Porsche Track Car – Road Atlanta May 2014

I had the pleasure of another great weekend with the Porsche 944 track car at Road Atlanta last weekend.  It was another Chin Motorsports event, which I have come to prefer due to the large amount of track time on offer.  My hour meter ticked off just shy of 6 hours of track time for the weekend.  The weather was perfect.  Sunny.  Not too hot. Not too cold.

I was running on the Toyo Proxes RA-1 tires on Saturday and the Toyo RR’s on Sunday.  I had my Race Capture data logger hooked up.  (See www.autosportlabs.net).  I made some very significant improvement over the weekend as I learned the capabilities of these tires.  I started on Saturday with lap times over 2:00.  By the end of Sunday, my best time was 1:53.  So that was very good improvement for me and I still am not at the limits of the tires.  I was somewhat humbled to find that the NASA lap record for a 944Spec at Road Atlanta is 8 seconds faster than my time.  So I still have much room for improvement.  Upon the advice of young Brian Cosgrove of Goldcrest Motorsports, I was challenged to take Turn 11 coming from the bridge flat out.  In my final hour I crept up on this level of performance and was finally able to do it.  Wow, what a thrill!

Reviewing my data, I see that my peak cornering values were as high as 1.25 g’s.  I don’t have any real basis for comparison but that seems pretty good to me.  I know my neck was sore after the weekend.

I did have a couple of maintenance issues.  One I knew about.  After my last event, I had noticed some cracks on the front brake rotors.  Not all the way through to the edge but cause for concern.  I had a new set of rotors shipped in and decided to change them after Saturdays sessions.  I found one area on the right front rotor that was cracked all the way through to the rim.  So I was glad that I decided to change the rotors.  Sunday the car died on me as I came into the pits.  I was able to coast to my parking area.  Long story short is that the tension rod for the alternator had come loose at one end, allowing the belt to slip, and no charge to the battery, resulting in the car quitting.  Fortunately it didn’t happen out on the track.  I was able to jury rig the tension rod back into position and all was well for the rest of the day.

So all in all a very satisfying weekend at a great track.