404: Racecar Not Found - My 1997 M3/4/5

[Brake_L8]

I've had this car for about 2.5 years, and have an active build thread on my old college car club's forums, but figured the larger BF.c community might enjoy seeing where the car has been and where it's going from here.


I started my HPDE career with NASA Mid-Atlantic with a '95 Miata. Great car to learn on, and it ferried me all throughout my college years with little fuss. I blew up two motors in it once I started tracking it, and I finally decided to change platforms. NASA-MA is very BMW-centric, and I had owned a few at this point, so I figured another would be good to build into a serious track car, as there would be plenty of trackside support and knowledge to go around. Plus, they're just really friggin' good cars.


So, I drove up to New Jersey on Labor Day weekend of 2013 to pick this car up. It's actually a Bimmerforums alumni - was owned by Wisky for a stint back in 2006-2007 (maybe longer?) and then PG123 after that. It was PG123's college car and he owned it from 2008 to 2013.


Some photos from Wisky's ownership and his for sale ad:











Pierce sold it to me and it looked about the same. The interior was pretty beat, but who cares, it's all coming out.








I'll condense all the track time stories, but I bought it in September '13 and had it at VIR six weeks later, on some bald Star Specs with shot RTABs and full interior/no safety gear.


Naturally, I crashed it at T6.





Was able to bang out the worst of it and drive the rest of the weekend, while also passing my Time Trial check ride Saturday afternoon. I finished out the 2013 season at Summit Point in November and put the car up in my garage to get some basics worked through - namely, a Kirk Racing rollbar, some used seats/six-points, "new" suspension, RTAB replacement, and probably the typical brakes/oil/fluids fun.





When doing the suspension install, we discovered the downsides of the car being a Jersey girl:





I ended up having one rear and one front shock tower welded back in - the other rear had been done before I got the car, under Pierce's ownership. That was a fun shop bill.


The 2014 season started off well, I had some fun at VIR and Summit and started really learning the car, still on a kind-of-street alignment and summer street tires. Went up to NJMP for the first time in May of that year. Was gaining confidence and had a lot of fun on the Thunderbolt course.


Swapped out my crunchy fender to a nice one before Hyperfest 2014, and did a few other maintenance-y things around that time. Y'all should know what this means:





Having fun at Summit Point:





Closed out 2014 with 1st Place in TTD, which was pretty cool. I celebrated by giving the car a wheel bearing and some power steering lines.


I decided 2015 was "the year Jake gets a truck and trailer" and that all came none too soon. Took the car to VIR for our season opener in March 2015, and was gifted with a blown head gasket about 20 minutes into my Saturday. #blessed





Thankfully, a friend of mine let me take his Spec E46 out for some laps, so my weekend wasn't totally shot.





Got the car home and my dear roommate (fellow college friend and GTS racer) along with several friends helped me get the head gasket replaced in our garage. I only had a few weeks before the next event so we had to hustle. Got it done in the nick of time, and did timing chain guides while I had it all apart (mostly because I removed a chunk of one due to clumsiness, but good peace of mind either way).


Yay, clean timing cover. I never knew it had a BMW roundel on it, that's how sludgey it was.





2015 took many turns for the better after the head gasket job. Hyperfest moved to VIR, I threw some t-shirts out of a pickup truck to celebrate:





More TTing, better lap times:





Competed in my first "championships" event at VIR that fall, the NASA East Coast Championships. I worked the event as Chief of Pace, which meant I got to hustle a 170 hp Mazda6 around in front of much faster cars, when needed:





Brap brap.





After the ECC, I finally tackled my (very) leaky oil pan gasket and installed a safety-wired pump nut:





Went to the NASA Fall Finale at Summit Point in November, and promptly tested the abilities of my shiny new Sparco Ergo halo seat:





Thankfully, the damage, while serious, was not life-ending to the car. Some friends jumped into action to help me out on-site and we got the car back on track by 3:30 that afternoon. My friends > yours. Total tally of the damage ended up being:


Hood
Fender
Nose panel
Bumper
Both driver's side doors
Ruined Toyo RR tire
Driver's lower control arm (ripped the ball joint out, bent the arm like a taco shell)
Driver's tie rod
Turn signal
Side skirt
Bent lower rear control arms
Transmission crossmember cracked in half





I had already paid for the "Santa's Toy Run" event with NASA Southeast, so I abandoned my social life for a week or so and hustled to get the car back to one piece. Humpty Dumpty came back together again about a week before leaving for Road Atlanta:





A friend of mine came down with me to RA and split the towing, which was great. He also took my truck to various turns and got some fantastic photos of me and friends - also great.








Heading home, I lamented that I only got two days at a new-to-me track. We soon found out that the first event of 2016 was to be a combined NASA SE/MA/FL event at Road Atlanta. Hooray!





Even with the crashy crashy in November, I placed 2nd regionally for TTD. The goal for 2016 is to get my competition license and perhaps go W2W racing. I enjoy TT a lot, but think W2W would ultimately be more rewarding. I shopped around and found a fabricator/shop nearby to cage the car. Really happy with how it turned out.





Wired up my AIM to be powered on with the car:





Threw on an Active Autowerke catback and some sweet color-matched tow hooks:





And here we are. Hard to believe I distilled 2.5 years of competing, wrenching, storytelling, and breaking stuff into this post. I'm waiting on new vinyl decals to match the cage color, need to swap some fluids out, and otherwise am ready to head back to Road Atlanta in two short weeks. Updates to come!

[19Spec3]

Photo links are broken?

[Brake_L8]

Ugh, it's something with Bimmerforums. They all work but the forum is having a hell of a time handling them. I'll work on a fix when I have a minute.

[hoki06]

Fitting thread title for the current status of pictures lol

[cemmett]

Ugh, it's something with Bimmerforums. They all work but the forum is having a hell of a time handling them. I'll work on a fix when I have a minute.

If they're hosted on Imgur, they don't allow hotlinking to some forum sites due to traffic. I used postimage.

[camdinans3]

This is perfect, trendy stupid hipster thread name and then ironically the pictures are screwed up. Delightful.

I think it was all part of the plan gents.

[Brake_L8]

Fixed them, finally. Sorry I'm bad at the internet.

Also, this was the final license plate I had on the car, when it was (vaguely) street legal:

[alwaysinboost]

Have you considered PT as an option for w2w rather than GTS? its a MUCH more natural transition for a TT car to move to PT.

[Brake_L8]

Have you considered PT as an option for w2w rather than GTS? its a MUCH more natural transition for a TT car to move to PT.

I have, yeah. A few of us have chatted about it but it's all up in the air for now. Lots to consider as far as cost, additional build, and who's actually in the class. With Mid-Atlantic, it seems as though a lot of TTD drivers are going GTS2. I just don't want to put another $Lots into the car so it'll depend on the deals I can find for aero and such.

[alwaysinboost]

As long as you're already "setup" for TT, you wouldn't have to invest anything additional to make the transition to PT.

To be competitive in GTS, however, you will need to dump $$$ in the car.

I brought this up because a lot of us (you, me, xtina, Donovan and Josh) all caged our cars over the winter... we have a full class right there.

[Brake_L8]

As long as you're already "setup" for TT, you wouldn't have to invest anything additional to make the transition to PT.

To be competitive in GTS, however, you will need to dump $$$ in the car.

I brought this up because a lot of us (you, me, xtina, Donovan and Josh) all caged our cars over the winter... we have a full class right there.

Agreed. TrackWife and I have talked about this a fair amount and I think we'd both be super okay with PTD. I'm really not looking to throw $10-15k more at the car anytime soon.

[Brake_L8]

Road Atlanta - NASA Southeast "Race For The Pi"


I was pretty excited to go back to Road Atlanta after my first foray south in December of last year. Unfortunately, my friend Tom couldn't join for another round of road tripping, but I worked something out with a few others and it made the trip pretty fun.

Paul came to my place in his newly-purchased C5 Corvette Z06 on Thursday night. He had a LOT of issues registering the car (illegal tint that had to be removed, DMV lost the "proof" paperwork, wouldn't give him tags) but showed up anyway after getting the previous owner's permission to drive it on the old tags. Previous owner is an enthusiast who replaced the Vette with a CTS-V, so I guess he thought us road tripping to Atlanta was a cool thing. The car had no front plate, either, so I told Paul to stick behind my trailer and we mutually agreed to engage in no jackassery that would lend to getting pulled over.






We left very early Friday morning as we had to pick up my trailer and load the M3 still. Our "straps tightened, time to roll" time ended up being about 7:45 AM.

Stop one: Henrico/Richmond area to pick up Zach and their friend Tyler. Zach rode with me and Tyler hopped in the Vette. Thanks to the Corvette's tall 6th gear and my truck's 36 gallon fuel tank, we both had some pretty serious cruising range and agreed to keep stops to a minimum.





Ended up stopping at a Sheetz for a quick bathroom break and to grab food, which we ate on the go. Our next stop came when we agreed it was time for another pee break. I decided to just take the next exit off of I-85, and took the first right into a truck stop for fuel... and who do I see parked there filling up? Two more friends - Simon and Jim.



So then, we had ourselves a proper caravan as we all left the truck stop together. Simon with his Yukon/Spec3, Jim with the F350/E46, me with the F150/E36 and Paul in the Vette. Everyone had radios and Paul did a great job "running interference" and changing lanes first to allow the rest of us to cut over.



We arrived to Road Atlanta right around 6:30 PM, after a quick stop at the Pilot nearby to fill our cars and gas jugs.

When I had been to RA in December, we used the infield "pro paddock." This time, NASA SE only rented the "outfield" paddock. Unfortunately, it was a disaster. There had been a Friday-only HPDE day with a partner group (Just Track It) and between that and no policing of how much space everyone was taking up, we found it extremely hard to find parking. We finally nabbed a spot down in the very, very back corner of the paddock, away from everything. Someone was being ridiculous and trying to save the width of two trailers for his buddy who he swore would be there Saturday by 10 AM... sorry dude, that's not how this works. We left him one width for the truck/trailer, parked Jim's rig in the other spot, and abandoned our trailers over in the grass. Simon and I parked our cars kind of wherever we could, and trucks in the grass way out. It was a pain.



Saturday's driving was great, though. The track is fantastic and was way fun. Definitely much easier to head back out there, having been once before and being more confident in the basic layout, location of curbing, knowing which is safe to jump or not, etc.

Us TTers got our warmup session in, and then the timing loop promptly broke. The organizers wasted about 30 minutes trying to fix it, decided to redo the schedule and attempt a fix over the lunch break. So, the entire morning turned into HPDEpalooza and we puttered around the paddock. Even had time to take a definitely-not-posed photo or two.




Thankfully the timing got fixed over lunch, which meant a ton of TT and racing sessions all back to back. We were all hustling but thankfully, that paid off on my end. I ran a 1:51 which was good enough for third place in TTD (in a group of six) - very pleased with that result given my second time at the track!

The day closed out with some catered BBQ and an awards party - the food was pretty good, the party was snoozy. Lots of inside jokes and too much talk, not enough action. NASA Mid-Atlantic moves things along incredibly well by comparison. I got my photo with the "NASA girls" and earned a coffee mug for 3rd place. I guess NASA Southeast does beer steins for 1st, big mugs for 2nd and coffee mugs for 3rd. Kinda different and not sure how I feel about that. Part of me likes the stupid plastic trophies.






Sunday we woke up to heavy rain. Ohh great. Last time I took the M3 out in rain, I earned some surprise body work. I was really on the fence about going out, but Jim and Simon convinced me to throw my "rain tires" on the car (Hankook RS3 summer tires) and get back on the goddamn horse. I'm very glad I did. Didn't turn any super fast laps, but completed the entire session and got over the mental block of "rain = crash" so that is good. I also learned that my wipers no longer work on intermittent, only on high speed. Whatever.




The rest of Sunday was good, it dried out in time for the rest of my sessions but I left the RS3's on the car as I wanted to save my Hoosiers for Summit Point in April. Didn't set any records but focused on being consistent and definitely met that goal.

Simon and Jim did well in their races both days - Simon took 1st for both of his! - and Paul was super pumped to have completed his first weekend in DE 1. Eric and his dad were there, and Eric took 3rd in TTC, which he was happy about as well! Definitely a great weekend for all of us.

We packed up around 4 PM and headed north, hammer down. Zach, Tyler, and Zach's girlfriend (who met us in ATL and rode home in the truck) all had places to be Monday morning, so we drove from Atlanta to Richmond in one evening. That was a really exhausting thing to do, and I don't want to do it again.

On the plus side, I crashed at Tyler's place and was home/unpacked Monday by 11 AM. Spent the rest of the day relaxing, downloading GoPro video and Aim data, and learning how to merge the two. I'll have video ready to post soon.

Definitely a great time and I'm glad I went - but I'm also super excited to be back at events with the Mid-Atlantic family starting in April. Can't wait for what the rest of the season will bring!

[Driftit]

Good read man. Made me miss racing back in NZ so much more.
Does this race series have a website? I'm in DC and would love to get along and have a watch some time.

[hoki06]

Solid trip with lots of track time and some mugs! Your write up is much better than mine. I hope you didn't mind that I stole your picture! I didn't take too many so I had to steal some lol.

Bring on Summit Point!

[Brake_L8]

Good read man. Made me miss racing back in NZ so much more.
Does this race series have a website? I'm in DC and would love to get along and have a watch some time.

Yep, we are NASA Mid-Atlantic and the site is www.nasaracing.net - come hang out!

- - - Updated - - -

Solid trip with lots of track time and some mugs! Your write up is much better than mine. I hope you didn't mind that I stole your picture! I didn't take too many so I had to steal some lol.

Bring on Summit Point!

Hah, steal away! I could have just summarized with the "we drove 10 hours each way to turn money into noise and win some coffee mugs" but figured more words was more better Can't wait for Summit - just have a few fiddly things to do on the car (namely, replace the brake bleed valves and bleed the system). Trying to save some money at the moment, so a fire/electrical system will likely wait until May to be ordered.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBnS0n1z3CY

[Brake_L8]

March 2016 "Spring Rumble" - Summit Point Main

First "regular" event of the season in the books. Road Atlanta was truly a NASA Southeast weekend, so it was great to be back with the Mid-Atlantic family yet again. My weekend was... ugh. It was okay. The last time I was at Summit (November) I came home with a rather mangled BMW. The car and I both came home in one piece this time, so that's always a positive.

I just felt - all weekend - like I didn't drive very well.

I did our Saturday warm-up session on my RS3's, and had a buddy from New York ride shotgun. He was there for HPDE 2 and hadn't been around Summit Main ever, so I figured some "take it easy" laps to knock off the rust would be good for me and helpful for him. Ran some 1:32's and 1:33's in traffic which was alright by me.

Switched to the Hoosiers (R6) and got a hair faster - but not on "Hoosier level" of speed, at all. I think that's what is bumming me out. My best lap was on Sunday morning, at a 1:29.6. That's still kind of a street tire time.

My friend Zack rode with me on Sunday mid-morning and observed my driving, then offered some pointers in the paddock. His biggest observation was that I was a bit violent with my inputs, which was upsetting the car and, as he put it, "holy understeer." He really stressed being more gentle with my brake release and my steering input - said my turn-in was very autocross-esque - and said that with smoother transitions, the car wouldn't fight me so much. He was 100% correct and the rest of Sunday was spent turning laps that were significantly less stressful or rough. That was great.

Zack's schooling produced smoother yet slower laps. I think I was focusing a lot on doing what he said, which distracted me from jumping back on the throttle with enough alacrity to keep the momentum up. Having the stock 3.23 rear end means the car doesn't want to power out of corners nearly as well as my friend Christina's (3.38, her car started life as an auto) or the Donovan's (3.64 custom from Diffsonline). So, gotta keep the revs up which I am now seeing in the time deltas.

That said, I ran the rest of Sunday laying down 1:31's that were all within a tenth of each other. Several folks told me the consistency was something to be very pleased with, and I am. My hope is that it transfers to VIR next month and I can pick up more speed while remaining smooth with everything.

Photos and videos to come, but this one of my friends' dog about sums up large chunks of how things felt:

[TXBDan]

haha great pic.

[Brake_L8]

Photos from our official track photographer (Finish Line Productions) are up!

Hang in there lil' corner light!



Braaaap.




Christina chasing me down:






And some semi-slow video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuYoSkKsVgw


Now time to get ready for Hyperfest... installing Aerocatch hood latches as my cage prevents installation of the stock hood release, which means opening the hood is a difficult and dangerous gamble of holding each side of the release and twisting it carefully. Not anymore. Also going to replace the brake bleed screws and re-bleed the system to hopefully make the pedal firm up a hair. Not bad now but could be better, and my rear caliper screws are starting to round out.

[Brake_L8]

Got started on my Aerocatch install the past few nights after work. This is a giant pain but looks (and hopefully will function) a lot better than cheapo hood pins. Had to buy a Dremel after the (pictured) borrowed unit started acting flaky. Yay, now I own a Dremel and don't have to borrow flaky ones from friends.




I got the driver's side done last night, and have to cut the hood for the passenger side next week as the rest of this week is busy with non-racecar things to do. It's equal parts fun and nerve-wracking taking an angle grinder and Dremel to your hood, but I think the first one came out pretty good:



Also replaced the bleed screws. The rears were seized on there badly - had to use big vice grips to get enough torque to remove them. Not sure why they were on so tight as I did a brake bleed a few months back. Perhaps this is a lesson in "don't let your quasi-car-guy roommate do the caliper screw part, leave him on pedal duty."

[Brake_L8]

May 2016 - 15th Annual Hyperfest at VIR

Hyperfest is NASA Mid-Atlantic's annual "automotive amusement park" that we have run first at Summit Point and now, at VIR. It's our only event where we actively invite the public to come out and take part in the action. Rally ride-alongs, Hyperdrives on a separate course, Jeep off-road drives/rides, supercar rides on VIR Main, games, drifting, stunt shows, food trucks, beer pavilion, the whole nine yards.

After four years of being one of the green shirt Hyperfest staff who sets up and runs that aspect of the weekend on Friday and Saturday, at this event, I finally said "no more" and asked to be put back on the NASA side of the event. It wasn't worth the tow down to only get to drive one day (Sunday) yet take a ton of time off of work. This year, I was able to run Open Practice on Friday and run TT on Saturday and Sunday. Didn't work at all Friday which was super nice and allowed me to focus on driving.

Got to VIR around 4:30 PM on Thursday and was on the staff "early entry" list, so I was able to get in and set up before 99% of other folks. Roped off a ton of space for the gaggle of us who always paddock together and seized the opportunity to get photos of my car with an otherwise empty paddock surrounding it:



We kicked off the weekend in the Spec3 paddock that evening with some cold beers and grilled meats, per usual:



So, how'd it go?

Waking up to this on Friday morning put me in a damn good mood, and that's how my weekend went, thankfully.



I spent all of Friday running on street tires, just turning laps. We got 2 hours of track time and it was definitely useful. I felt much more "connected" with the car and comfortable on track. Greasing the caliper pins and bleeding the fluid got the pedal feeling as good as an E36 with half-life brake pads will ever feel. My friend Chris hopped in for a session on Friday mid-afternoon and was very helpful with instruction for a few turns. Notably, he got my speed, confidence and consistency up at T3. We worked on Oak Tree but I wasn't consistent there. At least I have some pointers which will give me more to work on next time.

Rain was mostly reserved for the evenings/nights, which was super fortunate. I ran street tires for Saturday morning while the track dried up and switched to the Hoosiers that afternoon. My friend Christina and I had a pretty great battle for lap times on Saturday. She finished the day with a 2:19.215 and I finished with a 2:19.253. Four hundredths of a second difference! That put us at 3rd and 4th, respectively, out of a 7 car field. Curses, foiled again. I'll get you tomorrow, sister.



Went back out Sunday morning and was again greeted with a semi-damp track for my 8:15 AM session. I ran the street tires and wanted to just put clean laps down, which I did. Nabbed a 2:20 on the Hankooks (remember, Saturday saw a 2:19 on friggin' Hoosiers) so I felt pretty good. Again, the weather gods smiled down on our busted whips and gave us hours of mostly sunny, dry weather, so on went the R6's. A few laps in and my confidence grew a bit. Later braking, back on throttle sooner, and a willingness to push some got me down to a 2:17.8!

Having the Aim Solo in the car has been very helpful. Running on predictive mode, I'm not looking at it the entire drive, but I will glance over on the straightaways if I can. Really nice to see "okay, this is good, keep pushing" or "eh, you blew that lap, get back at it next time" sort of things.

Saturday evening was pretty fun, as Hyperfest often is. Lots of laughs, good food, goofy drifting games, and a little late-night sideways-and-smiling exploration in my truck.





I did pick up a small vibration/growl from the front right wheel on Friday afternoon. Pretty sure it's the start of a wheel bearing failure, so after consulting with a few folks, I ordered two front wheel bearings (might as well do both of them) and some Redline grease to preemptively re-pack the bearings before installing.

On to Summit Point in a few short weeks!



Saying hi to my friends' attack dogs:








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AOf1giN0xU

[Brake_L8]

July 2016 "Dominion Dash" - Dominion Raceway

This was the inaugural race weekend for Dominion. They had hosted a few small club events on the road course leading up to this NASA weekend, but our event was the first test of the course, the facility, and the staff.

My drive down on Friday was pretty sucktastic - right about 2 hours to go 55 miles down I-95. Route 1 was no better. But, I eventually made it past the cluster of traffic and took my exit. The track entrance is about 500 feet off of the highway, which is awesome for those of us who tow. No tiny back roads = win.



I showed up and unloaded around 4 PM on Friday. The "main" paddock is fairly small, but there is also a giant gravel-ish lot that is paddock space and not too far from grid. The circle track's infield was also available as paddock space and does connect to the main paddock. Unfortunately a bunch of us didn't get to paddock as a group due to our staggered arrival and nobody knowing the lay of the land. Next time, though. It was easy to drive/bike around the place and nothing is truly very far away.

Took a track walk with a few people as the sun set and got to see things up close.





A few of us decided to check out the local Mexican restaurant, which is about a mile down the road and delicious. And cheap. Definitely going back next time. I was super excited for this burrito smothered in queso.



After dinner, we ended up in the main building, enjoying "dueling pianos" (aka two guys taking turns playing decent and occasionally trashy music) and some cold beers. The building is really nice, and overlooks the course. The second story is where the bar and grill are located, alongside the little gift shop. Plenty of space for everyone to hang out - there are enough views of the road course both inside and on the outside deck.

On to the driving...



Saturday was my "feel it out" day. The track itself can look pretty unnerving from various videos floating around, and I was pretty nervous to get out there. A few laps in, though, and my comfort increased quite a bit. The walls that appear close on video are indeed close in person, but they're not something you notice after a few laps. The layout of the course is really fun - kind of like a bigger Shenandoah with longer straightaways, if you've been there - and rewards a good line as well as low-to-medium horsepower cars.

The track is not done making improvements to the road course. I chatted with the GM and he plans to add curbing in many places as well as (potentially) some more pavement or runoff. The runoff right now sans-curbing is all dust and rock, which is just thrilling when someone in front of you goes off and you have a Days of Thunder moment driving through the dust cloud.

Everything seems to be ideally late-apexed, save for the last little chicane before the tunnel, which is a somewhat blind early apex and perhaps my favorite turn on the track.



Our high Saturday afternoon was an indicated 104*F in the pace car. Sunday morning was my best chance for a "hot lap" before ambient temps got too high, eventually reaching an indicated 101*. I went out and ran 4 seconds faster than my Saturday best, laying down a 1:39.02. My good friend and fellow TTDer Christina hauled the mail and set a 1:36.xx which was fantastic to see. My ancient Hoosier R6's really gave it up in the heat and I suspect they really have nothing left aside from ride-along type of laps at 6/10ths. My buddy Zack sold me a lot of new tires, so I'll be replacing the Hoohoos before our next event in August at VIR.



Another friend let Christina and I use his E46 328iC for pace car duty all weekend and it performed admirably. I treated it like a police-spec Crown Vic (lots of idling, AC blasting, with bouts of full throttle acceleration) and it never faltered with the AC set at 59*. What a champ, especially at 213k miles.

My car handled the heat very well, all things considered. I have my temp gauge set to go off at 210*F and that's fairly conservative. Even in the mid-day Saturday heat, I was keeping temps around 212-215* which I felt was safe-ish. I personally was getting pretty exhausted by midday Sunday and chose to call it quits after two timed sessions. The track wasn't getting any grippier, my tires were a mess, and I had a moment where I just lost focus and caught myself just before I drove entirely off track for no reason.

Definitely a very fun road course and facility with a lot of potential to get even better. I'm excited to get back there in two weekends (instructing for Dub Deliverance) and in a competitive capacity again in October! Hopefully cooler temps then will be advantageous.

M3 updates...

I need new brakes on both axles. My plan was to stick with Performance Friction, although I have a few hundred dollars in Hawk Bucks to use. I know some friends like the DTC-60 so I may try a set of those.

Tires, as mentioned above. Going to have one set of Hankook C51's and one set of BFG R1S's. They're all pretty new (only 3 heat cycles on the Hankooks) so hoping between the two, I'll have plenty of tire for a while. And of course, I'll also keep my RS3 street tires for storage and whatever sort of practice/bullshittery I want to use them for. And rain, I guess.

All the tires mean I need wheels, so.........



They'll be here this afternoon.

Next up...

August is going to be insanely busy and I'm pumped for it.

• Dub Deliverance at Dominion - August 6/7
• Chump Car 24 Hour Enduro at VIR - August 13/14
• NASA at VIR - August 20/21

And some video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqoMaEPFf6I

[cemmett]

Hell yeah man! Looks like you're having a great time.

[jayjaya29]

And I thought mid 90s at Palmer in MA was bad over the weekend...

Looks like a fun track, some curbing would definitely be appreciated.

[Brake_L8]

Looks like a fun track, some curbing would definitely be appreciated.

There will (apparently) be more curbing by next weekend, when I'm back to instruct for a VW/Audi event with TrackDaze.

[GG Emerican]

Saw you on the track at Dominion and peeped into your car to check it out!

Hopefully my car will be ready for the next event at Dominion.

You keeping the Kosei's or getting rid of them?