Howdy Folks -
I ran a high speed even with Chin Motorsports this past Sunday - thought I'd share the experience with everyone!
First, the last time I ran at Sebring, there was NO onsite hotel. Now there's an excellent place to stay, the Chateau Elan, right on the hairpin. Our room was track side and had a balcony with a great view of the track. During this event, the price was $79, during the 12 Hours, it goes up just tad to $500
(and of course is booked for a 1000 years...). They also had full spa facilities, so my lovely wife spent the morning being exfolated (get your minds out of the gutter
) Also had a great bar with pretty good food, and some excellent, cold beer on draft!
We went the night (Saturday) before since these events start pretty early - tech inspection starts at 7am. So be warned, don't drink too much, heheheh
Anyway, the day was pretty warm, stayed around 95-96 degrees according to my AC. This is pretty close to last event I'll run before summer, and then get started again, like September or so, when it cools down a little.
In prep for the event I upgraded the brake/coolent fluids, SS lines, added a 6-point/bar and that's about it! I had planned on fashioning some kind of supplimental brake cooling ducts (I scored some $3 3" flex tubing from the Depot) but the time did not allow for me to work out the details, and I didn't want to hit the track with something I hadn't thoroughly tested. Next time for sure!
The car ran superb - I would say I was driving pretty conservatively, maybe at about 70% - the car had so much more in it. Sebring is very brake intensive, and the brakes held up nicely (mine only had 1300 miles on them!). I didn't see much fade even with all the track time I got (not a huge turnout, so LOTS of track time). My previous event at this track I was running some standard spec fluid, oem lines, and on at the end of the day, my brakes felt like they were just about cooked.
The brakes felt much easier to modulate than my 99 Coupe - I don't know if GM "tuned" the system a little better in later models, or if it was just the Z spec pads, but it was a really easy to roll on the brakes *hard*, yet not engage the ABS.
The Z has such smooth power all over the curve, I didn't even bother to drop it into 2nd during some of the slower turns - I was having fun getting use to the car, but next time, I plan on a little more aggresive exit speeds!
My instructor LOVED the car - I even let him run several laps in it (had to drag him out afterwards, heheheh). He hadn't driven a Z before (just a C5 coupe) but he was amazed at the overall balance of handling, performance and brakes.
I've run about 10-11 events, so I'm not what I would consider extremely fast, *however* I was easily able to catch every other novice car (running street tires). I was even able to run pretty well with a couple of advanced guys running street tires (though there was one 996/TT running street tires that was FAST). Of course, all the R compound guys were giving me a serious beating
My oil temps were high, but I don't believe I saw anything over 280 (seems like I kept seeing 273) - my coolent temps seem pretty good, hovered right around 220 - I added some Water Wetter, I know there's some debate about its effectiveness, but for $8 I figured it couldn't hurt too much.
The one thing that _did_ rear it's ugly head was my tranny temps - I got a temp indication on my DIC (when I noticed it I believe it was showing 265, then it crept up and up to 275+, then at some point it switched to just say TRANNY HOT and which point I backed off, ran a cool down lap and came in to the pits. The session where that happened was particularly long, and probably my most aggressive laps during the hottest part of the day. I might seriously look into a small tranny cooler. I had put a little B&M unit on my previous ride, with fittings, etc., it only set me back about $200.
I had asked in a previous post about using blue painters masking tape for a race tape substitute - well it worked great, didn't peel off at all (even at 130
) - it saved me all sorts of clean up time, so much in fact, that next time I'm going to tape up a little more! You pick up those black "greasy" marks (might be grease, or melted tire, who knows) but they really do a number of a light colored car like MY (they come off, but need a little more effort than just a light wash). Hmmm, I could buy like 100 rolls and tape the entire car! No after event cleanup, just "peel and go".
I have some in car video, when I get a chance to encode some off the DV camera I'll post that too, but until then, here are a few static shots, taken by my honey - the "arial" type shots of the hairpin were right from our balcony! Oh yeah, I'm # 922
The pictures are pretty self explanatory, the hotel, track, the in-car shot is from the "parade lap", the last pic is the car back home, just a little dirtier!
Hope to see some Z-people at the next event(s)!!
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