now that the exige has a new set of tires, a new clutch, and a new pressure plate, i thought it appropriate to beat up all of them and rip around road america for two days.
this is my second time at road america, first with the exige, but now my 20th track event (i think it comes out to like 34 days on a track in 3 years). this track definitely doesn't do any favors for low-horsepower cars like my exige. climbing up the hill on the main straight feels like an eternity and i can just barely hit 120mph before braking into turn 1 (but boy, full throttle out of 1 feels so damn fast in my car).
my first session was with my check ride, so i took it easy and tried to remember things from last year like driving under the 's' in 'sargento.com' under the sargento bridge and straddling the seam in the road through the carousel. lots of traffic (in the advanced group on a 4 mile track, come on) and people that wouldn't give passes so i had to cycle through to get some space to myself, at least for a little while.
my second session was spent pushing my little car for all it had to keep pace with a carrera gt. i know it sounds ridiculous that my 190hp car could keep pace with a $440k 612hp car, but i was, and my video will show it. see, the benefit of a $60k car versus a $440k car is that you don't worry as much about balling up the $60k car and thus you can push it harder and brag about keeping pace with the $440k car.
after lunch, it started to rain. i was about to grid up and realized i was almost out of gas, so i had to fill up with half a tank of 98 octane at the track for $8/gallon or whatever it was. the rain started to come down harder and then lightning and thunder came. some slight showers would have made it fun, but it was raining so hard that i could barely see the cars in front of me. the session was brought in early and everyone huddled in the classroom waiting for the storm to pass. since it was my last session of the day, i just left and went back to the hotel (again, barely able to see the road).
i noticed a weird hesitation during my rainy session and was worried that water had gotten into something or that the ecu was not responding well to the 98 octane. after sitting around in my hotel room for a few hours watching hitchcock movies on amc and eating dominos pizza, i went and filled topped off the tank with 93 and did some long wide-open-throttle passes down the nearby highway. the hesitation seems to be gone, so hopefully it was just a temporary thing.
the little weather widget on my iphone says the weather in elkhart lake will be much warmer and dryer tomorrow, so hopefully i'll be able to get in a bunch of good hot laps and clean up my line a bit.