a team of lawyers who will dine on the mustard of the orient

back from road america in lovely elkhart lake, wisconsin. twas a chilly 50 degrees on tuesday and only slightly warmer on monday, with random sprinkles of rain and lots of wind.

i drove up on sunday evening and met up with the rest of the audi chicago crew on the highway just by luck. i went through tech inspection and registration at the hotel and checked into my room, then sat in a long driver's meeting before returning to my room and ordering domino's pizza.

monday morning i got ready, gassed up the car, and headed to the track. i had been to road america once before to watch an alms race but i honestly didn't remember any of the facility other than standing at the bottom of turn 5. after doing the braking excercises and slalom, i went for a ride in my instructor's car, a c5 vette.

eventually my first session was up which went alright. during my second session, as i picked up speed, i began to smell burning rubber and hear a rubbing noise through hard, high speed turns. i pitted early and had the staff quickly look at my tires to see what the problem was. they said there were lines carved into the front tires and that one of the corner workers had radioed in that they saw smoke coming from my car. i came off the course and sure enough, the fenders were digging grooves into the front tires and there were gobs of rubber on the undersides of the fender lips. the problem was that the ra1's i had just gotten were 245/40's and my t1r's are 245/35, so the profile of the new tires were taller. the ra1's only come in 245/40 or 225/40 in 18", and i wanted as much grip as possible so i went with the 245.

my options were to somehow roll the fenders, raise the coilovers, or go slower, none of which sounded appealing. for my last session of the day i slowed down quite a bit and worked on my line, letting lots of cars pass me along the way.

at the end of the day i went back to my hotel room and heated up some leftover pizza. i watched tv and fell asleep on the couch, woke up at 10 and went back to sleep in my bed.

on tuesday morning i checked out of the hotel and went back to the track. i borrowed wrenches for the coilovers from dave and adjusted the coilovers up a half inch or so. luckily the perches broke loose easily, even after being on for 2 years through 2 winters. an hour later, both fronts were raised, the wheels were back on, and i was ready to go. unfortunately, the driver's side tire was still rubbing on some of the turns, so i raised it again.

by the end of the two days i had the track pretty much memorized, but still not really feeling fast. i was hitting about 120-125 before braking at the 4 marker into 1, about 120 before tapping the brakes at the top of the hill at 5, coasting over the crest, and then braking hard to the actual turn, and doing the carousel at about 80-85. i didn't get a chance to use my gps data logger because i wasn't really feeling fast enough to care about fast lap times, but looking at the video footage, most of the laps were about 3:03-3:05 unless i hit traffic.

i put two laps into a video and the second is an even 3:00 lap. that's not fast by any means, but whatever. if you cringe at my line coming out of the bridge at 13a, my instructor made me change to it against my will. oh, and yes, that is a carrera gt flying past me in the beginning like i'm parked on the track.

for my reference, visual markers were the white house thing behind the fence coming down the hill for 3, the "sargento.com" on the bottom right part of the sargento sign on the bridge at 3a, then straight towards the yellow "concoursmotors.com" sign for 5 (even going down the hill, still towards it), and a small white sign behind the fence going into 14 for braking, then turn and hit the large break in the pavement by the rumble strip for the apex.

i think that was the last event for the year, so cabin fever will set in soon as i anxiously await next spring to get on a track again.