Just another day at the track.

I went up to Buttonwillow with my bro-in-law Clint to rag out the car a bit. This track day was put on by Speed Ventures (http://www.speedventures.com/) and on this particular day, they had a Lotus Challenge. So there were ~20 Lotuses (Loti?) there.



And being So Cal, there were a dozen+ Honda S2000's with many of them gutted out and wearing some very sticky rubber. Also, being So Cal, you have some high-end cars such as a BMW M5, and a couple of GT3s. Oh, and being So Cal, you get some of the import holy grail cars like the R34 Skyline.

So, first time on this track in the car (did it a month back on the motorcycle), and managed a 2:15. That's probably about 15 seconds faster than I did on the motorcycle as I was able to push much harder without fear of killing myself. It got over 90F which was causing issues with my brakes. The whole point of doing a trackday in April was to avoid the heat as the track is out in the desert. Lucky me, the heat wave hit exactly on the weekend; it was over 10 degrees cooler the next day. So basically, my brake pads which are a 'aggressive street/light track duty' pad, had an issue called material/pad transfer. Basically, some of the pad material bonds to the brake rotor which causes a poor surface and the brake pedal to pulsate.

I ran in the advance group which has open passing anywhere; in the lower groups, passing is only in designated areas and also only with a 'point-by' where the lead car signals the following car to pass them. The Long Beach Grand Prix is coming up and Speed World Challenge is a support race. So there was a fully raced prepped Porsche 911 (sponsered by K&N and driven by Paul Brown) and Viper out on the track with me running ~1:52-1:54. Needless to say, those cars came up from behind VERY quickly.

Oh yeah, I only went off-roading once :)