emfNet Racing

  It started like every other week -- Except for all the hurry-hurry, rush-rush that comes along with not having enough time to be completely prepared.  Maybe it was the fact that I didn't register until the Monday before the event . . . or, the fact that I hadn't pulled the Vette off the trailer since the last time it was on the track (about 6 weeks prior) . . . or the fact that slicks weren't going to show up until Wednesday or Thursday.   Bah, preparation is for wussies.  Besides, if the car hasn't been off the trailer . . . there's nothing to prep, right?  Sure . . . . SUUUUURRREEEE, there’s nothing to prep.

  So the good news, is that John Berget was able to ship tires on Thursday of the prior week – they showed up at the house on Wednesday, and got picked up at the UPS depot on Wednesday night.  Was really only concerned with rear tires, since I cut one of the rears at the last event . . . but John was nice enough to send along one front just in case.  Mind you, everyone and their grandmother have been waiting for 11.5x25.5 480 compound slicks for about 8 weeks . . . so it was a nice surprise for John to say that he could probably send one or two, let alone for one to show up.  On the flip side, having to explain why I had 5 tires shipped was entertaining.  Ditto, explaining why *used* tires were something worthy of shipping.
Thursday night turned out to be an easier job packing than usual – Picked up the trailer in the afternoon, parked it in the driveway, and had everything ready to go on the truck by mid-evening.  This basically cleared the way for the mad dash around town to pick up all the random stuff that was needed for the weekend . . . . water, snacks, pieces parts.  Night ended remarkably early too, with a much-needed tire rack being built and mounted to the wall by 11.  Just enough time to unwind, catch a few winks, and get back to it by 5 or 6am.  Pack in the AM, head to the office to make sure the wheels are still on . . . heck, not only does this sound like a plan, it’s – dare I say – foolproof!  Caravan from Riverside county along with Ed (who has a DRM prep’d 2000 Coupe) and Charles (who has a 97 coupe), and we should be in town by 3 or 4pm.

I should have known that things were going to be a bit ‘off’ after I get a call at 9:30 from Ed saying that both he and Charles were running late.  A few minutes late doesn’t cause too many problems, so I decide to leave a couple minutes later than planned – 10:20, I walk out the door, with a scheduled stop just off the I15 at 11:15.  Okay, so I don’t meet up with them at 11:15, but I finally catch up with them a little outside of Barstow . . . better late than never.  Good thing I caught up, too – a little bit after catching up, “Hey Eric.  Your right rear tire is low on the tandem,” and 5 minutes later, “Hey Eric.  You’re coming apart.”  <sigh>At least we got the major mechanical of the weekend out of the way early.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t have said that.  Hayashi calls it Raceaflais – the Greek god of Racing Chaos (seriously) – I just call it “reality”.  After a quick stop at the Mad Greek for a snack, we make it to Pahrump a little after 4 and drop off the trailers.  Total trip time ends up about 90 minutes longer than it should have been for a normal 0 stop trip.  Could have been worse, I guess . . . Denis didn’t make it out at 10am like we originally planned, and got wedged right in the middle of Friday traffic after his 2:30 departure.  Ouch.And, oh-yeah . . . the Best Western, Nugget, and Saddle West are all booked solid.   Double ouch.  At this point, I’m glad I made my reservations on Monday.  Denis however, gets to experience the lovely Shoshone Inn.  Yikes.
 



Morning in the desert is always peaceful somehow.  Not sure if that’s what makes life at 6:30AM easy, or if it’s just an added bonus.  Worst case, the sound of 400+HP sportscars, the smell of rubber and gasoline, and pure adrenaline rush from the first session of the day is always a wakeup call.  This weekend, it looked like there were going to be fewer cars than usual – maybe it was because of Mothers Day, maybe it was because of solar flares . . . too hard to tell . . . Consensus was Mothers Day.  No problems here . . . . less cars == more track time with less traffic.  More track time with less traffic == happy Eric, which has got to be good for everyone.  In fact, everything would have been good, had the car started.





<sigh>

As it turns out, cars like to suck down battery power while they’re sitting idle.  Matter of fact, after 6 weeks of sitting idle cars like to suck the battery ALL THE WAY down.  Anyone surprised?  I’m not.  Raceaflais strikes a gain, damnit.  Enter jumper cables and the spare Optima Red-Top that I carry for this very reason, and disaster is averted.  Car is able to warm up and get a bit of a charge on the battery at the same time, so everyone’s happy.
I decided to stop cheating for at least a few sessions of the weekend, and keep with street tires until I hit 1:50’s.  Last time out, I was consistently running 52’s and 53’s on both slicks and streets . . . . which just isn’t right.  Aside from the obvious issues that I knew I had with overheating brakes, weight distribution, lack of downforce, suspension deflection, and sunspots . . . . the world just wasn’t happy with a shredded trailer tire, dead battery, and the fact that I was over-stressed and under-paid, another problem had to pop up.

One of the great things that Chevrolet included with the Z06 (and, newer C5’s), is a feature that many commodity vehicles are starting to come with -- “Active Handling”.  Essentially, the car keeps track of both lateral and longitudal acceleration, wheel rotational rates, steering input, etc, etc and applies braking pressure to each caliper individually as needed.  Groovy stuff, since it can typically react much more quickly than the G-force-butt-o-meter.  Down side, is that it causes greater brake-pad wear and uneven usage of the rear pads . . . compared to a high-speed pendulum followed by a spectacular off, it’s probably not so bad.  For the most part, the car’s traction-control is useless – if not downright dangerous – on the track, so it comes off.  Bottom line, unless you’re comfortable with hanging the car out on the extreme edge for 20 minutes at a time most folk keep the Active Handling enabled, while disabling Traction Control (Chevrolet calls it “Competitive Mode”).  Since I hadn’t had seat time for 6+ weeks and I was running on traction-limited tires, competitive mode was it.

Turns out, when Active Handling starts having problems and freaks out it will do one of two things:
  a)  It will continue to freak out until the driver shuts it off
  b)  It eventually figures out that it’s seriously screwed up and shuts itself off.  Along with Traction Control and ABS, that is.

So after a 2 minute warm-up lap, things don’t quite “feel” right.  More importantly, the dash keeps lighting up with warnings that Active Handling is “active”.  Huh . . . not normal, when we’re heading in a straight line.  A gentle right-hander through T1 ends up being a full-fledged adventure, with the back end of the car hanging out farther than usual, and the front end dancing and darting from left to right – Not only is Active Handling “active”, it means business.  The short-shoot between 1 and 2 (Okay, so I take an unusual line through 1 and 2) turns out to be a great time to end the madness, and active handling gets shut off.  About halfway through the turn 2 drift, I realized I should have paid more attention to my entrance speed – at least the tires were a little warm and there was a little grip to be had.  Up the hill to 3 seemed like the next best place to try and reset AH, which turned out to be feeling better until half-way through the chicane.  This time, it settled down on it’s own until 6 and 7 . . . at least it was convenient enough to wait until the straight.   Turns out, there’s lots of room to figure out what the hell is going on when you’re traveling in a straight line – resetting AH ended up to be futile, since it would immediately turn itself on.

Depending on how much you’re paying attention at Spring Mountain, a good exit speed in 7 will typically result in a 120+ entrance into 8, which is fortunately a decent radius sweeper.  Depending on your tire combination however, 80-85 is a more average and reasonable speed to carry the turn at.  The braking zone coming into 8 is typically pretty short, and should be completed before getting too far into the turn – regardless of how hot you’re coming into the turn it’s sometimes easier to brake late, bury the brake pedal, let the ABS do a little bit of work, and trail-brake on the turn-in.  Since I was paying more attention to the state of the e-lectronic gizmos on the car than my speed coming into 8, I ended up stabbing the brakes late, realizing that I’d be setting the ABS off.  Only, this time ABS didn’t decide to kick in right away, probably because of the vast discrepancy in brakepad temps – at about 105, the rear end kicks out hard, then darts back in line the minute I let off the brake.  Fortunately, the car slowed down enough to where T8 wasn’t as much dangerous, as it was an inconvenience.  Trail braking wasn’t an option, since there was such a huge difference between the heat of the left vs right rotors and pads – since the pads I’m using are full race pads, having one pad at temp and one cold, just wasn’t going to work.  I decide to pit before I cause any other problems, and start fiddling with the active handling again.  After validating that the PCM and BCM weren’t throwing codes and resetting all of the computers, I decided to head back out.  After the dash started lighting up again halfway through T1, I just decided to run the rest of the session “all off”.  2 minute warmup laps through the rest of the session was enough to make sure that nothing else was broken, and after all the brakes came up to temp braking became manageable again.
First session – no speed records, but nobody got dead.  I’m calling it a success.

 


So, between first and second sessions, I check BCM codes again, and find two generic warnings, but nothing that would explain the mass calamity that occurred the prior lap.  Just for good measure, I jack the rear end up, do a quick visual on the wheel sensors, re-seat each of the connectors, and call it a day.

Comically, there was nothing really “wrong” that popped up, so I didn’t have a good level of confidence that I was able to “fix” anything.  Preparing for the likelihood that the next session was going to be an adventure, I decided to take a look through the paddock, relax, and catch up on recent events with a few of the folk I hadn’t seen for a while.  Second session came along quicker than I had expected and thought, so I started the car, strapped in, and prepared for the worst.



Amazingly, the second session was nothing short of flawless.  Literally, flawless.  52’s on streets, flawless.  Granted, all of the problems I was expecting to have – balance and weight transfer, mainly – were still there, but at the same point none of the “the car is deciding to freak out on its own” problems were there, either.  Granted, 52’s weren’t the fastest times in the group – most folk in the group run on slicks or R’s – but at the same point, it was back in the direction that I wanted to see.  As it turns out, it was also the same lap time that I was running the last time *on slicks*.  Mental note, need more seat time . . . and need to get to the bottom of the last of the setup issues on the car.  In a true testament to “screw you Raceaflais!” the third session came off without a hitch as well.  We’re not setting any land-speed records, but at least we’re getting consistent, and not causing any more problems.

Just after lunch, I ask for one of the instructors to take the car out, make sure that my line is right, and validate that I’m not insane with the car’s setup issues – Victor puts down 52’s, hangs the rear end out a few times, and reaffirms my thoughts with a “I can see why you’re having a few problems”.  What’s unusual this time around though, is a pronounced shudder / vibration under hard braking.  The WHOLE CAR VIOLENTLY SHAKING type of vibration . . . . which to say the least, is new.  After the session and a couple more tips from Victor, we start checking rotors.  And find the problem.



So what’s concerning about this picture, is that all of the hardware is grade 8.  Last time I checked, grade 8 hardware isn’t supposed to do this.  Same point, there were two bolts missing on each rear rotor – the two you see above on the driver’s side, and two separated by 3 bots on the passenger side.  Vibration . . . . . ‘ya THINK?!?  Mental note #2, call Stillen and figure out what can be done about this.  The last time I talked to their techs, they mentioned that this can happen under big lateral loads and high heat scenario, and mentioned moving to a floating-rotor hat.  High heat?  Probably.  High lateral loads?  Ummm, yeah . . . probably.   DAMN YOU RACEFILAS!


So the last time I was out here, I ended up backing out the bolt holding one of the rear shocks to the lower A-arm -- technically, I backed out the nut and the bolt worked itself out, but it’s the same net effect.  At any rate, I discovered that neither the local NAPA nor AutoZone had any amount of hardware . . .  ACE on the other hand, had tons.  Including grade 8.  As it turns out, they have both coarse and fine thread hardware, but that’s a completely different story . . . . and a second trip back to ACE.  On the down side the hardware doesn’t match, but they’re all going to have to come out anyway due to heat stress (if 2 are shot, the other 10 can’t be too far behind).  I was surprised, but everything went together fairly quickly and easily.  Missed an advanced session, but still made the last sessions of the day to shake things out.  Well, technically . . . there was a lot less shaking, but you get the point -- Slamming the brakes on at 130+ didn’t end up in the vehicular equivalent of the “magic fingers” bed.  There was still a bit of vibration, probably from the prior pad material on the rotor or some other leftover deposits, but that’s more normal stuff.

Best times of the day were mid 52’s, but at least we were sorting things out and nothing broke.  Ed however, was putting some blistering times down even running on Toyo RA1’s – by late in the day, he was consistently running 48’s and 47’s.  To say the least, Ed’s gotten his car dialed in finally . . . it’s about time, since he’s had nothing but problems for months with a number of LA tuners (not to say that all tuners are crooks, but as it turns out a bunch of them are . . . and, incompetent to boot).  With Saturday’s sessions winding up, it was a good day all around and lots of fun had by just about everyone.  Translation, nobody dropped a wheel and smacked the wall outside of 10.  Unfortunately, after a couple sessions of taking photos, Denis started feeling the effects of a chicken quesadilla from Wulfy’s . . . after hanging out for most of the day and not feeing any better, Denis headed back mid-afternoon and missed the dinner, but made it back home for some needed rest.  Fortunately, he was able to make it back down to Orange County in record time because of a total lack of traffic.  The traditional Saturday night party went off fantastically like usual.  This time around, they opened the dinner menu up a little bit to have something other than just steak, changed the sides from potato to some really awesome beans, and had plenty of cold Corona handy.  Since the later events of the evening didn’t turn out to be the traditional “watch Rupert do laps in the T1 at midnight” followed by target shooting, it was an early night.  Literally early, since I’m pretty sure that I was checking the inside of my eyelids for leaks by 9:30.

So I head to the track early on Sunday to see if I can cause some extra trouble.  Since the car seemed light in the rear, and regularly oversteered . . .  it was time to jack the front end up a bit, since the rear couldn’t come down (the slicks rub on the fenders under load).  So, up comes the front end, off come the wheels, off come the heim joints (well, at least one of ‘em), and out come the allen-wrenches for a whole bunch of coil-over-tuning-goodness.  Two turns on the collar each should do it, at least for starters.  Without having scales handy, it was more of a craps shoot than anything, but the new ride-height passed the eyeball-test.  Since most of the time needed to perform these acrobatics comes down to jacking the car and pulling the wheels, everything was reset in less than 45 minutes.  If anyone knows where I can find a center-lock hub for the vette, life would be much easier . . . I’m still looking around, but life is always easier if someone’s already done the research.  First session of the morning netted a .5 second faster lap as a result, which squarely stuck me in the low 52’s.  Eternally stuck in the 52’s, I decided that it was time to kick it up a couple notches, start driving the hotter lines, and “get some balls” in a couple corners, braking later, and picking the speeds up.
Which, as it turned out . . . did nothing beneficial for my lap times.  Actually, I think I was slower by a few 10ths on some laps.  Not to say that things weren’t a bit more exciting now, but the laps just weren’t any faster, and about the only tangible result I got, were hotter tires.

<sigh>

So, we learned a few things:
  Turn 1 and 2 are designed to keep the car in complete transition.  Exiting T1 sooner, cutting straight through to T2, and turning hard into the turn late ends up being a great passing line if you can get a jump on the car in front.  Good for racing, and pushing cars out into the marbles, but no faster on streets.  Exiting LATE out of T1 into T2 can still turn T2 into a double-apex, except if you bump the exit speed from 1, the car will drift through the first apex in T2.  In the second case, it’s possible to hold a 4 wheel drift all the way from the turn-in to T1, through the exit of T2 . . . it’s not only a fast line, but very, very noisy.
  Turn 3 is designed to be a super-late corner, where the fastest exit speed requires you to nearly drive off the far edge of the turn.  It’s easy to turn in way too early, at which you’ll never be able to make up enough speed to pick your times up until the exit of 5B.  The chicanes can be taken largely straight, with a fast line tight in the first kink, wide in the second, and tight in the third.  Too wide of an apex through the third kink, and you’ll completely botch T4.  Too tight of an angle between the last kink and T4, and you’re dead.  Too WIDE of an angle into T4, and you’re dead.  Basically, the last kink will be the moment of truth for T4.
  Turn 4 requires a tight line at the apex, otherwise you’ll be pushed far out of the turn, and never recover for the uphill.  Too wide of an exit will get the same result too, since you’ll end up hitting the candy-stripe at too sharp of an angle, and you’ll never get enough speed up the hill.  Although the car’s balance is off kilter at the exit of 4, the run between 4 and 5A can be handled as a constant drift hard under power.  The trick, is to unwind, get gradually on the gas to drift to the exit, and then hold both the gas and steering angle to where the car accelerates and drifts up the hill to the entrance of 5.  If you’re hard on the gas and turning up through 5, then the entrance to 5A is easy – let off the gas, trail-brake, and turn in late.  The car will shift its balance and set itself up if you’re in a power induced understeer.  Otherwise, if you’re taking too straight of a line to 5A, you’ll end up with a far lower entrance speed, and a really weird turn in to 5 after braking hard before the turn in.  At this point, it’s all a matter of how you’ve entered and exited T4, since a narrow or wide line will set you up poorly for the up-hill climb into 5.  Basically, if you’re going straight out of 4 and into 5, you’ll have a slower overall time up the hill.  On the other hand, the right line will leave you feeling like your brain has been smooshed to the right side of your skull.
  5A and 5B is a much easier turn than everyone gives it credit.  A wide entrance and exit to 5A will end up putting you at about 3/4 down the candystripe, which is what you want.  Ditto, the exit of 5B is fairly wide, where you’ll need to nearly drive off the edge of the rumble strip.  A fast exit out of 5B is critical, since you can make or lose a ton of time between 5 and 6.  Bad times through 5 and 6 will get you to a bad exit from 7, which just ends up ruining everyone’s day in the long run.  So, long story . . . use the rumble strip in 5A and 5B to your advantage, especially on the exit of 5B . . . aim for the smooth part.  A fast exit out of 5B will get a straight line through the kink, with a quick upshift under power just before the turn.  A fast line should take you tight through the kink, track left wide well before the entrance of 6, with a wide almost “S” turn motion into 6 (Okay, so it's a reverse "s", but you get the point).  Staying hard on the power, then quickly downshifting before the turn-in to 7 is critical – most folk will take 6 way slower than it needs to, and end up losing tons of time before 7.
    Turn 7 is deceptive, since it’s a fairly tight corner.  A late entrance into 7 should put your exit just at the end of the candy-stripe, which results in a fairly straight and fast line.  Too tight of a line through 7 ends up being bad for a bunch of reasons . . . most specifically, because you’ll end up at too sharp of an angle to get hard on the gas.  Too late of a turn-in, and you’re taking a far slower line which begs people to pass you.  If you do get a fast exit out of 7, then you’ll be rewarded with an astonishingly fast speed through the backstraight.  On the converse, it’s easy take 7 completely wrong, and be entire seconds behind by the time you see 8.  While the back straight isn’t particularly long, it is possible to see 120+ regularly.  Exceptional exits, and you’ll see 130+.
  8 isn’t a particularly fast turn – I’ll normally see 80-85 on streets, and closer to 90-95 on slicks – but needs to be taken fairly quickly to set yourself up for 9 and 10.  A wide approach through the apex results in a wide and fast line that takes you almost to the edge of 8, which is un-nerving.  Track right for the exit of 8 and the turn in of 9, as well as 10.  Too early of an exit from 8 will push the car WAY far out in 9, and results in a crap line for 10.  On the exit of 10, it’s easy to come out hard under power, and drop two wheels . . . setting the car for a nasty spin that will put you into the pit wall.  I’ve seen more accidents in 10, than anywhere else on the track.  A good exit from 10 will turn the front straight into a 100+ jaunt into T1, where the whole miracle starts again.

Okay . . . so yeah, I learned something important in every corner.  Some I had a hunch on, some I knew like the back of my hand . . . and some I can’t help but screw up on a few every single lap.  So, clearly we’ve done some good by shifting the weight backwards, clearly the line can support faster entrance and exits.  The only way that this is going to happen, is if I grow a pair and push a bit harder.  By this point I’m still running 52’s consistently -- Ed is consistently running 47’s and 48’s.  On a quick check however, Ed’s managed to cord one of his front Toyo’s . . . even though it’s got some life left in it, some fender rubbing ended up cutting a groove in the outside edge, tearing a couple patches up, about 2” each.  Without an extra tire, it’s time to either move to old scrubs or streets – the streets were mounted, and we managed to get the full set of wheels swapped in record time.  Convinced that this will slow him down significantly, I’m on a mission.  And so I decided . . . push.  And it all went fine, until I pushed a little more than I should have coming into 8.  From what I heard, it was fairly impressive, too.

Problem number one, is that I took an odd line at the entrance of the turn because of a late pass.  I initially came up quick behind Charles – who was planning on pitting – however didn’t have a really good line to pass.  I pulled back on the throttle a little bit, which was counterproductive since Charles saw me approach like a bat out of hell and tapped the brakes.  The pass was good, but I got a shallow line and early apex in the turn.Problem number two, was that I was entering MUCH hotter in the turn than usual, and was shooting to carry 85-90 through the turn.  For the most part, carrying a bit of extra speed probably isn’t too tough in T8, as long as you take a wider line.  The turn is somewhat deceptive since it’s a fairly decent radius . . .  I think everyone gets freaked out by the skid marks driving off to nowhere about halfway through the turn.  Personally, I don’t get freaked out by the skid marks . . . it’s the wall at the end of the turn (ie, the rapid stop if you don’t make T9) . . . but that’s the good news, heading too fast through T8 just means you’ll harmlessly head off into the desert, not go careening off into the wall that’s put up to save the paddock.Problem number three, was that I didn’t recognize that I was running into problem one and two at the exact same time, until it was too late.  Although I had done a bit to shift the weigh of the car back a bit, the rear end was still too light – this basically meant that there wasn’t a chance in the world for the back to dig in the way it needed.

Just after entering T8 and hitting the first apex, I cranked the wheel over a bit more to get a better angle through the rest of the turn.  Although I was trail braking to bleed off a bit more speed without pitching forward too much, the rear-end couldn’t get nearly the bite it needed.  So, as the car starts rotating through T8 I get about halfway through and still have the car in a drift.  For a minute, I thought I could actually hold the drift all the way through the turn, and recover by the turn-in to 9.  I was ambitious . . . maybe delusional.  That said however, it was evidently a spectacular event, from both Charles’ seat (about 50 feet behind me), as well as the bleachers where Craig was watching.  For as spectacular as it evidently was however, not a single photo got snapped.  Not even an in-car.  So eventually the ride ended, and I finally got some bite from the rear tires.  All at once, as it turned out, and the car started rotating again in the other direction, and finally snapped back.  I ended up sliding the car off the inside of T8 nearly where the turn-in for 9 was, and finishing my spin in the dirt.  Fortunately, this all happened away from all of the solid objects, and except for a couple small rocks that made it to the track, everyone (and the car as a whole) was none the worse for wear.   As it turns out however, hot street tires end up picking up lots of rocks and pebbles just about the same as slicks do.  Probably ended up kicking more debris up into the pit entrance than anything just by spinning the tires a couple times. 

So a quick check confirms that all is well, nothing fell off, and all the parts were where they were supposed to be.  Mental note, 90 on streets with an early apex . . . bad juju.  I’m pretty sure the result would have been the same even with stickies, so I’m chalking this one up to experience, and a resounding “don’t do that”.  The car is in one piece, so I decide to salvage a few more laps in the session, and head back out – there’s nothing like getting back on the horse after drifting off the pavement.  Everything’s settling out, when all of a sudden Active Handling starts acting up.  No worries . . . we’ve been through this again . . . Off comes the active handling and the traction control.  At least this time, I wait until the backstraight to start playing with the active handling again – instead of active handling just deciding to freak out however, Raceaflais decided to strike big.  I switch everything back full-on, wait for the normal freaky sway of the rear end while everything’s sorting itself out . . . and then it stopped.The dash lights up this time however, and things start beeping:

     *BONG!*               “Service Active Handling”
Huh.  Hasn’t done that before.

     *BONG!*               “Service Traction Control”

Huh.  Well, if they’re going to freak out . . . at least everything’s going at once.

     *BONG!*               “Service ABS”

Woah – This is new.  Huh, I wonder if it’s really shut everything off. 

     (Stab at brakes)

Hmmmm.  Yup, it’s off.  All 4 corners just locked up.

It’s at this moment that I realize that I should have been paying attention, because I’m now about 20 feet away from my normal braking point coming in to T8 at about 120.  Uh oh.  I’ve been here.  Recently, even.  By some miracle of remembering how to drive a normal car without all the e-lectronic gizmos, the car slows down a bit where I don’t start the repeat of the last lap.  The rest of the session goes about the same, with the key agenda of re-learning how to drive.  A little while ago, I was thinking of disabling the ABS because it was acting up too much (activating when it really didn’t need to).  This exercise demonstrated a couple different things, but namely pointed out that I have quite a few hot spots and patches of uneven wear on the rotors.  The ABS was probably doing what it thought it needed to, because the tires *would* act like they were locking up at times, and then start/continue to roll.  What I believe was happening, was pretty simple overall – pad hits debris on rotor, rate at which rotor and wheel spins decreases dramatically (but, not to the point where the wheel locks).  Difference in rotational speeds of wheel versus vehicle speed was too great for the tire to hold, which is what caused the audible noises.  ABS was similarly setting itself off, because the wheel slowed rotation by more than the %%% programmed, and voila!  Amazingly, nobody died (namely me) and I didn’t hit anything (namely other people or immobile objects) – this was a good session.

Ed meanwhile, is still hitting respectable times with 51’s and 52’s on streets.  So, he’s still faster than I am by .5 to 1 second.  Damn.

The rest of the day starts slowing down at lunchtime – I head out a couple more sessions just to practice my line, but not to set any speed records. Several 54’s later, the day is done and it’s time to pack up.  Fortunately, the long drive home will wait until the next day – it’s time to regroup, relax, and catch up on all that missed sleep from the prior week.  First on the agenda after everything settles down, is to figure out what’s going on with active handling and ABS – the group consensus is that it’s probably wheel bearings, but I haven’t seen any of the secondary signs of a bearing going out.   My hunch is that it’s a wheel speed sensor . . . but we’ll figure it out.  There’s still plenty of time until OTC