Sunday, February 18. 2001
Aloha 500
It’s been about a week since we finished our track day at Hawaii Raceway Park as a part of the BMW sponsored Aloha 500 driving school. After taking time to reflect on the day, I’ve got to say it was well worth the money spent. There was more track time available to us than in the lapping day at the end of the SCCA Regional race, but the big advantage was the additional one-on-one instruction.
After the tremendous heat generated by the rear brakes at the previous weekends track day, I was determined to be sure I had sufficient stopping power. It may sound kind of silly, but I felt like I was upholding Honda’s honor with all those BMWs present. To help me in this, I upgraded my brake pads to Porterfield R4S “hot street” carbon metallic pads. To keep the fluid from boiling over, I replaced the (one week) old Honda DOT 4 with some fresh Motul 600 DOT4. Since we were anticipating much higher speeds than we are used to, and since the SCCA will require newer Snell rated helmets, we decided to upgrade this part of our hardware as well.
The organizers of the event wanted all the drivers there at 7:30! Man that’s early, unfortunately there were delays starting so even though it looked like the drivers were ready, we got off to a late start. This would prove costly later.
For the first session on the track, we would run the “short course” with John my instructor at the wheel for 4 familiarization laps. We then pulled over and swapped positions. I felt really confidant since I had been out on this course only one-week prior. I was determined not to spin again, and approached the S-turn section carefully as I worked myself up to speed. The “Rubber Room” (the sweeping turn leading onto the main straight) still made me feel VERY uncomfortable and demanded my full concentration. When you drive through that section, you are only too aware there is no room for error, no run-off, and lots of hard things to hit!
John and I practiced different lines approaching the Rubber Room in order to try for the best launch onto the front straight. The Honda S2000 needs to be kept in the higher part of the rev band to have good power, and if I shifted into 3rd in the Rubber Room, the car was less sensitive to throttle input and felt more stable, but there was a painful lack of power because we had to wait for the revs to build and this made overtaking on the short straight much harder.
The rules for the day were simple: no passing unless the car in front waved you by. With about a dozen cars on the short course it did not take long for everyone to “stack up” behind the slowest car. I don’t want to seem too harsh, but once there were more than 3 cars in a line, there was no way to get around and the whole group was forced to tool around at speeds so (relatively) slow that the challenge was gone. I spent the last 10 minutes of the session driving at 6/10ths.
At lunch, Franceen brought my extra rims and race tires that I had loaded into her car the night before. The organizers were opening up the track to run the long course and I was looking forward to the challenge and higher speeds.
After mounting the race rubber, I dashed across to track to the office where lunch was waiting. As I was eating a sandwich, I heard a familiar sound. I turned around just in time to see my car streak by at 9000 RPM. My first though was, “Hey, who’s driving my car?” Followed by “Man that car sounds great!” It seems Franceen was going for a ride with Lindsey in my car! That will teach me to leave the keys in the car. She emerged with a great big smile and said there was no way she was interested in driving the long version of the track, “it’s just too fast for me.” Lindsey got out of the car and said, “your car has a LOT of power!” High praise considering his normal car is an immaculately prepared Porsche 911.
After our classroom session, we were ready to buckle up and hit the long course. This configuration uses the entire length of the ¼ mile drag strip including the staging area (the Rubber Room) and the area after the timing lights, allowing almost ½ mile of straightaway. I was making my third gear change as I exited the Rubber Room and shifting into fourth halfway down the front straight. On a good lap, I saw over 115 MPH before I needed to brake for the 2nd gear turn 1. This leads onto the back straight, which has a slight kink in it, but is still taken flat out and you can get almost as much speed as on the front straight. You need to tap the brakes to slow down for the 3rd gear Guard Shack Esses and then get heavy onto the brakes for the Off Camber turn that is taken in 2nd. Once you have the car pointed straight, it’s hard on the throttle for the run into the rubber room, again taken in second.
My run group had a bunch of Z3s, a Maxima, Reid’s Type-R, and Ray’s 328. For the most part, I had no problem getting around any of the cars, except for Ray’s 328. I followed him for several laps, slowly closing in under braking for turn 1 and through the Esses. Again the only place to pass was on the front straight and I had to wait for Ray to wave me by. The problem was, he waited too long (he did this on purpose)! I got so close to his bumper that I had to back out of the throttle, and only then did he stick his hand out the window. Once I lost my momentum, I couldn’t get it back quick enough to get by him and was forced to tuck back in and follow him for another lap. This time I got closer in the Rubber Room, and he waved me by before I had to get out of the power and the pass was made without drama.
Once we were out of our cars, Ray said, “I was passing everybody and doing great until you came up behind me. You were the only car I had to wave by all day long.” When I asked about the first attempt to get by, he chuckled and said that he couldn’t make it too easy for me and wanted to make me “work for it.” I guess he didn’t like the view of Honda taillights because I heard the next day he had placed a deposit on new 2002 M3.
If there weren’t restrictions on passing, I could have gotten around more cars, in some cases I followed the same car for 2-3 laps, but not all the drivers were looking in their mirrors or watching the flags. Since we started so late, we were forced to abandon our last session. This was really too bad, since we were getting ready to run on our own, but over all I felt the day was a success. I feel like I learned a lot, I had a chance to run on the full track, and I drove without putting a wheel wrong all day. I never even had a scary moment!
Thursday, July 22, 2004 at 5:36PM 