since it was a "soft" border but you "crabbed" in by driving diagonal (early apex) then pinching the turn so that you can make the right.

I don't really want to pick, but I think you have a track event coming up this weekend so you have a week of street driving to try to apply these concepts. Do these things all the time...even on the street, so they become second nature. Hope this helps and I don't mean to be critical, but I think you want to know these things from your responses above.

Craig

S60R

Yes Craig, I can't disagree with most of that, its all good advice.

Except for the Eyes part. Not really sure how you think I know where I'm looking and the reason for a lot of the mid turn corrections is that I'm pushing it hard enough to deliberately break loose on the wet pavement and those adjustments are seat my pants corrections I'm making to keep from completely breaking lose when I felt car falling outside the zone of control. The whole purpose of this ride was for a little limited drift and oversteer after all, but not making a trip off into the run off area, lol.

Its also the reason I'm holding my line really tight on the inside of the turns in a way I never would if I was shooting for the fastest path through. If the car is going to break lose in a bad way and completely lose control I do not want to do so right on the outer edge of the pavement where there is no safety zone left. I would never do any of this on a track with other cars around, but as I stated before, it was a great test of both the new oversteer bias and the stability algorithms in my updated software.

So my defense for the non-hands stuff like the strange lines and overloading the car in the apex and exits were two-fold. I've just converted my car from being an understeering pig with a bit of body roll to boot to a much more roll resistant chassis with a tendency for oversteer until the computer decides its too much and tries to over-ride the rear end passing me around.

When it comes to next week's event where there are going to be cars all around me and I'm trying to be competitive, that's not the time to find that all my recent mods are going to do something to make the car uncontrollable or react badly if not just too differently than what I'm used to.

It would be sheer stupidity to me to have made the changes I did and take it right to a wheel to wheel event. Testing is key to how suspension and related changes effect the car, and you are not going to know where the new limits lie until you find them, and see what happens when you push right past them.