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04-04-2009, 08:55 PM | #1 |
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PSCs in the rain = kind of Fail!
OK, so this is dumb point, but there is a track story around it, so I guess read at your own risk of wasting time.
So, I call up NASA and tell them I am about to sign up for HPDE at Lime Rock on the 18th in group 3. He asks a few questions and says that's fine. He then asks if I drove at Lime Rock before. I say no. He then says they won't have instructors for group 3, and I should have one to show me around, and advises me to sign up for group 2 on the 4th as well since group 2 would get instructors. I say great idea and sign up for that as well. Then I look at the weather forecast, which means close to nothing around here, and see that it might rain. One day it says it will rain the next day it says it will be sunny and warm. I have only two tire options, PSCs or BFG R1s, so I am kind of worried. Then, I wake up and it looks dry. Weather forecast for the day is up and down. I say screw it I can't wait I've been waiting for 6 months through the most depressing winter ever, and I take out the rear seats (5 min job now), load the BFGs in the back (they fit nicely side by side without any visual obstruction), and drive out there on the PSCs. Of course, it is raining and won't stop. It is also 4C. I stare at the track to see if there is any standing water and there isn't. I go talk to an organizer and he doesn't really say anything significant apart from go try it out see how it is. Yeah! Of course, I am all worked up and convince myself I should, and I do. It also turns out they don't have any instructors for me, so I am simply asked to follow the guy in front of me as he has an instructor on board. It turns out more than half of the people in group 2 don't know what they are doing. (I clearly don't know know what I am doing when it comes to tire choice). So, I politely do not follow his advice or the guy in front of me as he keeps on missing every other apex and brakes at the wrong place, etc. I go with the flow for a couple of laps trying to warm the tires. I test the brakes just a bit down the hill, and the car is all over the place despite going in a straight line. No standing water, but wet and raining. No tires. AWD cars with decent tires are having a field day. I can see them grin on my rear view mirror. I think of Footie, then T-Bone, and then this thread, and almost run into an Audi (joke). I give a few point bys, but I am doing OK for the most part, but man the car is all over the place. I go easy on the turns, but you do need to slow down, which is the real iffy part, especially down the straight at high speed. The session ends and I am simply relieved. But it doesn't end all that lightly. I notice a bunch of RWD cars having major issues. I identify 3 guys who don't seem right and stay away. In the next session, to their credit, they give me an excellent instructor, who turns out to be a great guy, and gives me solid advice, and we work the course together. I pick up a bunch of stuff and feel better about the whole thing, but the car is still all over the place (there is still no standing water though, so the reptilian part of my brain says, why not!). All of those 3 guys spin their cars. One of them twice, kicking mud on the track as he spins, fortunately onto the grass. Another guy puts his car into the wall bad coming out of the downhill. It looks totalled. In the next session, the guy who already spun is all over my bumper so I let him go. A couple of laps later, who spins again, this time in turn 1 and there is mud and grass all over on the inside. The debris actually somehow turn out to be entertaining as it sits there the entire session, and we have to drive around it and take a different line. Then, it stops raining, and the track starts to really clear up. The line is bone dry, but the danger is leaving it for even a few inches into the wet track as the PSCs can't handle that difference at all. I start going faster each lap, and each lap gets drier. The last 2-3 laps, I can actually start feeling the tires bite and give them a good push all around. The RS19s start to rock. The second instructor says, this car has some really nice brakes (coming from a E46 M3), and I say I am not even on the pedal. The AWD cars, including a GTR, start falling pray. I end the day with a grin on my face. I still don't know if this, driving with the PSCs, was a dumb thing to do overall. It probably was...Actually...it surely is. I would not recommend it, but I guess you could have figured that out without reading this.
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04-04-2009, 09:09 PM | #2 |
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It was a pleasure meeting you ~ The instructor was very nice and I really had a great time tracking for the first time. Good think you told me not to swap the brakes and the fluids till after my first track day. Hope to see u again in other tracks~! Thanks~
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04-04-2009, 09:54 PM | #4 |
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Great write up; well written and entertaining. I am signed up for a BMW CCA track day at Pacific Raceways near Seattle on the 16th, and I'm considering going with the Alfa club the following week. My big concern is rain. I am still running on my stock tires, and though they should hold up better in the rain than the PSCs, I am still concerned. In my total history of 4 track days I have seen 3 cars with significant damage, two of them totalled. I don't want mine to be one of them.
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04-04-2009, 10:11 PM | #5 | |
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04-05-2009, 11:42 AM | #6 |
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since your choice was a PSC vs a BFG R1 you probably made a good choice considering the PSC has more tread. R tires have good mechanical grip in the wet, its the hydroplaning (lack of tread and water evacuation) you have to watch out for.
did your instructors talk about driving off the line a bit to avoid areas with oil and rubber build up? they tend to be more slick in the rain?
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04-05-2009, 11:52 AM | #7 | |
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i tried driving off the line slightly on some low speed corners, but i happened to find more grip closer to the line where there was less water. another issue was the cold weather. 4c air in conjunction with the cold water. in my experience, PSCs do not like being cold at all. they did warm up eventually, but that took some time.
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04-05-2009, 11:52 AM | #8 |
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The stock 19'Pilot Sport 2's rock in the rainMuch faster than the unshaved Toyo R888's that I started on the rain,as they they seemed to have very little side grip but did accelerate and brake quite good.The PS2's also wore quite a bit in the rain but it was worth it for the grip that I got.
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04-06-2009, 07:09 PM | #9 | ||
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04-06-2009, 08:04 PM | #10 | |
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Good to hear the car was not totalled. The engine looked severely impacted to us from the timing tower, and that's why we thought it was a write off. So, were you in the car when this happened? I thought the instructor in that car hurt his neck and had to be taken to the hospital. That's what they told us at the least as we were waiting for the ambulance to come back. Are you OK? I hope so...
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04-07-2009, 06:22 AM | #11 | ||
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Yes, I was in the car when it happened. I did hurt my neck and I was taken to the hospital (sorry, I didn't find out until afterward that you all had to wait for the ambulance to come back The first people over asked if we were ok and I have a pre-existing condition with my neck so I mentioned it. From there, everyone was precaution this and precaution that. They had me on a backboard with my whole head immobilized for 2 hours. I was going crazy. Worst part was that right before that session I went to the food shack and got a sandwich. It was sitting on the center console in my car waiting till the end of that session for me to eat it! I was starving. They did a ct scan and didn't find anything so they gave me a prescription muscle relaxant and off I went. I even caught up with the student and his father on the way home and stopped to chat a bit. My neck's still a bit sore but better. Now this morning I'm finding my knee is sore as is my wrist. I think they might've been hit by the airbag. I'll be ok and back instructing for the 5/2 event at Pocono East and hopefully the student will get right back in the car again too. As I told him, the HPDE events are all about learning and learning from your mistakes. Unfortunately for him though the mistake had a major result. Usually the mistake is just getting a little loose, going off track in the grass (and not hitting anything), or a spin. He needs to just keep the accident in the back of his head and get right back in the car and keep going. I guess I should add some M3 content, huh? His father owns an M3 Last edited by kieranlavin; 04-07-2009 at 06:22 AM.. Reason: had to add M3 content |
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04-07-2009, 07:12 AM | #12 |
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Great to hear your neck is just sore, and there doesn't seem to be anything seriously wrong. Sorry they makde you starve for 2 hours waiting to be scanned!
The neck thing worries me. I ended up posting an inquiry about the R3 device after I got home, but didn't get any responses (one of the organizers mentioned it when they were getting you out of the car). Do you have any opinions on that? http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=248351 I'll be back at Limerock on the 18th. If it looks like it will rain, I have the PSCs swapped out with some spare PS2s I've been sitting on.
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04-10-2009, 01:58 AM | #13 | |
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04-10-2009, 07:02 AM | #14 |
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setting the other stuff on compound and tire temp aside, it sure was scary for the car to lose traction under braking in a straight line at high speed and step to the side. i guess you are saying that would have happened even if i had PS2s on. i doubt that it would have happened that easily to say the least. i'll be using PS2s if i drive in the rain again (if it rains on the 18th), so then i'll have a chance to compare...
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04-12-2009, 09:23 AM | #15 |
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wow... sounds like you had quite a handful that day... glad you got through it safely tho!!
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04-19-2009, 03:05 AM | #16 | |
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04-19-2009, 07:30 AM | #17 | |
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Check out the description of the Hoosier wet radials. The compound is clearly different. http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....e1=yes&place=3 I understand you are not saying that one would not benefit from specific wet condition compound. You are saying that an R compound tire would have as much or more "mechanical" grip than a street tire in the wet. If someone with racing experience or significant wet tracking experience would like to chime in, it would be great as I would like to learn more about this.
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04-19-2009, 09:47 AM | #18 | |
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OOPS correction!Those are different than the Hoosier rains that we used to run on I have raced in the rain quite a bit and have used mostly street tires not dedicated wet tires.I have started on fresh shaved @3/32 s and that was disaster because of standing water.If there is no standing water I think the compound has more to do with grip than the tread pattern.But I have seen people on slicks go amazingly well in some pretty aweful conditions also.For myself I will just try to use newer street tires that do not have any track heat cycles on them and and leave my R's in the paddock if it is real wet. Last edited by Gearhead999s; 04-19-2009 at 10:05 AM.. |
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04-19-2009, 02:59 PM | #19 | |
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I have to drive 300 miles to get there, so tire choices are tricky. My original plan was to take my new Nitto NT-01's (on a set of 4 OEM 18" rears) with me in the back seat and trunk and drive down on a stock set of 19" PS2's that I'd run on if it rained. Well, my wife (for the first time ever) decided to come along, so I decided to leave the Nitto's behind to make room for luggage. Because I didn't want to run on stock PS2's if the day was dry, I compromised and put on my older set of Bridgestone 265/35 RE-01R's on 9.5" rims. BIG mistake. I don't know whether it was the heat cycling (two full seasons of 6 outings each on them already) or what, but the tire choice turned the driving experience into a clusterf**k. First, on the 300 mile drive through Washington State it poured rain the whole way from the US border to Portland, so much that we had to slow down to 40MPH at times. It was Easter Sunday so the road (I5) was packed. I was getting major tramlining and wander from the standing water. White knuckles the whole way. Monday, track day, dawned overcast and cold. The track was damp and on my first outing I had no grip at all. It was embarrassing - I've spend hours on that track and know my way around, but I couldn't keep up even a little bit. The second run was better and I got a bit of pace back although I couldn't get back to a normal pace. At the end of the lunch break the sky opened up and we had a torrential downpour. I did one more part-session run through the standing water and then gave up and left for home. I just didn't see the point in spending twenty minutes keeping out of other people's way and trying to avoid an accident on tires I didn't trust. On the drive home, it rained off and on, then we went through the heaviest hailstorm I've ever seen just south of Tacoma. Finally, north of Seattle, the day warmed up a bit and the road was dry. Suddenly I was driving a different car. Stable, solid and tracked like a charm. It was a long two days of driving in nasty conditions on tires that don't work at all in the cold and wet. They have about 5/32 tread on them, but they just won't stick. Bridgestone ended RE-01R production recently and they're not available any more - I suspect that my experience is not the only case where the compound hardens up below 40 degrees and handling goes away. |
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04-19-2009, 04:03 PM | #20 | |
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i love the performance in the dry, but once the roads get slick... it's a whole 'nother story. i have heard that the new nt05's from nitto offer similar dry performance and better wet performance than the re01r's... i'm looking to try them out as my next set of tires.
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04-19-2009, 05:11 PM | #21 |
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I had RE01Rs on my Evo and they were fine in the rain. AWD aside I never felt any hydroplaning whatsoever and I took them through some pretty heavy storms.
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04-19-2009, 05:15 PM | #22 |
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Track driving or not?
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