May Autocross Report with NEW TIRES!

Did NMS just buy a classic Porsche 911? 
Nope. This is someone else's car at the Darlington autocross. 

It is now the month of May. Many people say it's the Merry Month of May, but I think they're just big fans of the letter M. Like James Bond's boss, you know, "M."

NMS Porsche Cayman: 2nd in B Street.

Anyway, after a bunch of autocross events and six track days, the Continental tires wore out, so NMS is now happy to be competing on Hankook RS4 tires. Out of the last five different sets of tires we've tried, the Hankooks lasted the longest by far, so we're looking for an excellent return on investment here. Or maybe they'll just last longer! The Continentals wore pretty well, but it looks like my car could use more negative camber to get more mileage out of the tires. The Contis were great in the wet too. 

Saying goodbye to these Continental tires. 

So, with the new tires, we headed to the first event of the year with the South Carolina Region of the Sports Car Club of America down at the parking lot of Darlington Raceway. This was where NMS started autocrossing, and it's the first autocross by the SCR for a few years too. 

There were just a few bits of rain when I got to the Darlington Speedway, and about as quickly as I put on a rain jacket it stopped, so the little bit of rain had no impact on the driving. The course was basically a series of slaloms, a big turnaround sweeper at the far end, and then some more slaloms and offsets coming straight back, including the world's largest Chicago Box bunch of cones. Mostly this event was fun just to be back at Darlington, and running with the South Carolina Region again!

After six runs on a very nice day, NMS came home in 2nd place out of 3 cars in B Street. A Honda Civic R took the victory, with a 2000 Porsche 911 in 3rd place. On the good news side, I was less than half a second behind 1st place, with my best time on the final run of the day. That always feels good to improve all day. 

Porsche 911: 3rd place in B Street

My best time came with lower tire pressures in the afternoon, the traction control turned off, and a different approach to the big sweeper turn. Unofficially I took 20th fastest time out of 70 drivers, so not too bad. There's always somebody faster out there!

Honda Civic: 1st place in B Street. 

The South Carolina Region has five more events scheduled for the year, so we've got them on the schedule!

Lotus cars always look cool!

NMS Adds DAYTONA to the Calendar!

For the first time, NMS will be driving on track at the famous Daytona International Speedway. Well, it's not quite NASCAR, or the famous Rolex 24 Hour race, but we will be driving on the ROVAL course at a Track Night in America (TNiA) event. With the TNiA  format, you get three driving sessions during a weekday, so it's perfect for drivers that like to skip work. Or drivers that don't work. Whatever!

NMS visited the track in January to watch the 24 Hour race, so we know some important information to help us navigate the course:

 1: It's in Florida! Pretty sure that is south of South Carolina and Georgia. 

2: It will be hot. 

3: The track uses a bunch of the big steep banking, but also uses the infield twisty bit, which all adds up to 3.56 miles per lap. 

4: If Brian doesn't go, I can set the internal NMS TRACK RECORD AT DAYTONA! That would be fun, because he's faster than me at every track we've both driven!

5: There is a Buc-ees at the next exit!

6: It's not a race, there's no prize money, so we'll be strictly limited to driving just to be HAVING FUN!

Look for a report from Daytona late in June. 

NMS Back on Track at CMP

Photo 1: Ready for the Side-By-Side drill with Scott in the Corvette. 
No rain on Sunday!

Photo 2: Rain on Saturday. 

During the first weekend of May, the NMS squad returned to Carolina Motorsports Park in search of faster lap times. Or maybe just more fun driving laps and not worrying too much about our times? Either way, we  drove on track and have fun! Brian mostly instructed in Driver Education, so that's a lot more time on track too. Oh, his student had a new Nissan Z car! More description below, but here's 4 laps on Sunday when the track was dry!

FOUR LAPS AT CMP

At NMS-North, we prepped for the track by checking the car for tire wear, brake pad wear, and double checking the coolant, brake fluid, and everything else. I got the car up on all 4 jacks to check things over and take care of business like BTO.  

Brian signs in on Saturday. Did we mention it was rainy?

SPOILER ALERT! RAIN!

NMS at CMP. We do acronyms. 

With a new upgraded to Castrol SRF brake fluid, the brakes were great.  After Saturday's sessions, I checked the brake pads and they were getting to that point where they should be replaced. So, Saturday night I put on the new Ferodo pads, and they were also great on Sunday! 

Porsche GT4 RS. He kept passing me! See the blog post from last week about driving one!

We don't run on race gas 100 octane. It's $11.49 if you do. 

Do Corvettes go on track? YEP. 

One thing that's fun about going to the track is seeing other cars, talking with other drivers, and of course trying to improve my driving skills. The weather comes into play, since driving sessions are held rain or shine, and only stopping for dangerous conditions like thunder and lightning.  

This Mazda was driving in my group!

Brian in the instructor seat.

Speaking of other cars, since Brian was instructing in the DE 1 group, here's a look at them heading out on track. Pretty much any kind of car can drive on track, as long as it's in good shape, and the driver has a helmet. What are you waiting for?

HPDE 1 GROUP VIDEO

Nice hauler!

My DE 3 classroom instructor Mike. 

Do Mustangs go on track? YEP!

Sunday was dry all day, so other than some concern for one of the front tires showing a lot of wear, things were good. Brian and I swapped the fronts left to right, and went with an increase in air pressure to try and avoid having any wear issues. This got the car through the day, lots of fun, but resulted in the NMS Chief Mechanic and Financial Departments ordering some new tires. 

One of the Spec Racer cars. 

If you're on track, there is a fleet of emergency, medical, and tow trucks and crew ready to support anything that happens. 

At the final session on a beautiful Sunday, Brian hopped in the right seat and coached me for 20 minutes. Well, when he wasn't laughing at how slow I drive he was coaching me. My driving group included the fastest group, the DE 4 drivers, and it felt like there was always people passing me up. That's part of the deal with Driver Ed, and it is all prep for any real racing on track, so just good experience. 

Spotted this Ford GT replica on Sunday, wasn't sure if it was going to be on track. 

YES! It was on track in my run group! Here's the view from my seat, waiting to go out. 

Also, with just the DE 3 group I'm in, we had sessions where we worked on our skills. In one drill, the idea was to do a lap side-by-side with another student. This forces you to be on different parts of the track, much less the spatial awareness of not hitting the other driver! I was driving with Scott in a fast Corvette, and it was a good exercise. Hey, here's a video! WARNING: it does include faster cars passing us and interrupting our actual side-by-side, but that's life too! SPECIAL BONUS: Starting about 1:55 of this video you can see the Mazda that passed me and had flames shooting out on the shifts! It smelled great too!

SIDE BY SIDE DRILL

Porsche Driving Experience Center Atlanta

NMS at Porsche North America HQ in Atlanta

Santa was very nice to me last Christmas, because she sent me a ticket to the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta. And that's why I got to drive the awesome Porsche GT4 RS on track! Believe it or not, the Porsche folks are serious about their automobiles, and since they probably want to sell you one, they offer a few ways for you to drive one at multiple locations around the world. There's another location in Los Angeles, and one up in Toronto. 

NMS can now fully recommend the Porsche GT4 RS. Makes a great birthday present. 

OK, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Blah Blah Blah! What's the deal with a GT4 RS? It's not even a 911! True, a Porsche Cayman GT4 RS is NOT a 911, it's BETTER! here's why!

Here's the test track I got to drive, it's one of two they have there!

The 911 has a rear engine set up, while the Cayman is a mid-engine, which means the weight of the vehicle is more centered, making the car handle better. Yeah, OK, but wait, there's more! The engine in the GT4 RS is the same engine found in the high performance 911 GT3 RS! For the first time you can get a 911 engine in a Cayman! Basically, this gives you almost 500 horsepower in a mid-engine car. 

So how was the driving? Glad you asked! 

Porsche GT4 RS, just under 500hp. I'm driving!

During most of my 90 minutes, the instructor had me on the test track, and we gradually built up speed. Not wanting to damage someone else's $200,000 car, I took it easy at first, and man this car is amazing! Before long I was picking up the pace and having even more fun. What really caught my attention was that the engine automatically blips the throttle to allow the engine to downshift when you brake, so that SOUND was amazing.  By blipping the throttle the transmission can slip into the lower gear more easily. You hear racers doing it with their feet, but this car does it for you, and it made me look forward to braking to hear it!

Porsche Experience Center Atlanta

After lapping a while, we visited two other parts of the test track. The first was a skid pad, where you just drive in a small circle. This drill was intended to get you to drift the car by hitting the gas briefly so that the car starts to spin. Then you have to steer  and coordinate your use of the gas to try to maintain the sideways-ish drift around the circle. To make it easier, the whole pad has water pumping onto it. OK, it's supposed to make it easier, but after a lot of practice on this drill I was just starting to be able to do it at all. 

Brian checks out the view of the two test tracks. 

The other test track area was a straight shot, to launch from a standstill very fast, and then brake all out. This is a good exercise to feel what the brakes and gas can do, and I'd like to think that from other driving I've done (on a track) that I get the idea. However, after doing that once, the instructor had me repeat the exercise, but he didn't tell me when to brake, he only told me where to end up. This was a bit more challenging, but to be honest, it wasn't as much fun as the drift pad and way less fun that just lapping!

They let me drive it for 90 minutes. They didn't let me take it home!

The test track had a lot of corners, with two of them built to mimic the famous Corkscrew at Laguna Seca in California, and one to resemble the Carrousel at the German Nurburgring. I could nitpick and point out that in Germany the carrousel goes counter clockwise but that in Atlanta it was backwards, but since famous track designer Hermann Tilke designed the place, I won't mention it!

The instructor and Brian

The track was maybe a mile, but it had a lot of corners, and elevation change, so it was nice. There was only one place on track where you could pass the other cars on track, and of course the instructors were in charge of letting you know when you could do that. I managed to pass a few cars, but I'd guess their drivers were just out having fun and not really pushing the car, or maybe they'd never done that. It wasn't a race, but I enjoyed passing a few people anyway!

The instructor said to go ahead and act like you own it!

While the driving experience is pricey, and the fancy Porsche restaurant was pricey (we didn't eat there,) and the Porsche gift shop was pricey, they didn't allow any video or in car photos. Unlike at the amusement park where they take your photo on the big roller coaster and want you to buy it, there was nothing like that. 

The car had pretty much race car like seats, big bolsters, so it was comfy for driving. The Porsche dual clutch PDK transmission has been around since 2009, and works great. One different aspect of the driving was that the instructor in the passenger seat had the main rear view mirror aimed at him, so that he could tell me if we were going to let someone pass. That left me with the two outside mirrors, which was fine. This specific use of the mirrors works in this situation, but if you were instructing a driver on a regular track session, you'd want them to have all three mirrors, because it's their job to manage traffic and be aware of cars approaching from the rear. 

Step one: adjust the seat and mirrors before driving. 

In addition to the driving, we walked around the facility and saw some nice cars on display. In one area they had cool Porsches on loan from real people. In another room they had some world class Porsche racing cars too. As the Porsche HQ on this continent, it's a large office building and more. The more part includes a restaurant, a smaller cafe, a shop where they can work on cars, and even more. The even more is a building to totally refurbish your classic (over 20 years old I think) Porsche. Then, there's another building that does every day services on Porsche cars to take care of the southern part of Atlanta. If you order a new Porsche, you can even have it delivered right at this facility. Here's a look at some of the rest of the building. 

1983 Porsche poster, they took 9 of the top 10 positions at LeMans!

Hey, it's Sally Carrera from the Cars movie!

I don't know what race series this is from, but it looks cool!

Serious endurance racing? Porsche does that!

Porsche raced in IndyCars for a few years, so you don't see many of these! Brian and I saw another one at the Brumos Collection museum in Jacksonville on our way down to Daytona in January. 

OK, not the greatest photo, but, this view of the Porsche building was used in the Marvel Civil War movie, with an Avengers logo replacing the Porsche sign, to make it look like the cool HQ building of the Avengers. Call me a movie geek if you like, but you can Google more fun trivia about filming locations around Atlanta. 

When it was time to drive back to South Carolina, Brian took over the driving. I was honestly worn out from concentrating and driving the awesome car for 90 minutes. On a normal track weekend, we usually get multiple 20 minute sessions, and that seems about right for driving hard and paying attention to what you're doing, so going up to over 4 times that much was a workout!

The Bunch of Idiots at the 24 Hours of Lemons Race

Dodge 318 motor 1972 Coronet

NMS-South and the BUNCH OF IDIOTS race team once again took the 1972 Dodge Coronet to race with the 24 Hours of Lemons folks. The team has previously raced this car at multiple tracks in the South, and to be honest I've lost track of how many motors they've used, how many belts have slipped off, and what all parts are on it. 

Saturday morning Kyle installs a GoPro camera

The race was 10am-5pm on Saturday, then in two sessions on Sunday: 9-11am, and 12-4:30 with that one hour of quiet time. The challenge of Lemons racing is to have your car last the entire race, and hopefully be quick, minimize time in the pits to refuel and deal with problems, and of course avoid damage or other penalties that keep you off track. 

Brian checks some hoses

The team has done a great job in the past, and with some recent work on the Coronet to make it more reliable, they were ready to race. While they were joking about betting on the over/under of finishing 80 laps, no  money changed hands!

Part of the paddock area tools and spares. If you're racing a car from 1972, yeah, you need some tools and spare parts!

With 90 cars on track, sometimes you are driving in clear open spaces, and other times you just hit a bunch of traffic. Some of that traffic might be faster, and some of it hopefully is slower, so you do what you can and keep the car rolling. During the first 10 minutes of racing there were already other cars coming off the track with damage or problems, and that's how it goes in Lemons. 

Adam was driving the first stint, and after 45 minutes was looking good on fuel, with only a small temperature spike to keep an eye on with the coolant. He was passing cars regularly, and I went with part of the other drivers on the team to fill up some fuel jugs. While we were at the gas station next door, we heard on the radio that the team was now leading Class C, so that was their goal! 

We got our gas and drove back to the paddock, but unfortunately there was the car, not on track and not racing. Bad news indeed. What was suspected to be a blown head gasket, judging by the smoke and oil/coolant we could see in the exhaust pipe, turned out to be a cracked piston and a hole in the cylinder. Oh and then damage to some of the other pistons. This ended the race for the weekend, after only 1 hour, with 2 laps leading Class C. 

That fluid should NOT be coming out of the side exhaust. 

So, I'm sorry to report that the team was stopped after only 26 laps. Sure, they could have grabbed their backup engine and swapped it out, but the team brain trust decided to stop the damage right there. The Coronet has been through multiple 318 engines, so at this time the fate of the big purple Dodge and it's odds of doing any more racing are unknown. 

The piston on the left has some serious damage