Improving

A couple of weekends ago was the first event of the year for the Tar Heel Sports Car Club (THSCC). THSCC is a car club and not a race group, so their events are focused on instruction of the students in attendance. I started doing events with them back in 2003 and worked my way up to instructor level in 2006. I always try my best to be at their schools to instruct and help give back to this hobby of mine. Normally instructors are given two students at two different ability levels to coach. This weekend, due to an over-abundance of instructors, almost all of us only had one student. This was very nice as it made for a much less busy event and allowed us more time to focus on working with our student.

The competition aspect of THSCC events are their Time Trials. Time Trials are not typical, door-to-door races but instead is a challenge to set the fastest single lap time that you can and to see how that time stands up against your in-class competition. For the past two seasons I have finished the season in second place in my class, F-Prepared (FP). Being so close both times has made me more determined than ever for this season. Goal #1 was making myself faster at VIR's North Course.

North Course has long been my favorite track. Regardless of how much I liked the track, I've never been that fast there. I've always been about 2-3 seconds slower than the rest of my class. I came into the weekend hoping that some of my newly developed driving skills, all found as a result of racing and figuring out how to go faster in places and situations I"m not used to being in, would pay dividends in the Time Trials.

The normal driving sessions during the day at these events serve as a bit of practice for the TT's, but you never really get to push it as hard as you can because there is always quite a bit of traffic to deal with and you have passengers riding with you most of the time. Even though I was trying to focus on being smooth and consistent for my students riding with me, I did my best to push the envelope here and there. The problem was that I didn't "feel" like I was going any faster. Instead I felt like I was just being erratic and driving sloppy. I even ran into one of my fellow racers and discussed with him how I wasn't sure that racing was making me any faster. I'd get to find out for sure once the TT rolled around in the afternoons.

Saturday's Time Trial was a challenge. The weather had been windy but sunny all day so we didn't have any reason to worry about it. The skies to the south had darkened a little before I walked into the driver's meeting, but I still wasn't concerned. It was a different story when we walked back outside 20 minutes later. There was obviously nasty weather heading our direction in a hurry. Everyone scrambled to get in their cars and get to grid with the hopes of getting out in front of the rain. A couple stragglers at the end of the group cost us several valuable minutes, but we finally got sent out onto the track. As we got to the first turn on our out lap, the drops started falling. The sun was shining brightly from the west and the rain was blowing in from the south. We got back to the start/finish line and took the green to start the TT. The rain was now falling on only portions of the track. Some corners were dry and fast, others were soaked and slippery. The conditions were truly difficult to deal with. I knew that first lap would be our fastest, so I pushed as much as I could. Most everyone realized the same thing, and the majority of drivers came in after that first good lap. I did fine as far as the competition was concerned (1st in class and 3rd overall), but the time I put down (1:52.0) didn't really matter as it was set in "adverse" conditions. I had to hope for better weather on Sunday.

Sunday came with no wind and nothing but sunshine. The car ran great during the normal school sessions and I was able to run the gas level down to about 1/16th of a tank in order to have the car as light as possible for the TT. Several folks who competed on Saturday decided to pack it up and head home early, so the TT crowd was quite a bit smaller. As a result I was set to go out second. The car in front of me, a Datsun 280Z with a huge Chevy engine in it, was much faster than me. Therefore, my strategy was to stay close to him during the warm up lap and make sure I would have plenty of cushion behind me. I got the tires warmed up and got on it hard coming onto the front straight while getting the green flag. The first lap went by with no mistakes. As I crossed the start/finish line, I glanced down at my data screen to check out my time. 1:44.1. I almost couldn't believe it. I had never been lower than a 1:46 before. I stayed in it for another lap. This time, a 1:43.9. I felt like the tires had one more good lap of pushing in them so I stayed in the gas. I crossed the finish line for the third and final time with a 1:43.6! Unreal. I was hoping for 1:45's and instead knocked several seconds off my best time ever. I guess I must be doing something right.

As a comparison...here is a graph of speed over distance showing my best time from last year (red line) and the 1:43.6 lap (blue line). I was simply faster everywhere. Maybe racing is making me faster after all...