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As you may have heard it for quite a while, the name PRW has been flying around as the "new SIR". We've been to quite a few SIR events, but friday Terence and I had our 1st PRW event, Alfa Club's 2nd PRW event of the year (we missed the 1st one). The weather was kind of fluctuating thru' out the day. I ended up forgoing my 3rd session due to the downpour plus my "treadless" A032s. I went back on the track for the 4th session just to get more track time on the new layout. I knew it's not a record-setting day anyways due to the tires. Even that, I still logged about 1 hour of track time.
Nonetheless, it's a great event considering there weren't any mishaps in the wet. Well, at least I got the chance to test out some things that I always wanted to know:
1. I need to put back my oil cooler,
2. running with the top up helps top speed by about 10km/h,
3. running in the advanced group doesn't mean I won't be slowed down by a Porsche,
4. the situation where I fry my brakes worst is when I have slowed down enough and get ready to take a corner but just to find out the driver in front of me wants to slow down even more,
5. my treadless 032s are really really bad, it's not just a bad driver on the autox course,
In my opinion, the new track might be safer for those high hp cars since we don't run over the VHT any more. The problem is that turn 9 is tighter than before and is blind now. For a low hp car like mine, I can do WOT all the way from turn 8, 9, 10, 1, to the point before braking for turn 2 on the dry just like on the old track layout. The lower top speed (about 5 to 10km/h) is then because of tighter turns to scrub off speed. With an open track, I don't have problems with the new layout besides a bit more scary. However, driving in traffic is a bit more frustrating for me. It's next to impossible for me to pass any car if the other guy doesn't lift on those short "let-by" zone. The front straight is not a passing zone any more. It's a "let-by" zone because of the chicane, which is still taken at WOT 190km/h+.
As I like to say, "While a pic is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pics!". Here's another Porsche story (sorry for the bad sound, still experimental. If you don't have divx codec (don't you love the Bill Gates effect), i can convert the video to an mpeg). I fried my brakes because of the green machine. The video doesn't show how I did it, but I figured it'd be more interesting to see how much lap time difference do we make than to see how I fried my brakes. Keep in mind I was running treadless 032 with conservative cornering, screwed-up lines, plus conservative shifting rpm (look at my oil temp to the right of my speedo!
). My fastest lap time of the day was around 1:50 with conservative driving. My best lap record with the old layout was 1:47.66. I found out that bad tires don't just give low cornering speed, the worst problem they make was to lower my confidence on corner entry. As you can see, it really screwed up my turn 2 entry -- too early apex. I just hope that my new wheels will come soon so that I can run new tires.
[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: Race Miata ]</p>
Nonetheless, it's a great event considering there weren't any mishaps in the wet. Well, at least I got the chance to test out some things that I always wanted to know:
1. I need to put back my oil cooler,
2. running with the top up helps top speed by about 10km/h,
3. running in the advanced group doesn't mean I won't be slowed down by a Porsche,
4. the situation where I fry my brakes worst is when I have slowed down enough and get ready to take a corner but just to find out the driver in front of me wants to slow down even more,
5. my treadless 032s are really really bad, it's not just a bad driver on the autox course,
In my opinion, the new track might be safer for those high hp cars since we don't run over the VHT any more. The problem is that turn 9 is tighter than before and is blind now. For a low hp car like mine, I can do WOT all the way from turn 8, 9, 10, 1, to the point before braking for turn 2 on the dry just like on the old track layout. The lower top speed (about 5 to 10km/h) is then because of tighter turns to scrub off speed. With an open track, I don't have problems with the new layout besides a bit more scary. However, driving in traffic is a bit more frustrating for me. It's next to impossible for me to pass any car if the other guy doesn't lift on those short "let-by" zone. The front straight is not a passing zone any more. It's a "let-by" zone because of the chicane, which is still taken at WOT 190km/h+.
As I like to say, "While a pic is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a thousand pics!". Here's another Porsche story (sorry for the bad sound, still experimental. If you don't have divx codec (don't you love the Bill Gates effect), i can convert the video to an mpeg). I fried my brakes because of the green machine. The video doesn't show how I did it, but I figured it'd be more interesting to see how much lap time difference do we make than to see how I fried my brakes. Keep in mind I was running treadless 032 with conservative cornering, screwed-up lines, plus conservative shifting rpm (look at my oil temp to the right of my speedo!
). My fastest lap time of the day was around 1:50 with conservative driving. My best lap record with the old layout was 1:47.66. I found out that bad tires don't just give low cornering speed, the worst problem they make was to lower my confidence on corner entry. As you can see, it really screwed up my turn 2 entry -- too early apex. I just hope that my new wheels will come soon so that I can run new tires.[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: Race Miata ]</p>
That was some good stuff and it really makes me wanna go back to "SIR". So what IS the difference between SIR and PRW besides the safer entry onto the front straight?
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